The Chernobyl Disaster
Aftermath of the disaster|CC Soviet Authorities
On April 26, 1986, during a routine test, the Number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had a power surge and triggered an emergency shutdown.
Instead of shutting down, the reactor kept surging power, and in no time at all the plant was in full disaster mode.
The control rods used to manage the core’s temperature were inserted too late into the process. Instead of cooling down, the rods cracked in the rising heat from the core and locked into place.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the water used to cool the entire reactor vaporized, resulting in a massive explosion. The first explosion blew the 4-million pound lid of the reactor through the roof of the building. The second explosion followed shortly thereafter and sent broken core material, fire, and radioactive waste into the air.
Without the tons of steel and concrete typically used to shield it, the core of the reactor began to melt. The result of the melting process is a substance called Corium.
Corium is a lava-like molten mixture of portions of the nuclear reactor core, nuclear fuel, fission products, and control rods.
At Chernobyl, the corium melted through the bottom of the reactor vessel, oozed through pipes, ate through concrete, and eventually cooled enough to solidify.
CC US Department of Energy
The Elephant’s Foot
The spot where the corium solidified wouldn’t be discovered until December in 1986. To contain the fallout, a large concrete enclosure named the sarcophagus was built on the site. Access points were left in the sarcophagus for researchers.
During one such research trip, their equipment registered levels of radiation so high that it would kill anyone who got too close for more than a few second.
In order to see what was causing the readings, the scientist attached a camera to a wheeled contraption and rolled it in the direction the readings were emanating.
What they saw was dubbed the Elephant’s Foot.
CC US Department of Energy
The Elephant’s Foot is so deadly that spending only 30 seconds near it will result in dizziness and fatigue. Two minutes near it and your cells will begin to hemorrhage. By the time you hit the five-minute mark, you’re a goner.
Even after 30 years, the foot is still melting through the concrete base of the power plant. Its existence makes the city uninhabitable to humans for at least the next 100 years. If it melts down into a source of ground water, it could trigger another explosion or contaminate the water of nearby villages.
And yet, in spite of the Elephant Foot’s toxic presence in Chernobyl, something strange is happening.
Animals Flourish
Biologists from the University of Georgia set up cameras in the Belarus evacuation zone to try and track animal activity in the area. What they found was surprising.
Many different kinds of animals aren’t simply living in the irradiated area; they’re thriving in it.
The cameras spotted gray wolves, red foxes, wild boars, moose, and deer.
It’s not that the area isn’t still dangerous to humans, but instead, the animal life seems to have found a way to thrive in spite of it. And even more important than that, the flourishing animal life shows just how destructive the presence of human beings can be on the animal population of any given area.
Whatever the reason, the area of the Chernobyl disaster has become a kind of wildlife refuge for many different species of animals. At least some small amount of good was able to come from one of the worst disasters in the last three decades.
A lot if this information is false…. There was no power surge. The operators at the plant ran a yearly test without the proper Emergency Shutdown Procedures in place. So the computers ” thought ” everything was running right on the RMBK-1000 reactors. Meanwhile the core got too hot, and shot the entire core, thousands of feet into the air. Witnesses described it as a ” Fireworks Display “. A ” PSA ” to citizens wasn’t given for days. They were told their was a ” minor problem with the plant, and not to worry “. It would have been cool if you showed the Vehicle graveyard where the vehicles were so heavily radiated they still cant be moved or touched and have since been bleached white instead of forest green. cool article though.
Thanks a lot for your reply. We love it when people care enough about our topics to do some fact checking on their own and keep us on the up and up. For the record, the sources I looked at when composing the elephant’s foot portion of this blog can be found here, here, here, and here. While I can’t speak to the sheer validity of each of those sites, they do all mention a power surge in one way or another as initiating the meltdown. Though I honestly doubt that it was the sole reason behind the disaster as a whole. What sources do you have that claim differently? We’re always looking for new source material and would love to have more information.
As for the vehicle graveyard images, they sound really cool. Do you have any you could share with us? The primary focus of the blog post was about the elephant’s foot itself and about the animal life thriving in this area we tend to think of as being uninhabitable, so I’m not sure if the images would have fit in perfectly with the story we told, but I’ve always been fascinated by the story around Chernobyl and more images and more angles are always appreciated.
hi. the power surge was the end result of a series of blindingly stupid things that the crew did beforehand. while running the test, the operators let the reactor power down to a low level. they then panicked because if the reaction stopped, it was no simple matter to get it going again, and Kiev relied on the plant for a good chunk of electricity. so the operators then pulled the control rods too far up, and the reactor went critical, with certain sections getting way too hot in the process. when the operators tried to put the rods back in, they compoundd the problem because the rods were tipped with graphite for a reason that isn’t important. so yes, you are correct, there was a massive power surge that blew out the reactor.
In brief, not being an expert, but having just visited the Chernobyl exclusion zone two days ago …
There was a “power surge” of sorts. The control rods had moderating material (which increases the reaction rate) at the end, and neutron absorbers along the length. When fully “pulled out” the moderating material was in the middle of the pile (7 M tall). When the operators realized it was out of control, they commanded that all control rods be fully inserted. The first thing that happened was that the moderator on the end of the rod went from the middle of the pile to to bottom (while neutron absorbing material was entering from the top, a long way away). That increased the reaction rate at the bottom of the pile (the “power surge”) triggering the explosion.
This was not a yearly test, it was to test for a way to handle a problem in the power driving the coolant pumps.
The accident happened before dawn on April 25. The people of the nearest town (Pripyat, built in 1970 to house the people running the plant, 50,000 people) were evacuated on April 27. They were told to bring enough things for three days. On May 1, in Kiev, 60 miles south, the Soviet had their annual May day parade, pretending that everything was okay.
There are still 2000 people working at the plant. Reactor 1 was shut down after a minor accident (a melted fuel channel), then reactor 2 was shut down after a minor accident, and finally reactor 3 was shut down (without having had its accident). I ate lunch in the plant’s cafeteria.
Also people do still live there about 150 people or so.
Yup. I heard about a great documentary recently about that exact thing. You can check out the trailer for it here.
Personally, I don’t think that the fact that people do live there automatically implies it’s perfectly safe to do so. Issues with radiation poisoning can take a long time to take effect. And I didn’t mean to imply that the Elephant’s Foot was, in and of itself, dangerous to everyone in the area. It’s deep underground and contained in the sarcophagus after all. But the general idea is that area won’t be “safely inhabitable” (definitions of safe my vary) by humans for quite some time still, and that makes it interesting that the animals are thriving.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
Animals are not coming back. They’re actually dying and living much shorter lives.
This documentary strongly indicates otherwise: https://youtu.be/eFvvdYr-1Wc
There was a power surge. What was happening was an experiment and it was performed incorrectly. Nuclear reactors such as the one at Chernobyl require a supply of coolant even in a ‘shut down’ state for some time after they are ‘off’ because they continue to generate a lot of latent heat. So you need power to the pumps and so forth. There were emergency diesel generators that would start and supply power in the event of a reactor shut down. But they took at least 30 seconds to start and come online. So operators were trying to see if the steam turbines powered by the reactor generated steam itself would supply enough power to run all the reactor systems as it was slowing down and stopping after a shut down, to bridge the gap between the time it took to get the generators running. Sort of an insurance policy, so they were never without enough power.
There was a minimum reactor power level specified to perform this experiment, because a reactor of this type is very difficult to control at low power and rather unstable. It’s much like a bicycle I suppose, it’s a lot easier to control when you are going some speed than trying to balance on it at a crawl.
As the test required the reactor to be shut down to run the turbines down, power was reduced down to minimum test level prior to the shut down and intended to be held there, but it dropped even further below the required level. So the minimum power requirements were not being met for this test, operators got the reactor in a dangerous state of operation by trying to increase the power too quickly to again reach the required safe level for the test. Operator error and safety design flaws contributed. Most of the safety control rods had been removed from the core to try and increase the power level. The reactor power then spiked massively, an estimated 10 times higher than the maximum operating level, instantly flash evaporating all the water coolant inside the core to superheated steam. The steam pressure threw the enormous 900 tonne concrete shield clean off the top of the core and blew the building to pieces, scattering bits of the core’s fuel rods all over the place and releasing enormous amounts of radioactive particles contained in steam and gases.
Animals Are coming back actually.
Chernobyl didn’t really happen. It’s all faked to keep people away from the nearby DUGA radar. Simplez
Cheap land it seems. I would buy it all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The tour guides say it is available. You can buy a farm right outside the exclusion zone for only $500. A bargain at twice the price, huh? (Now, they aren’t realtors, and your mileage may vary.)
That radar is the Coolest looking thing! I got the best pictures of it when I visited two days ago. Okay, it was secret until after the reactor explosion, and it was shut down because it didn’t do the job they hoped it could do, but it sure is cool. The tour guides said the Soviets built six systems like it. The other five were demolished, but they didn’t want to use the explosives on this one, being so close to the reactor, so it just sits and the let us visit.
Doesn’t make sense that it’s dangerous for humans but somehow animals thrive.
[…] close to radiation sources usually died, and mid-ranged plants would develop tumors and growths. At the far reaches of the […]
[…] The elephant's foot […]
[…] On May 27, 1962, the people of Centralia, Pennsylvania put into motion a course of action that would have ramifications that would continue to be felt to this day. […]
I’m sorry but some of the things in this description are wrong, as actual human beings went under the reactor, where they discovered the elephants foot and toke photos of it for several minutes, only to die in a few days, not minutes the people and military personnel involved whether intentionally or forced by duty bound service where extremely brave and gave there lives or had there lives altered or shortened because us as humans can not control some of the things we create.
no the animals thriving is bull and its a lie. they are dying and lviing short lives and a pig in uraine had deformities radiation does not maKE ANIMALS THRIVE
The second image that you showed of the elephants foot was taken ten years after. Yes, for this specific one they did use a robot for the picture instead of a human. For the first picture they sent in photographers who were unknowing of the dangers. Only the people in charge knew the severity of this accident. Even years later their own government does not completely admit it. Most of what they will tell you is lies. as a matter of fact they continues allowing irradiated meat to be mixed into products on a ratio of 1:10 for a very long time. Chernobyl is also still causing mutations of children born today. This includes organs not existing or being misplaced, limbs mutated or completely missing all together, increasing cases of cancers, and mental deformities. The worst part is that their government still wont tell the truth and only says that it caused a few thyroid cancers. Btw George is wrong, there was a power surge and the core itself was not shot into the air. So yeah. Plz reply to me. Would love to talk to a fellow Chernobyl enthusiast!
100 years ? Uhhhh it will take about 20,000 years before we can actually safely walk around Chernobyl again. Need a little more precision on that one
Two days ago I was 300 M from the exploded reactor. At that location, my Geiger counter registered 0.71 micro-Sieverts per hour. After 9 hours in the exclusion zone my total dose was only 2 micro-Sieverts. A CT scan will be 2,000 to 10,000 micro-Sieverts.
This is because the Soviets put 500,000 people to work for years decontaminating the region. Some were military, some were prisoners, some were volunteers. The work they did was amazing. You still need to follow the rules. Don’t go off the roads, don’t turn over the dirt, but we can actually safely walk around Chernobyl today.
(At the entrance to the exclusion zone my counter read 0.14 uSV per hour. When crossing west of the reactor, where the winds were blowing fallout on the day of the accident, and where the evacuees drove past on April 27, my counter inside the bus read 20 uSV per hour. We did not stop and get out at that place.)
You can tour the closest ghost town. Perfectly safe. The reactor is out of bounds and still dangerous.
Unless you were there NNONE knows the facts!!!
Fun fact: my mother was on a bus to Kiev when Chernobyl melted down. Since she was an American citizen in the USSR, the militsia knew where her and her collegues were at all times. They pulled the bus over and the Americans were told they were going on a vacation to Finland. It wasn’t until much later that they found out what had happened because it wasn’t until unusually high levels of radiation in reindeer meat started turning up in Sweden that the West started to figure out what happened.