The disaster makes for a compelling and very frightening tv series. In the early morning hours of april 20, sixth, 19 86, at the ternoble nuclear power plant, they were running a safety test. They violated a series of safety rules that we would have in the west, that they didn't have. And even after it exploded, they refused to believe that it exploded. There is a mass of exclusion zone around trenoble that exists to this day because the area is still considered rather dangerous.