Chernobyl The Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident on April 26, 1986 in the former Soviet Union demonstrated for the first time that the effects of any nuclear accident are not localized, but rather spill over into neighboring countries and have global consequences. The accident harmed a lot of people in many ways and took years to clean up. The Chernobyl power plant ran most of Ukraine’s power. The board of director of the plant wanted to run a test that would tell them whether or not the power plant could run on low power in case of a malfunction of the reactor. The plan went into effect and when Reactor 4 was on shutdown for routine maintenance on Apr