Chernobyl Research Paper

Not many people fully know what happened at Chernobyl, or understand the effect it has had on today’s nuclear science. Chernobyl has been named as the largest man-made disaster ever recorded. Chernobyl is the most influential and important event during the 1980’s because it has completely changed how the world views anything nuclear by changing experimentation and usage of nuclear materials and power as a whole. It was extremely influential because it caused thousands of people to move out of their homes, while damaging nearby cities and countries and covering the surrounding area in radioactive smog, and is still a threat to surrounding cities and countries today. It also has caused the nearby area to be thriving with wildlife.

This quote, which I obtained from the newspaper The Guardian’s website, is from Sasha Yuvchenko, a former employee at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. What he didn’t know at the time of the event he was describing was that he had just experienced the worst nuclear explosion in history.

Cs-137 results from the natural decay chain of Uranium-235. Cs-137 has a half-life of 30 years which would account for the high levels after the decrease in discharge from Sellafield and is problematic due to ease with which it spreads throughout nature due to the high solubility of Caesium salts. This ease of spreading makes it difficult to clean up radionuclides such as Cs-137 and poses dangers to both aquatic wildlife and humans as ingesting the isotope can lead to exposure to gamma and beta radiation. Small amounts of Cs-137 were also released in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 which would also correspond to the above background levels after the discharge from Sellafield decreased and would fit the timescale identified by the Sellafield

radioactive nuclides from spreading. Coupled with their slower response time and lack of high quality equipment, their rescuing was slowed down and not as productive as it could have been. More lives could have been helped with advanced equipment and proper attire.

The power plant was built next to the city of Pripyat, which had a population of fifty thousand people in 1986 (World Nuclear Association). “The Chernobyl plant used four Soviet-designed RBMK-1000 nuclear reactors— a design that is now universally recognized as incoherently flawed” says Lallanilla,“In most nuclear reactors, where water is used as a coolant and to moderate the reactivity of the nuclear core, as the core heats up and produces more steam, the increase in steam bubbles or ‘voids’ in the water reduces the reactivity in the nuclear core. This is an important safety feature found in most reactors built in the United States and other Western nations.” Irresponsibly, “operators disabled the plant equipment including automatic shutdown mechanisms the day before the disaster when they were to perform routine maintenance on reactor number four” says sources from the U.N. Scientific Committee on the effects of Atomic Radiation (Lallanilla). Recorded at 1:23 on April 26, extremely hot nuclear fuel rods were disengaged into cooling water. This created a large amount of steam that exceeded the reactivity in the nuclear core of reactor number four. This power surge caused an “immense explosion that detached the one thousand ton plate that was covering the reactor’s core” (Lallanilla). Thus, releasing radiation into the atmosphere and cutting off the flow of

There have been lots of nuclear accident around the world. One of the accident that had a major impact on the world was the Chernobyl disaster. The disaster took place on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. The disaster was caused by a reaction explosion induced by design faults and staff application errors. The accident took place in the course of scheduled tests to check the power supply mode in the event of external sources loss. Even after 10 days, explosions and ejections of radioactive substances continued. The release of radiation and radioactive substance polluted the places within 30 km of Chernobyl, and those areas have been closed for a long period of

In the Spring of 1986, the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen destroyed Chernobyl, Russia. The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear plant explosion that occurred when there was an unexpected power surge that the workers were trying to fix. The reason this is the worst nuclear disaster ever seen is because not only were there many casualties, but the health care costs were also very expensive for the country. It took a very long time to decontaminate the area and other parts of Europe which was very hard. This disaster was very impactful towards the mental and physical health of the residents, the environment of Chernobyl and the areas around it, and helped change the safety regulations and ways nuclear reactors are used today.

The day after the accident, the residents of Pripyat were told to evacuate to nearby cities. To avoid mass panic, they were not told about the severity of the explosion, and were promised that they would be back in their homes safe in a couple of days. They were told to bring nothing but necessities, as heavy luggage would hinder the attempt to evacuate. These people were also stopped from taking their pets and cattle along as their fur may have radioactive properties. The cattle may also be ineligible to be used for meat in eating, as it may have eaten radioactive food, and itself become unhealthy to eat. However,

After nearly 30 years of abandonment, a study released in Current Biology revealed that wildlife has been thriving in the absence of human involvement in Chernobyl. Researchers believe it is because of this human absence that wildlife has been able to thrive.

The radiation caused mutations in humans, animals, and plants. Humans and animals mutated because of radiation and chemicals. At first, everyone thought it was Sweden's fault because radiation was found on power plant workers clothes. Sweden investigated more into the radiation and found out that really it was the Soviet Union's fault. Soviet Union,Bryansk, and Ukraine were the most affected areas affected the most. One of their power plants exploded. Reactor 4 in the power plant caused the explosion. After 2 years 600,000 people went and cleaned up Chernobyl they were called liquidators.

There were incidents in the past with nuclear reactors that caused disastrous problems for the civilians and the environment. As explained before with the Chernobyl accident and the Fukushima incident, nuclear plants can be terrifying when there are accidents or natural disasters. With Small Modular Reactors that can bring down the chances of accidents happen and if something unfortunate were to happen it would be much more easily controlled. With the Chernobyl accident, the reason why there was a problem was because of human error. The operating team in charge of the Chernobyl Plant did not take all the safety precautions in running the plant so when something went wrong, they failed to control the problem and it got out of hand and cause

The animals eat a variety of things in the Chernobyl area, but it is all radioactive. Toads eat stag beetles or worms and herons eat stag beetles (and other insects) fish, toads, and mice. Bobcats eat elk or roe deer and Short-eared owl eat rodents. Lynx eats roe deer, rodents, or birds and Raptor eats short-eared owls, rodents, fish, and fruits. Hedgehog eats snakes, berries, bird eggs or melons and moose eat leaves and twigs. Elk eats grass or pine trees and foxes eat fruits, grasses, birds, and rodents. wolves eat Przewalski horse, elk, moose, beavers account for 60% of the wolves diet.

Three times in the world’s long history has a nuclear event occurred of such an epic proportion that residents will never be able to return to the places they lived. In 2011 a tsunami hit Fukushima, Japan causing a nuclear meltdown, the consequences of which we are just now beginning to see. A man recently documented the plant life which is returning to the desolated city, it reveals the devastating effects of the leftover radiation, and demonstrates why Fukushima may never again be inhabited by human beings again. These mutated flowers are just the first signs of the long-term destruction caused by the nuclear disaster.

The actual causes of the accident itself was a faulty reactor, as well as technicians who were not fully trained (“Chernobyl,” 2016). This led to the discharge of a mixture of hazardous chemicals in an array of different forms that affected areas in one way or another depending on whether

The main reason for the mishap is by now well recognized (Petryna 1). However, initially the Chernobyl catastrophe baffled the minds of people in the 20th century and definitely left the people of Ukraine disordered while living in anxiety. Now, without question, the public knows that the accident at Chernobyl was the result of a disastrous combination of ignorance from the Ukrainians and complacency from the Soviets in control of Ukraine at the time. As according to American physicist and Nobel laureate Hans Bethe, “…the Chernobyl disaster tells us about the deficiencies of the Soviet political and administrative system rather than about problems with nuclear power." The immediate basis of the Chernobyl accident was a mismanaged electrical-engineering experiment (Rhodes "Chernobyl", PBS). While, the indirect source of the calamity was an industrial malfunction of a Soviet made nuclear-based machine. Ironically, the Chernobyl accident occurred during a test run, which was conducted to improve plant safety. This accident proved once more what experienced control engineers have all learned: that a process must be understood before it can be controlled. (Liptak “Control Global”). Engineers with no familiarity of reactor physics were interested to see if they could draw electricity from the turbine generator of the Number 4 reactor unit to run water pumps during an emergency, when the turbine was no longer being driven by the reactor but was