The area around Chernobyl before.
Chernobyl was located in a town known as Pripyat, this town was only 140km (86.8mi) from Kyiv, the capitol of Ukrine. The town was founded 1193. Even before the sadly known disaster that happened in 1986, it's population wasn't numerous. Likewise only 12,000 people living there. However now the small town is known globally for being the worlds worst nuclear disaster in history so far. It lead to many discoveries in nuclear power.
What went wrong.
On April 26th,1986 at 1:23 am the Chernobyl reactor exploded because of a flawed reactor design that was operated by not qualified personnel. When the explosion occurred it let out 5% radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere. Right away two workers were killed. Followed by 28 more operaters and firemen. The explosion destroyed the 4th power block of the power plant.