CHERNOBYL - As it stands today, Pictures.

[Phaelon]

This is some freaky stuff.
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/page2.html


History of Chernobyl - http://www.nea.fr/html/rp/chernobyl/chernobyl.html

[Sentrosi]

W O W

Utterly incredible account of that disaster many years later.

[Incompetent]

Great stuff.

[UncleDynamite]

Amazing, just amazing.

[kreeten]

Good find. I remember seeing that live, when the Russians were dropping some of the first emergency guys onto the site by helicopter. With virtually no protection. It was estimated that they had pretty well sealed they're fate in under one minute.

[Robot]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R, anyone?

[Everay]

robot, explain what you mean.


its interesting, there are a many times when russian reactors failed, leaked radiation, and a few people stepped up, saved others lives, and died from radiation poisoning, and just look at those old russian helicopters, its a shame to see them wasted because of radiation, real historic peices.

and how did you see videos of people dropping out of helicopters going in? i thought the russians kept this top secret.

[Dharkbayne]

Everay, everyone and everything has a price.

And that's wierd, the entire city just... stopped. It makes you think, what if that were to happen here?

[Veteran]

It did... Three Mile Island. Over 20 tons of nuclear material melted, core exposed, etc.

Propaganda is a strong weapon.

[Peacemaker]

Yea vetran but it didnt leak into the atmosphere as badly as that. THe Chernobyl reactor was viewable from above the facility, you could see it glowing deep red through all of the rubble. Three Mile Island had some radioactive Hydrogen Gas slowly vented into the atmosphere to prevent an explosion. Compairing the disaster at Chernobyl to the Three Mile Island incident is like compairing a fist fight to world war 2.

[Phaelon]

If you go to the second link I provided, it explains why Chernobyl was so bad.

The reason it was so bad was because of something called a "Graphite fire"

The graphite fire
While the conventional fires at the site posed no special firefighting problems, very high radiation doses were incurred by the firemen, resulting in 31 deaths. However, the graphite moderator fire was a special problem. Very little national or international expertise on fighting graphite fires existed, and there was a very real fear that any attempt to put it out might well result in further dispersion of radionuclides, perhaps by steam production, or it might even provoke a criticality excursion in the nuclear fuel.

A decision was made to layer the graphite fire with large amounts of different materials, each one designed to combat a different feature of the fire and the radioactive release. The first measures taken to control fire and the radionuclides releases consisted of dumping neutron-absorbing compounds and fire-control material into the crater that resulted from the destruction of the reactor. The total amount of materials dumped on the reactor was about 5 000 t including about 40 t of borons compounds, 2 400 t of lead, 1 800 t of sand and clay, and 600 t of dolomite, as well as sodium phosphate and polymer liquids (Bu93). About 150 t of material were dumped on 27 April, followed by 300 t on 28 April, 750 t on 29 April, 1 500 t on 30 April, 1 900 t on 1 May and 400 t on 2 May. About 1 800 helicopter flights were carried out to dump materials onto the reactor; During the first flights, the helicopter remained stationary over the reactor while dumping materials. As the dose rates received by the helicopter pilots during this procedure were too high, it was decide that the materials should be dumped while the helicopters travelled over the reactor. This procedure caused additional destruction of the standing structures and spread the contamination. Boron carbide was dumped in large quantities from helicopters to act as a neutron absorber and prevent any renewed chain reaction. Dolomite was also added to act as heat sink and a source of carbon dioxide to smother the fire. Lead was included as a radiation absorber, as well as sand and clay which it was hoped would prevent the release of particulates. While it was later discovered that many of these compounds were not actually dropped on the target, they may have acted as thermal insulators and precipitated an increase in the temperature of the damaged core leading to a further release of radionuclides a week later.

The further sequence of events is still speculative, although elucidated with the observation of residual damage to the reactor (Si94, Si04a, Si94b). It is suggested that the melted core materials settled to the bottom of the core shaft, with the fuel forming a metallic layer below the graphite. The graphite layer had a filtering effect on the release of volatile compounds. But after burning without the filtering effect of an upper graphite layer, the release of volatile fissions products from the fuel may have increased, except for non-volatile fission products and actinides, because of reduced particulate emission. On day 8 after the accident, the corium melted through the lower biological shield and flowed onto the floor. This redistribution of corium would have enhanced the radionuclide releases, and on contact with water corium produced steam, causing an increase of radionuclieds at the last stage of the active period.

By May 9, the graphite fire had been extinguished, and work began on a massive reinforced concrete slab with a built-in cooling system beneath the reactor. This involved digging a tunnel from underneath Unit 3. About four hundred people worked on this tunnel which was completed in 15 days,allowing the installation of the concrete slab. This slab would not only be of use to cool the core if necessary, it would also act as a barrier to prevent penetration of melted radioactive material into the groundwater.

This is why Chernobyl is so bad and why it isn't even in the same class as Three Mile Island.

[Veteran]

Hmm, well now I know.

BTW, what's up with buiding reactor's on the San Andreas faultline in Cali? Scary.

[Robot]

robot, explain what you mean.

http://www.stalker-game.com/

[Navaron]

That's Russia.

[Rbstr]

3 mile island was no ware near a destructive as this. It realesed the plum of Radioactive steam but it got blown over the ocean not to the mainland, i think most of the area where it happend is fine.

My World Geography teacher showed us a video with people going int to throw one shovel full of dirt into the crated before they had to run back out. Even then apperantly all of those people died in a few days or weeks

[Infernus]

... While Three Mile Island wasn't as destructive it was equally as dangerous... In order for the cloud to reach the ocean it had to blow over most of Eastern PA, parts of Philadelphia, and a Large portion of New Jersey... do not undermine its potential...

[Corrosion]

Wewt! page 5 mentions my home country!

Maybe my mom got cancer cuz Ukraine was so close to Belarus... :rolleyes:

[AztecWarrior]

Those pictures are stunning. I've never seen a city like that so desolate. Sure, you can point out that hurricanes have leveled cities, but it is as if the city was frozen in time and everybody left.

And that Stalker game looks AWESOME!

[Phaelon]

Three Mile Island was not as dangerous, the amount of critical elements released from Chernobyl were FAR greater than three mile island. Read fully through the article in my second link. He describes in detail all the elements released from the initial explosion to the graphite fire.

Chernobyl was much worse than Three Mile Island.

[Phaelon]

Here is three Mile Island for you, the whole re-cap.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/tmi/whathappened.htm