It was early morning on April 26, 1986 when workers at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, began scheduled work on an experiment…
It was the early hours of April 26, 1986, when workers at the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, began scheduled work on an experiment intended to test safety systems, but which led to the largest nuclear accident.
As part of this experiment, technicians shut down the station’s fourth unit’s automatic power regulation systems, as well as safety systems, but left the reactor operating at 7% of its power. At 1:23 in the morning, the chain reaction in the fourth reactor caused a series of explosions, which shook the thousand-ton steel reactor cover into the air. Huge quantities of radioactive material were scattered into the air, through which it was transported to the surrounding areas at a rapid rate.
On April 28, Swedish monitoring stations began recording high levels of radioactivity and demanded an explanation. Although the Soviet government initially tried to cover up the incident, it was forced to admit that there had been a “small accident”.
For ten days, the burning nuclear fuel released millions of radioactive elements into the atmosphere, the equivalent of 200 Hiroshima bombs. Radioactive dust spread over Europe and up to the North Pole. It took 7,000 tons of metal and 400,000 cubic meters of reinforced concrete to bury the hundreds of tons of nuclear fuel and radioactive debris inside a sarcophagus.
Officially, 31 people died shortly after the explosion. But since 1986, more than 25,000 soldiers and civilians from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and other former Soviet republics have lost their lives sent to restore the station. According to the UN, about 8.4 million people in these three countries have been exposed to the radiation, which has contaminated an area of 150,000 square kilometers, equal to half the area of Italy. Four hundred thousand people fled their homes, but about 6 million still live in contaminated zones.
The exact reasons that led to this tragedy remain unknown. It is clear, however, that a series of chain factors played an important role, such as the inadequate safety and protection systems of the reactor, as well as the incorrect handling (perhaps without relevant authorization) by insufficiently trained workers.
The ill-fated Chernobyl plant was permanently shut down in December 2000, following international pressure on the Ukrainian government and fears of further explosions in its aging reactors.
The political implications of the tragedy
The communist regime made the disaster even worse by initially hiding the consequences of the nuclear accident, despite the fact that the “reformer” was in power Mikhail Gorbachev.
The world learned what happened only after the detection of increased radiation… at Sweden. And decades later Gorbachev himself, its last leader Soviet Union would admit that this particular nuclear accident was the cause of the beginning of its end USSR…
To date, the full account of the largest nuclear disaster in history, it remains obscure, while the accident opened huge debates about the safety of nuclear power.
In 2011 the planet experienced a similar nightmare, this time in Fukushima of Japan which is still counting wounds after the devastating earthquake, the subsequent tsunami and the accident at the eponymous nuclear plant.
The consequences of the accident
Tracing the long-term effects of Chernobyl continues, with scientists often disagreeing with each other about the effects on human health but also for the number of dead.
Thirty nuclear workers factory and firefighters they died almost immediately. Thousands more they succumbed to diseases related to radiation, such as cancer, although the total number of deaths remains a matter of debate.
The exclusion zone around the Chernobyl it will remain uninhabited for several more decades, approximately 5 million people however, they still today live in areas that are officially designated as contaminated.
Many people developed chronic metastases health problemssuch as various forms of cancer, heart diseases, vascular diseases, circulatory diseases, while miscarriages, birth defects, etc. were recorded in the disaster zone.
However, recent research has found that there was none “additional damage in the DNA’ of children born to parents who had been exposed to its radiation Chernobyl.
Is first investigation which is carried out with the aim of studying the genes of the children who came into the world from the so-called “kamikaze cleaners”.
There are more than 600,000 Soviets -men and women- who were transferred to the area after the accident, to clean up so the rest of the world stays safe. No protective clothing, no essentials security measures and continuously exposed to the high levels radioactivity.
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