[captioned]"They must build a new sarcophagus soon, because the original one was hastily constructed and is disintegrating."
...and that was six, to seven years ago.
Posted on 02/02/2011 7:09:42 PM PST by Bean Counter
We always observe significant anniversaries, and this April 26th marks the 25th year of the ongoing nuclear disaster that began on that date in 1986 at the Lenin Nuclear Power Station, Chernobyl, in the Urkraine. The World did not find out about what really happened for some time, and the first indications that something had gone terribly wrong was when nuclear power stations all over Europe started experiencing radiation alarms from the plume of radioactive debris that Reactor 4 was spewing out like a volcano.
I've been re-reading Gregori Medevedev's outstanding book "The Truth About Chernobyl" and the details of what happened are just ghastly. The Soviets were such monsters that they lied to one another about what happened for days while their children breathed plutonium, strontium, and radioactive iodine among other things, and while they sent the only good men they had to an agonizing radioactive death.
You cannot copmare this to either Hirosihma or Nagasaki, because there was no nuclear explosion, only a reactor burning out of control for weeks. When it blew, the reactor threw out over 50 tons of highly radioactive fuel, and well over 1500 tons of highly radioactive graphite moderator blocks for hundreds of yards around the plant. The rest of the graphite still in the reactor continued to burn, and the damaged fuel rods inside the reactor burned in uncontrolled nuclear fire until enough absorbing material could be dropped by helicopter to smother it. Hundreds of people came down with severe radiation sickness and many died after taking doses of ionizing radiations that were fatal several times over.
There are still places at the site today where you could receive a fatal dose of radiation in a few minutes, and it will be that way for centuries. I shudder to think of the men and women who faced this disaster.
Chernobyl was the result of highly incompetent people manipulating dangerously flawed equipment in the most irresponsible ways imaginable, and the entire incident has been used to tarnish the entire nuclear power industry ever since. Chernobyl is only one legacy of the former Soviet Union, and far too few people understand that the disaster at Chernobyl continues to this day, and our nuclear power industry suffers in large part because of the gross and monstrous incompetence the Soviet Union displayed at Chernobyl.
If anything, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster should be a case study in why we need to develop thorium as an incredibly safer nuclear fuel used in a safe and efficient reactor design that can prevent anything like Chernobyl from happening again, while we still meet our power generation needs.
[captioned]"They must build a new sarcophagus soon, because the original one was hastily constructed and is disintegrating."
...and that was six, to seven years ago.
yes....several years ago there was a lot of talk about how the old sarcophagus was leaking rainwater and in imminent danger of collapse. I recall seeing some very ambitious plans to build a new sarcophagus over the old one, but nothing ever came of it, and the story faded into the background.
As I understand it, if a minor earthquake shook that area it could stir up another plume that carries thousands of REMs of radiation, even now.
It’s horrifying to consider the entire scope of this disaster.
From an abandoned kindergarten in Chernobyl. The building are all left with windows and doors open, so that radioactivity doesn't build up within. From other photos it is apparent that much looting went on at areas spread throughout the contamination zone.
Talk about your "hot" property...
I remember the DOD wasn’t encrypting the satellite images, and the Swedes made the images available.
Thank you, it was an interesting read. The other thread I started has other info, with one link in particular leading to disturbing images of children in Belarus who were victims of the fallout. Much of the cloud was blown over their way. The contamination there was in some instances, worse than nearer to the nuclear plant itself, or so I’ve been told.
Part of the problem was that because authorities waited days to begin the evacuation of Prypyat, the entire town and everyone and everything in it were highly contaminated, and they exported that contamination all over the Country on cars, people, furniture, you name it. The roads leading in and out were heavily contaminated as were the tires on any vehicle that drove on them.
Just a nightmare scenario, and the cleanup still goes on today.
My sister once monitored film badges / dosimeters for a military site. A day or two after Chernobyl, the background radiation counts had skyrocketed here, half a word away.
HBO ran a documentary a few years ago called “Chernobyl Heart” which is the term used to describe a birth defect that is prevalent in the area around the disaster; it’s heartbreaking to watch, and I hope it runs again this Spring for the anniversary.
Many countries were impacted by this. I was living in Switzerland at the time. The plume and its remnanrs travelled through a lot of western Europe. In Switzerland we could not drink the milk produced locally for a period of time(if you needed milk you had to purchase powdered milk), had to take extra care to wash all vegetables, etc. It was quite frightening at the time because we thought we might be getting exposed to increased cancer risks.
The Last Film of Vladimir Shevchenko
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbCcutzXzYg
The word “hero” is thrown around so loosely nowadays, but those brave men who gave all to contain the radiation were heroes in the truest sense of the word.
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