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Andreas, Germany:

Ich habe sehr angenehme Erinnerungen an unseren Ausflug. Alles war perfekt organisiert und ...

2009
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After the disaster

The nuclear accident was not followed by a nuclear explosion. Both explosions were normal – thermal. Radioactivity started to radiate out of the destroyed and burning fourth reactor of Chernobyl power plant, which contaminated both the near and far environment.

The first step in liquidation of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl was extinguishing the burning reactor hall and the roof of turbo-generator’s hall. Special power plant fire department, together with firemen from the nearby town of Chernobyl, extinguished the fire within three hours after the explosion. Yet, in the heart of the reactor, graphite was still burning…

Firemen who worked at the accident did not know the cause of the fire and thus they just poured water at the ruins of the reactor. This worsened the situation and several smaller explosions followed, together with a severe radioactive contamination. To prevent radioactivity from further spreading into the environment, the reactor was filled with five thousand tons of boron, dolomite, sand, clay and lead compound - thrown from a helicopter flying above the reactor. These loose materials extinguished the burning graphite and absorbed radioactive aerosols. Two weeks after the breakdown, Soviet official bodies decided to conserve the whole crashed block of the power plant into a special sarcophagus – concrete body with its own cooling system.

The explosion at Chernobyl brought up radioactive substances to the altitude of 1.5 kilometer in the air. In this elevation, wind from the southeast took the radioactive cloud to as far as Scandinavia. The cloud flew over Scandinavia and then turned back to Ukraine again. During the day of the accident, the direction of the wind changed to westward. The second contaminated cloud thus flew via Poland to Czechoslovakia and further to Austria. There, it bounced back from the Alps and flew back to Poland. As far as we know today, there is no place in the world where the radioactive clouds from Chernobyl were not present. Contaminated clouds flew all around the world.

The most affected territories were Ukraine and Belarus, which decided to evacuate parts of their countries forever because of the contamination of the environment. In the process of contamination, a large role was played by radioactive iodide. This element has a short disintegration half-time and relatively soon after the accident naturally decomposed to harmless substances. Today, the radioactive pollution is made up mostly by substances such as strontium and cesium – these have a 30-year disintegration half-time. Thus, they will continue to pollute the close environment for several decades. Isotope of plutonium and americium will be present at the respective territory probably for several thousand years. However, they have a negligible radiation affect for the human body.

gRAPHIC by MARCELINO 2009
programmed by daniel.pribula