Chernobyl

[ chur-noh-buhl; Russian chyir-naw-bil ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

noun

a city in northern Ukraine, 80 miles (129 km) northwest of Kyiv: nuclear-plant accident 1986.

Chernobyl

/ -ˈnɒbəl; tʃɜːˈnəʊbəl /

noun

a town in N Ukraine; site of a nuclear power station accident in 1986

Chernobyl

A place in Ukraine where a nuclear power plant — a generator powered by a nuclear reactor — underwent a meltdown in 1986. A cloud of radioactive gases spread throughout the region of Chernobyl and to foreign countries as well. Forty thousand people living nearby were evacuated. Dozens of deaths and hundreds of illnesses were reported to have been caused by the accident. ( Compare Three Mile Island (see also Three Mile Island ).)

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How does Chernobyl compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

Chernobyl vs. Three Mile Island

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Example Sentences

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“People actually say to us, ‘Don’t you know what happened in Jurassic Park?,’ equating it to, like, Chernobyl,” Lamm said.

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A derelict housing estate dubbed "Scotland's Chernobyl" for its eerie ghost-town like appearance is finally about to be razed to the ground.

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Barbara Keys, a professor of US history at Durham University, took a look at an AI-generated video of someone working at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on 6 April 1986, the day the reactor exploded.

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A Russian drone attack has hit the radiation shelter over the damaged reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said.

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But critics fret about safety, cost and nuclear waste – it is a sector with sceptics to convince after the disasters at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan in 2011.

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Chernivtsi Chernovtsy

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