Chernobyl 04/26/86 ----- 04/26/06 ------20 Years-------

[GrayFox 0]

I think that this could happen again, but what do you think?

 

A short story about what happen that day:

 

The explosion of the reactor

 

What was the sequence of events?

The accident in reactor no. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power station took place in the night of 25 to 26 April 1986, during a test. The operating crew planned to test whether the turbines could produce sufficient energy to keep the coolant pumps running in the event of a loss of power until the emergency diesel generator was activated.

 

In order to prevent the test run of the reactor being interrupted, the safety systems were deliberately switched off. For the test, the reactor had to be powered down to 25 per cent of its capacity. This procedure did not go according to plan: for unknown reasons, the reactor power level fell to less than 1 per cent. The power therefore had to be slowly increased. But 30 seconds after the start of the test, there was a sudden and unexpected power surge. The reactor's emergency shutdown (which should have halted the chain reaction) failed.

 

Within fractions of a second, the power level and temperature rose many times over. The reactor went out of control. There was a violent explosion. The 1000-tonne sealing cap on the reactor building was blown off. At temperatures of over 2000?C, the fuel rods melted. The graphite covering of the reactor then ignited. In the ensuing inferno, the radioactive fission products released during the core meltdown were sucked up into the atmosphere.

 

 

 

 

What caused the accident?

Determining the causes of the accident was not easy, because there was no experience of comparable events to refer to. Eyewitness reports, measurements carried out after the accident, and experimental reconstructions were necessary. The causes of the accident are still described as a fateful combination of human error and imperfect technology.

 

The test during which the accident happened was conducted under time pressure. Shortly after it started, on Friday 25 April 1986, the test run was interrupted for nine hours. Electricity still had to be supplied to the capital, Kiev. The test then took place at night. Today, several flaws in the technical design of the reactor type are thought to have been decisive.

 

These include the handling of the control rods. In a reactor, the power level is controlled by raising and lowering the control rods: the fewer control rods are positioned between the fuel elements, the greater the reactor power. In this type of reactor, however, the management of the "braking" process has a fatal flaw. If the control rods are raised and then, to "put on the brakes", lowered between the fuel elements, the initial effect is the exact opposite: reactor power is increased.

 

If, as was the case in the test at Chernobyl, too many control rods are raised at once and then reinserted simultaneously during an emergency shutdown, the power level rises so dramatically that the reactor is destroyed. A similar error, but with much less severe consequences, had already occurred in a reactor of the same type in Lithuania in 1983. This experience, however, was not passed on to the operating crew in Chernobyl

Sources

(3.7) Wolfgang Botsch: Untersuchungen zur Strahlenexposition von Einwohnern kontaminierter Ortschaften der n?rdlichen Ukraine, Universit?t Hannover, 2000, p. 5 ff. und p. 7/8

 

(22.3) Katalyse e. V. Das Umweltlexikon, Institut f?r angewandte Umweltforschung, K?ln, 1993, p. 727

 

(3.8) Wolfgang Botsch: Untersuchungen zur Strahlenexposition von Einwohnern kontaminierter Ortschaften der n?rdlichen Ukraine, Universit?t Hannover, 2000, p. 9 bis p. 13

 

For more information visit this site. Complete Information, detailed.

 

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Edited April 25, 2006 by GrayFox (see edit history)

[jlhaslip 4]

Unfortunately, yes, it may happen again. One study has it where there have been about 93,000 victims of that one single incident, although the official version is way less than that. The incident is only twenty years old, and the real results won't be known for certain for another twenty years, really. Until all the potential victims have either died as a result of cancer or other illnesses brought on by their exposure, or survived. A real tragedy for the people in the area. The CanDu Reactor is inside a containment building and apparently would have protected the local residents.

[Blacklaser 0]

Of course it might happen again, chances are slim but never say never... I live only a few miles from a french nuclear plant and although one hears a lot of stories, I think it is rather safe.

[GrayFox 0]

Wow

 

Well, the plant will be radioactive for another 100.000 years!!!

And the Sarcophagus isn't very secure, you can see a lot of things in the page that I wrote before.

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[epox 0]

i hope this never will happen again, i don't mind all that poor people suffering after 20 years after, and all that psichologic traumas, what kind of future waits for them? ,it must be horrible, god give them blesses

[Blacklaser 0]

Short note to the poster: the post belongs in regional > Europe section since Chernobyl lies in Europe.

This map shows nicely how the radioactive cloud spread over Europe and how strongly winds affected the spread of radiation. The east of Chernobyl is almost completely untouched. Since I'm from Europe and was born only a year before it happened, I can't recall the incident, but my parents told me that even the poeple in Luxebourg were told not to eat any vegtables from their home gardens for 2 years after the nuclear cloud passed over us. Scary thought.

Here is another interesting link to a photostory of the visit of the Ghost town: http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html

Read through it all, it is very interesting.

Edited April 26, 2006 by Blacklaser (see edit history)

[GrayFox 0]

Short note to the poster: the post belongs in regional > Europe section since Chernobyl lies in Europe.

I don't do that, The Moderators changed the location of my post

The links are excellent! But if you want more information about Chernobyl, you can visit the website that I wrote above. So you don't have to search on the internet.

----------------
Moderators, he is right, can you change the location of the post?
Edited April 27, 2006 by GrayFox (see edit history)