Chernobyl
Chernobyl�No center of population on the earth�s surface is secure from surprise destruction in a single attack. There is no defense in science against the weapon which can destroy civilization.� (Gale 210) The Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986 is described as one of the most frightening environmental disasters in the world. The plant was made up of four graphite reactors, which were the most modern Soviet reactors of the RBMK-type. (Medvedev 4) Two more of these reactors were still under construction at the station. Chernobyl was an obscure town in north central Ukraine (former Soviet Union) on the Pripyat River near the Belarus border. (Gale 135) Immediately its name was joined to the Nuclear Power Plant located twenty-five kilometers upstream. It is not only the radioactive mess left that strikes fear, but nineteen similar stations are still running, because neither the former Soviet Union nor its republics can afford to shut them down. The world first learned of this accident from Sweden, where unusually high radiation levels were noticed at one of their own nuclear facilities. At 1:23 am technicians at the Chernobyl Plant took some erroneous actions that would impact the course of Soviet events without exaggeration. (Gale 27) In my paper I will discuss the causes and effects of the Chernobyl accident.
Human error is what basically caused the disaster. (Medvedev 1) These operators of the fourth unit slowly allowed power in the reactor to fall to low levels as part of a controlled experiment gone wrong. The purpose of the test was to observe the dynamics of the RMBK reactor with limited power flow. Twelve hours after power reduction was initiated, power reached 50 percent. (Medvedev 36-39) Only one turbine was needed to take in the decreased amount of steam, so no. 2 was turned off. Power was then reduced to 30 percent. Leonid Toptonov, a young, inexperienced and tired operator allowed the level of reactivity to fall dangerously low. As he attempted to correct this, the power in the reactor rose dramatically and uncontrollably. Instead of keeping power at 30 percent, he forgot to reset a controller, which caused the power to plummet to 1 percent. Now water was filling the core, and xenon (a neutron absorbing gas) built up in the reactor. The power was too low for the test. The water added to the reactor is heated by the nuclear reaction and turned into steam to turn the turbines of the generator. Leonid forced the reactor up to 7% power by removing all but 6 of the control rods. (Medvedev 26-36) This was a violation of procedure and the reactor was never built to operate at such low power. This type of reactor is very unstable when filled with water. (Medvedev 37) The operator was not successful in getting the flow of water corrected and the...
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