30 years of the night when the world stood #chernobyl

stood 30 years ago time stopped in Chernobyl, and impassive to the advancement of the world around him, its ruins bear witness to the worst nuclear accident in history.

for many, 30 years pandora’s box was opened, marking the beginning of the end of the world. On Saturday April 26, 1986 at 1:23:58 local time, the sky a remote region of Ukraine lit in the middle of the night, releasing on the atmosphere an amount of energy 500 times the explosion Nagasaki or Hiroshima. The biggest nuclear disaster in history.

And is that unlike Fukushima Daiichi, whose problems were caused by energy loss resulting tsunami caused by an earthquake of magnitude 9.0, and that still we are healing their wounds without knowing exactly its consequences, Chernobyl was the result of poor design and human error, for which today we are paying a still unknown price.

the principle of end

The April 26, 1986 , at 1:23:58 local time, during a system test conducted outside the known parameters, and a display to show the solvency of Soviet nuclear technology, reactor number 4 of the central Chornobylska atomna Vladimir Ilyich Lenin elektrostantsiya , there was a sudden jump in power. Ten seconds later, the core suffered an explosion and fire, unleashing hell on earth.

• What caused the accident?

An inactive nuclear reactor continues to generate a significant amount of residual heat. The RBMK reactors as those used in Chernobyl, after an emergency stop continue to emit 7% of its thermal output and therefore must remain cooled. Chernobyl reactors using water as coolant, so that the reactor 4 was equipped with 1,600 individual channels; and each require a refrigerant flow 28,000 liters per hour. As he wanted to test, among other things, the cooling system of the plant.

The experimental procedure was intended to function as follows: the reactor was operating at a low power level between 700 MW and 800 MW, but the reactor turbine would run at full speed. When these conditions are reached, the water supply for turbine generator would be closed, so that the efficiency of the generator could be analyzed to determine if they could provide enough power to the coolant pumps until they caught up diesel generators emergency, which were sequenced to start and provide power to the pumps automatically during cooling. Thus, once the emergency generators arrived at a normal speed, rip off the subsidiary.

once started the experiment, diesel generators started operating and were supplying power sequentially. During this period, the power for the four MCPs was supplied by the turbine generator. As decreases impulse turbine generator, the water flow decreases, which increases the formation of steam voids (bubbles) in the core.

However, as recorded by the central control system of the central Skala, an emergency shutdown of the reactor was what caused the explosion. The subsequent course of events was not recorded by instruments, and the details that are handled are the result of the mathematical simulation . Apparently, a large increase in power, caused by an increase in fuel temperature and a massive accumulation of steam, combined with the technical could not get off the all graphite rods emergency, provoked the accident.

it was not possible to reconstruct the precise sequence of the processes that led to the destruction of the reactor and the building of the power unit, but a steam explosion, the explosion of a steam boiler excess pressure, seems to have been the final result. Hence, to hell on earth.

a hell that spread in the form of radioactive cloud, over much of western Russia and Europe, detectable thousands of kilometers away. In the battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involving more than 500,000 workers, at an estimated cost of estimated 18 billion rubles for poor Ukraine at the time.

Without any form of containment, despite the trial work of liquidators href=”https://hipertextual.com/2016/02/heroes-chernobyl”>

Only after the radiation level activase the alarms at the Forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden, more than a thousand kilometers from the Chernobyl plant, forced the Soviet Union admit publicly that there had been an accident. And only after the evacuation of city of Pripyat, several days after the incident, it was reported on state television:

“There has been an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant One of the reactors. nuclear has been damaged are being correcting the effects of the accident has assisted people affected a commission of inquiry has been established “-…. April 28, 1986, 21:00 Soviet state TV

After the explosion, 31 plant operators and firefighters who came to put out the fire died because j AMAS told it was the result of an explosion in the reactor. While thousands of people living in the area and nearby, suffered a radiation dose so large that either caused his death, or certainly shortened his life condemning several generations. the wHO says 4,000 people were direct or indirect victims the explosion of the center of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the data, as always, vary depending on the lips of who they are.

Lagos, sandy soils and forests of immeasurable beauty spent, in seconds, to become vacant, ghostly, uninhabitable of all that exist on planet earth ground. nuclear winter that even during the Cold War had ever imagined.

The green of the nuclear forests became red. A prohibited area on earth where man can no longer set foot carefree to within thousands of years, contaminated with levels of radioactive-137 cesium, strontium-90 and isotopes plutonium incompatible thresholds with normal development of human life. In the forest, now red by radiation levels multiply by 20 the Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the blast, 30 years later.

Since then, Chernobyl has been the benchmark by which have been tried all other nuclear accidents in the last 30 years. The only thing that has been classified as level 7, with Fukushima, the International Nuclear Event Scale. A concrete and metal frame, a sort of sarcophagus was hastily built to enclose the unit 4 as an emergency measure to stop the release of radiation into the atmosphere after the disaster of 1986.

30 years after Chernobyl still you have to tell us a lot about the accident on the nuclear energy itself and the consequences the silence of the iron curtain. 30 years later, Chernobyl is and will be for thousands of years, forbidden zone.

The area

the Zone of 30 kilometers, Dead zone, the exclusion zone, the Fourth zone … are some of the names given to the forbidden zone only literally for man on earth, the result of the actions of the man himself. Today, 30 years later, the 30 kilometers separating life from death have become a tourist attraction.

All villages within 30km of the central were evacuated and are guarded under military control. Today, the Dead Zone covers an area of ​​2,600 square kilometers, and only 500 residents and a few visitors per year may witness the end of the world that broke that broke out at Chernobyl.

Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl from on Vimeo href=”https://vimeo.com”>.

Basically, the main purpose of the exclusion zone is restrict access to the most dangerous areas, reduce the spread of radioactive contamination and carry out radiological activities and ecological monitoring. Today, the exclusion zone is one of the most polluted dell world areas and attracts great scientific interest due to high levels of radiation exposure in the environment.

“Nearly 400 million people residing in the territories that were contaminated with radioactivity in excess of 4 Bq / m2 (0.11 Ci / km2) level, from April to July 1986. Nearly 5 million people (including more than 1 million children) still live with dangerous levels of radioactive contamination in Belarus, Ukraine and European Russia – [Consequences of the Catastrophe for people and the Environment] (https://www.strahlentelex.de /Yablokov_Chernobyl_book.pdf)

Perhaps the most representative part of the area is the city of Pripyat, a few kilometers from Chernobyl, which today is an icon of popular culture for obvious reasons, and that can best exemplify the disaster

Pripyat was built in the 1970s to house plant workers and their families, and about 50,000 people lived in this bedroom community spread over apartment blocks surrounded by tree-lined streets. Fifteen elementary schools, five middle schools, a technical school, a hospital, two sports stadiums and amusement park still today as witnesses to the greatest disaster in modern history. Empty, without children who teach without hosting football matches.

Today, Pripyat and the 30 kilometers that separate of civilization, they are ghosts. Its streets are deserted and apartment blocks are radioactive ruin where books and toys are mixed with radioactive dust and nuclear waste.

Kopachi, a few kilometers south of the plant, had a population of 1,114 people and was the worst part. The village was so contaminated by fallout that the authorities demolished and buried all the houses and buildings, except kindergarten, which still awaited the thousands of years that will be necessary for children to reoccupy their classrooms, if is that someday can. Kopachi is the most contaminated with plutonium, cesium-137 and strontium-90 area in addition to the reactor zone. Kopachi is literally hell on earth.

it is curious how the man fled the disaster, life in a place where it is prohibited, continues to make inroads. The area is synonymous with apocalypse, but also of hope, because even in that hell, wildlife is thriving within the exclusion zone of Chernobyl: elk, deer, deer, wild boars and wolves live in freedom around the world’s worst nuclear disaster. In fact, researchers at the University of Portsmouth believe the number of wolves around the exclusion zone is seven times greater than in any nature reserve.

Perhaps the question without answer most dangerous of all is what the long-term impact of the disaster. In total, 350,400 people were evacuated and relocated away from the most severely contaminated areas. However, the health consequences of such disasters are much more difficult to calculate.

Five years after Chernobyl, a report of 1,500 pages, based on the work of 200 health experts from 25 countries tried to assess the effect on more than 825,000 people in the most contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, without determining exactly the long-term consequences. At the end of the day, it’s been 30 years and still do not fully understand the magnitude of this accident.

Today, the fate of the plant is to be buried in a new sarcophagus. Buried in hell into hell.

Hipertextual