A new book by Ukrainian nuclear historian Serhii Plokhy places the Chernobyl disaster in a broader, more global history of six nuclear accidents — from explosions at plutonium production plants to meltdowns at nuclear power stations
Credit: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/GettyIn February, soon after Russian forces invaded Ukraine, they reportedly dug trenches in the radioactive soil at Chernobyl and drove heavy vehicles in the area, kicking up contaminated dust. Thirty-six years after a reactor core exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, fallout from the world’s worst nuclear accident still permeates the environment.
Radioactivity spread over inhabited islands including Rongelap, 157 kilometres away. People reported a whitish substance resembling snow falling on them. It was irradiated coral, vaporized in the blast. Given no warning or advice by the US government, people stayed outside until their skin began to burn and itch. Hundreds were unknowingly exposed to radiation.
At Kyshtym, a plutonium-processing facility in the Soviet Union’s Ural Mountains, a tank storing nuclear waste exploded and sent a plume of radioactivity drifting widely. Days later, the nuclear facility of Windscale in the United Kingdom saw thousands of tonnes of graphite ignite and release radioactive material. In both cases, delays to maintenance tasks involving complicated engineering, combined with stressed workers, led to cascading failures.
And so, on the afternoon of 11 March 2011, reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were operating when a magnitude-9 earthquake rocked the eastern coast of Japan. Emergency generators kicked in to keep coolant flowing, but they were swamped when an enormous tsunami arrived. The plant’s designers had anticipated an earthquake but not a tsunami. Three reactors melted down.
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