The Lasting Effects Of Chernobyl On Chernobyl

1594 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Environmental impact of Chernobyl disaster

The lasting effects of Chernobyl The effects of the nuclear disaster that occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Soviet Union are still experienced today even though more than thirty years have passed since the event. The event is known as “Chernobyl” and has gone down in history as one of the worst nuclear disasters to have ever occurred. (Hjelmgaard) Approximately 120,000 people lived within a 30- km radius but the radioactive release spread causing even more people to continue to experience effects in the present day. (Chemistry in Context) Extreme health issues, extreme environmental contamination, and health promoting organizations remain prevalent as a result of devastating Chernobyl. On April 26, 1986 a nuclear explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in present day Ukraine caused catastrophic damage. A systems test at a reactor took a turn for the worst when there was a sudden surge of power. Unskilled worker attempted a shutdown but only caused an even greater spike in the power surge. A reactor vessel ruptured and a succession of explosions followed. A total of thirty operators and firemen were killed in a short amount of time. (“What is Chernobyl”) The amount of radioactivity released was two hundred times greater than that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Following the accident into present- day there is a larger number of radiation related deaths as people are exposed to unhealthy amounts of radiation. Chernobyl was unique in the commercial nuclear power industry because it was the only accident in history where radiation- related fatalities occurred. These radiation- related fatalities occur in the form of cancers, primarily thyroid and leukemia, digestive d... ... middle of paper ... ...uld have caused irreversible mutations that continue to affect the population. It is also important to realize the Ukrainians could face another nuclear disaster as the sarcophagus enclosing the problemed reactor faces disrepair. (Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl) In conclusion, the Chernobyl disaster was immensely destructive and the impacts will continue affecting the European population for hundreds of years to come. These impacts are seen changing the lives of humans and animals in the contaminated zone. By utilizing various primary and secondary sources it is evident that the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986 is most definitely significant. Unfortunately, radioactive waste can be hard to control and dispose of making it overwhelmingly powerful and widespread. Overall, Chernobyl has created a lasting legacy of how dangerous nuclear power is. (Chemistry in Context)

Show More
Related

  • An Analysis Of Visit Sunny Chernobyl

    871 Words  | 2 Pages

    The engineers in Visit Sunny Chernobyl created a new frontier past the safety zone because they want to test the limits of the reactor. What the scientists didn’t account for is that fact that the reactors already had the potential of a dangerous chain reaction. (Blackwell 6) Consequently, their boundary destroying led to catastrophic consequences and the total annihilation of a land area because of massive radiation. Blackwell thought Chernobyl was so horrific he expressed that no one should visit without a “working understanding of radiation and how it’s measured” (Blackwell 7). These are some horrific consequences that followed from surpassing the

    Read More

  • Chernobyl, an Examination of the World’s Worst Nuclear Disaster

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    The meltdown of Chernobyl's fourth reactor was the result of a series of errors in the reactor design, operations, and a failure to follow established safety protocols. These human errors resulted in more than 400 times the radioactivity of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb being released into the environment (Salge & Milling, 2006). This caused a massive economic, environmental, and human toll to the region. Improved reactor design and proper adherence to safety procedures could have prevented this disaster.

    Read More

  • Chernobyl: One of the Greatest Accidents the World Would Learn From

    1730 Words  | 4 Pages

    IPPNW. Only 50 Deaths Caused by Chernobyl? 20 Years after Chernobyl - The Ongoing Health Effects. 6 Apr. 2006. Web. 19 Mar. 2011. .

    Read More

  • How Chernobyl Became a Scary Word

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...r. Iodine 131, another radioactive element, can dilute very quickly in the air, but if it is deposited on grass eaten by cows, the cows then re-concentrate it in their milk. Absorbed into the body's thyroid gland in a concentrated dose, Iodine 131 can cause cancer. In the Chernobyl disaster, the biggest health effect has been cases of thyroid cancer especially in children living near the nuclear plant. Therefore, because of the Chernobyl disaster we know to test the grass, soil, and milk for radiation. Also, an evacuation of the Chernobyl area was not ordered until over 24 hours after the incident. Japanese authorities evacuated 200,000 people from the area of Fukushima within hours of the initial alert. From the mistakes and magnitude of the disaster at Chernobyl, the world learned how to better deal with the long and short term effect of a Nuclear Fallout.

    Read More

  • Three Mile Island Case Study

    430 Words  | 1 Pages

    On March 28, 1979, at 4:00 A.M. Eastern time, the worst accident in commercial nuclear power history happened. It was a nice day in Dauphin county, Pennsylvania, and then it all happened. This accident was rated a 5 on a scale that only goes to 7. The scale is called International Nuclear Event Scale. It all started inside the secondary-system where the pilot-operated relief valve was stuck open releasing large amounts of nuclear reactor coolant. This horrific accident caused many scientists to worry about nuclear energy, as well as concerning scientists that it could be a danger to the world, so this caused many safety concerns among activists and the general public which resulted in in new regulations for the nuclear industry, and has been cited as a contributor to the decline of a new reactor construction program that was already underway in the 1970s. Even though this sounds like it should have caused many people to develop cancerous cells, epidemiological studies analyzing the rate of cancer in and around the area since the accident, determined there was a small statistically non-significant increase in the rate and thus no causal connection linking the accident with these cancers has been substantiated. After

    Read More

  • The Effects of the Chernobyl Accident on International Actions Concerning Nuclear Power

    2187 Words  | 5 Pages

    Early in the morning of April 27, 1986, the world experienced its largest nuclear disaster ever (Gould 40). While violating safety protocol during a test, Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl power plant was placed in a severely unstable state, and in a matter of seconds the reactor output shot up to 120 times the rated output (Flavin 8). The resulting steam explosion tossed aside the reactor’s 1,000 ton concrete covering and released radioactive particles up to one and a half miles into the sky (Gould 38). The explosion and resulting fires caused 31 immediate deaths and over a thousand injuries, including radiation poisoning (Flavin 5). After the accident more than 135,000 people were evacuated from their Ukrainian homes, but the major fallout occurred outside of the Soviet Union’s borders. Smaller radioactive particles were carried in the atmosphere until they returned to earth via precipitation (Gould 43). The Soviets quickly seeded clouds to prevent rainfall over their own land, so most of the radioactivity burdened Western Europe, Scandinavia, and the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans (Flavin 12). This truly international disaster had far reaching effects; some of these were on health, the environment, social standards, and politics.

    Read More

  • The Disaster at Chernobyl

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    On April 26th, 1986, operators at the Chernobyl Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, ran what they thought to be a routine safety test. But fate was not on the side of these operators. Without warning, reactor #4 became unstable, as it had been operating at a low power for a possible shutdown and the reactor’s design caused it to be unsafe at this level of power. Internal temperatures rose. Attempts to cool the system produced the opposite effect. Instantly, the nuclear core surged with power. At 1:23 p.m., the reactor exploded. The first blast ripped off the reactor's steel roof. The second blast released a large plume of radiation into the sky. Flames engulfed the building. For ten long days, fire fighters and power plant workers attempted to overcome the inferno. Thirty-one of them died of radiation poisoning. Chernobyl was the worst nuclear disaster in history. It unleashed radiation hundreds of times greater than the atomic bombs exploded over Japan during World War II. [1]

    Read More

  • Chernobyl: The Unforgettable Engineering Disaster

    1499 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Chernobyl Nuclear has also affected the environment. Such as the food products in the Forest like mushrooms, berries containing high levels of long-lived radioactive caesium and this pollution is expected to remain high for several decades or so. For example, the accident led to high pollution of caribou meat in Scandinavia. Water bodies and fishes became polluted as well with radioactive materials. The accident has actually affected many animals and plants living within 30-40 km of the . There was an increase in mortality as in increasing of deaths in an area and a decrease in reproduction and some genetic anomalies in plants and animals are still reported

    Read More

  • Could the Chernobyl Disaster Have Been Prevented?

    1240 Words  | 3 Pages

    Chernobyl (chĬrnō´byēl) is the uninhibited city in north Ukraine, near the Belarus boundary, on the Pripyat River. Ten miles to the north, in the town of Pripyat, is the Chernobyl nuclear powerstation, site of the worst nuclear reactor disaster in history ("Chernobyl", Columbia Encyclopedia). To specify, On April 26, 1986, Unit Four of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in Ukraine, injuring human immune systems and the genetic structure of cells, contaminating soils and waterways. Nearly 7 tons of irradiated reactor fuel was released into the environment—roughly 340 million curies. Included in the release were radioactive elements with a half-life of 16 million years. Yet, we humans cannot defe...

    Read More

  • Chernobyl

    451 Words  | 1 Pages

    Chernobyl was the greatest nuclear disaster of the 20th century. On April 26th, 1986, one of four nuclear reactors located in the Soviet Union melted down and contaminated a vast area of Eastern Europe. The meltdown, a result of human error, lapsed safety precautions, and lack of a containment vessel, was barely contained by dropping sand and releasing huge amounts of deadly radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere. The resulting contamination killed or injured hundreds of thousands of people and devastated the environment. The affects of this accident are still being felt today and will be felt for generations to come.

    Read More

  • Voices From Chernobyl Analysis

    1127 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant explosion in 1986 is arguably the worst industrial accident in history, but there has been comparatively very little disclosure of its consequences. This was a disaster predominantly kept quiet by the Soviet government; the victims were lied to about the dangers of the radioactivity and the seriousness of the consequences were kept to a minimum. Svetlana Alexievich was one of the few people who managed to expose the truth through her book Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. There have also been a multitude of documentaries centered on the disaster, however, with different approaches, than Alexievich, in informing viewers. *Alexievich wrote Voices from Chernobyl with the intent to

    Read More

  • Nuclear Power Essay

    698 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...r more than a hundred thousand years. (Lindsay, 2002) The Chernobyl Accident in 1986 which has not taken the right safety measurement by the power plants operator caused the nuclear power plant to release radiation. There were more than 30 people found dead in this accident impute to radiation exposure. (WNA, 2012; U.S.NRC, 2011)

    Read More

  • The Effects of Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster on Humans and the Environment

    778 Words  | 2 Pages

    Humans were a victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident which affected their lifestyle and their health. People of Chernobyl were evacuated to clean and safe areas. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) (2006), there were 116 000 people who were evacuated from Chernobyl region to other safe areas in the summe...

    Read More

  • Environmental Disaster: The Chernobyl Disaster

    980 Words  | 2 Pages

    One of the most significant environmentally damaging instances in history was the Chernobyl incident. In 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in Ukraine exploded. It became one of the most significant disasters in the engineering community. There are different factors that contributed to the disaster. The personnel that were tasked with operating the plant were unqualified. The plant’s design was a complex one. The RBMK reactor was Soviet design, and the staff had not be acquainted with this particular design. As the operators performed tests on the reactor, they disabled the automatic shutdown mechanism. After the test, the attempt to shut down the reactor was unsuccessful as it was unstable. This is the immediate cause of the Chernobyl Accident. It later became the most significant nuclear disaster in the history of the

    Read More

  • Essay On Chernobyl Disaster

    1188 Words  | 3 Pages

    The biggest damage is the radiation exposal to the people. 530,000 local recovery workers were exposed the radiation, the effective dose is same as fifty years of natural radiation exposure (IAEA, 1996). 31 nuclear power staffs and emergency workers were died by direct effect, and the Chernobyl Forum anticipates the total num...

    Read More

More about The Lasting Effects Of Chernobyl On Chernobyl

Open Document