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The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred on April 26. The accident at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin nuclear power plant near the cities of Pripyat and Chernobyl was the most serious disaster since the 1957 Mayak Kystim tragedy. As a result of the accident, a radioactive cloud covered Europe, with 70 percent of the radiation concentrated in Belarus. The day before the accident, the operating personnel turned off the reactor's emergency cooling system, and then the reactor operated without emergency cooling for half a day on the instructions of the dispatcher. This may have caused the steam explosion at Unit 4. The world learned about the accident from Swedish scientists. On the occasion of the 35th anniversary, we spoke with József Kóbor, a biophysicist.