A terrible colossal catastrophe happened in the spring of 1986 at 1 am on April 27. A man-made explosion destroyed the fourth power unit of the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, due to its complete destruction into the environment, a powerful radioactive substance was released. Do you know everything about this tragedy?
Immediately in the emergency location, two workers of the station burned down. The rest of the roof was engulfed in a terrible fire. The remnants of the active reactor zone melted, then the rooms under the reactor were poured with this molten mixture of metal, concrete, sand and radioactive fuel particles. On an open unprotected surface escaped: isotopes of plutonium, uranium, iodine-131, with a half-life of about eight days, isotopes of cesium-134, with a half-life of two years, isotopes of strontium-90, the half-life of which is twenty-eight years, isotopes of cesium -137, with a half-life of about thirty-three years.
The fire brigades who arrived at the crash site were the first to be hit by the radiation element. An hour later, under the influence of the strongest radiation, the first victims appeared among them. The firefighters developed a nuclear tan, after which severe vomiting appeared, the skin peeled off from muscles and bones, it was literally removed along with mittens.
A powerful radiation release overnight caused the death of trees within a radius of ten kilometers around the emergency power unit, all the plants instantly turned yellow and dried up. However, an official message about the accident was broadcast only a day later.
A government commission set up under the leadership of inorganic chemist Academician Legasov began to liquidate the consequences of the accident. He was the first to drive an armored vehicle to the destroyed reactor, after scientifically substantiating the stopping of the reaction in the destroyed reactor. Specialists, conscripts and reservists were sent to the emergency station, who were later named liquidators. People eliminated the consequences of the release in shifts, and gaining the maximum allowable dose of radiation for life, they went to sanatoriums for treatment and restoration of body functions. Others came to replace them.
In order to cover the entire zone of liquidation of the consequences of the emergency, reservists were urgently gathered in the military registration and enlistment offices of the whole country. They performed the main dirty work, having the only protective equipment against lethal radiation in the form of a respirator or even a gauze bandage (there were not enough respirators for everyone). People did not yet understand the highest level of danger of being in the accident zone, but soon they began to feel incredible fatigue.
It was very hot on those hot days, and the servicemen rested right on the radioactive street, although they were instructed on the rules of conduct in the contaminated area. None of them fully realized the highest degree of mortal danger. They also stayed overnight in the dangerous zone of Chernobyl, so as not to travel far from the place of liquidation of the terrible consequences of the disaster. The liquidators lived in white tents around the Chernobyl reactor within a thirty kilometer quarantine zone.
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The settled radioactive dust from the upper layer of fertile soil was simply plowed by tractors with a plow and turned over, burying deep into a small layer of earth. Dosimetrists took measurements before and after such digging in order to determine how much the background radiation had decreased. The level of radiation was also measured at the points of washing cars from the contaminated zone.
At first, for a couple of weeks, local residents calmly drove into the danger zone, someone transported chopped wood in carts, someone grazed cattle, fishermen went about their usual business in the deadly exclusion zone, unaware of the level of danger hanging over their lives and health. In mid-May, people from Pripyat near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were evacuated, and the contaminated area was surrounded by barbed wire. However, precious time was already lost, most of the residents within a radius of thirty kilometers around were seriously exposed. The evacuees were not allowed to take animals and personal luggage from their homes, and to prevent panic, they were announced to return soon. Subsequently, all abandoned domestic animals and livestock were shot.
During the first two years after the accident, the number of those who visited the area with the highest radiation reached 240,000 liquidators. Statistics show that absolutely of all the volunteers who participated in 1986-1987 in eliminating the consequences of the emergency, no one was left alive.
In addition to the lethal dose in the Chernobyl zone, there was a series of deaths from accidents and local crashes. In early October of the same year, there was an unexpected crash of an MI-8 helicopter. There were four liquidators on board the manned vehicle. The helicopter caught the boom of the crane with its tail, turned over with the screw down and crashed next to the reactor. All crew members suffered the terrible fate of being burned alive.
Since the radiation catastrophe, abandoned equipment has accumulated in the exclusion zone, forming a kind of graveyard of cars with high radiation traces.
After the beta decay of plutonium-241, americium-241 was formed in the radiation-contaminated area. Its share of radiation activity today is about 50%. Soil contamination with transuranium isotopes continues continuously. This process will last until early 2060, and by that time will have stopped at 66.8%.
Soil contamination with plutonium on the adjacent alpha-active lands of Belarus by 2086 will be 2.5 times higher than in the initial period after the accident. In European countries, in the territories closest to the site of the tragedy, more than 10,000 cases of deformity of newborns have been recorded, associated, according to scientists, with an increased background radiation.
In 2000, the President of Ukraine signed an order on the complete completion of the operation of the nuclear power unit number 3 and the final completion of the operation of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, but the dangerous echoes of the tragedy of thirty years ago are echoing with a growing radiation background, and for another hundred years they will pose a mortal danger to the wildlife of our tiny planet.