On April 26, 1986, at 1:23 am, the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant number 4 was destroyed in a series of explosions. As a result of the explosion, a radioactive cloud was created that traveled west of the western side of the USSR. On the night of April 27, the cloud was over the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian parts of the USSR and eastern Poland, and in the morning it reached Scandinavia. On April 29, the cloud reached southern Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary. The radioactive cloud grew larger as it moved towards France until it began turning back towards Turkey on May 2. To date, Chernobyl has levels of radioactivity dangerously high, and scientists predict it will stay that way for around 20,000 years.