Chernobyl nuclear accident

Chernobyl Nuclear Accident

O nuclear accident at the Chernobyl power plant took place on April 26, 1986, in Ukraine while the republic was still part of the defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

At the time, it was the most serious nuclear accident of all time, losing this position in 2011 when the accident happened at the Fukushima plant, in Japan, after an earthquake and a tsunami hit the city. Unlike what happened in Fukushima, the Chernobyl accident occurred when the plant's reactors were in operation.

Causes of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident

The radioactive accident happened at the power station of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant while nuclear technicians were carrying out an experiment in the reactor, four years later. late in 1991, a study conducted found that the accident was not just the result of human error, but rather a number of factors, including a possible failure in the reactor.

Chernobyl had four reactors in operation and two more that were still under construction, the plant was a symbol of the development of the Soviet Union.

After a huge explosion, a huge cloud of radioactive smoke was formed that spread throughout the Soviet Union and Europe. West, helicopters were used to throw sand and lead on the flames, but it did little good as the tragedy had already gained huge proportions.

Evaluation of Nuclear Accidents

The explosion was so intense that it threw pieces of the plant up to fifty meters away. The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) elaborated in 1990 the International Scale of Nuclear and Radiological Events, this was created with the intention that lay people would understand the level of severity of radiological accidents, this scale goes from level one to seven. Only two nuclear accidents have been classified to date at level seven: Chernobyl and the Fukushima power plant.

Scale for evaluation of nuclear accidents

The criteria used to classify accidents are based on the amount of radiation released and the damage caused by it to the population and the environment.

Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident

At the time of the accident, thirty-one people died immediately, about 800,000 were exposed to radiation and 25,000 died over time (the government admitted only fifteen thousand deaths), of these 20% committed suicide.

Studies revealed that 70,000 people suffered illnesses as a result of radiation and 93,000 would have died worldwide as a result of the accident, women who were pregnant during the period were advised to abort, as there was a serious risk of babies being born with some type of malformation.

The cloud containing radioactive materials released mainly iodine and cesium into the atmosphere, which contributes to the growing number of people with cancer. One of the main concerns with radioactive accidents is not the intensity of the radiation, but the time spent exposed to it.

Cesium can be found in soil and food for up to thirty years after exposure. Many psychological illnesses and others that have no clinical explanation were detected in the population residing around the plant, it was found that the health of people who inhabit the regions close to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant are more fragile than the populations of other locations in the Europe.

The seriousness of the accident at the Chernobyl power plant led the Soviet government to attempt to hide it from the international community, which This episode only became known to the world when neighboring countries detected the presence of high levels of radiation in their territories. The president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev waited three weeks to officially pronounce on what happened. Twenty years after the accident, Gorbachev presented his vision of Chernobyl:

“More than any other event, Chernobyl opened my eyes: it showed me the appalling consequences of nuclear energy, even when it was not used for military purposes. One could more clearly imagine what would happen if an atomic bomb exploded.”

According to Mikhail Gorbachev, if the workers directly involved in the tragedy had known about the destructive power of radiation, they would never have approached the accident site. The four active generators at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant generated 10% of the energy consumed in Ukraine.

Soon after the accident, the government began a desperate attempt to evacuate the areas close to the plant, on the day following what happened to the streets of Pripyat, the city where Chernobyl was installed had already been almost completely destroyed. abandoned.

The Soviet government promised residents that they could return to their homes three days later, however this never happened. The area around the power plant was cordoned off, thus the city of Pripyat was within the exclusion zone. After the attempt to contain the radioactive flames released by the explosion, workers were summoned to working on the construction of a steel and concrete structure around the plant, the structure was named sarcophagus.

The men who participated in this construction worked without any type of protection, all of them died shortly after the work was completed. It is estimated that about one hundred tons of radioactive waste still remain at the site of the tragedy, according to the NRC, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission the region will take at least a hundred years to be completely free of agents radioactive. Pripyat turned into a ghost town, the physical and mental health problems that affected the population, still represents today, the biggest public health problem in the world.

Twenty-nine years after the Chernobyl accident, millions of Ukrainians still suffer from radiation sickness, thyroid cancer being the most common.

A fauna in the region also continues to be affected, according to biologists who study the animals close to the affected cities the number of wild species is increasing decreasing and, in addition, many suffered some type of mutation related to the existence of radioactive particles in the soil and in the water of rivers and lakes. A museum was built in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, in memory of the people who died as a result of the radioactive accident.

Lorena Castro Alves
Graduated in History and Pedagogy