The Chernobyl nuclear disaster took place all the way back on 26th April 1986 due to an accident at the power plant in Ukraine. It is often describe as the worst nuclear accident in the world. Chernobyl was located in the former Soviet Union which is now known as Ukraine. At present, Chernobyl is now known as a nuclear wasteland and people are believed to have evacuate the place, but however, there are still some settlements there even with the danger of mutation and radiation sickness those people are exposed to.
The nuclear disaster happened at 1.32am when the town slept very peacefully. A fire broke out at the nuclear power plant nearby. It was a bluish glow all over the power plant. Lieutenant Colonel Leonid Petrovich Telyatnikov was the head of the fire department at the Chernobyl power plant then, led the team of firefighters to the fire at reactor number 4 which had caused the outbreak of the fire. Despite the radiation level being extremely high at that time (even higher than the one after the Hiroshima atomic bomb), they still fought the blaze without a radiation suit and respirators. They only had their uniforms and gas masks. After about a few minutes of trying to put out the fire, Telyatnikov began vomiting and it was the sign of radiation sickness. Several days after that, Telyatnikov and his teammates began developing radiation burns all over their bodies. They were soon taken to a hospital in Moscow where they were kept in sterile units because their body immune system had been weakened. In 1987, Telyatnikov was named a Hero of the Soviet Union. He died of cancer at the age of 53. On April 25, 2006, the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, a monument was dedicated to him at the Baykove cemetery in Kiev where he is buried.
The causes of the explosion were a long list of problems with management errors being the main issue. The head managers who conducted the test at Chernobyl were electrical engineers but none were specialised in reactor plants. Is it said that there were a sudden loss of water to cool down the 1661 uranium fuel assemblies that were set in pressure pipes surrounded by 1700 tons of graphite blocks, causing the fuel rods to overheat. The zirconium alloy around the fuel assemblies, along with the pressure tubing, melted at about 3500 degrees Fahrenheit, overheating the graphite. This causes the temperature to increase even more. Soon, the uranium-oxide fuel began to melt at 5100 degrees Fahrenheit. When water was introduced into the fire, it immediately turned into a superheated steam which reacted with the graphite, fuel, zirconium to produce hydrogen, methane and carbon monoxide. Over several hours, the gases built up and combined with the oxygen released from the cracked pressure tubes which resulted in a massive explosion. Melted metal fissioned out of control, releasing radioactive isotopes that were sucked up into the smoke, creating dangerous cloud of deadly radiation. Since water cannot be used to put out the fire (as it would react with graphite to produce more methane which is a flammable substance), the only way to stop the fire was to wait for the flammable elements to have run out.
The worst part is that, The Soviet government did not informed other countries of the incident so that they would be well prepared with safety precautions and such. Instead, they covered up the incident and acted as if nothing had happened.They did not even bother to evacuate the area. The rest of the world found out of the incident in a rather shocking way. Sweden was the first that realised something when they saw signals indicating high levels of radiation in the area. At first the technicians involved thought that it might be a leaked in one of their power plant which contributed to the high level of radiation. They used a Geiger counter to test it on all of their worker's clothing and had found nothing. Similar reports then came from parts of Finland, Sweden and Norway. Soon they realised that it was coming from the Soviet Union. Evacuations had only started several hours after they had confronted the Soviet Union. However, several serious damage had already been done to the people.
Evacuations were also very discriminatory. According to Jessica Lee in USA Today, "Increased ethnic unrest threatens because Byelorussians were not evacuated immediately after the accident." As quote by Lemonick, "this angered many people along with the fact that the communist officials failed to evecuate nearby towns and cities rightaway, although they knew of the danger." Chernobyl now is common with human and animal mutation. Pregnant women living in these areas has a higher chance of giving birth to deformed babies or infants with genetic problems. After the incident in Chernobyl,many women were afraid to give birth because of the risk of getting a deformed child. Animals in the affected areas often deliver young that are stillborn or so deformed that they had to be destroyed. According to Gould, "the radioactive fallout resulting from Chernobyl was detected all over the world, from Finland to South Africa."
In 1995, over 125 000 people had died due to the accident. Many of these deaths could have been prevented had the Soviet Union taken responsibility in the first place and if the Soviet Union had nuclear power plant standards as high as the United States.
In "The 20th Century Plague" by Sharon Begley and Susan Katz, the effects of radiation on the body is laid out.
- Krypton 85 affects the entire body and can increase a person's chances of getting cancers like leukemia within two years of exposure. It has a half life of 10.7 years.
- Cesium 137 can attack the entire body, centering on the liver, spleen and the muscles. It has a half life of 30.2 years.
- Barium 140 gathers in the bnes and can cause tumors as late as thirty years after exposure. It has a half life of 12.8 days.
- Iodine 131 gathers in the thyroid. It can trigger cancer there decades after exposure. It has a half life of 8 days. Most radioactivity disappears from the body after only two months.
The Chernobyl accident has cost a lot of money so far and will cost even more if Ukraine ever wants to use the land again. This incident should be remembered so as to not be repeated in the near future. As the saying goes, people learn from studying history so as to not repeat the same mistakes again.
References:
1. Barnathan, Joyce and Steven Strasser. "The Chernobyl Syndrome." Newsweek. 12 May 1986: 22-30.
2. Begley, Sharon and Susan Katz. "The 20th Century Plague." Newsweek. 12 May 1986: 36-37.
3. Lemonick, Michael D. "The Chernobyl Coverup." Time. 13 November 1989: 73
4. Lee, Jessica. "14,000 at Chernobyl to Evacuate." USA Today. 24 April 1990.
5. E.S., 4/01/99, for History and Thought of Western Man, Rich East High School, Park Forest, Illinois, United States of America. Retrieved from http://www.richeast.org/htwm/chernobyl/chernobyl.html
6. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Leonid Telyatnikov. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonid_Telyatnikov
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