Episode 736
Chernobyl disaster
Thu, 2019-May-09 02:20 UTC
Length - 4:40
Direct Link
Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.
With 351,084 views on Wednesday, 8 May 2019 our article of the day is Chernobyl disaster.
The Chernobyl disaster, also referred to as the Chernobyl accident, was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 25–26 April 1986 in the No. 4 nuclear reactor of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, in northern Soviet Ukraine. The accident occurred during a late-night safety test which simulated a station blackout power-failure, in the course of which both emergency safety and power-regulating systems were intentionally turned off. A combination of inherent reactor design flaws and the reactor operators arranging the core in a manner contrary to the checklist for the test, eventually resulted in uncontrolled reaction conditions. Water flashed into steam generating a destructive steam explosion and a subsequent open-air graphite fire.
This fire produced considerable updrafts for about nine days. The heat was so intense that it melted firefighters' boots.
The fire was finally contained on 4 May 1986.
The lofted plumes of fission products released into the atmosphere by the fire precipitated onto western Europe and parts of the USSR. The estimated radioactive inventory that was released during this very hot fire phase approximately equaled in magnitude the airborne fission products released in the initial destructive explosion. The total number of casualties, including deaths due to the Chernobyl disaster, remains a controversial and disputed issue. During the accident, steam-blast effects caused two deaths within the facility: one immediately after the explosion, and the other compounded by a lethal dose of radiation. Over the coming days and weeks, 134 servicemen were hospitalized with acute radiation syndrome (ARS), of which 28 firemen and employees died in the days-to-months afterward. Additionally, approximately fourteen radiation induced cancer deaths among this group of 134 hospitalized survivors were to follow within the next ten years (1996). Among the wider population, an excess of 15 childhood thyroid cancer deaths were documented as of 2011. It will take further time and investigation to definitively determine the elevated relative risk of cancer among the surviving employees, those that were initially hospitalized with ARS, and the population at large. The Chernobyl accident is considered the most disastrous nuclear power plant accident in history, both in terms of cost and casualties.
It is one of only two nuclear energy accidents classified as a level 7 event (the maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011. The struggle to safeguard against scenarios that were perceived as having the potential for greater catastrophe, together with later decontamination efforts of the surroundings, ultimately involved over 500,000 workers (called liquidators) and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles. The remains of the No. 4 reactor building were enclosed in a large cover which was named the "Object Shelter", often known as "sarcophagus." The purpose of the structure was to reduce the spread of the remaining radioactive dust and debris from the wreckage, thus limiting radioactive contamination, and the protection of the site from further weathering.
The sarcophagus was finished in December 1986, at a time when what was left of the reactor was entering the cold shutdown phase.
The enclosure was not intended to be used as a radiation shield, but was built quickly as occupational safety for the crews of the other undamaged reactors at the power station, with No. 3 continuing to produce electricity up into 2000. The accident motivated safety upgrades on all remaining Soviet-designed RBMK reactors, the same type as Chernobyl No. 4, of which ten continue to power electric grids as of 2019.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 02:20 UTC on Thursday, 9 May 2019.
For the full current version of the article, see Chernobyl disaster on Wikipedia.
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This has been Justin. Thank you for listening to popular Wiki of the Day.
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