35th anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster

www.irishexaminer.com

President leads global candle lighting campaign to mark 35th anniversary of Chernobyl

News from the Irish Examiner's team of reporters
www.irishexaminer.com www.irishexaminer.com

ulsterherald.com

Charity marks 35th anniversary of Chernobyl disaster - Ulster Herald

The Fermanagh Omagh branch of the Chernobyl Children Appeal NI is marking 35 years since one of the worst man-made catastrophes in history today (Monday). The disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine, which unfolded over April 25 and 26, 1986, has affected generations of...
ulsterherald.com ulsterherald.com
 
Last edited:
One of the most astounding punchlines in the HBO series was the hero scientist telling the politician
"Look, what is happening here; that disaster: it something that has never happened, never been seen in planet Earth 4 billion years of existence."

In a nutshell: congrats Dyatlov and others, you created the ultimate human-made disaster ! Now, go try taming that nuclear volcano and inferno... !
 
I was listening to a podcast interviewing Serhii Plokhy and he mentioned that there had been a similar incident elsewhere in the USSR but because that time it was an experience day shift and not a less experience night shift as at Chernobyl they were able to prevent it getting it out of hand.
 
An interesting discussion about one of the biggest flaws in the HBO series - that supposed steam / thermal explosion that could have razed Ukraine and made Western Europe a sterile parking lot.

physics.stackexchange.com

How large would the steam explosion at Chernobyl have been?

So the second episode of the HBO series began to cover the risk of a steam explosion that led to them sending three divers into the water below the reactor to drain the tanks. This occurred after ...
physics.stackexchange.com physics.stackexchange.com

That only multiplies the amount of useful fluid a few times, but then there is the exterior reservoir that is itself connected to internal pumps that might also be part of someone else's calculation, since that reservoir would have had nearly 10^6 tons of water judging from Wikipedia's map, which would make the yield upper bound 150 kT TNT.
Click to expand...

or 149 tonnes of TNT equivalent.
Click to expand...

1.8×10-7 MJ In terms of tonnes equivalent of TNT, it is ~4 kilotonnes TNT equivalent
Click to expand...

Even if no megaton by any mean (of course) it compares well with the largest non-nuclear bangs in human history

Largest artificial non-nuclear explosions - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Beirut August 2020

Following early estimates of the yield of the explosion ranging from hundreds of tons of TNT equivalent to 1.1 kilotons, a study by researchers from the Blast and Impact Research Group at the University of Sheffield estimated the energy of the Beirut explosion to be equivalent to 0.5 - 1.2 kt of TNT.
Click to expand...

PEPCON disaster 1988

PEPCON disaster

On 4 May 1988, about 4,250 short tons (3,860 metric tons) of ammonium perchlorate (NH4ClO4) caught fire and set off explosions near Henderson, Nevada. A 16-inch (41 cm) natural gas pipeline ruptured under the stored ammonium perchlorate and added fuel to the later, larger explosions. There were seven detonations in total, the largest being the last. Two people were killed and hundreds injured. The largest explosion was estimated to be equivalent to 0.25 kilotons of TNT (1.0 TJ)
Click to expand...

Halifax explosion

Halifax explosion​

An evaluation of the explosion's force puts it at 2.9 kilotons of TNT (12 TJ)
Click to expand...
 
elpoderdelasgalaxias.wordpress.com

Mil Mi-8: April 26, 1986.

A daring Mi-8 taking radiological measurements over the desolate, but smokeless, Reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power. Man, those guys were brave.35 years on, and counting.
elpoderdelasgalaxias.wordpress.com elpoderdelasgalaxias.wordpress.com
 
science.slashdot.org

Nuclear Reactions Are Smoldering Again At Chernobyl - Slashdot

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world's worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. "It's like the...
science.slashdot.org
 
Foo Fighter said:
Something to remember the heroes who died preventing an even larger disaster makes sense to me. They did not die for nothing after all.
Click to expand...
A bigger thing to remember is Chernobyl is a monument to the corrupt power of an unaccountable government building an inherently unsafe reactor system in the name of saving money.
 
I took an Engineering 100 course in college, we covered both TMI and Chernobyl in the section on nuclear power (course was before Fukushima).

I ran out of expletives in the class section where the instructor went over the RMBK design, and then the experiment design.


Flyaway said:
I was listening to a podcast interviewing Serhii Plokhy and he mentioned that there had been a similar incident elsewhere in the USSR but because that time it was an experience day shift and not a less experience night shift as at Chernobyl they were able to prevent it getting it out of hand.
Click to expand...
Yes, having a shift expecting the low-power burbles would have helped.
 
A sobering read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_in_Chernobyl

There had been a couple of "almost Chernobyl" RBMK incidents in the previous decade : Leningrad 1975 of course but also another one at Chernobyl itself in 1982.

The HBO Chernobyl series had its flaws, but one line stuck with me. When Legasov tells the apparatchiks
You're dealing with something that has never occurred on this planet before.
Click to expand...
Surely enough, they have created an atomic volcano belching radioactivity like crazy.
 
Last edited:

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom