Chernobyl, 18 years later...

Whoa.

Amazing pics.

 

Can anyone gave me a history lesson of what happened there? I was one day shy of 3 months old at the time.

The pictures were breathtaking, can't imagine what it would be like to go through the uninhabited town.

 

Basically, a nuclear reactor exploded. It was probably the largest industrial disaster in World History. The History Channel has a really good program on what happened. The part of the reactor that exploded was sealed off with concrete immediately afterwards and between 4 and 5 thousand men who worked to seal off the reactor died afterwards from the radiation exposure. They knew they were going to die when they were asked to do the job.

Incidently, the largest industrial disaster in American history happened about 30 miles south of Houston in Texas City and about 15 miles south of Texas City in Galveston is the site of the largest Natural Disaster in American History, the Hurricane of 1900.

 

Absolutely unbelievable. Those were very powerful pictures.

I was a 8 at the time it happened so I do not remember too much about what happened except that a nuclear reactor melted down. I would like to hear more about what happened also.

 

Did this lady say that it happened because someone pressed the wrong button? Man! No button should have that much power.

 

From what I remember from the History Channel explanation, one of the reactors was being run at a rate that it wasn't able to handle. I don't remember exactly how, but I do remember it was some sort of test.

 

Very powerful website...wow

DD

 

Thanks for the link. That was amazing.

 

Wow, that's quite a collection of photographs.

Goddamnit, I love the internet!

 

Neat stuff. It's like walking through Silent Hill.

 

Amazing, amazing pictures. Wow...

 

I wonder how long it will take for the radiation to go away. Im guessing hunderds of years, maybe more.

Unless one day there is advances in that field; so that then you can clean up that mess.

thanks for the link macalu.

 

So the meter she had in her hand measured radioactivity? could someone explain the meter readings?

 

Great read. Thanks.

 

Not quite right. The reactor was being idiotically safety tested and when super-critical in about 0.5 seconds after they realized the mistake.

The Operators and Techs at Chernobyl were doing low power Physics testing and trying to take the reactor critical at the time of the accident. The reactor design was stable and proven. The reactor had been just previously shutdown and had been operating at power. While operating at power one of the fission products that is produced is Xenon, an isotope that has a huge microscopic cross-section for absorption for neutrons, and hence a reactor poison. Unknown to the Operators and Techs this Xenon buildup prevented the reactor from going critical to do the low power testing and they kept bypassing safety circuits to achieve criticality. They also kept pulling "rods" to expose more of the core until nearly the entire core was exposed. They achieved criticality and in a short time the worst thing imaginable happened. Xenon burn-off came down the curve and was no longer an inhibitor to neutron population. The resulting super-critical pulse blew the reactor apart, set fire to the graphite moderator, and in general destroyed the physical plant. The rest is history.

The RBMK reactors have a positive void coefficient. The rod control mechanisms had been manually disabled for the turbine coast-down experiment (because they kept ramming in the rods, something which should have served as a Big Clue to the operators that what they were doing was a bad idea). When the cooling water began to boil, the reactivity jumped due to that positive void coefficient and the power level spiked 3-4 orders of magnitude in some milliseconds. That flashed the cooling water into steam, which exploded and blew the top off the roof. The 3,000+ degree graphite moderator was now exposed to open air and burst into flame and it was good night

It is insane to think about it. The stell "cap" to the reactor blew about a 1000 feet into the air and the graphite literally exploded. It takes a LOT of heat to make graphite burn, nevertheless explode.

The firemen and soldiers HAD NO IDEA what they were getting into. Soviet officials denied any problem with the reactors and everyone sent to work on the concrete "sarcophogous" had no clue they were being exposed to enough radiation to kill them all. They were soldiers, and obeyed orders, and died.

There were pictures in a National Geographic about Chernobyl a couple years ago. One I remember had a group of kids lined up against a wall, all with deformed arms. Birth defects are a big problem in the area, along with an incredible rate of cancer.

My grandparents in Germany still watch where their vegtables are from, the radioactive dust settled all over east Europe and Russia. Had the winds been stronger it might have blown as far as the U.S.

--rhad

 

One of the coolest things i've read in a long time - thanks for the link.


Thats interesting stuff rhadamanthus I always wondered why those xenon headlights were so bright...

 

WOW, that was amazing. Thanks for sharing. Those pictures are captivating. I am left speechless in awwe......

 

rhadamanthus do you have any books you would suggest about what happend?