Why We Built This Site

I’m Max, and my grandfather was a liquidator at Chernobyl. I am one of the founders of this educational platform about Chernobyl and nuclear safety.

After the explosion in April 1986, the Soviet government sent hundreds of thousands of people to contain an environmental disaster and prevent further consequences, such as a health crisis. Soldiers, miners, firefighters, engineers, and ordinary workers spent nights trying to stop the Chernobyl fire so we can live safely today. Many of them were exposed to radiation.

This site is dedicated to them. It includes my grandfather’s own documentation from the cleanup on the Radiation page, because documents like his show who these people were and what they were asked to do. My grandpa was an engineer. When I was five years old, he died of cancer.

Our Mission

My friend Jackson and I are two students from Lake Forest Academy. We have never faced what the liquidators faced. We created this website to honor people who sacrificed their lives for our future and to ask questions about what truly matters today. Should we prioritize operational tasks over safety? What could be the consequences?

Through this website, we want to understand the science behind nuclear energy, learn from the history of Chernobyl, and remember the people who took part in the cleanup. We want visitors to think carefully about the responsibilities that come with using nuclear technology.

Today, we have to understand science, learn from history, and think carefully about consequences together so we can take responsibility for our own actions.

Learning Through Simulations

That is why the site has four simulations.

Three of them run on the Radiation page. They follow uranium-238, plutonium-239, and cesium-137 through 200 simulated years. Each year, chance determines how many atoms decay and how much energy they release, and we repeat the whole run around 10,000 times. The results help visitors compare how differently these materials behave over time.

The fourth simulation maps the approximate dose of radioactive fallout across Europe, allowing visitors to explore the consequences of a single accident.

Let’s honor these brave people and not let something like that happen again. Please read it and let us know if we got something wrong.