The Russian Woodpecker: The Chernobyl Disaster

The disaster had more of an effect on eastern Europe’s nuclear experimentation and use but “While no-one in the West was under any illusion about the safety of early Soviet reactor designs, some lessons learned have also been applicable to Western plants” (World Nuclear Association). Since the Chernobyl disaster was majorly caused by human error and under qualified scientists, to work with nuclear reactors today you need to be insanely qualified. Since the accident, Soviet-designed reactors’ safety has improved greatly, even in smaller ways. Automatic shutdown mechanisms now work faster, and other safety mechanisms have been sped up. Even new equipment has been installed such as automated inspection equipment. Several scientist and reporters have even said an accident like Chernobyl is virtually impossible with today’s technology (World Nuclear Association).

2. (Relevancy)After spending most of my life in the Ukraine, and learning about my country’s history as a kid, there is one event that caught my attention and has always stuck with me to this day

Most people believe that Chernobyl contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. This explosion caused social and economic problems in the Soviet Union. Stated in an issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review, Chernobyl led to “…efforts of environmental groups to puncture the official silence surrounding the disaster was what led, indirectly, to the birth of glasnost during Gorbachev’s tenure and the collapse of the totalitarian containment vessel.” Multiple individuals believe that the Soviet’s reasoning for not protecting the citizens of Ukraine is that they have a “…deeply entrenched propensity for secrecy and mendacity and its general disregard for the health and safety of its citizens.” As a result of glasnost, which is a Soviet policy of being open with their public, individuals could see how the USSR was handling the disaster in the Ukraine. Several documents were hidden away but with the coming of glasnost the “curtain of secrecy” had been removed and the secrets of Chernobyl had been released. By obtaining these documents individuals are now able to see how the Soviet Union tried to cover up Chernobyl and how unprepared they were to help innocent civilians. Therefore, many believe that Chernobyl was a major contributing factor in the fall of Soviet Communism. President Gorbachev stated “…the Chernobyl accident was a more important factor in the fall of the Soviet Union than Perestroika…” Chernobyl is suspected to be the major downfall of the Communist government. The Soviet Union was “robbed of the opportunity to keep news of the accident from reaching the public, secrecy quickly became a massive liability that undermined Soviet citizens’ faith in their government.” With the Soviet people not having faith in their government, the people started to stray from the government causing the USSR to

As a Russian nuclear engineer, Medvedev was able to write extensive notes on what exactly happened and what went awry with the reactor. He was able to explain how exactly the reactor malfunctioned and what could have been done to prevent it. On the other hand, Alexievich is a journalist from Belarus. She was awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize in literature and she is known for her book War’s Unwomanly Face. Her book Voices From Chernobyl is a collection of more than 500 interviews that she obtained over a 10 year period. She in turn took many people’s perspectives on the issue and was able to compile them into a moving and heartbreaking

The Chernobyl accident happened in 1986. The power surge caused an explosion and destroyed the reactor. The radiation of the explosion caused Ukraine to suffer and and killed millions of kids and adults. Radiation contaminated the air, water, and food supply as well as contaminating peoples bodies. The plant and animal life had a huge decrease after the explosion. The animals could not help disperse the plant life like pollinating plants and spreading seeds. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated their homes to more safer environments. Long term effects caused citizens of chernobyl to develop cancer and thyroid cancer from drinking milk from cows in Chernobyl. Debris from the explosion caused fires around the cities in Ukraine. The

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

There were many things wrong with the reactors at Chernobyl and Chernobyl itself. All four of the reactors were pressurized water reactors that should have been able to last up to fifty years each. Reactor number four needed a safety test so they did the test while the plant was still running when the test was designed to be done during a full plant shut down. The people that designed the test were not specialists in reactors and the people running the test were not familiar on how to do it.

This amount shows the extent of the explosion, and the damage that one reactor malfunction could cause. The amount of people that had to evacuate was due to how far the radiation travelled and, “The Chernobyl accident showed dramatically that an accident anywhere represents an accident everywhere, for it reflects on the ability of nuclear power to serve society as a trustworthy technology” (Klevans and Farber 316). This goes out to show not only the worries of radiation but also the technology standards that control the radiation from going wrong. To this day there is still about 7% or so of the population in some of the affected cities nearby. This was all due to the mass amount of “Over 20 million particles of radioactive material were put into the air and or atmosphere by the mass explosion of Chernobyl” (Gilman 187). The explosion being as big as it was, and the amount of particles being spread throughout the air, it caused the radiation to become “global in the sense that radioactive fallout was present throughout the northern hemisphere and caused local contamination in many European countries that were not prepared for such an accident” (Klevans and Farber 316). Although it took time, the radiation spread all the way from Chernobyl, across the Western Soviet Union, and Europe. The radiation caused a lot of people, especially kids to get sick, or at least gave them potential future health concerns which were

The personnel violated the safety protocols and the safety construction codes; as a result, the pressure of the reactor was suddenly uncontrolled. This explosion was equivalent radiation of 400 Hiroshima bombs. In Prypiat the nearest city was in a small alert, citizens of Pripyat were unnoticed of what was really occurring at the time. A few hours later a military command was sent to test the plant radioactive measure, they estimate 2.8k roentgen which was equivalent for human to die in 15 minutes. 36 hours later 400,000 people were forced to leave their home forever many of them were unaware of the matter. The hardest hit is an area of almost 1,100 square miles around the Chernobyl reactor. The full evacuation of Chernobyl and a radius of 30 miles wasn't done before May 2 by then more than 1000 were affected by severe radiation. A massive decontamination process was initiated by 600 thousand persons called ‘liquidators’. The group of liquidators was composed mainly of firefighters, scientists, workers and specialists of the nuclear industry ground and air troops prepared for the atomic war and engineers of mines,

Early in the morning of April 27, 1986, the world experienced its largest nuclear disaster ever (Gould 40). While violating safety protocol during a test, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl power plant was placed in a severely unstable state, and in a matter of seconds the reactor output shot up to 120 times the rated output (Flavin 8). The resulting steam explosion tossed aside the reactor’s 1,000 ton concrete covering and released radioactive particles up to one and a half miles into the sky (Gould 38). The explosion and resulting fires caused 31 immediate deaths and over a thousand injuries, including radiation poisoning (Flavin 5). After the

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

The accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukrainian produced a plume of radioactive debris that drifted over parts of the western USSR, Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia. The accident, which occurred on April 26, 1986, was the worst nuclear power accident in history. Large areas of the Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Russian republics of the USSR were contaminated, resulting in the evacuation of roughly 200,000 people. The accident raised concerns about the safety of the Soviet nuclear power industry, slowing its expansion for a number of years, while forcing the Soviet government to become less secretive.

A big part of the clean up process involved the setting of the sarcophagus. A sarcophagus is a concrete box, usually used for a corpse. In this case the unit 4 of the Chernobyl plant was in a corpse in hoped to be buried for good. Around 7,000 tonnes of steel and 410,000 m3 of concrete were used to cover the reactor. The sarcophagus was designed to halt the release of any radiation being projected into the atmosphere from the reactor. “ The first task in destroying the nuclear reactor was to build a ‘cooling slab’ underneath the reactor to prevent the still-hot reactor fuel from burning a hole in the base of the the reactor” ( Green Peace International ). Two months later, on the 24th of June 400 coal miners had built the 168 meter long tunnel under the reactor. A problem with the sarcophagus is that the lifetime span of the concrete is only 20 to 30 years. With the concrete starting to crack it leads to moisture in the air or rain being able to seep through the cracks into the reactors, then entering the reactor becoming radioactively contaminated seeping into the soil. With this happening, it can lead to the contamination of groundwater and the contamination of lakes and rivers nearby. Scientist predict that the next nuclear catastrophe like Chernobyl, will be Chernobyl itself, due to the fragile status of its protective shield. The next nuclear catastrophe could be even worse than the first one if the sarcophagus is not properly taken care of. No one knows exactly how

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded April 25-26, 1986, near the town of Pripyat, Ukraine. At the time of the incident, Chernobyl’s reactors were owned and operated by the Soviet Ministry of Power and Electrification. The design of the reactor was unique to the Soviets and was called an RBMK, which stands for Large Power Boiling Reactor. Like the reactors in the United States, the Chernobyl reactors used ordinary water to cool the fuel but use graphite to moderate the neutrons produced in fission (Klevans, Farber). Another significant difference is Soviet reactors at the time did not have steel-lined, concrete-walled operating buildings like the ones in Western Europe, North America and Asia. The changes between the US and Soviet designs of their nuclear reactors at low power operation and under the right circumstances, the power of the Soviet reactors could increase in an uncontrolled and devestating way.

Chernobyl itself was a combination of four pressurized water reactors. The reason behind the explosion was instability at low power levels. Poorly trained