The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

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Level Seven Scenario: Sirens blaring in the middle of the night and chaos erupting from every direction. At precisely 1:21 a.m. on April 26th 1986 in Chernobyl, in a city with upwards of fifty thousand people located next to Pripiat River, a reactor exploded and released up to thirty to forty times the radiation of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing. But one would never think of that a disaster of this magnitude would ever happen because the plant workers are among some of the most highly trained in the universe. Millions of people had to suffer from the greatest nuclear disaster ever known to mankind. The Chernobyl Site Located at about 81 miles north of Kiev, Ukraine, and about 12 miles south of the border to Belarus, the Chernobyl plant consisted of four RBMK-1000 (Reactor Bolshoy Moshchnosty Kanalny) nuclear reactors. Reactors one and two were constructed from 1970 to 1977, while reactors three and four were completed in 1983. Before the nuclear accident occurred two more reactors were being constructed to have better energy production. An artificial lake of some 236,808,000 square feet was located just southeast of the plant where a tributary was constructed to run cooling water for the four reactors. The RBMK-1000 is a Soviet-designed and built graphite moderated pressure tube type reactor. It is designed to slow down neutrons and make them more effective in producing fission in the fuel surrounding the pressure tubes. The power production of this reactor is 3200 MW (megawatts) thermal. Many safety systems such as the emergency core cooling system were integrated into the design of the reactor. One of the most important features of the RBMK reactor is that it can hold a 'positive void coefficient'. This is w... ... middle of paper ... ... chain reaction and power production could increase if cooling water was lost or turned into steam, in comparison to most Western designs. Since 1989, over 1000 nuclear engineers from the Soviet Union have visited Western nuclear power plants and there have been many mutual visits. Over 50 alike provisions between East and West nuclear plants have been put in place. Many other international programs were initiated after the Chernobyl disaster. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safety evaluates projects for each particular type of Soviet reactor, bringing together operators and Western engineers to focus on safety improvements. The Chernobyl board report said that up to six million people are now getting or are eligible for benefits as 'Chernobyl victims'. We are slowly rebuilding from this horrendous disaster but together we can learn and overcome it.

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