© Dr. Galen Royer Frysinger
Ukraine
Folk Architecture and Life Museum
Ethnic Ukrainians make up 73 percent of the population of Ukraine.
Russians are the largest minority group at 22 percent.
Jews (considered both an ethnic and a religious group in Ukraine)
and Belarusians each account for about 1 percent of the total.
Other numerically significant groups are Bulgarians, Poles,
Hungarians, and Romanians.
Chernobyl
diorama of the Chernobyl site
In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986,
reactor No. 4 was operating at very low capacity (6 to 7 percent)
during a planned shutdown. Plant personnel intended to monitor the
performance of turbine generators, which supplied electric power for
the plant's own operation, during a changeover fromstandard to a
backup source of power. The reactor's design made it unstable at low
power, and the operators were careless about safety precautions
during the test. After a sudden power surge, two explosions destroyed
the reactor core and blasted a large hole in the roof of the reactor
building. Radioactive debris moved up through this hole to heights of 1
km (0.6 mi), carried by a strong updraft.
