Chernobyl disaster

In Ukraine, in the first five years after the disaster, cases of cancer among children increased by more than 90 percent. During the first twenty years after the accident, approximately 5,000 cases of thyroid cancer were registered in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus among those who were younger than eighteen at the time of the explosion. The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 5,000 cancer deaths were related to the Chernobyl accident, but this figure is often challenged by independent experts. In Ukraine in 2005, 19,000 families were receiving government assistance owing to the loss of a breadwinner whose death was deemed to be related to the Chernobyl accident. Other consequences include genetic damage to people born after the disaster. Russia’s oil and gas riches helped it deal with the post-Chernobyl crisis, while resource-poor Ukraine and Belarus had nothing comparable. Those two countries introduced a special Chernobyl tax in the early 1990s, amounting in Belarus to 18 percent of all wages paid in the nonagricultural sector. In general, however, the Belarusian government dealt with the enormous challenge by continuing the Soviet tradition of suppressing investigations of major disasters. Although Belarus was the post-Soviet country most affected by Chernobyl fall-out, its antinuclear movement never attained the proportions of its Ukrainian counterpart. Nor did the Belarusian Popular Front exercise influence comparable to that of the Ukrainian Rukh. Th...

Even after many years of scientific research and government investigation, there are still many unanswered questions about the Chernobyl accident — especially regarding the long-term health impacts that the massive radiation leak will have on those who were exposed. Related: 5 weird things you didn't know about Chernobyl Where is Chernobyl? The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is located about 81 miles (130 kilometers) north of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and about 12 miles (20 km) south of the border with Belarus, according to the World Nuclear Association. It is made up of four reactors that were designed and built during the 1970s and 1980s. A human-made reservoir, roughly 8.5 square miles (22 sq. km) in size and fed by the Pripyat river, was created to provide cooling water for the reactor. The city of Pripyat, founded in 1970, was the nearest town to the power plant at just under 2 miles (3 km) away and housed almost 50,000 people in 1986. A smaller and older town, Chernobyl, was about 9 miles (15 km) away and home to about 12,000 residents. The remainder of the region was primarily farms and woodland. A black and white image of the smoking, damaged building and reactor (Image credit: Sovfoto/Universal Images Group via Getty Images) The Chernobyl plant used four Soviet-designed RBMK-1000 nuclear reactors — a design that's now universally recognized as inherently flawed. RBMK reactors were of a pressure tube design that used an enriched U-235 uranium dioxide fuel to heat...

Excerpt from the International Herald Tribune May 2, 1986 (Schmemann and New York Times Service 1986). Click image for link to full article (on Bowdoin network). Outside of the Soviet Union (USSR), the world was unaware of the Chernobyl accident until April 28, 1986, two days after the meltdown of Reactor No. 4. At the Forsmark nuclear reactor in eastern Sweden, a worker arrived for his shift and set off an alarm indicating abnormally high radiation levels. Subsequent analysis revealed that the “radioactive dust” on the Forsmark reactor worker’s shoes was not due to a malfunction at Forsmark—or any other nuclear reactor in Scandinavia. Instead, the radioactive materials had come from 900 miles away in Ukraine (Browne 1986). Excerpt from May 2, 1986 International Herald Tribune (Schmemann and New York Times Service 1986). According to Malcolm Browne, a journalist for The New York Times, “Sweden was ideally situated to peek under” Moscow’s “veil of secrecy” surrounding the Chernobyl accident due its close proximity to the USSR. Swedish nuclear physicists utilized European nuclear radiation data to trace the source of radiation to the Chernobyl plant (Browne 1986). But, only after Sweden “spent a full day demanding information” from the USSR, did Moscow issue a 44 word statement regarding the Chernobyl accident (Schmemann and New York Times Service 1986). The Western world was largely dissatisfied by the lack of detail in Moscow’s statement. On May 2, 1986, one journalist dem...

• Home • Getting Started - Research Tips Toggle Dropdown • • • Research Topic List: Inequality and Human Rights Toggle Dropdown • • • • Research Topic List: Political Revolutions Toggle Dropdown • • • • Research Topic List: Climate Change and Environmental Issues • • • • Research Topic List: Globalization Toggle Dropdown • • • • Citing Your Sources • Virtual Research Workshops Chernobyl On April 26, 1986, there was an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the republic of Ukraine. Large amounts of radioactive material were released into the atmosphere, where it was carried great distances by air currents. It affectedlarge areas of the former Soviet Union and even parts ofwestern Europe. This led to the deathsof more than a dozenpeople,hundreds becoming ill from radiation sickness, as well as environmental damage. Please review the below links to reference articles (tertiary sources) on this topic for more information. (Please note, encyclopedias/tertiary sources should NOT be cited in your assignment. Scroll down for primary and secondary sources).

On April 25 and 26, 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history unfolded in what is now northern Ukraine as a reactor at a nuclear power plant exploded and burned. Shrouded in secrecy, the incident was a watershed moment in both the Cold War and the history of The disaster took place near the city of Chernobyl in the former USSR, which A few months after reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant went up in toxic flames in 1986, it was encased in a concrete and steel "sarcophagus" to contain the radioactive material inside. That ageing structure, seen here, was covered with a larger, newer containment housing in 2016. Photograph by On April 25, 1986, routine maintenance was scheduled at V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station’s fourth reactor, and workers planned to use the downtime to test whether the reactor could still be cooled if the plant lost power. During the test, however, workers Firefighters attempted to put out a series of blazes at the plant, and eventually helicopters dumped sand and other materials in an attempt to squelch the fires and contain the contamination. Despite the death of two people in the explosions, the hospitalisation of workers and firefighters, and the danger from fallout and fire, no one in the surrounding areas—including the nearby city of Historic disaster Soon, the world realised that it was witnessing a historic event. Up to 30 percent of Chernobyl’s 190 metric tons of uranium was now in the atmosphere, and the Soviet Union eventually At l...

A view of the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant three days after the explosion.Considered history’s worst nuclear accident, the Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986 killed 31 people directly, many due to radiation poisoning during the cleanup. The area around the plant remains so contaminated that it’s officially closed off to human habitation. The Elephants Foot of the Chernobyl disaster is shown in the immediate aftermath of the meltdown. The “Elephant’s Foot”, named for its appearance, is a solid mass made of melted nuclear fuel mixed with lots of concrete, sand and core sealing material that the fuel had melted through. It lies in a basement area under the original location of the core. Over a hurried construction period of 206 days, crews erected a steel and cement sarcophagus to entomb the damaged reactor.Here, an employee stands in front of a radiation sign at the sarcophagus a few years after its construction. A35,000-ton New Safe Confinement was built on tracks and then slid over the damaged reactor and existing sarcophagus in November 2016. Bumper cars at a fair rust away in the ghost town of Pripyat, which was evacuated following the disaster. Today Pripyat remains a ghost-town, its apartment buildings, shops, restaurants, hospital, schools, cultural center and sports facilities derelict and its streets overgrown with trees. The city lies in the inner exclusion zone around Chernobyl where persistently high levels of radiation make the area uninhabitablefor thousands...

1. The reactor’s emergency safety systems had been turned off. The Chernobyl nuclear power station in present-day Ukraine consisted of four 1,000-megawatt reactors, plus two additional reactors that were under construction. On the night of April 25-26, 1986, Soviet technicians initiated a turbine test on Unit 4 just prior to a routine shutdown for maintenance. In order to perform the test, they unwisely disabled the emergency core cooling system and other key safety equipment. A chain of operating mistakes then ensued, resulting in a buildup of steam that caused the reactor to overheat. At 1:23 a.m., two to three rapid-fire explosions blew its steel and concrete lid right off and sent a fireball shooting high into the sky. This initial release of radioactive material was then compounded by several fires that broke out, including one inside the reactor core that raged for 10 days. All told, the accident at Chernobyl released at least 100 times more radiation than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 2. The cleanup was much deadlier than the original blasts. Though massive, the explosions at Chernobyl killed only two plant operators directly and reportedly prompted a third to die of a heart attack. By comparison, 28 workers and firefighters succumbed to acute radiation poisoning during the first few months of the cleanup, and dozens of others were badly sickened. Heavy radioactive fallout, which spread as far west as France and the United Kingdom, likewise too...