The Chernobyl Disaster

Imagine a city of 50,000 people. It’s like any normal city with hotels and restaurants and a city square. A new amusement park is going to opened in a few days. Everything in this town is great. Now imagine the city being completely empty in a matter of days. There is no one to be seen for miles. This is the story of the Chernobyl Disaster.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station was built in the town of Pripyat, which was a town mainly for the people that worked at and helped build the power station. The town had been founded on February 4, 1970, and earned the title of being a city in 1979. The Town had grown to a population of 49,360 before the explosion occurred.

In March of 1970, the construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station began. In 1972, The type of reactor that was going to be used was in question. At first the Idea of a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) was brought up by Chernobyl’s director, Viktor Bryukhanov. He informed the Ukrainian Minister of Energy that the RBMK- 1000, which was another possible reactor, produced 40 times the amount of radiation as the PWR and was not as safe. However, that was opposed by the scientist Anatolii Aleksandrov, who said that the RBMK-1000 was not only the safest, but produced energy the cheapest. This was the deciding factor that the RBMK-1000 was to be used.

The RBMK-1000 was a pressurized, water-cooled reactor, that had individual fuel cells and used graphite as a moderator. The RBMK was also known as the Light Water Graphite Reactor (LWGR). The RBMK was different from other reactors in the fact that the design was based on the production of plutonium. It was also different from any other reactor because it used water coolant with the combination of graphite as a moderator. As...

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...ncer spiked after the Chernobyl accident. As many as 1,800 cases of thyroid cancer, and 4,000 cases of different cancers have been reported.

To this day, the area around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station is still radioactive. A sarcophagus was built and put over the reactor a couple months after the incident, but the damage was already done. As much as 150,000 square kilometers were affected by radiation contamination. Parts of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were affected. In early 2013, Pripyat was re-opened for tours of the once lively city.

In the result of the Chernobyl accident, mankind has learned a lot. We learned the price we may have to pay if we abuse the power we have created. We have learned how to create safer, and more reliable forms of energy. In the future, mankind should be careful as to prevent a disaster of this severity from ever happening again.