The day before the Chernobyl disaster

The Post's new Retropolis columnist, Petula Dvorak, introduces herself and reintroduces you to what can be uncovered with a good look at history. Petula shares her Retropolis column "The presidential inauguration that made everyone sick" about the aftermath of James Buchanan’s in ... Show More

On Christmas Eve in 1968, the Apollo 8 astronauts captured an image that symbolizes hope and inspired environmentalism. 

On March 25, 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono were a few days into their marriage when they invited the press to join them at their honeymoon suite at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel. 

Welcome to When It Goes Wrong, the podcast about disasters, accidents and when things fall apart. On this episode I discuss the  the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster in which the reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl Power Plant suffered a full meltdown and explosion resulting in the worst nu ... Show More

NOTE: IN THE PORTION WHERE I EXPLAIN NUCLEAR FISSION, I MIX UP NUCLEI AND NEUTRON! I realised this post editing but I think it generally makes sense, but when I explain how the nuclei is hit, I say it releases a nuclei, it actually releases a neutron, the neutron then hits the ne ... Show More

What happens after everything falls apart? The end of the Bronze Age was a moment when an entire network of ancient civilizations collapsed, leaving behind only clues to what happened. Today, scholars have pieced together a story where everything from climate change to mass migra ... Show More

In April 1986 a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, in the USSR, causing the worst nuclear accident ever. Sergii Mirnyi was in charge of a monitoring unit which measured radiation levels in the 30 km exclusion zone around the plant.(Photo: The Cherno ... Show More

Remembering the earthquake and tsunami which devastated Japan and triggered a nuclear emergency in 2011. Max Pearson, who reported from Japan at the time, presents eyewitness accounts of the disaster which left thousands dead and led to many questioning the future of the country' ... Show More

In 1986, the Chernobyl power plant became the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history. Poisonous radiation caused over 100,000 casualties, and cost billions of dollars to clean up. Even now, the exclusion zone is one of the most polluted and heavily-patrolled regions in the ... Show More

In the early hours of March 28, 1979, a system malfunction began what would become the worst nuclear accident in American history. What ensued punctured the public's belief in the safety of nuclear energy and became an awful study in the consequences of communication breakdown du ... Show More

In March 2011, one of the largest earthquakes in history struck eastern Japan, followed by a massive tsunami. This one-two punch then caused a third disaster—a total loss of power at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Employees at the plant found themselves scrambling to ... Show More