DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Our "CNN 20" segment, a look back at the world's worst nuclear accident.</s>ANNOUNCER: Bringing you the world for 20 years, this is CNN.</s>UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Soviet authorities announced what is apparently a major nuclear reactor accident in the Ukraine. It happened about 80 miles north of Kiev, the republic's capital. The announcement said one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear power station has been damaged...</s>UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER (voice-over): For the first time, the Soviet Union has reported a nuclear accident within it's own boundaries. First indication of the accident came when Sweden, Finland and Denmark all reported high levels of radioactivity. Then word from the Soviet Union -- an accident had damaged a reactor at the giant Chernobyl atomic power plant in the Ukraine. The Soviet report acknowledged injuries, but didn't say how many. Western experts speculated that the accident must have been major for the Soviets to have admitted that it occurred. Scientists say, from what they know, it's the worst nuclear power accident ever.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It looks to me as though it were a core melt -- a core melt-down. They were finding iodine and cesium in Sweden, which are fission products. And the only way they could get there would be to have a partial or full melt-down.</s>UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Tass (ph) claimed the nuclear accident was the first in the Soviet Union. But some 28 years ago, a nuclear waste explosion reportedly claimed thousands of lives in an Eastern province of the Soviet Union.
CNN 20: Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, April 26, 1986