Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident that Occurred on April 26 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant Power Plant in Soviet Union today Ukraine. An explosion and the fire released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, with spread over much of the western USSR and Europe. The Chernobyl disaster is widely considered to have been the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, and is one of the only two classified as a lever 7 Event (maximum classification) on the International Nuclear Even Scale. The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophic ultimately involved 500, 000 workers and cost millions of dollars. The official soviet casualty count in 31 deaths has been disputed and long-term effect such as cancer and deformities are still being counted.

Overview.
The disaster began during a system test On Saturday, April 26 1986 at reactor Number 4 of the Chernobyl Plant, with is near of the city of Pripyat and a proximity to the administrative border with Belarus and the Dnieper river. There was a sudden and unexpected power surge, and when an emergency shutdown was attested, an exponentially large spike of spike output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture and series of steam explosion. These events exposed the graphite moderator of the reactor in the air, causing to ignite. The resulting fire spend a plume of high radioactive fallout in the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area, including Pripyat City. The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union and Europe. From 1986-2000, 350,400 people were evacuated and resettled from the most several contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. According to official Post-Soviet data, about 60% of the fallout landed in Belarus.

Thirty one deaths directly attributed to the accident, all among the reactor staff and emergency workers. An UNSCEAR report places that the total confirmed deaths from the radiation at 64 in 2008. The Chernobyl Forum predicts the eventually death toll could reach 4,000 among those exposed to the highest level of radiation (200,000 emergency workers, 116,000 evacuates and 270,000 resident of the most contaminated areas), this figure is a total casual death too perdition, combining the death of approximately 50 emergency workers who died soon after the accident from acute radiation syndrome, nine children who died of thyroid cancer and a future predicted total of 3940 death from radiation-induced cancer and leukemia. The risk projection suggest that by now Chernobyl may have about 1,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 4,000 cases of cancer of the other cancers in Europe. Models predict that 2065 about 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancer may be expected due to radiation from the accident.

Accident.
Reactor 4 suffered a catastrophic power increase, leading to explosions in its core. This dispersed large quantitites of radioactive fuel and core materials into the atmosphere and ignited the combustible graphite moderator. The burning graphite moderator increased the emission of radioactive particles, carried by the smoke, as the reactor had not been encased by any kind of the hard containment vessel. An inactive nuclear reactor continues to generate a significant amount of residual decay heat. In an initial shut-down state the reactor produces around 7 % of its total thermal output and requires cooling to avoid damage. RBMK reactor like those in Chernobyl, use water as coolant. The test plant called for a gradual reduction in power output from the reactor 4 to thermal level 700-1000 MW. However, due to the natural production of xenon, a neutron adsorbed, core power continued to decrease without further operator action-this process is called reactor poisoning. As the reactor power output dropped further, to proximally 500 MW. An employee mistakenly inserted a control rod too far. This combination of factors rendered the reactor in an unintended near-shutdown state, with the power output of 30 MW thermal or less. The reactor was now only producing around 5% of the minimum power level establish as safe for the test. Control-room personnel consequently

made the decision to restored power by disabling the automatic system control governing the control rods and manually extract ting the majority of the reactor control rods to the upper limits. Several minutes elapsed between their extraction and the point that the power output began to increase and subsequently stabilize at 160-200 MW (thermal), a much smaller value than the planned 700 MW. The rapid reduction in the power during initial shutdown, and the subsequence operation at a level of the less 200 MW led to increased poisoning of the reactor core by the accumulation of xenon.