system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How would the Chernobyl disaster have appeared to observers at a range of galactic and intergalactic distances?

I’m assuming it would not have been detectable at intergalactic, or even medial galactic distances. But if we had had a radio telescope pointed at a similar event on a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri, could we conceivably have caught it? What we we have observed?
gpt
Not even close. The amount of energy in the blast wasn't nearly as big as intentionally designed atomic bombs. Those range from kilotons to megatons of TNT equivalent. The Chernobyl blast was probably <20 *tons* of TNT equivalent - so like a fraction of a percent of an atomic bomb. The bigger problem was that it produced a cloud of radioactive steam that spread out across Europe, and that it sprayed the nearby area with radioactive material.

This explosion produced about as much energy as we get from the Sun every few milliseconds. The Earth's reflected light from the Sun would be a much stronger signal than a nuclear explosion. But even that would be difficult to observe from Alpha Centauri, because the Sun is so much brighter than Earth that it totally outshines us.