Chernobyl :: Ukraine Disaster History Essays

Chernobyl 1986 was a year of several meaningful worldwide events, some of which include the Voyager 2 got details and pictures of Uranus, the space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff, and Haleys comet soared past Earth (infoplease.com). Perhaps the event that alarmed the world the most, however, was the major nuclear accident that occurred at the nuclear power plant Chernobyl. The nuclear disaster that occurred at Chernobyl in 1986 (Lecture 4/1/02), has forever changed the way that nuclear power plants are viewed by the world. Chernobyl is now an abandoned city in north Ukraine because at 123 am on April 26th (Chernobyl.com), during an unofficial test of one of the plants four reactors, engineers initiated an uncontrolled chain reaction in the core of the reactor after disabling emergency backup systems (infoplease.com). The type of reactor used at Chernobyl was a graphite-water reactor (Lecture 3/25/02). This means that the moderator of the reactor is graphite, and the coolant is water (Lecture 3/25/02). According to Chernobyl.com, technicians allowed the power level in the fourth reactor to fall to an extremely low level, causing a core meltdown. An explosion ripped the top off the containment building, expelling radioactive material into the strain for over ten days (Chernobyl.com). More was then released in a fire that followed, due to a second explosion that allowed air to rush into the reactor (world-nuclear.org). It was only after Swedish instruments detected a problem from the explosion that Soviet authorities admitted that an accident had occurred (infoplease.com). The reactor core was sealed off by air-dropping a cement mixture which included 5,000 tons of boron, dolomite, sand, clay and lead, but not before eight tons of radioactive material had escaped into the aureole (infoplease.com). It is estimated that all of the xenon gas, about half of the iodine and caesium, and at least 5% of the remaining radioactive material in the Chernobyl reactor core was released in the accident (world-nuclear.org). Over twenty firefighters died instantly from overexposure to radioactivity, while hundreds suffered from severe radiation sickness (infoplease.