The faulty design of reactor no. 4 combined with human error caused the disaster. That morning, the engineers put the plant into operation at very low power. When operating at low power, the reactors are very unstable and the engineers did not take adequate precautions or coordinate their procedure with safety personnel. Suddenly, there was an increase in heat, causing some of the pressure pipes with fuel to burst. ¹⁾

The Chernobyl explosion is one of only two nuclear power accidents classified as level 7 on the international scale of nuclear incidents. The second one is the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. ²⁾

Before being contained on 4 May 1986, an open-air reactor core fire that followed the core explosion released considerable airborne radioactive contamination. For about nine days the contamination spread onto parts of the USSR and Western Europe, especially Belarus, where around 70 percent landed. ³⁾

The Red Forest is the name of a forest with the ginger-brown color of the pine trees. The pines died following the absorption of high levels of radiation from the Chernobyl accident on 26 April 1986. It is the 4 sq mi area surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant within the Exclusion Zone located in Polesia. ⁴⁾