Chernobyl - 18 years later

[rfjockey]

Very interesting web site. An eerie tour of the ghostland in the area around the former Chernobyl reactor site. Let's hope nothing like this ever happens here.....


600 years
On the Friday evening of April 25, 1986, the reactor crew at Chernobyl-4, prepared to run a test the next day to see how long the turbines would keep spinning and producing power if the electrical power supply went off line. This was a dangerous test, but it had been done before. As a part of the preparation, they disabled some critical control systems - including the automatic shutdown safety mechanisms.

Shortly after 1:00 AM on April 26, the flow of coolant water dropped and the power began to increase.

At 1:23 AM, the operator moved to shut down the reactor in its low power mode and a domino effect of previous errors caused an sharp power surge, triggering a tremendous steam explosion which blew the 1000 ton cap on the nuclear containment vessel to smithereens.

Some of the 211 control rods melted and then a second explosion, whose cause is still the subject of disagreement among experts, threw out fragments of the burning radioactive fuel core and allowed air to rush in - igniting several tons of graphite insulating blocks.

Once graphite starts to burn, its almost impossible to extinguish. It took 9 days and 5000 tons of sand, boron, dolomite, clay and lead dropped from helicopters to put it out. The radiation was so intense that many of those brave pilots died.

It was this graphite fire that released most of the radiation into the atmosphere and troubling spikes in atmospheric radiation were measured as far away as Sweden - thousands of miles away.

The causes of the accident are described as a fateful combination of human error and imperfect technology.

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html

Lots more, including plenty of pictures.

[Occulus]

1. What a moving tribute.

"This is the highest building in town. On the day of disaster, many people gathered on this roof to see the beautiful shining cloud above the Atomic Power Plant."

[Paranoid_Portlander]

2. And then they were killed by the shining cloud,

according to the website link. I found it very eerie, too.

[minkyboodle]

3. can anyone confirm

that this site is nothing more than a interesting photo essay. I looked and googled all around to try to confirm some of the stories and casualty counts and frankly there was nothing to support the claims of this site.
Scott

[treepig]

4. if nothing else

it's the photo essay that just won't go away - it's been the subject of at least five separate threads - the most recent being:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x7208

[LastDemocratInSC]

5. I found plenty on Google - you need to look harder

As with most topics of this kind, there is plenty of good info and and even more bad info. There were lots of immediate deaths that can be directly attributed to the incident. Read up on the firefighters who were sent in early on. Some were dead within days.

The data gets sketchy as the less immediate deaths are figured in because these can include deaths from diseases that could have been caused by the incident but perhaps weren't. Also, some studies include deaths over time for various distances from Chernobyl, so these numbers are going to vary. There is good data to directly attribute about 15,000 deaths to the incident over the years.

Google harder, you'll find plenty of good information. The photo essay is accurate.

[treepig]

6. 15,000 deaths sounds about right for something you'd pull up on google

in reality, there were about 50 deaths (see the other thread i referenced above, or the following link):

http://www.magma.ca/~jalrober/Howbad.htm

[evworldeditor]

7. Thanks for posting this information... it helps balance the picture

... but even if the death counts are exaggerated, what isn't exaggerated is the fact that nothing but wild animals is going to live here (apart from the 3,500 people who refused to move) for a very, very long time. Can you imagine having to evacuate everyone within a hundred miles of Harrisburg, PA or Akron, Ohio and declaring the entire area a "dead zone" for centuries to come?

Kiss your sweet Hershies goodbye.

Also, I am not entirely convinced that the Russian or Ukranian governments are all that interested in releasing or even knowing the full extent of the disaster in human terms. What incentive do they have to report the truth and if they don't how are all those scientists who gathered in 1996 going to know what really happened?

Finally, those photos of abandoned vehicles and helicopters says volumes about this disaster. You don't walk away from million dollar heavy-lift helicopters like that without cause.

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BTW: I lived in Camp Hill and used to picnic on the island just across from Three Mile Island in 1971.

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