Today, I am going to talk about the Chernobyl disaster, that occured in the early hours of April 26, 1986.The text is a press article extracted from the « Scientific American » of April 1996.
The operators were driving a test to see how long the generators would be able to run without energy.
I remind you that the reactors of a nuclear power station produce steam which operates generators, and these generators produce electricity.
To carry this test out, the operators greatly reduced the power made by the reactor number 4 and they blocked the flow of steam to the generator.
That was the first mistake because this RBMK reactor had a flow that made it very unstable at low power.
Moreover, due to an operational error the power fell too much, about 30 MW instead of 1000 MW.
In fact, you can control the power with rods that you put in the reactor and it absorbs neutrons to slow down spliting.
The second mistake in this disaster was to switch off the safety system to allow the test to be carried on.
At 1 AM, the situation had become dangerous so an operator tried to activate the protection system but it was too late.
Then, the power reached 100 times the maximum power, the temperature increased and the reactor exploded. There were two explosions that blasted the top of the reactor which weighted 2000 tons of graphite that had componed the moderator, burned for 10 days. The moderator is to slow down the speed of neutrons for a good spliting.
This fire carried fuel particules made of uranium and plutonium, which are are dangerous elements, and other radioactive products.
About 5000 tons of various materials were thrown by helicopter to cover the reactor.
The lighter materials were carried throught wind over Europe increasing, among others, thyroid cancers. The area of the nuclear power station was contaminated by radioactive fallout and many persons still live in contaminated areas.
As a conclusion, I would like to say that thousands of people called « liquidators », had sacrified themselves in removing radioactive waste and building a sarcophagus around the reactor to avoid a larger collapse that would have involved an explosion 20 times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb. Europe would have been uninhabitable. These persons didn't have suitable protections and most of them have died in agonizing pains.
