Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
decommissioned nuclear power station near the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, known by Chernobyl disaster

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) is a former nuclear power plant undergoing decommissioning. ChNPP is located near the abandoned city of Pripyat in northern Ukraine, 16.5 kilometres (10 mi) northwest of the city of Chernobyl, 16 kilometres (10 mi) from the Belarus–Ukraine border, and about 100 kilometres (62 mi) north of Kyiv. The plant was cooled by an engineered pond, fed by the Pripyat River about 5 kilometres (3 mi) northwest from its juncture with the Dnieper River. The RBMK type graphite-moderated reactor used in this plant is considered an unusual design. It prioritizes cost efficiency over safety compared to other reactor designs, such as the VVER pressurized water reactor.
Originally named the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant of V. I. Lenin after the founding leader of the Soviet Union, the plant was commissioned in phases with the four reactors entering commercial operation between 1978 and 1984. On 26 April 1986, in what became known as the Chernobyl disaster, reactor No. 4 suffered a catastrophic explosion and meltdown; as a result of this, the power plant is now within a large restricted area known as the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Both the zone and the power plant are administered by the State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management. The three other reactors remained operational post-accident maintaining a capacity factor between 60 and 70%.
“Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant” enters the record as decommissioned nuclear power station near the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, known by Chernobyl disaster. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Chernobyl, Nuclear and Power can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q215419. VIAF identifies the subject as 248687163. The Library of Congress control number is sh94005305. Authority coordinates are 51.390, 30.099. 2 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1984 and 1986.
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This entry incorporates text from “Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.