Nikolay Solovyov was on shift the night of April 26, 1986 when the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. Instead of fleeing, he chose to fight his "first war" against radiation.

A routine safety test, a sudden surge, and within seconds, the world changed forever. On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl disaster turned a quiet night into a global crisis, releasing a radioactive cloud that spread far beyond Soviet borders.

I saw it for the first time in 1972,” Natalia Oliinychenko says, looking at Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant; “it was amazing and so modern.” Inspired by that first visit, she returned a few years later as “a big Soviet boss”,

The Night That Never Ended Forty years have passed – but for many, the night of April 26, 1986, never truly ended. It began quietly. A test. A routine procedure inside a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Halyna Kharshenko went to work at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986, unaware of the scale and severity of the explosion that had just occurred. The next day, she had to be rushed to a hospital unit where the staff would only approach her in full protective gear.

Mikhail Ulyanov warned that a projectile near Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant in Iran poses a risk for a "major nuclear disaster."