Located on the Dnieper River roughly 200 miles south of Kiev, the Cherkasy nuclear power plant has been producing electricity since it went online on July 14, 1976. Consisting of four Soviet-model RBMK-1000 reactors, the plant is capable of generating 4050 MWe of power under normal operating conditions. These light-water-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors are virtually identical in design to the RBMK-1000 unit at Chernobyl that underwent catastrophic meltdown in April of 1996. Adapted from a Soviet military design, these graphite reactors can easily become unstable when run in a low-power configuration, resulting in failure of the reactor cooling system and breach of containment.