Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, viewed from a nearby road
Location of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine
Location	Prypiat
Coordinates	51°23′23.47″N 30°5′38.57″E / 51.3898528°N 30.0940472°E / 51.3898528; 30.0940472Coordinates: 51°23′23.47″N 30°5′38.57″E / 51.3898528°N 30.0940472°E / 51.3898528; 30.0940472
Status	Decommissioned
Construction began	15 August 1972
Commission date	1977
Decommission date	ongoing since 2000
Owner(s)	Government of Ukraine
Operator(s)	State Agency in Administration of Exclusion Zone
Power generation
Units operational	0
Units decommissioned	4 x 1,000 MW
Nameplate capacity	4,000 MW
Annual gross output	0 GWh
Website www.chnpp.gov.ua (Ukrainian) www.chnpp.gov.ua/en/ (English)
Reactor status: Reactor number 1 shutdown (1996) Reactor number 2 shutdown (1991) Reactor number 3 shutdown (2000) Reactor number 4 destroyed in Chernobyl Disaster (1986) Reactor number 5 never completed Reactor number 6 never completed

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant or Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station (Ukrainian: Чорнобильська атомна електростанція, Russian: Чернобыльская АЭС) is a nuclear power station under decommissioning near the city of Pripyat, Ukraine, 14.5 km (9.0 mi) northwest of the city of Chornobyl, 16 km (9.9 mi) from the Belarus–Ukraine border, and about 110 km (68 mi) north of Kiev. Reactor No. 4 was the site of the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and the power plant is now within a large restricted area known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Both the zone and the former power plant are administered by the State Agency in Administration of Exclusion Zone (Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources).

The nuclear power plant site is to be cleaned by 2065. On January 3, 2010, a Ukrainian law stipulating a programme toward this objective came into effect.

The V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station (Russian: Чернобыльская АЭС им. В.И.Ленина) as it was known during the Soviet times, consisted of four reactors of type RBMK-1000, each capable of producing 1,000 megawatts (MW) of electric power (3.2 GW of thermal power), and the four together produced about 10% of Ukraine's electricity at the time of the accident.

The Chernobyl station is 18 km (11 mi) northwest of the city of Chernobyl, 16 km (9.9 mi) from the border of Ukraine and Belarus and about 100 km (62 mi) north of Kiev. Construction of the plant and the nearby city of Pripyat, Ukraine to house workers and their families began in 1970, with Reactor No. 1 commissioned in 1977. It was the third nuclear power station in the Soviet Union of the RBMK-type (after Leningrad and Kursk), and the first ever nuclear power plant on Ukrainian soil.