Chernobyl Disaster

The Chernobyl disaster occured on April 26, 1986 when a series of explosions in Energy Block #4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Soviet Ukraine resulted in a core meltdown that spread radioactivity over a wide area, including contaminating about a quarter of the country of Belarus. One plant worker was killed immediately, and about fifty firemen and workers died in the next few weeks of acute radiation poisoning from firefighting and cleanup activities. Tens of thousands of people were subjected to high doses of radiation. The nearby city of Pripyat was evacuated and closed off. Initially the accident was attributed to operator error, but subsequent investigations revealed major design and construction flaws. The thirty-kilometer Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl remains off limits.

Emergency Response

The Soviet government immediately dispatched policemen, firemen, soldiers, and workers ("liquidators") to the affected area, ultimately throwing 340,000 untrained, unequipped, and unprotected personnel into action following the meltdown.

Volunteer divers swam into radioactive water to unblock potentially explosive connections. Miners worked around the clock to blast a tunnel under the reactor to pour in liquid nitrogen to try cooling the reactor. Helicopter pilots flew multiple missions directly into heated radioactive air to drop sand into the burning crater. Teams of frantically racing workers (liquidators) shoveled smoldering graphite fragments into wheelbarrows in two-minute hot-zone-exposure workshifts atop the smoldering ruins.

Radiation Poisoning

Acute radiation poisoning takes about two weeks to kill. Symptoms include --

• skin lesions, sores, and burns
• vomiting, diarrhea, and suppuration
• loss of hair, teeth, and nails
• pulmonary edema and tissue swelling
• massive internal organ failure

Belarus Damage

One quarter of Belarus land was radioactively contaminated. The totalitarian government of Aleksandr Lukashenko declared it a criminal offense against the state (with a penalty of three years imprisonment) to join any protest group or demonstrate publicly against the Soviet government.

Accident Cause

While the meltdown was initially attributed to operator error, subsequent investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) blamed design flaws and shoddy construction of the nuclear power plant itself.

In the first early hour of April 26, began the events stemming from a scheduled shutdown and subsequent test of the reactor scheduled the previous day. At approximately 12:28 AM, the power level had dropped to 500 MW(t) in accordance with the procedure, when control was transferred from the local to the automatic regulalation system. At this point, a signal to hold the power at level failed due either to operator or regulatory system response. Power produced by the plant rapidly fell to 30 MW(t).

Responding to this power drop, the operator retracts a number of control rods in attempt to correct the situation. Fewer than the effective equivalent of 26 control rods were remaining in the reactor, a situation that should have happened only with the station safety procedure approval of the chief engineer. 1:00 AM, the reactor power rises to 200 MW(t). Two pumps were switched into their opposite-handed cooling circuits in order to increase the water flow to the core. This operation of the additional pumps although removed heat from the core at a quicker rate, reduced the water level in the steam seperator.

Fifteen minutes later, automatic trip systems to the steam separator were disabled by the operator in order for the operation of the reactor to continue. The operator increased the water flow in attempt to address the cooling system problem. In order to increase power, the operator withdrew some of the manual control rods in an attempt to raise the temperature and pressure in the steam seperator, against an operating policy requirement that a minimum effective equivalent of 15 manual control rods were to be inserted into the reactor at all times. It is estimated that at this time the number of rods in the system was about half of the requirement.

Twenty minutes into the total process, the operator reduces the water flow rate to below normal in an attempt to stabilize the steam seperator water level, decreasing heat removal capability from the core. The increased amount of heat spontaneously generates steam in the core, abnormally giving the operator the appearance that the reactor was stable.

At 1:23 AM the actual shutdown process began. Turbine feed valves were closed off, and automatic control rods were withdrawn from the core. A 10-second withdrawl of the rodes from was the normal reponse to compensate for a decrease in the reactivity following the closing of the turbine feeds. Typically, a decrease in reactivity is the result of an increase in pressure in the cooling system and a consequent decrease in the quantity of steam in the core. This expected decrease did not happen due to the reduced feedwater to the core (the operator manually reduced the water flow rate).

Steam generation in the core increased, and because of the reactor's positive void coefficient, any further amount of steam would lead to a rapid increase in power output. Unfortunately, seconds later steam in the core begins to increase uncontrollably. The emergency button is pressed by the operator which sends control rods into the core. It is too late, and the insertion of the rods from the top concentrated all of the reactivity to the bottom of the core, causing the reactor power to rise 100 times the alotted design value. Fuel pellets shattered, reacting with the water to produce high pressure in the fuel channels. The channels rupture, causing two explosions: one a steam explosion and the other a result of expansion of fuel vapor. The two explosions cause a loss of integrity of the pile cap, allowing the entry of air that reacted with the graphite moderator blocks to form carbon monoxide gas. The gas ignites, causing a reactor fire.

The major design flaw in the Chernobyl-4 reactor was the ability for the nuclear chain reaction and power output to occur in the loss of cooling water or the conversion of that water into steam. This flaw was the key factor that instigated the power surge which led to its destruction.

Human Casualties

All totalled the amount of people dead from the Chernobyl accident is currently at 49; an initial 30 died from the accident itself (28 from radiation exposure). 19 of the 209 treated for acute radiation poisoning have died as a result of side effects of exposure, although out of those only 134 cases have been confirmed.

Animal Casualties

Soldiers were given shoot-on-sight orders for cats, dogs, and livestock to prevent the spread of epidemic disease and radioactive particles beyond the thirty-kilometer Forbidden Zone. The nearby city of Pripyat was evacuated, with many animals being left behind on the pretext that residents would be returning soon.

Robot Casualties

German-designed heavy equipment, Soviet-designed Mars exploration robots, and Japanese-designed industrial robots were used in attempts to contain the twenty tons of nuclear fuel in a lead, steel, and concrete sarcophagus. All failed rapidly due to radiation damage to electronic circuitry. They remain in place, too radioactive to remove.

Survivor Quotes

• "At the reactor the firefighters were stomping on burning fuel [graphite], and it was glowing, but they didn't know what it was."
• "Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There's nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air."
• "No, they weren't a gang of criminals. It was more like a conspiracy of ignorance and obedience. The principle of their lives, the one thing the Party machine had taught them [the apparatchiks] was never to stick their necks out. Better to keep everyone happy."
• "Tell everyone about my daughter. Write it down... She doesn't play 'store' or 'school' -- she plays 'hospital'. She gives her dolls shots, takes their temperature, puts them on IV. If a doll dies, she covers it with a white sheet."

Potassium Iodide

Take pre-prescribed potassium iodide tablets or mix drops of potassium iodide (chemical formula KI, in the correct physician-prescribed concentration) in half a glass of water (from a sealed supply) to prevent radioactive material from accumulating in the thyroid, and then get at least fifty miles (80 kilometers) away as rapidly as possible, abandoning all possessions, shaving, showering, and scrubbing hard in uncontaminated water as soon as possible, burying affected clothing, but above groundwater level. (Note that tincture of iodine used for treating wounds is a poison, and is not potassium iodide.)

Reference Source

Interviews with survivors are documented in the book "Voices From Chernobyl" by Svetlana Alexievich, 2006, Picador St. Martin's Press $14 ISBN 0312425848.