The consequences of the Chernobyl disaster are still felt today

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred 38 years ago, on April 26, 1986, at 1:23 a.m. It was the worst nuclear accident in human history, killing thousands and affecting tens of thousands, writes Rubicon.

What caused the disaster?

The first reactor of the power plant, located 130 kilometers north of Kiev, went into operation in 1977, and two years later a detailed report was drawn up about its construction irregularities. According to the inspection committee, the concreting was of poor quality, there was a high possibility of groundwater contamination and there was also an excessive deviation between the wall panels.

However, the accident was not caused by these, but rather by the incompetence of the staff. The director overseeing the Chernobyl operation used to deal with coal-fired power plants, while the deputy chief engineer of the reactor was only familiar with submarine nuclear reactors.

At one o’clock on the night of April 25, 1986, an experiment was launched to test whether, in the event of a failure, the reactor’s turbine generator could supply the cooling water pump system with an adequate amount of energy. During the experiment, the safety system of the power plant was switched off, and then the power reduction began. In nuclear power plants, low power is a huge risk because the nuclear reaction becomes unstable. However, the managers of the power plant were not aware of this due to their lack of expertise.

The exact circumstances of the explosion are unclear: some attribute the disaster to the pressure caused by the steam developing from the heated cooling water, so the responsibility rests with the experimenters. According to others, the workers of the plant detected the crisis at the critical moments and tried to avert it by returning the control rods. The tragedy in this case was caused by the graphite coating of the rods, which, contrary to expectations, accelerated and did not tame the reaction. The heat that was released melted the rods, and the steam soon blew open the overly spacious container, and an explosion lifted the roof off the facility.

Victims of Chernobyl

During the disaster at the Chernobyl power plant, an estimated 32 people died and hundreds more were injured from radiation, as about 50 tons of radioactive material were released into the air. Arriving firefighters and local workers began extinguishing the fire without radiation protection equipment, so many people died within three weeks as a result of radioactive contamination.

The Chernobyl nuclear disaster released several times the amount of radioactive material released during the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki into the air, killing an estimated 3,000 Soviet citizens. The consequences of radiation are difficult to estimate due to the frequency of cancer, based on the risk factor of the impact on Hungary, ten people out of 1 million people could have been infected as a result of the Chernobyl disaster. Scientists attribute a total of 40,000 cancer cases to the 1986 disaster, the effects of which are still present in nature today.