In April of 1986, there was a terrible accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine which was a part of the Soviet Union at the time. Reactor Number Four experienced a "sudden and expected power surge." The operators tried to execute an emergency shutdown procedure on the reactor but that resulted in an even bigger power surge. There were multiple steam explosions and the reactor vessel ruptured. Upon exposure to air, the graphite moderator burst into flames. The fire expelled a huge plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere which drifted over a big area of the Soviet Union and Europe. In the next fourteen years, over three hundred and fifty thousand people were evacuated from the most contaminated areas of the Belarus, Russian and Ukraine.
These three states of the old Soviet Union have continued to deal with the contamination spread by the Chernobyl accident. Over five hundred thousand local men who worked on decontamination and clean up were exposed to an effective dose of fifty extra years of natural background radiation exposure. Because the health effects of radiation exposure can take decades to appear, the ultimate cost in human health of Chernobyl are hard to assess and estimates of the number of people who have died and will die vary widely. It is estimated by some sources that in the seventy years after the accident there may be hundreds of thousands of extra cases of cancer worldwide and tens of thousands of extra cancer-caused deaths.
There is pine forest near Chernobyl which turned red after the trees were killed by radiation. In the twenty eight years following the disaster, the forest has not decayed. Scientists recently found that the microbes and fungus which usually carries out decay in forests had also been killed by radiation.
Now there is a huge forest fire burning in the Chernobyl area and it is approaching the ruins of the nuclear plant. As the fire enters the area that is severely contaminated with fallout, the particles of radioactive materials which have been laying on the ground for twenty eight years are being picked up by the fire and injected into the atmosphere once again. It is so dangerous to human health that inhabitants of the area covered by smoke from the fire may have to stay inside for weeks to avoid inhaling the radioactive particles.
Proponents of nuclear power like to boast that very few people have been killed by operation of and accidents at nuclear power plants. Nuclear particles that can cause serious if not fatal injury to those who inhale them are invisible, tasteless and odorless. Radiation damage takes a long time to manifest as disease. These fact make it extremely difficult to pin down the health consequences of nuclear accidents. One thing that we do know for certain is that that the Chernobyl accident is still a threat to human beings and the environment twenty eight years after the accident.
There are many areas of the world that are contaminated by particles of radioactive materials from nuclear plant operations, nuclear accidents, improper disposal of nuclear waste and atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs. Even if the use of nuclear power ended tomorrow, all the nuclear plants were decommissioned and all the stockpiles of nuclear waste were buried far underground, the silent and invisible danger of the radioactive particles spread by human activity will continue to injure and kill people.
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant after the accident:
