Speaking of Chernobyl (the setting for the game, in the future), when I was in university one of my professors went through the cause of that accident. They turned off safety features so they would not interfere with an experiment a technician was doing (there was no physicist present), ignored a computer warning when things started to go wrong and generally made some very bad decisions along the way. Even after the core melted it would have been contained had water from the cooling system not been dumped on it (don't remember if that was deliberate or automatic/accidental) and the resulting steam blew the roof off.
Afterwards there was an international aid thing set up to bring kids from the area over to North America (at least), and feed them health food, etc to boost their immune systems. Most of those involved received more radiation on the flight over than they did from Chernobyl. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/suspicion.gif" alt="" />
