Talk:Chernobyl disaster

Grammar

The first sentence should read: "At the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Pripyat, located in the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union (USSR)" instead of: "at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Pripyat, then located in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union (USSR)". It did not physically move.

The section titled "Social Economic Effects" should be renamed to "socioeconomic effects" to reflect proper terminology.

minor but this is the English language page "Numerous structural and construction quality issues, as well as deviations from the original plant design, had been known to KGB since at least 1973 and passed on to the Central Committee, which take no action and classified the information." should be "been known to the KGB... which took no action"

Containing fire

The timeline says all fires were contained at 5:00 - this should probably mention "fires around the power plant": The core continued to burn days after, but there is no description what measures really lead to containing the fire inside the reactor. It just says "It is now known that virtually none of the neutron absorbers reached the core." It is not clear what really stopped the fire.

decay heat was the "fire" and it "stopped" being "red hot" like decay heat always does. With time.

Grammar edit request

There's a rather extended high-comma-count "sentence" with what looks to be a misspelling.

The expected highest body activity was in the first few years, were the unabated ingestion of local food, primarily milk consumption, resulted in the transfer of activity from soil to body, after the dissolution of the USSR, the now reduced scale initiative to monitor the human body activity in these regions of Ukraine, recorded a small and gradual half-decadal-long rise, in internal committed dose, before returning to the previous trend of observing ever lower body counts each year.

minimal-change improvement:

The expected highest body activity was in the first few years, where the unabated ingestion of local food (primarily milk) resulted in the transfer of activity from soil to body. After the dissolution of the USSR, the now reduced scale initiative to monitor the human body activity in these regions of Ukraine recorded a small and gradual half-decadal-long rise in internal committed dose before returning to the previous trend of observing ever lower body counts each year.

length of lead

This has come up before, see..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chernobyl_disaster/Archive_13#Lead_too_long

Dougsim

Weasel language/irrelevant “commentary”

"Commentators[according to whom?] have argued that the Chernobyl disaster was more likely to occur in a communist country than in a capitalist one.[259] Soviet power plant administrators were reportedly not empowered to make crucial decisions during the crisis.[260]"

This excerpt comes across as anti-intellectual. Firstly, the USSR was nowhere near communist in practice, so the entire thing is a nothing-burger to begin with. If the Nazi party called itself the Equal Rights party, we would not call Nazi Germany a bastion of equal rights.

Secondly, the reference for this excerpt is an article published by The Telegraph and written by… who, exactly? Not someone with any evident expertise, hardly even a "commentator" given that this is seemingly their only ever write-up. It is based in nothing but blind faith in a capitalist organization of the economy to the point of brown-nosing and provides no empirical, nor even any anecdotal evidence to back up its claim.

Courtega (talk) 12:42, 18 April 2026 (UTC)

Eastern Block countries were ruled by Communist Parties and self-identified Communists, therefore they are routinely referred to as Communist countries in plain English. So-called capitalist countries also don't practice pure or ideal capitalism; virtually all have mixed economies.Sredmash (talk) 14:45, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

No. You are wrong. If words and their meanings have any meaning to you, you do not use "communism" to describe the situation in English, and certainly not with a lowercase "c" as is done in this article.

Have you actually read the reference? Any defense of its inclusion after even the briefest of glances is straight up disingenuous. The idea that Wikipedia should even entertain such propagandizing slop is bizarre. The primary issue was, and still is, having an elite class with a greater incentive to line their own pockets/protect their own interests than to ensure the well-being of their constituents. That's what happened in Chernobyl, that's what happened in Fukushima, and that's what continues to happen now. Negligence. USSR administration did not care about workers or the actual goals of socialism/communism. This excerpt is disgusting, a borderline exploitation of tragedy to push Western exceptionalism. Courtega (talk) 14:23, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. It is a bit disheartening to see politics being snuck into a disaster of such magnitude when it is completely unnessesary. ~2026-25527-85 (talk) 04:04, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

Yup, its human failures. Compare to Three Man Island disaster, which dumped the primary coolant by accident, causing core meltdown without explosion, as no coolant - nothing to evaporate/explode. "Crucial decisions" were made in both cases on spot, but it was the luck factor that was the crucial. ~2026-40057-69 (talk) 06:38, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Chernobyl or chornobyl

which spelling should be used? ~2026-24990-37 (talk) 03:36, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

@~2026-24990-37 I would go with Chornobyl myself, considering that it is how it's said in Ukrainian. It would also align with how several Ukrainian places have been renamed in English within the past few years to better reflect their Ukrainian identity. Young N' Brash (talk) 17:30, 24 April 2026 (UTC)

Disagree - It wouldn't align with the fact that the disaster happened at the "Chernobyl" Nuclear Power Plant, and could be a violation of WP:NPOV Jaybainshetland (talk) 13:29, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

It’s extremely non-NPOV and offensive to only use and mention a colonial imposition, the Russian-based spelling of the place and events. The correct spelling is used by Canadian Press and CTV , the Guardian , CBC , Chernobyl Children International , the United Nations (A/RES/80/111, Art. 10) , the US Board on Geographic Names (for the place name, the abandoned zone, and the nature reserve) , Google Maps, OpenStreetMap , the national government , and the Chornobyl Center . The spelling is offered as alternative by Britannica , M-W , AHD , Collins , Wiktionary , and AP. ~2026-25535-72 (talk) 15:06, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

From Talk:Chernobyl/FAQ: While the standard transliteration of the city's name is Chornobyl, the name as used in the English language is overwhelmingly Chernobyl. Per WP:COMMONNAME, the latter should be used. Tbhotch^™ (CC BY-SA 4.0) 20:06, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

We even have WP:CHORNOBYL explaining "Do not use the standard Ukrainian transliterations, which are Chornobyl, Prypiat, Feodosiia and Yevpatoriia respectively, as this is not in common use" because people can't stop asking at Talk:Chernobyl the same questions that are literally visible there. Tbhotch^™ (CC BY-SA 4.0) 20:10, 26 April 2026 (UTC)

Not expressing an opinion on the issue, but I do want to point out to Jaybainshetland that even in the Soviet Union, the power plant had a huge sign on the ABK-1 building that said 'Chornobyl NPP' in Ukrainian. Not Russian.Sredmash (talk) 02:15, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Why would "colonial communist Russian occupants" place THAT huge sign on the plant THEY've built? It would imply that swapping any Russian sign with Ukrainian is actually an act of "communization". ~2026-40057-69 (talk) 06:44, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

It’s not disputed that the Russian-derived spelling is widely used. But it is 1) controversial, 2) there is an alternative that is more acceptable with solid justification, and 3) the alternative is used for good reasons by many prominent sources on the subject. To exclusively promote colonial language that is unacceptable in certain contexts is not NPOV and a disservice to readers. The alternative is to be given in bold in the lead. ~2026-25575-30 (talk) 16:13, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Weren't Soviet communists the one placing a crapload of Ukrainian signs everywhere and renaming nearly every Russian-found/-built city in the UkrSSR into Ukrainian? If that's true, what you demand is basically what Soviet communists did for the whole time... ~2026-40057-69 (talk) 06:52, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Reactor design flaws and sentence flaws

Please amend

A design issue when attempting to shut down the reactor in those conditions resulted in a dramatic power surge.

as

When attempting to shut down the reactor in those conditions, its flawed design resulted in a dramatic power surge.

Reason: If I have understood the main text correctly, there were potentially several design problems, not just one. Also, the sentence is grammatically ambiguous: a design error is by definition a permanent feature, not conditional or temporary.~2026-24799-47 (talk) 07:25, 27 April 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 29 April 2026

Noticed that the latest instalment to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series isn’t included. Also feel like the game Chernobylite should be included.

Change: The video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl, developed by GSC Game World and released by THQ in 2007, is a first-person shooter game set in the Exclusion zone.[274] A prequel called S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky was released in 2008 following with a sequel S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat released in 2010.

To: The video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl, developed by GSC Game World and released by THQ in 2007, is a first-person shooter set in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.[274] A prequel, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, was released in 2008, followed by the sequel S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat in 2010. A later instalment, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, was released in 2024. Another video game inspired by the disaster includes Chernobylite, which also takes place in the Exclusion Zone and features environments created using 3D scans of real-world locations.

Metanoiia (talk) 23:53, 29 April 2026 (UTC)

 Done Streetr4 (talk) 23:52, 4 May 2026 (UTC)

References

The museum (that has been just destroyed) should be renamed

Its name was Ukrainian National Chornobyl Museum not "Ukrainian National Chernobyl Museum" (because it was indeed Ukrainian). ~2026-31126-48 (talk) 22:09, 24 May 2026 (UTC)

Current status of the "Chornobyl" romanization on Wikipedia is to stick with the "Chernobyl" spelling as it is the more commonly known and used name amongst English visitors. I didn't decide that and I'm definitely not saying whether or not it's the best call, but until all other pages relating to Chornobyl are renamed and the call is changed, then doing it in pieces will only lead to confusion and inconsistencies across different articles. OneAntsyBoi (talk) 16:30, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

To any reviewers:

I’ve looked through the reversion history from the year a thing was published (https://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/timeline/) until now. I’ve also looked at the Earwig similarity.

Although Earwig says 88-ish percent, it seems to be wrong. Most of that comes from quotes, long-ish phrases that would naturally occur often in both, etc. _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 01:03, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Ditto for the other top two. Copyvio’s good. _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 01:05, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

I hope you can get the long-term effects merged before this article is reviewed. They still take up the largest chunk of the article. -- Reconrabbit (talk) 12:24, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

I don't really understand what's being proposed and asked @FaviFake to explain (xkcd (It's 'cause you're dumb)) (sorry for the pun). _{In solidarity}Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 13:17, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Working on that right now! _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 19:48, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

GA review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Chernobyl disaster/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Nominator: Wikipedian12512(alt) (talk · contribs) 01:42, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Reviewer: Chao Garden (talk · contribs) 17:41, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Review

To start, I really appreciate MicahelMaggs comments below (see: Special:Diff/1359005324). He has previously done substantial revisions & source reviews for this article, and I think it's pretty telling that he had concerns about the state of this article's sourcing prior to this GA nomination.

To @Wikipedian12512 / @Wikipedian12512(alt) (sorry, I'm tagging both accounts to be thorough, because you edited with both, nominated with the "(alt)" one, and responded from your main account) — Authorship at the time of GA nomination notwithstanding (context: Special:Diff/1358896126), after the many revisions you made in the past ~48 hours: additional sourcing issues have been introduced. I appreciate the WP:GOODFAITH effort you put into trying to address missing citations, but we need to evaluate these revisions.

Of the {{cn}} tags that were replaced with new sources in the past ~48 hours, I found 4 that failed verification:

#	Nominator's revision	Failed verification	Failure reason
1	Special:Diff/1359032002	Special:Diff/1359189018	Figures for Reactor no.4 stating "1,661 individual fuel channels" and "45 million litres of coolant per hour" are not reflected in this source. Source says the "coolant flow" / "re-circulation flow rote" is 42,000 t/h (tonnes per hour). So the mass measurement (tonnes) in source differs from volume measurement (litres) here.
2	Special:Diff/1358776506	Special:Diff/1359168035	Source is not about site cleanup & construction of the sarcophagus in the months immediately after the disaster. Rather, this source is about the health and socio-economic consequences of the disaster, as assessed almost 20 years later, around 2003-2005.
3	Special:Diff/1358788339	Special:Diff/1359130270	Source does not mention the IPHECA, nor does it mention $20 million in funding or Japan.
4	Special:Diff/1358918837	Special:Diff/1359027239	Source is about recovery efforts (as of 2019) in Belarus, specifically. It does not cover CRDP's work in any affected areas in Ukraine. It also does not specifically mention recommendations from Human Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident report.

Other issues I noticed from recent changes:

• Photo blog (?) cited Special:Diff/1358797370 (I tagged as a possible self-published source)
• The {{better source needed}} tags were removed Special:Diff/1358775776 without much explanation. (Note: the tags were added by a user who is now banned, so I couldn't ask them why the tags were added in the first place.)
• I added additional {{cn}} tags for mission citations: Special:Diff/1359096082

I will be failing this nomination (which the nominator also requested here: Special:Diff/1359227111). And I think that the source integrity issues need to be addressed.

FYI @Reconrabbit

Thank you — Chao Garden 🌱 ~ say hello 01:16, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

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Review on hold

* I will put this review on hold for now. (See discussion below.) However, I question why the article was nominated for GA when there are so many drastic changes happening to it + planned for it, by someone who doesn't have an established history with the article. In my opinion, it would have been better to resolve content questions, with collaboration with some of the top editors of this article, before nominating this article for GA. cc: @Wikipedian12512: — Chao Garden 🌱 ~ say hello 22:10, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Feel free to fail it; I’ll need more than a week. _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 23:41, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Initial questions

@Wikipedian12512: it doesn't look like you meet the requirements as a "significant" contributor to this article. Based on the edit statistics, you are ranked #30 on the list of editors by contribution. Your contributions currently total 0.6% of the article, and you've made 6 edits to the page (compared to 12k total edits on the page, or compared to 1.3k total edits from the top 10 editors). See authorship stats here.

Requirements for GA nominations states:

Nominators should be familiar with the article's subject and cited sources, and must have contributed significantly to the article: they are either the author of at least 10% of the article, or are ranked in the top five in authorship. (Source: Wikipedia:Good_article_instructions

The reason this requirement exists is to ensure that the nominator is knowledgeable of both the subject-matter and the sources used in the article.

Chao Garden 🌱 ~ say hello 17:41, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

There are also 12 {{citation needed}} tags throughout the article, as of the current revision: Special:Diff/1358859332

The GA criteria states that a nomination is an "immediate failure" if the article has maintenance tags: It has, or needs, cleanup banners that are unquestionably still valid. These include {{cleanup}}, {{POV}}, {{unreferenced}} or large numbers of {{citation needed}}, {{clarify}}, or similar tags (See also {{QF}}). (See: Wikipedia:Good_article_criteria#Immediate failures) — Chao Garden 🌱 ~ say hello 17:59, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Chao Garden, I added those just after the nomination was made to save any potential reviewer the trouble of putting those in themselves. Wikipedian wasn't immediately aware of them and I'd like to give some time to address this problem as they're a first time reviewer. I know I ran into similar problems in my first nominations. I think the more pressing issue is the current merge discussion which has been open since March. I'd be willing to help out with that on a later date. -- Reconrabbit (talk) 19:22, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Oh thank you @Reconrabbit, I didn't check when the CN tags were added, that's my mistake. I'll wait for the nominator to respond & make revisions.

But also, what's your take on the authorship stats in my first comment? (Although authorship percentage & edit count would go up when addressing the CN tags, it would still need to go up quite a bit to meet that 10% / top five editor threshold?) — Chao Garden 🌱 ~ say hello 19:33, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

I would like to see more, but it is difficult to judge without hearing anything from Wikipedian12512 how familiar they are with the text and the sources. This is a very large article and having more authorship would be very difficult. It wouldn't be undue to ask contributors like @MichaelMaggs or @Chris Capoccia what they think. I noticed an "unreliable source" tag also in the text relating to Grigori Medvedev's book, which is derided among some people familiar with the history of the disaster but otherwise effusively praised in reviews. -- Reconrabbit (talk) 19:48, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Just found this, sorry for the wait.

I’m cutting down part of the article, which isn’t really doing wonders for the authorship score. I think it goes by the sum of the edits, which means that the fact that I’ve started to do some removal to account for the consensus to merge isn’t doing wonders for my “score”.

I’m also taking a few editorial decisions (well informed) about whether tags are necessary.

I don’t think that, after the merge-cut down is done, I will be able to reasonably get that number up enough (assuming that’s how the number works) to get that amount. I think I’m reasonably well acquainted with the sources (if you have an issue with any particular one, I’m able to find a different one for that, although it’s hard to do that for every one.

If you have any follow up questions, I will be happy to answer them. _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 20:19, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the mention. I can't pretend to be highly familiar with the sources for this article; my involvement was largely to dig into them just enough to sort out some of the most confused and incomprehensible parts of the technical descriptions. I came away with the strong impression that the technical aspects have been summarised by an editor who has done their best to extract wording from the sources, but without much understanding of what is happening at the physics and engineering level. These aspects are pretty crucial, and I'd be uncomfortable with this article being submitted for GA status without it being vetted quite closely by a competent technical editor. What looks impressive at first sight has a tendency to be obscured by misunderstandings. Although the work would be interesting, and perhaps something I could conceivably tackle later, I am afraid I have too much on to put in the required effort just at the moment. MichaelMaggs (talk) 12:41, 12 June 2026 (UTC)

I went through all of those before nominating, hence my comment on the thing about EARWIG. I think we can ignore those three “problems” because they share long quotes and common phrases (I can’t remember right now, but something like “the Chernobyl disaster” and “the Chernobyl disaster caused”). _{In solidarity} Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 20:59, 11 June 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Incorrect hyperlink

I can't edit the page because it is protected. Where it says the coolant flashed to steam, it hyperlinks to flash point which is incorrect. It should hyperlink to flash evaporation. ~2026-35664-37 (talk) 18:25, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

 Done FaviFake (talk) 19:13, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 June 2026

to change the Russian spelling of Chernobyl to the Ukrainian one which is Chornobyl because of the invasion of Ukraine and since its in Ukraine should be spelt the way ukrAINians do 79re8ytwr72390u (talk) 20:49, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

 Not done: per WP:CHERNOBYL, Wikipedia does not use the transliteration "Chornobyl" as it is not in common English use. Day Creature (talk) 22:56, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

you think that wikipedia and other information and news sites would try and change it to the common English instead of continuing to push the English translation of the Russian version you know a country that has drone strikes the Chornobyl museum and to the concrete shell over the reactor 79re8ytwr72390u (talk) 19:32, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

The tail trying to wag the dog? ~2026-40057-69 (talk) 06:54, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

See also header

When one googles Chernobyl, the first Wikipedia article that appears is the one about the accident. Should we add a See also header for the power plant itself, for those who may be looking for it, as well as the city of Chernobyl itself? The article for Chernobyl City has a great example of what I think it should look like. Ethan (Emholt1)  :) (talk) 23:39, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

I went ahead and added one. It doesn’t look to out of place; if you don’t like it, yell at me here and I’ll get rid of it. Ethan (Emholt1)  :) (talk) 23:42, 31 July 2026 (UTC)

I removed it, it violated WP:NOTAMBIGUOUS FaviFake (talk) 15:19, 2 August 2026 (UTC)