• Chernobyl is the name of a city in northern Ukraine
• This happened on a Saturday, April 26 1986
• The disaster was an explosion at a nuclear power plant, it caused a fire and released a large abundance radioactive contamination into the atmosphere
• Chernobyl had four reactors, each capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of power
• engineers began an electrical-engineering experiment on the Number 4 reactor. The engineers, who had little knowledge of reactor physics, wanted to see if the reactor’s turbine could run emergency water pumps on inertial power.
• As part of their lousily designed experiment, the engineers took apart the reactor’s emergency safety systems and its power-regulating system then they ran the reactor at a power level so low that the reaction became risky, and then removed too many of the reactor’s control rods when they tried to power it up again. The reactor’s output rose to more than 200 megawatts but was getting out of control
• the engineers continued with their experiment and shut down the engine to see if its spinning would power the reactor’s water pumps. It did not decently power the water pumps, and without cooling water the power level in the reactor overflowed.

Works Cited

Chernobyl Gallery. chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/what-is-chernobyl/. "Fact Sheets." NEI, www.nei.org/Master-Document-Folder/Backgrounders/Fact-Sheets/Chernobyl-Accident-And-Its-Consequences. Green Peace. www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/Blogs/nuclear-reaction/chernobyl-nuclear-disaster/blog/56104/. United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/chernobyl-bg.html. World Nuclear Association. www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident.aspx