Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

On 26th of April 1986 at 01:23:45 in the night , Unit 4 nuclear reactor exploded spewing dangerous
ionizing radiation across Europe and contaminating hundreds of miles of countryside around the town of
Pripyat with nuclear waste . This level 7 disaster is till date the largest man made industrial accident ever
made in the history of mankind.

The beginnings of this tragedy can be traced to the commissioning of the Unit 4 facility on the 20 th of
December 1983. Unit 4 was a typical RBMK 1000 reactor that used uraniumbas its fissile material. To
meet the year end deadline and avail bonuses and rewards , top officials of the plant started operations
without completing all necessary safety checks that were required to be done.

One such important test was to simulate the working of the reactor if there is a blackout, or no power. A
nuclear plant requires cooling water to be circulated around the Nuclear core at all times. This
circulation of water requires pumps to run . The general plan was that if there was a blackout , the
diesel generators would supply the power until the power was restored. However there was a time lag
of 1 minute between the disruption of power and the generators kicking in . The test envisaged that
when the blackout occurs, the slowing turbine could still provide the bare minimum power required to
keep the water circulating until the generators kick in after 1 minute.

The plant officials including director Bruykhanov and plant head Dyatlov attempted to do this test
unsuccessfully thrice after the plant was started . The fourth ill fated attempt was made on 25 April
1986.

Working of RBMK reactor

Operating the RBMK reactor was basically a balance between conducive and opposing forces while
creating steam to run the turbines generating electricity.

Positive forces conducive to generating more steam

Uranium fuel itself that undergoes fission to generate heat

Positive void coefficient. When water around the core is heated, it creates a void that is steam. More
steam, more heat more reaction.

Negative forces opposing nuclear reaction working as brakes to the reactor

Boron control rods. This reactor had 211 rods. The rods when inserted absorb neutrons and stop process

Water

Xenon

Negative temperature coefficient. At high temperatures, reactivity of nuclear fuel decreases.

This safety test was supposed to be done on the 25 th of April 1986 in the morning. However due to grid
requirements the power could not be shut down . The right decision would have been to postpone the
trials but the plant management at around 2 pm,decided to run on half power 1600 MW and disable
the Emergency core cooling system . The green signal to do the tests came late in the evening and by the
time the test actually happened, some time after midnight the plant had run with half power for around
11 hours.

While it was decided to go ahead with the tests under the watch of plant head Dyatlov in the night shift,
this taste created a scientific and a human problem .

When Uranium undergoes fission,it creates Xenon gas. Normally when run at full power, the Xenon
burns away and decomposes. However at half power,there is not enough heat for Xenon to decompose.
Xenon as a negative impact on rate if Uranium fission and this Xenon that had been collecting in the
reactor for the past 11 hours was a key factor invthe events to follow.

The human factor: In any facility, the night shift operators are generally not the senior members.
Running an important safety test with inexperienced staff that had never done such a test before was
itself not correct . Entrusting this test to the reactor Engineer,Teptunov who was all of 25 years and
only 4 months into his job was the human problem.

At 38 minutes past midnight Dyatlov orders for the power to the reactor to be reduced to 700 MW. This
was a simulation of a situation which would have occurred if a blackout had happened. However due to
the intense Xenon poisoning, the power drops to 200 MW .At low temperatures Xenon was getting
created but not burnt off .The only way to raise power would have been to do it slowly over a day but
Dyatlov wanted test to be done immediately The only way was to pull out the Boron control rods.

Of 211 rods, 205 rods were pulled out to bring the power to 700 MW. With the Boron rods gone, the
only forces opposing the reaction were the water and xenon. The reactor was not hot enough so the
negative temperature coefficient did not matter at this stage.

At 01:00 am the test begins The water pumps are shut down. The balance immediately shifts In less
than seconds, reactivity increases creating more steam . More steam creates more heat . All the Xenon
starts decomposing .The positive void coefficient takes over and a runaway reaction starts with nithing
to stop it.

At 01:23:40 The engineers in a desperate attempt to bring things under control decide to use the AZ5
button to shut down the reactor. This is a safeguard mechanism in every nuclear reactor that engages all
the control rods to go downwards into the reactor and stop the reaction process. There was however a
fatal flaw in this step, that the operators did not know at that point. While the contrilvrods were made if
boron, the tips were made of graphite. Graphite accelerates the process. When the rods were lowered
the first part that entered the vessel was graphite that accelerated the reaction .All the water was
converted to steam creating a force that ruptured fuel rod channels. This prevented the control rods
from being lowered further. The graphite part remained fixed in its position endlessly accelerating the
reaction

Finally at 01:23:45 reactor No 4 exploded . The unit that could run at a maximum of 3200 MW went
beyond 33000 MW. The explosion threw open the 2000 ton concrete top of the reactor, hydrogen
combined with oxygen and superheated graphite was thrown out of the reactor .

Aftermath of Chernobyl

After the accident, in the hours, days and months to come Russian emergency workers including
firemen, soldiers, and volunteers made heroic efforts to save lives and reduce the resulting radioactive
contamination. Over 200000 emergency workers called liquidators were deployed. Over 116000 people
were evacuated from neighbouring areas and over 270000 residents from the most affected areas were
impacted by thus accident .As per WHO report, 50 emergency workers died in days after the accident
and around 4000 people died in the years thereafter mainly due to thyroid cancer and lukemia .

While iodine raduonucleotide no longer pose a problem due to their short half life. Contamination due
to Strontium and Cesium decays continue as they have half lives if more than 30 years. Plutonium and
Americium isotopes will decay on for centuries even though their levels are low and will not have
significant human impact.

The radiation contamination spread across the European continent. The main impact areas are in
Belarus, Ukraine and Russia within a 100 km square radius. The actual impact varied depending on the
wind direction and the rainfall at a particular place at that point of time.It was possible to cap the
radiation only 10 days after the accident.A total area of 200000 square kilometres were deemed to be
contaminated due to the disaster.

Remediation of urban, agricultural, forest and aquatic ecosystems.

Most of the urban areas in Pripyat including buildings, roads, lawns were contaminated. Winds, rains
and human activity reduced the load over a period of time but levels could be higher where top soil
remains undisturbed. A major contamination concern was that of radioactive iodine passing from
pasture grass to animal feed to milk . Transmission of Cesium through milk, meat and plant crops
remained a concern. Where possible , Cesium blockers were introduced in the soil to reduce
contamination and permit agriculture. However large tracts of land invthe 3 affected countries still
remain in a state of disuse. Animals and forest vegetation were impacted. This included lichens,
mushrooms,berries and animals grown in those areas. Restrictions were put on access to forest areas,
harvesting of food, collection of firewood and hunting. It was seen that reindeer feeding on lichen in
Arctic regions had been contaminated with raduonucleotide. Aquatic systems were also affected.
Surface water systems like rivers gradually saw levels fall due to dilution. Bioaccumulation happened in
aquatic food chain and fish in Germany and Scandinavia were found to be contaminated. Closed lakes
with no out flowing streams were closed for fishing and remained contaminated for decades.

Chernobyl Nuclear reactor No 4

To limit the radiation from the exposed reactor, team started working on creating a structure enclosing
the while of reactor 4. This was completed in 206 days between June and November 1986 . Four
hundred Coal miners were called in to dig a 168 meter tunnel under the reactor to put a cooling slab
under it to prevent seepage of the nuclear material. The structure was estimated to use 400000 metric
cube of concrete and 7300 tins of metal to cover 740000 metric cube of debris. However the hastily built
structure had a life span of only around 30 years and started showing signs of deterioration leading to
some gaps causing radiation to be emitted into the environment.

In 1997 under the leadership of the G7 group of countries,the European Bank of Reconstuction started
process of building a new Sarcophagus around the old containment area around unit 4.The contract was
eventually given to the French consortium NOVARKA in the year 2007 to build a dome shaped
structure.This itself was an engineering marvel as the structure was assembled elsewhere and was slid
over the actual building. The structure was completed in 2019 .It had a span of 262 meters , height of
110 meters and a length if 160 meters.Its total weight was 36000 tons .This structure costing 2.1 billion
Euro is expected to have a lifespan of 100 years and will keep a lid on the radiation that continues to
emit from Chernobyl reactor 4.