The Story Of The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

The Nuclear Disaster That Poisoned One-Fourth Of The Planet

On 25^th of April, 1986 in the Ukraine in Russia, near Poland, an RBMK type nuclear power reactor was to be shut down for routine maintenance. It was a Soviet-designed 1000Mw reactor, the type that could be refueled while still operating, but the shutdown period would allow them to run some tests.

There is a major flaw in the design of this type reactor – one that contributed to the subsequent events. If the reactor was allowed to run at only 20% power, this design flaw would gradually allow it to become unstable and possibly uncontrollable.

In a science-fiction like scenario description, “If it became unstable, the reactor would race to power levels never before attained and finally over-heat and explode into a ball of super-heated steam, radioactive particles and possibly even an atomic explosion!” At least that was the “theory”. No reactor had ever done such a thing, even though in the US, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania had come really close in 1979.

Anyway, this reactor was commencing shutdown, as planned, and then the test was started. The aim of this test was to determine whether cooling of the radioactive core of the reactor could continue to be ensured in the event of a loss of power. This type of test had been run during a previous shut-down period, but the results had been inconclusive, so it was decided to repeat it.

As the shutdown proceeded, the reactor was operating at about half power when the electrical load dispatcher, one of the personnel in the plant, refused to allow further shutdown (communication with other workers was not done), as the power was needed for the power grid to operate the rest of the plant.

It was not until about 11:00 PM on 25 April that the grid controller agreed to a further reduction in power, after the procedure was explained to him by the test team.

Runaway Reactor

For this test, the reactor should have been stabilized at about 1,000 MW (full power) prior to shut down, but due to operational error the power fell to about 30 MW, where the design-flaw started to become a major factor.

The operators then tried to raise the power to 700-1,000 MW by switching off the automatic regulators and freeing all the control rods manually. It was only at about 01:00 AM on 26 April that the reactor was stabilized at about 200 MW, the point at which the design flaw would be a major effect on the stability of the reactor operation.

There was an increase in coolant flow and a resulting drop in steam pressure. The automatic trip mechanisms, which would have shut down the reactor when the steam pressure was low, had been circumvented for the test.

In order to maintain power, the operators had to withdraw nearly all the remaining control rods. (The control rods are used to absorb the fission process to control the reactor.)

At this point, the reactor became very unstable and the frantic operators tried to bring the reactor under control by making adjustments every few seconds to try to maintain constant power.

At about this time, the stressed-out operators reduced the flow of feedwater, presumably to maintain the steam pressure. Simultaneously, the pumps that were powered by the slowing turbine were providing less cooling water to the reactor.

The loss of cooling water exaggerated the unstable condition of the reactor by increasing steam production in the cooling channels, which increased the power of the reactor suddenly, and the operators could not prevent an overwhelming power surge, estimated to be 100 times the nominal power output.

The Explosion That Poisoned One-Fourth of the Planet

The sudden increase in heat production ruptured part of the fuel in the fuel rods and small hot fuel particles, reacting with water, caused a steam explosion, which destroyed the reactor core. A second explosion added to the destruction two to three seconds later.

While it is not known for certain what caused the explosions, it is postulated that the first was a steam/hot fuel explosion, and that hydrogen may have played a role in the second.

It was 01:23 AM on Saturday, 26 April 1986, when the two explosions destroyed the core of the reactor and the roof of the reactor building. The two explosions sent a shower of hot and highly radioactive debris and graphite into the air and exposed the destroyed core to the atmosphere.

The plume of smoke, radioactive fission products and debris from the core and the building rose up to about 1 km into the air. The heavier debris in the plume was deposited close to the site, but lighter components, including fission products and virtually all of the radioactive gases were blown by the prevailing winds.

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The release of radioactive materials from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor is estimated to be only 5% of the core materials, yet they estimate that over 60 tons of particles (later estimates were revised to over 100 tons) were carried rose to an altitude of over 3000 ft. and carried by the prevailing winds.

This dust, these radioactive particles is known as “radioactive fallout”, the kind commonly associated with a nuclear bomb. But this fallout was much, much more serious than the atomic weapons unleashed on Japan: The total release of the radioactive substances was estimated at 18,500 million million Becquerel, or 50 million curies.

This is 2,500 times that of the Windscale nuclear plant accident in England in 1957, and 16 million times that of the Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania in 1978, and an estimated 100 to 300 times the combined fallout of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.

Millions of People Affected, Especially Children

From the offices of the Children of Chernobyl Fund come the following figures:

“The reactor spewed tons of uranium fuel, plutonium and other radionuclides three miles into the atmosphere. For 10 days the lethal fire emitted particles 90 times more deadly that those released from the 1945 Hiroshima bomb, and the winds blew the radioactive debris northward across Byelorussia and Europe."

"70% of the invisible toxins rained down on unsuspecting Byelorussian citizens, trapping them under a blanket of future death. Their government continued to lie about the lethal effects of the radiation even so far as to deny and not report the accident."

"Over two million residents, including 600,000 young children, still live in the areas of Belarus contaminated by Chernobyl. Although a steady increase in disease rates, particularly in thyroid cancer, has been demonstrated, the cumulative impact of constant exposure to low-level radiation is officially ignored.”

In a report ten years after the accident by Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation  (UNSCEAR) wrote: “The specific features of the release favoured a widespread distribution of radioactivity throughout the Northern Hemisphere, mainly across Europe. Only the Southern Hemisphere remained free of contamination. Activity transported by the multiple plumes from Chernobyl was measured not only in Northern and in Southern Europe, but also in Canada, Japan and the United States.

As a result of the disaster, 600,000 children were immediately exposed to the radiation by Iodine 131, causing their thyroid glands to be seriously effected. This was just those in the Ukraine as a result of the accident. Massive outbreaks of auto-immune thyroiditis and thyroid cancer from all the surrounding areas, villages and other countries have been reported by the Scientific Research Institute of Radiological Medicine.