Lydia Vasko

Men in protective suits franticly scurried as fast as they could, shoveling up the reactive waste on the rooftop and dumping it in into large barrels off the side of the building. The thought of losing their lives and endangering the lives of their unborn children kept running through their heads as they dived behind a protective concrete wall to protect themselves from the deadly levels of radiation the radioactive waste expelled. The waste these men were so terrified of was the result of one of the worst nuclear disasters in the history of mankind. This disaster rated 98 in the USA Today poll of the top 100 events of the century. When the nuclear power plant, near the town of Chernobyl, exploded in April of 1986, nuclear radiation swept across many countries causing vast physical, environmental, emotional, and social problems that will be around for generations to come.
Perhaps the Chernobyl incident could have been prevented if not for the faulty design of the reactor. A RMBK reactor used in unit 4 of the Chernobyl plant was unstable at low power and could cause a quick and uncontrollable increase of power. Many other types of these reactors with this problem, though many have added features to prevent this instability from happening. (Causes of the Chernobyl Accident, 2)The reactor should have used water as a coolant and less steam pockets in the design. The water acts as a moderator, slowing down the reaction. The excess power created, with the help of the steam pockets, caused additional heating, which required more coolant. The excess power and heating would become hard to control when this coolant becomes unavailable. (2) This is what led to the explosion.
Though there were problems with the reactor design, human error played a big role in the accident as well. The night started out as a time to run standard maintenance tests but officials decided they would use the time to check on the turbines in the reactor. During the night they ignored many safety precautions. When conducting tests, control rods were used to help regain control of the reactor should anything go wrong. In a normal situation a minimum of 30 rods would be in use, but on this night only 6-8 control rods were used. (2) Because officials feared the tests could not be conducted properly, they turned off the emergency systems. A communication problem caused the tests to be carried out without proper information exchanged between people in charge of the tests and people who were in charge of the reactor. (refer to visual #2 for more details)
When word of the explosion reached head officials of the Soviet Union, no one admitted a mistake. Careful not to let anyone suspect an accident, the government hid the explosion from the world while conducting tests on unit 4. When Unit 4 exploded on April 25, at around 1:00 am in the morning, no one knew what to do and who to go to for instructions. When fire fighters arrived from Kiev at 4:00 am, they immediately got to work. By 5:00 am the fire on the roof was contained. These firefighters boldly went into the unit with no protective clothing to prevent against radiation. Many of these fire fighters began to feel ill after only minutes in the unit, because of the radiation, and had to be carried out on stretchers and brought to a nearby hospital. At 10:00 am Saturday, experts arrived from Moscow. The estimated temperature of the reactor core reached 4,500 degrees F (2482 degrees C) and at this temperature, the core could burn for a long time. Volunteers tried to kill the fire with a mixture of sand, lead, boron, and dolomite to block radiation from seeping into the air. Pilots dressed in protective suits had to fly their helicopters low to hit the target with their sand mixture. To help protect against the high levels of radiation, they were given iodine pills to counteract the effects. Meanwhile, people still went on to their jobs and others in the nearby towns had no idea the air had been polluted by extreme levels of radiation. Three days after the accident, officials in Sweden picked up high levels of radiation in the air around them. At first, they thought the radiation was from Soviet nuclear weapons testing, but analysis said it was radiation from a nuclear reactor. Officials asked the Soviet government if there had been an accident but they replied with a “no”. The government waited to size up the disaster before they thought of telling the world of the problem, but finally, the government admitted to the massive disaster days after the explosion. Many people in the surrounding areas were evacuated out of their homes, a total of 50,000 people from the near by town of Pripyat alone, only being told there had been a problem at a nearby power plant and they would be returning to their homes in the next couple of days. In fact, most people never did return.
Many people believed the delayed reaction of the government made the accident much worse. The government of the Soviet Union not only hid the actual explosion but also the information about it. When the report of the Chernobyl explosion finally came out, it reported only 3 % of the reactor’s core was released into the air when, in reality, it was actually 80 %. (Gould, 2) Despite the enormous amounts of radiation, authorities withheld information so as to stop a public panic. The amount of radioactive land was so immense, the Soviet Union was still reluctant to let go of their information in 1989. Uninhabitable land stretched 200 miles north of Chernobyl while deposits of radioactive caesium could be found just 125 miles west from Moscow. ( Condon, _____) This type of incorrect information on the part of Soviet Union, led the world to believe, for a short time, the disaster wasn’t a major health problem.
As health problems in the surrounding countries and the Soviet Union began to increase, governments realized something had to be done with the radioactivity surrounding them. Radiation had been found in the air, the rain, the water, soil, plants, cattle, crops, and wildlife. Radioactive rain dribbled all over Europe, including in Great Britain, where restrictions were introduced on where cattle was grazed and would be transported. Some of these restrictions are still in place today. In countries where radiation affected most severely (Sweden, Germany, Poland, Belarus, and Austria ) different measures had to be taken to prevent against radiation. In many countries iodine pills were administered to civilians to counteract the effects of radiation. Large quantities of milk and leafy vegetables were ordered destroyed for people could not eat the food they had produced because of the radiation in the soil and the water. Because of the food contamination, fresh food and milk were transported into these special areas. In other areas, like the Soviet Union, there was not a surplus of food and the people ate what food they had, whether it was radioactive or not.
Even today the effects of the Chernobyl explosion are felt throughout Europe. The effects of the radiation differed but the immense increase in cancer in cancer became the most general side effect of the explosion. Cases of thyroid cancer have more than doubled in all of Europe after the explosion. Many of the victims of thyroid cancer were very young of unborn children at the time of the accident. Between 1981-1985, thyroid cancer had five victims per million people. Since the accident, between 1986- 1997, cases of thyroid cancer jumped to 45 victims per million people per year.(Health and Psychological…….., 3)( See visual # 1 for details) Researchers also found 64 % of the cases lived in the most contaminated regions of Ukraine, the provinces of Kiev, Chernigov, Zhitmoir, Cherkassy, Rovno, and the city of Kiev. (3) (See visual #1 for details) There were also reports of increases in other certain cancers in people living in these contaminated areas and in people who lived with those who helped clean up the radioactive waste. In all, 31 people died right after, or a few months after, the accident. In figures from the Radiological Institute in Ukraine, it is said more than 2,500 deaths were caused by the radiation though other studies show that the numbers may reach to between 7,000 and 10,000 people (Gould, 2) This number, however, will surely rise each year as the effects of the radiation are beginning to unfold and people who were children at the time of the incident are being diagnosed with cancer. As people still live in these highly contaminated regions, cases of cancer will surely climbing every day. The health consequences do not only stop with cancer. The blow up of the reactor had psychological effects, depression, social withdrawl, and other disorders caused by mental stress have escalated in the past years. Research showed the stress resulted from lack of public information and the confusion during evacuation. People were not told of the truth about the accident until many years after.
The results of one of the worst nuclear explosions in history have caused much emotional, environmental, physical, and social pain, which we shall have to bare witness for many years to come. Clearly the design of the reactor used at the plant, and human error, are to blame for this dreadful ordeal. When the government tried to cover up the incident and did not tell the truth about it until years afterwards, it only made the situation worse. Some people make their own mistakes and learn from their own experiences, but other people who learn from others’ mistakes and avoid making their own will go farther in their lives. Hopefully this is what we will do from now on and learn from this awful mistake. We must learn how to work with nuclear energy if we really are to use it in the future and learn how to deal with any accidents, like Chernobyl, if they should ever occur.