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The Melchizedek Chronicles - Nuclear Dangers - Chernobyl meltdown - April 25, 1986 - 33 years ago

Three dates we would do well to remember when the worst nuclear accidents in world history took place.

Three Mile Island - US - March 28, 1979 - 40 years ago

Chernobyl Ukraine - USSR - April 26, 1986 - 33 years ago

Fukushima Daiichi - Japan - March 11, 2011 - 8 years ago

Of course, for purposes of historical accuracy, we must also include the release date of the terrifying Hollywood movie about a nuclear reactor meltdown, the China Syndrome.  In an eerie and haunting twist of fate, this movie hit the box offices on March 16, 1979, just twelve days before the first nuclear meltdown in history took place in real life at TMI.

Nuclear energy, is not cheap.  The cost of a new reactor is $9 billion, while the cost to decommission it (shut it down) is about 15.6 times more than it cost to build it.  It uses uranium mined from the earth, a product of science and technology, source of the most powerful and destructive weapons ever known, and capable of doing devastating environmental damage to our air, water and land.

When you think about it it is a miracle we have only had three nuclear disasters throughout the world.  Standards vary, construction techniques and materials vary, and if it is located near a river or ocean, on an earthquake fault line, or where it can flood, you have a problem.

Of course, there is also the sad fact there is no place to dispose of or permanently store the spent reactor rods and radioactive cooling water.  A final drawback, we do not have much experience with damaged reactors and long-term study of the real effects of high levels of radiation on humans over lifetimes, and into the genetic coding of future generations.

In this article I want t remind you of the real consequences of a nuclear disaster which can happen anyplace and anytime most everywhere in the world.

This article is about Chernobyl, the first true meltdown of the core, the first explosion in a reactor, and the most extensive radioactive cloud ever experienced.  In a report by Reuters written by Richard Balmforth, these are the main facts.

Key facts:

* The cloud of radioactive strontium, caesium and plutonium affected mainly Ukraine and neighboring Belarus, as well as parts of Russia and Europe.

* Estimates for the numbers of direct and indirect deaths from the disaster vary.

* The Chernobyl Forum, a group of eight U.N. agencies, and the governments of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, have estimated the death toll at only a few thousand as a result of the explosion. U.N. agencies have said some 4,000 people will die in total because of radiation exposure.

* The environmental group Greenpeace puts the eventual death toll far higher than official estimates, with up to 93,000 extra cancer deaths worldwide.

* The Chernobyl Union of Ukraine, a non-government body, estimates the present death toll from the disaster at almost 734,000.

* The disaster was the object of a cover-up by secretive Soviet authorities who did not immediately admit to the explosion.

* The accident dented the image of reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who had earlier launched his ‘glasnost’ policies for greater openness in Soviet society.

* Chernobyl engineers shut down the last functioning reactor, Number Three, in December 2000. Radioactive nuclear fuel is still being removed from the plant.

* A make-shift cover — the ‘Sarcophagus’ — was built in six months after the explosion. It covers the stricken reactor to protect the environment from radiation for at least 30 years. This has now developed cracks, triggering an international effort to fund a new encasement.

* Ukraine is seeking a further 600 million euros ($840 million) to help finance the new convex structure which will slip over the aging ‘Sarcophagus’ and allow the old reactor to be dismantled.

* Officials say it could be up to 100 years before the station is completely decommissioned.

* A 30-km (19-mile) exclusion zone is in place round the disaster site.

* Wildlife has made a comeback in this area and there are said to be more than 60 different types of mammals living there including wild boar and elk.

* Although research continues, the first reports about long-term radiation damage have been published, and the results are that the radiation did less damage than initially feared. “There is a tendency to attribute increases in the rates of all cancers over time to the Chernobyl accident, but it should be noted that increases were also observed before the accident in the affected areas,” the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) said in its summer 2010 assessments of the radiation effects in Chernobyl.

“Moreover, a general increase in mortality has been reported in recent years in most areas of the former Soviet Union, and this must be taken into account when interpreting the results of Chernobyl-related studies,” the report said.

* In its conclusion, the U.N. report said that “the vast majority of the population need not live in fear of serious health consequences due to the radiation from the Chernobyl accident.”

* The report also said that the majority of the affected population in the region was exposed to radiation levels “comparable to or a few times higher than the natural background levels, and future exposures continue to slowly diminish as the radionuclides decay.”

Residents of Chernobyl and Pripyat surround the reactor and after considerable delay they were completely evacuated several hours after the radiation explosion.  Today, 33 years later, they remain part of the dead zone of high radiation levels and for the most part are abandoned.  This was life before the fateful day in April 1986.

Chernobyl before the nuclear accident.

The disaster!

Today.

 

 

 .

    

The cleanup of the area surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear disaster is expected to continue for decades, while parts may remain uninhabitable for thousands of years.

PHOTOGRAPH BY GERD LUDWIG, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

The Chernobyl disaster: What happened, and the long-term impacts

The accident at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine shocked the world, permanently altered a region, and leaves many questions unanswered.

PUBLISHED MAY 17, 2019

BY ERIN BLAKEMORE

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On April 25 and 26, 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history unfolded in what is now northern Ukraine as a reactor at a nuclear power plant exploded and burned. Shrouded in secrecy, the incident was a watershed moment in both the Cold War and the history of nuclear power. More than 30 years on, scientists estimate the zone around the former plant will not be habitable for up to 20,000 years.

The disaster took place near the city of Chernobyl in the former USSR, which invested heavily in nuclear power after World War II. Starting in 1977, Soviet scientists installed four RBMK nuclear reactors at the power plant, which is located just south of what is now Ukraine’s border with Belarus.

A few months after reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant went up in toxic flames in 1986, it was encased in a concrete and steel "sarcophagus" to contain the radioactive material inside. That aging structure, seen here, was covered with a larger, newer containment housing in 2016.

PHOTOGRAPH BY GERD LUDWIG, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

On April 25, 1986, routine maintenance was scheduled at V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station’s fourth reactor, and workers planned to use the downtime to test whether the reactor could still be cooled if the plant lost power. During the test, however, workers violated safety protocols and power surged inside the plant. Despite attempts to shut down the reactor entirely, another power surge caused a chain reaction of explosions inside. Finally, the nuclear core itself was exposed, spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Firefighters attempted to put out a series of blazes at the plant, and eventually helicopters dumped sand and other materials in an attempt to squelch the fires and contain the contamination. Despite the death of two people in the explosions, the hospitalization of workers and firefighters, and the danger from fallout and fire, no one in the surrounding areas—including the nearby city of Pripyat, which was built in the 1970s to house workers at the plant—was evacuated until about 36 hours after the disaster began.

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Publicizing a nuclear accident was considered a significant political risk, but by then it was too late: The meltdown had already spread radiation as far as Sweden, where officials at another nuclear plant began to ask about what was happening in the USSR. After first denying any accident, the Soviets finally made a brief announcement on April 28.

Soon, the world realized that it was witnessing a historic event. Up to 30 percent of Chernobyl’s 190 metric tons of uranium was now in the atmosphere, and the Soviet Union eventually evacuated 335,000 people, establishing a 19-mile-wide “exclusion zone” around the reactor.

At least 28 people initially died as a result of the accident, while more than 100 were injured. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has reported that more than 6,000 children and adolescents developed thyroid cancer after being exposed to radiation from the incident, although some experts have challenged that claim.

International researchers have predicted that ultimately, around 4,000 people exposed to high levels of radiation could succumb to radiation-related cancer, while about 5,000 people exposed to lower levels of radiation may suffer the same fate. Yet the full consequences of the accident, including impacts on mental health and even subsequent generations, remain highly debated and under study.

What remains of the reactor is now inside a massive steel containment structure deployed in late 2016. Containment efforts and monitoring continue and cleanup is expected to last until at least 2065.

The city of Pripyat was built to house workers of the nuclear power plant in the 1970s. It has been an abandoned ghost town since the accident, and is now used as a laboratory to study fallout patterns.

PHOTOGRAPH BY GERD LUDWIG, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

The impact of the disaster on the surrounding forest and wildlife also remains an area of active research. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, an area of about four-square miles became known as the “Red Forest” because so many trees turned reddish-brown and died after absorbing high levels of radiation.

Today, the exclusion zone is eerily quiet, yet full of life. Though many trees have regrown, scientists have found evidence of elevated levels of cataracts and albinism, and lower rates of beneficial bacteria, among some wildlife species in the area in recent years. Yet, due to the exclusion of human activity around the shuttered power plant, the numbers of some wildlife, from lynxes to elk, have increased. In 2015, scientists estimated there were seven times more wolves in the exclusion zone than in nearby comparable reserves, thanks to humans’ absence.

The Chernobyl disaster had other fallout: The economic and political toll hastened the end of the USSR and fueled a global anti-nuclear movement. The disaster has been estimated to cost some $235 billion in damages. What is now Belarus, which saw 23 percent of its territory contaminated by the accident, lost about a fifth of its agricultural land. At the height of disaster response efforts, in 1991, Belarus spent 22 percent of its total budget dealing with Chernobyl.

Today, Chernobyl beckons to tourists who are intrigued by its history and its danger. But though Chernobyl symbolizes the potential devastation of nuclear power, Russia never quite moved beyond its legacy—or its technology. As of 2019, there are still 11 operational RBMK reactors in Russia.