Puttin’ Russia on Blast.

Did you know that the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster of April 26, 1986 reportedly released 400 times more fallout than the Hiroshima atomic bomb blast of August 1945? Even more, did you know that, despite the fallout, both literal and political, the plant continued operating until 2000? Russia depends on nuclear energy for fully 16% of its electric power—nearly a sixth of the total. (Nukes provide 20% 0f U.S. electrical needs.)

But that’s just a start. Rosatom, Russia’s equivalent to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plans to be generating 23% of the massive country’s electrical power with atoms by 2020, and fully a quarter of it ten years later. Clearly, the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history hasn’t made former Soviets the least bit gun shy. Perhaps that’s why they had no qualms about letting a photographer inside their 2.7Gw Smolensk nuclear power plant, 200 miles from Moscow, so he could take pictures of everything  from a worker handing out safety helments, above, to the colbalt-blue glow of fuel rods in water. Take a gander. See it before it blows up.