Chernobyl

"Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid."

Who would've thought that multiple generations would have to bear the cost of a few people's lies?

It was 26th of April, 1986. The city of Pripyat, about 62 miles away from north of Kiev of the then Soviet Ukraine, where about 49,000 people lived, faced one of the most extreme nuclear facility destructions in the history of human civilization. The operators of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which was the very first nuclear power plant of Ukraine, prepared to conduct a test to see how an emergency water cooling system would fare in the event of a complete loss of power. The test began at 1:23:04 a.m. in the reactor No. 4. The pumps failed thus resulting in a loss of water flow and the reactor started making loud noises. Hot fuel combining with cool water created a massive amount of steam which created a lot of pressure. Fifty-six seconds later, an explosion due to steam buildup resulted into lifting a 1,000-ton lid that covered volatile fuel elements. Radioactive elements were immediately released into the air. As oxygen poured into the reactor, a graphite fire began. A chemical reaction caused a second explosion, and burning debris landed on the roof of reactor No. 3. Power went out. Meanwhile, the engineer responsible for the night shift, Aleksandr Akimov, did not yet think that the reactor’s core was damaged. “The reactor is OK, we have no problems,” he says. Nobody knew that an RBMK reactor could even explode! He never thought that his decision would bring upon such a disaster.

At 3:12 a.m. an alarm went off at an army base deep in the Soviet Union. The general in charge decided to send troops. They arrived in Ukraine’s capital of Kiev at 2 p.m.

At 5 a.m. reactor No. 3 was shut down. Reactors No. 1 and 2 were stopped about 24 hours later. As more emergency response teams arrived, evacuations began in a radius of 6 miles around the plant.

An alarm went off at a Swedish nuclear plant about two days later, when the shoes worn by an employee there were scanned by a radiation detector. The radiation was traced back to Chernobyl. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union publicly admitted for the first time that an accident happened but gave few details.

About 49,000 people were evacuated from the area, primarily from Pripyat. The exclusion zone was later increased to 30 kilometres (19 mi) radius when a further 68,000 people were evacuated from the wider area. The reactor explosion killed two of the reactor operating staff. In the emergency response that followed, 42 people died. The final death toll ranges between 9000 to 200,000 people.

After that catastrophe tons of clay, sand, boron and dolomite were dropped to quell the fire and also to stop the spread of radiation.

A trial took place from 7 to 30 July 1987 where five plant employees: the former deputy chief engineer, Anatoly S. Dyatlov(10years); the former plant director, Viktor P. Bryukhanov(10 years) ; the former chief engineer, Nikolai M. Fomin(10years); the shift director of Reactor 4, Boris V. Rogozhin(5years) and the chief of Reactor 4, Aleksandr P. Kovalenko(3 years) and USSR State Committee on Supervision of Safe Conduct of Work in Atomic Energy inspector, Yuri A. Laushkin(2 years) were sentenced in labor camps.

The first official explanation of the accident, later acknowledged to be erroneous, was published in August 1986. It was the INSAG-1 Report published by the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group(INSAG). It effectively placed the blame on the power plant operators.

It was later revealed in the INSAG-7 Report(1992) that the design of those RBMK reactors were flawed and the control rods were conceptually flawed. But the other reactors in use were fixed after the Chernobyl Explosion revealed these findings.

This incident has taught us a very valuable lesson that advancement towards anything needs to have appropriate precautions and qualified people working on it. We pay homage to all who died due to this disaster and feel that whatever we do for future shouldn't cost us any more lives.

Sources: Wikipedia, Timeline of Chernobyl, HBO Mini Series-"Chernobyl".