Chernobyl, a word that still causes pain and fear in the hearts of many, even after 28 years, is still causing great damage. It was the biggest nuclear disaster ever, Chernobyl was it." . . about 400 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II. . .” (Walmsley “26 Years Later: Helping Chernobyl Children”). The disaster was not immediately seen as a major threat, which is why so many lives were killed or destroyed. The Chernobyl power plant is located approximately 18.2 miles northwest of the city of Chernobyl, and was 8.2 square miles in size. Chernobyl opened in 1977 and took the Soviet Union six years to build. At the time the Soviet Union was struggling with power and this is what prompted the construction of Chernobyl. By the 1980s, the Soviet Union had climbed the ranks in nuclear energy, leading with the United States, England and France. The power plant had 4 reactors that provided electricity to millions of people and had the official name of the VI Lenin Nuclear Power Plant. The Chernobyl design was similar to previous designs used in the United States. The VI Lenin nuclear power plant used the fission process to create energy that would then be transformed into electricity. The reactor used at Chernobyl was an RBMK reactor created by the Soviet Union as a breeder reactor. A breeder reactor by definition is a reactor that creates more fissile material than the amount of fuel of different types of fissile material needed to power it. This type of reactor produces more than is needed to maintain the chain reaction in the fission process and can also produce a fissile isotope that can be used to create a nuclear weapon. Although use as a breeder reactor was not the main purpose of the RBMKs, it still had... middle of the paper... as its only disease, many children developed disabilities. “Data released by UNICEF in 2010 showed that more than 20% of adolescent children in Belarus suffered from disabilities and chronic diseases. Belarus absorbed 70% of Chernobyl's fallout” (Walmsley “26 Years Later: Helping Chernobyl Children”). Chernobyl also influenced the nuclear community, bringing safety awareness. Considering that not many of those who worked at Chernobyl had ever worked at a nuclear power plant before, and there hadn't even been an emergency drill at Chernobyl. This has prompted many organizations to reevaluate other facilities and their procedures. Many thought that the RBMK reactors needed better safety measures, with the understanding that Chernobyl could ultimately have been avoided. Works Cited Brennan, Kristine. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Chelsea House Publishers, 2002. Print.