How strong was the chernobyl disaster compared to an atomic bomb?

Answer 1

The explosion itself was a very weak steam explosion (yield well under 1 ton of TNT) compared to a nuclear explosion (typical yields in the kilotons to megatons of TNT), the operators in the control building attached to the reactor were not even aware the reactor had exploded for roughly a half hour after the actual event! Had a nuclear explosion happened, all four reactors and other buildings on site would have been instantly destroyed and the operators killed. The real damage at Chernobyl came not from the explosion but from the graphite fire deep in the core that followed the explosion and was almost impossible to put out. As long as that fire burned, its smoke carried radioactive pieces of the core high in the atmosphere to drop down all over the Ukraine and Europe as fallout. This fallout level compares to that of a very high yield thermonuclear bomb, but as it was being lofted by a long lasting fire instead of a single blast the actual damage from that fallout almost certainly covered a larger area than the fallout from such a bomb would.

In other words, it is really hard to say.