Today marks the 30th anniversary of the nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl.

McClatchy DC: Ruined Chernobyl nuclear plant will remain a threat for 3,000 years. “30 years since Chernobyl may seem like a long time, but it’s really just the start. Below reactor’s ruins is a 2,000-ton radioactive mass that can’t be removed. How do you protect a site for as long a time as Western civilization has existed?”

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty: The Chernobyl Disaster: How It Happened. “On April 26, 1986, a routine safety test at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine spiraled out of control. Follow the dramatic events that led to the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster.”

Links via the 30th anniversary commemoration thread on MetaFilter, which contains more excellent links and interesting discussion, as usual: “This was the day, of course, when we learned we were wrong.“

I posted about Chernobyl on my weblog several times in the past: April 26, 2006, 20th anniversary; May 2, 2006, Artikel aus der Zeit; May 28, 2007; April 26, 2010; November 18, 2010.