A
Look at One of the Worst Nuclear Disasters the World Has Ever Seen
In
the town of Chernobyl, all was quiet and peaceful. It was Friday, April 25th,
five days prior to May Day and the opening of a new amusement park, and the
feeling of festivity was in the air. Night came and the town slept peacefully.
Little did they know their lives were about to be forever changed. At 1:23
am April 26th, 1986, the worst nuclear accident known to the world
occurred, due to both mechanical and human error.
At approximately 1:00 am April 25th
the reactor was running at full power with normal operation and steam power was
directed to both of the power generators. Slowly the operators began to reduce
power for the test, which was to observe the dynamics of the RMBK reactor with
limited power flow. Twelve hours after power reduction was initiated the
reactor reached 50% power and only one turbine was needed to take in the decreased
amount of steam so turbine two was switched off. Under normal procedures of the
test, the reactor would have been reduced to 30% power, but the Soviet
electricity authorities refused to allow this because of an apparent need for
electricity elsewhere, so, the reactor remained at 50% power for another 9
hours.
On April 26th, or day 2,
the staff finally received permission to resume reactor power reduction. One of
the operators however, made a mistake, and instead of keeping power at 30%, he
forgot to reset a controller which caused the power to plummet to 1% because of
water which was now filling the core, and xenon (a neutron absorber) which was
building up in the reactor. This amount of power was too low for the test. The
water added to the reactor is heated by the nuclear reaction and turned into
steam to turn the turbines of the generator. Sometime between 1:00 and 1:20 am
the operator forced the reactor up to 7% power by removing all but about 6 of
the control rods. This was a violation of procedure, and the reactor wasn’t
built to operate at such low power.
By 1:23 am the reactor had reached
120 times its full power and all the radioactive fuel disintegrated, causing
pressure from all of the excess steam, which was supposed to go to the turbines,
to break ever one of the pressure tubes and blow off the entire top shield of
the reactor. At this point government officials were notified, but they refused
to acknowledge such an event had occurred, thereby putting off what should have
been an immediate evacuation for 2 days. During this time, instead of
evacuating the town to places where there wasn’t such immense danger of
radiation exposure, they continued on with everyday life. Children were dressed
and sent to school, parents went to work. On day 2 post explosion, families
were finally evacuated, but by this time, they had already received the maximum
exposure. As of current the Chernobyl Union of Ukraine, a non-government
agency, estimates that the present toll, 26 years after the disaster, sits at
almost 734,000 people due to anything from direct exposure, to Thyroid cancer
which is a direct result of radiation exposure. According to Wikipedia.com, only
36 people died of initial radiation exposure, including, 4 that died in a
helicopter crash while trying to deliver loads of clay, in an effort to contain
radiation levels.
It’s safe to say that in the past 26
years, we have only had 2 nuclear meltdowns of this magnitude, Chernobyl and
Faushima Daiichi located in Japan. I think most would agree these have been
extreme causes of concern of a possible nuclear meltdown here on US soil. In
both cases there has been an immense amount of sorrow and displacement, due to
things that may or may not have been avoided, however, both devastated the
world over nonetheless.
References:
Wikipedia
contributors; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia; June 2010
Balmford,Richard;
March 2010 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-nuclear-chernobyl-facts-idUSTRE72E42U20110315
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