What was chernobyl like before the accident

A large containment structure known as "the sarcophagus" was built to capture the materials. The structure trapped about tons of nuclear fuel and debris that had melted through the floor and hardened.

By May 14, about , people, who lived within a mile radius of the nuclear plant had been relocated. By July , there were 28 deaths due to radiation exposure.

In following years, , more people moved into less contaminated areas and a mile zone of alienation was established. Many settled in Slavutych, a city built shortly after the disaster for power plant workers and their families. To this day, any business or residential activities in the zone are strictly prohibited except for monitoring the power plant and installations to study nuclear safety.

Some 3, workers are currently employed inside the zone of alienation, but they do not live there. Workers are regularly monitored for radiation and can only work a limited number of shifts per week.

Workers are needed at the site because the remaining 3 reactors, although no longer operational, still contain nuclear fuel that needs to be monitored. The site is to be cleared by Some residents, primarily elderly, refused to evacuate the zone or returned illegally.

The roughly who still live there today reside in homes with signs that read: "owner of this house lives here. Tours of the zone are available.

For example, SoloEast Travel books both private and scheduled group tours. At the end of the tour, everyone must be tested for radiation.

The tons of hardened nuclear fuel and debris remains so radioactive that even today scientists cannot approach it. Some radioactive elements in nuclear fuel decay quickly; however, cesium has a half-life of 30 years, and strontium has a half-life of 29 years. According to scientific estimates, it takes 10 to 13 half-lives before economic activity and life can return to a contaminated area.

This means that the total area contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster — 15, square miles — will be affected for the next years. In , a more secure confinement structure will be completed to replace the hastily built sarcophagus. The new structure, an 18, ton metal arch, will cover both reactor No. The Chernobyl Forum was founded in to assess the environmental consequences and health effects of the disaster.

Borets, being at that time at LNPP, was personally convinced of how dangerous this situation could be. He became a witness of a serious accident in the history of the station almost by accident.

On that day, he decided to stay after his shift to observe the behavior of the reactor. It is a process when the reactor is shut down and transferred to another operation.

Borets quickly guessed that certain problems had arisen during the test. While at low rates, the power in the reactor began to rise sharply. The operator tried to slow down the process by lowering additional control rods into the reactor core. The radiation level usually drops immediately after the operator adds control rods. After all, it is in the core where the nuclear reaction of the fuel channels takes place and nuclear energy is released. When the experienced operator, who impressed Borets with professionalism, manually lowered the additional rods, the increase in power level did not slow down.

The reactor did not work as expected. Given this experience, he realized that if the personnel did not reduce the power, it would lead to an explosion of the reactor. You turn on the engine of the car, start moving, smoothly picking up speed. You take your foot off the gas pedal, but you realize that the car automatically continues to accelerate.

The brakes do not work, but the speed increases. How would you feel in such a situation? The explosion did not happen. However, the fuel channel in the RBMK core melted due to sharp power drops.

This led to a leak of uranium into the core. Radioactive waste got into the environment through the chimney. The consequences of radiation pollution were classified. One can only guess how many curies dropped out near Leningrad, located 50 km from the station.

Vitaly Borets has never received an explanation of the cause of the accident. Moreover, he did not have access to information about this significant flaw in the design of the reactor. All the data were classified, but the designers did not make any significant changes in the design of the RBMK. At the same time, the experts gave recommendations. It was necessary to improve the functionality of the control rods without explaining the reasons.

Their instructions could not fail to find their reflection in the recommendations of the commission that inspected the 4th power unit of the Chernobyl NPP. In fact, few people understood that the absolutely critical question of rods. People have not learned the lessons of the Leningrad accident.

There were many options for improving the operation of the reactor. However, the main task of the ChNPP personnel was to generate energy. The last thing they worried about was the development of new reactors or the modification of already invented ones.

The repair would wait. In general, they had satisfaction with the state of the two new power units. The agents were tracking the progress of construction. They reported that the 3rd and 4th power units were safer than the 1st and 2nd. In , the committee members summed up: despite serious security problems, the situation at the ChNPP is stable. The last couple of years became the point of comparison. In , 16 equipment breakdowns and 3 accidents took place at three power units.

And in the first nine months of , there were only 10 breakdowns and not a single serious accident. Neither Vitaly Borets, nor anyone else, preparing for the test, had any reason to recall the Leningrad incident. Borets did everything he was responsible for. The engineer collected information on all the proposed experiments, made the appropriate schedule. He handed it over to a group of specialists responsible for preparing for the shutdown of the 4th reactor.

Borets suggested starting a full stop on Thursday, April 24, at 10 p. The entire set of tests, including modeling the reactor failure, had to be completed on April 25 at 1 p. A responsible team made their adjustments and stated that the tests should run out by 10 a. This ensured that the level of radioactivity in the reactor would not drop to unacceptable levels.

There were no objections. Nikolai Fomin, Chief Engineer, signed all the necessary documents. The station administration has not submitted the test program for approval by the Ministry of Energy and reactor manufacturers.

Although the instructions assumed this, in practice, it happened extremely rarely. The ChNPP was going to meet the last weekend in April with a successful shutdown of the 4th power unit. You might be interested: Days of our lives actor dies in car accident. Visitors are now permitted to enter the control room of Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Visit Businessinsider. Your email address will not be published.

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