How long was the core exposed at Chernobyl?

about nine days
This was immediately followed by an open-air reactor core fire. It released considerable airborne radioactive contamination for about nine days that precipitated onto parts of the USSR and Western Europe, before finally ending on 4 May 1986.

How long after the explosion did it take for residents to be evacuated?

The entire town of Pripyat (population 49,360), which lay only three kilometres from the plant was completely evacuated 36 hours after the accident. During the subsequent weeks and months an additional 67,000 people were evacuated from their homes in contaminated areas and relocated on government order.

What happened at Chernobyl?

On April 26, 1986, the most horrific nuclear disaster in history happened in the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine. After a series of technical failures and poor human judgment in handling an unstable nuclear core, the RBMK reactor 4 exploded, facing the former USSR and the whole world with a problem that was new for everyone.

How much radiation is in the Chernobyl nuclear reactor?

The radiation levels in the worst-hit areas of the reactor building, including the control room, have been estimated at 300Sv/hr, (300,000mSv/hr) providing a fatal dose in just over a minute.

How long does it take for nuclear radiation to kill you?

Most, including Akimov, died from radiation exposure within three weeks. 22 years after the explosion radiation levels inside the reactor hall were approximately 34 Sv/hr – a lethal dose in 10-20 minutes. Shortly after the explosion firefighters arrived to tackle the fire.

What happened to the radioactive iodine from Chernobyl?

The radioactive materials continued to spread over southeast Europe, and more than 77,000 square miles (200,000 square km) of land are contaminated in varying degrees. One thing good is that now, 30+years after the catastrophe, radioactive iodine is almost gone, as it has a relatively short half-life of only 30 years.