Why can you live in Hiroshima but not in Chernobyl?
INTRO On August 6, 1945,
the world’s most famous nuclear bomb was detonated at 8:15 in Hiroshima, a Japanese embarkation port
and industrial center that was the site of a major military headquarters. The intense brightness of
the flash and ensuing mushroom cloud could be seen from miles away, with house windows even
up to 50 miles away shattering from the impact. Many consider this event to be a pivotal moment in
human history, as it marked the first time nuclear warfare and its devastating power was unleashed.
The detonation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was planned.
What was not planned, instead, was the worst nuclear accident in history.
Everything happened on April 25 and 26, 1986, in what is now northern Ukraine.
The reactor at a nuclear power plant exploded and burned. Shrouded in secrecy,
the incident was a watershed moment in both the Cold War and the history of nuclear power.
The disaster took place near the city of Chornobyl in the former
USSR, which invested heavily in nuclear power after World War II.
Both events were the result of nuclear fission, a reaction in which the nucleus of
an atom splits into two or smaller nuclei, producing a very large amount of energy,
according to the famous Einstein's mass-energy equivalence formula: E = mc^2.
However, while it was possible to repopulate the Japanese city, this couldn’t be done
for Chornobyl. Why is that?
Why can you live in Hiroshima but not in Chornobyl?
Follow me in this video to get to know the answer to this question, and more!
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ATOMIC BOMB In 1942, six thousand scientists and
engineers from leading universities and industrial research labs were
at work on the development of the world’s first-ever nuclear weapon.
Among the others, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Maria Mayer, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, Richard Feynman.
For security reasons, the facility was located in the desert near Los Alamos, New Mexico.
In 1944, a team of six thousand scientists and engineers from leading universities
and industrial research labs managed to develop the world’s first nuclear weapon.
These people belonged to the now-famous Manhattan Project.
The whole project at its peak employed an estimated 130,000
Americans at 37 locations across the US, with a principal research and development
facility located in Los Alamos, New Mexico. By the summer of 1945, amounts of plutonium-239
sufficient to produce a nuclear explosion had become available, and weapon development and
design were sufficiently far advanced so that an actual field test of a nuclear explosive
could be scheduled. The rest is history. BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CHORNOBYL DISASTER
On April 25, 1986, routine maintenance was scheduled at V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power
Station’s fourth reactor in Chornobyl, and workers planned to use the downtime to test
whether the reactor could still be cooled if the plant lost power. During the test, however,
workers violated safety protocols and power surged inside the plant. Despite attempts to shut
down the reactor entirely, another power surge caused a chain reaction of explosions inside.
Finally, the nuclear core itself was exposed, spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere.
Now. At that time, the unit measure for radioactivity was the Roentgen
equivalent man, abbreviated rem. The ionizing radiation levels in
the worst-hit areas of the reactor building have been estimated to be 5.3 rem, equivalent to about
19.000 rem per hour. As a term of comparison, the dose of radiation expected to cause death
to 50 percent of an exposed population within 30 days, ranges from 400 to 450 rem.
HIROSHIMA AND CHORNOBYL: COMPARISON Although Hiroshima and Chornobyl are often
referred to as the two main nuclear destruction events ever happened, they were not the same.
Hiroshima lost over 75,000 people due to initial bomb devastation,
ensuing radioactivity-related deaths, and displacement. However, Hiroshima today has
roughly tripled in population since the days of those horrors. The predominant
architectural style in the city shows how strong growth was in the 1960s through the 1980s.
Regarding Chornobyl, almost 40 years after the disaster, scientists estimate the zone
around the former plant will not be habitable for up to 20,000 years.
Compared with other nuclear events, the Chornobyl explosion put 400 times more
radioactive material into the Earth's atmosphere than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The radioactivity released at Chornobyl tended to be more long-lived than that released by a bomb
detonation. Therefore, it is not possible to draw a simple comparison between the two events. Also,
a dose of radiation spread over many years (as is the case with Chornobyl) is much less harmful
than the same dose received over a short period. If we want to talk real facts, the only thing
Chornobyl and Hiroshima have in common is to have caused massive fatalities, which by the
way are also affected by different statistics. For example, the immediate explosion killed
two operating personnel, and 134 firemen and personnel were hospitalized as a result of severe
radiation syndrome caused by the high levels of radiation released. In the following years,
Chornobyl caused more than 28 deaths and over 2 million people were exposed to radiation.
Yet the full consequences of the accident, including impacts on mental health and even
subsequent generations, remain highly debated and under study. What remains
of the reactor is now inside a massive steel containment structure deployed in late 2016.
Containment efforts and monitoring continue and cleanup is expected to last until at least 2065.
Hiroshima killed about 129.000 people and it is estimated that 350.000
were exposed to the radiation. In any case, in the years following
the devastation, people repopulated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
but there’s no way you could live happily ever after in Chornobyl.
Why is that? =======================
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TYPE OF DETONATION Well, the most obvious
difference between the two explosions is their magnitude and the type of detonation. The atomic
bomb in Hiroshima was detonated hundreds of meters above ground to maximize its yield,
while the Chornobyl explosion occurred at ground level. This resulted in vastly different radiation
distributions, with Hiroshima’s radiation spread throughout an enormous area due to vaporization
and Chornobyl’s radiation contained to a smaller area due to its weaker force. Additionally, the
wind was not a factor in the Chornobyl explosion, whereas Hiroshima suffered wind-based effects.
Although their effects were incredibly different, the magnitude of both events is equal. The sheer
destructive power of both explosions is unmatched, resulting in innocent lives being taken and
profound environmental damage. REACTION MECHANISM
The fissioning of uranium 235 is used as the energy source in both a nuclear bomb and a nuclear
reactor. In an atomic bomb, we want to release as much energy as fast as possible. This is done by
means of a chain reaction: uranium 235 absorbs a neutron, undergoes fission, releases A Lot of
energy, and releases 3 new not-so-cute neutrons. These neutrons will then repeat the cycle. This
chain reaction takes on really quickly. 1 neutron can duplicate itself to 81 in just 4 cycles!
While the reactor utilizes the same fission processes, the use of control rods allows for
only one new uranium 235 to absorb a neutron to maintain a self-sustaining chain reaction.
This means that a nuclear reactor requires much more enriched uranium than an atomic bomb.
For instance, the atomic bomb in Hiroshima used only 46 kg of uranium while Chornobyl used 180
tons of reactor fuel. Additionally, atomic bombs don't contain waste products that accumulate with
the passing of weeks as a nuclear reactor does. This allows for a much higher dose of radiation to
escape from a nuclear reactor, such as Chornobyl, which is significantly worse than an atomic bomb.
While the dose of radiation from the atomic bomb would still give be lethal,
all these reasons above combined are why Chornobyl is much worse in terms of radiation.
Something to be mentioned is that Chornobyl was a power plant nuclear accident, while the
Hiroshima event was a planned atomic bombing. In a certain sense, although probably not justified,
the Hiroshima bomb was… controlled. Talking about the damaged area,
for instance, the Chornobyl accident affected Europe and the former Soviet Union.
On the other hand, the Hiroshima attack affected a 2km radius within the attack location.
===================== SUMMARY
Let’s try to sum up the key points. The devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
from the atomic bombs was much different than that of the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.
This is due to the type of detonation and the reaction mechanisms involved.
The atomic bomb detonates hundreds of meters above ground, which vaporizes the
bomb and distributes radiation in a wide range. Whereas Chornobyl's explosion was much weaker,
occurring at ground level, with chunks of radioactive materials left in a small area.
The nuclear chain reaction mechanism of an atomic bomb is designed to be as quick as possible,
while a nuclear reactor needs to maintain a steady, self-sustaining reaction. Also,
there is much more uranium present in a reactor core, and a build-up of nuclear waste over time,
which the atomic bomb does not produce. Overall, all these factors mean that the radiation dose
from Chornobyl was orders of magnitude higher than that of the atomic bombs that destroyed
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Because of this, it is not possible for people to repopulate Chornobyl.
======================= CONCLUSION
The devastating effects of nuclear weapons demonstrated in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and
Chornobyl are reminders of why it is of the utmost importance to prevent the use of such weapons.
Despite the differences between the two events, they are forever linked by their utter destruction
and devastating consequences, with Chornobyl still having the potential to cause harm to inhabitants
even after decades. The success of preventing nuclear warfare depends on our collective efforts
to ensure that disasters such as Hiroshima and Chornobyl never happen again. Stay safe!
Hey, this video ends here. Have you ever visited Hiroshima? Would you plan
a trip there? Let us know in the comments below! See you next time on the channel!