The Chernobyl Disaster It was to be the largest nuclear complex in the world, the Soviet Union's pride for the energy industry. But one day, something went terribly wrong. Chernobyl, a town located 70 miles north of Kiev, Ukraine (Pringle, 64), had four reactors to supply much of Ukraine's power in the region (Edwards, 104). To run an experiment on the reactor, technicians disabled key safety systems. The reactor had a good record of safety (Pringle, 64-65). Inside reactor Number Four, engineers reduced power below twenty-five percent (Edwards, 102-103). In order to maintain reactor power, they withdrew many control rods, which help control the chain reaction. Operators reduced cooling water flow to maintain steam pressure. The cooling water that remained boiled rapidly, and the reactor surged with energy. In fact, it surged so fast that the reactor went from seven percent to fifty percent power in just under three seconds. The operator then knew that the chain reaction was surging out of control. Another operator noticed this, and quickly pushed the emergency button. Control rods began to lower into the reactor chamber to slow down the out of control chain reaction, but failed to halt it. The reactor's fuel began to dissipate and fall into the pool of cooling water. As the hot material met with the water, a massive amount of steam was produced. The pressure from all that steam shattered the core's 1,000-ton lid and ripped through the roof. Radioactive material was launched over three quarters of a mile into the atmosphere. Only four percent of the reactor's radioactive material reached the atmosphere, but it was still more than was released by the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan (Pringle, 62-65). In fact, the explosion produced 90 times as much fallout (radioactive particles launched into the atmosphere and later fall to the earth) than Hiroshima received from one atomic bomb alone (McCuen, 33). Explosions and fires that followed the explosion sent 12 million curies (a measure of how radioactive something is) of radiation into the air in just 24 hours. An additional 38 million fell within the next ten days. In contrast, only 17 curies escaped at the Three Mile Island accident (Pringle, 65). Two point two million people now live within contaminated regions. Their lives have adapted to deal with it. Clocks atop government buildings in Minsk, Byelorussia, flash the time, temperature, and radiation level (McCuen, 33). Following the accident, the Soviet government sent an army of 750,000 people to clean up the accident.
The engineers in Visit Sunny Chernobyl created a new frontier past the safety zone because they want to test the limits of the reactor. What the scientists didn’t account for is that fact that the reactors already had the potential of a dangerous chain reaction. (Blackwell 6) Consequently, their boundary destroying led to catastrophic consequences and the total annihilation of a land area because of massive radiation. Blackwell thought Chernobyl was so horrific he expressed that no one should visit without a “working understanding of radiation and how it’s measured” (Blackwell 7). These are some horrific consequences that followed from surpassing the
...ed the water begins to boil and steam is produced. When the steam is produced is moved up towards the reactor opening, as it moves up the steam passes through turbines that spin creating energy. The turbines begin to move which is what produces the energy. During this process a lot of steam is produced which is why so much power is created.
"What Are the Social and Economic Costs of the Chernobyl Accident?" GreenFacts. Web. 19 Mar. 2011. .
Today, Chernobyl is defined as an abandoned city in the northern Ukraine. Pripyat, the city founded in 1970 to house the workers for the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, is currently described as a ghost town. The population of Chernobyl in 2010 was around 500. Prior to the spring of 1986, the city was inhabited by about 14,000 residents. For $140-$160 U.S. dollars, SoloEast Travel offers guided tours of Chernobyl, but that price does not include the $80 charge for mandatory insurance. Plus, everyone who goes on the tour has to be tested for radiation before leaving the Zone of Alienation, the 19 mile area around the site. Long before the worst nuclear disaster in history, Chernobyl was a city. For more than 300 years after the nuclear fallout, the area will be contaminated.
Three Mile Island was a three month old nuclear power plant located in southeast Pennsylvania. On March 28, 1979, a series of mechanical and human errors led to above-normal levels of radioactive gas being released into the air. Subsequently 400,000 gallons of water from a holding tank containing xenon-133 and xenon-135 was released into the Susquehanna River. (Davis 313) By the end of Thursday, March 29, detectable levels of increased radiation were measured over a four-county area. Plant officials estimated that 180 to 300 of the 36,000 fuel rods in the reactor had melted. (Davis 313) The governor advised that pregnant women and small children evacuate and stay at least five miles away from the facility. They did this for good reason because almost 80% of the gas escaped the morning of the accident (Davis 313). After the accident people filed more than 2,200 law suits. But only 280 claims have been settled for $14 million (Freiham 290). Deaths from thyroid cancer have been monitored in Middletown, but no link to
Initially the Soviet Government kept the accident at Chernobyl a secret. Because radiation lacks smell or taste, and is invisible, people carried on with their daily lives, all the while inhaling radioactive particles. It took ten days for the Soviet government to evacuate the contaminated areas. Particles fell into the crops and plants of the people. Cows ate grass that had been contaminated by the nuclear particles causing the dairy produ...
Chernobyl wouldn’t have been the traumatic event that it was if the Soviets were technologically advanced and obviously, if they trained their personnel to manage radioactive materials.
Humans were a victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident which affected their lifestyle and their health. People of Chernobyl were evacuated to clean and safe areas. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) (2006), there were 116 000 people who were evacuated from Chernobyl region to other safe areas in the summe...
The way people died was shocking.... ... middle of paper ... ... “Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers.”
Chernobyl was the greatest nuclear disaster of the 20th century. On April 26th, 1986, one of four nuclear reactors located in the Soviet Union melted down and contaminated a vast area of Eastern Europe. The meltdown, a result of human error, lapsed safety precautions, and lack of a containment vessel, was barely contained by dropping sand and releasing huge amounts of deadly radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere. The resulting contamination killed or injured hundreds of thousands of people and devastated the environment. The affects of this accident are still being felt today and will be felt for generations to come.
One of the most significant environmentally damaging instances in history was the Chernobyl incident. In 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in Ukraine exploded. It became one of the most significant disasters in the engineering community. There are different factors that contributed to the disaster. The personnel that were tasked with operating the plant were unqualified. The plant’s design was a complex one. The RBMK reactor was Soviet design, and the staff had not be acquainted with this particular design. As the operators performed tests on the reactor, they disabled the automatic shutdown mechanism. After the test, the attempt to shut down the reactor was unsuccessful as it was unstable. This is the immediate cause of the Chernobyl Accident. It later became the most significant nuclear disaster in the history of the
The energy industry is beginning to change. In today’s modern world, governments across the globe are shifting their focuses from traditional sources of power, like the burning coal and oil, to the more complex and scientific nuclear power supply. This relatively new system uses powerful fuel sources and produces little to no emissions while outputting enough energy to fulfill the world’s power needs (Community Science, n.d.). But while nuclear power seems to be a perfect energy source, no power production system is without faults, and nuclear reactors are no exception, with their flaws manifesting in the form of safety. Nuclear reactors employ complex systems involving pressure and heat. If any of these systems dysfunctions, the reactor can leak or even explode releasing tons of highly radioactive elements into the environment. Anyone who works at or near a nuclear reactor is constantly in danger of being exposed to a nuclear incident similar to the ones that occurred at the Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi plants. These major accidents along with the unresolved problems with the design and function of nuclear reactors, as well as the economic and health issues that nuclear reactors present serve to show that nuclear energy sources are not worth the service that they provide and are too dangerous to routinely use.
This chain reaction produces massive amounts of heat. Nuclear reactors take advantage of this heat by pumping water into the reactor, which in turn produces steam. The steam then becomes pressurized through a pipeline and exits into a turbine (“How to do Nuclear”). The pressurized steam causes the turbine blades to spin, producing power which is linked to a generator for use in the main power lines. When the steam passes the turbine blades, it goes past cooled pipes and condensates (“How to do Nuclear”).
...t entire families died which left no one to identify remains of the deceased. Union Carbide claimed 3,800 people died as a result of this industrial accident. The municipal workers that moved the bodies of the deceased estimated 15,000. However, the local government’s official death toll is 20,000. The Indian Government reported that over a half-million people were exposed to the toxic gas and that survivors are, to this day, still dying from long-term effects of exposure.
The biggest damage is the radiation exposal to the people. 530,000 local recovery workers were exposed the radiation, the effective dose is same as fifty years of natural radiation exposure (IAEA, 1996). 31 nuclear power staffs and emergency workers were died by direct effect, and the Chernobyl Forum anticipates the total num...