Chernobyl was one of the worst human-caused disasters in history, a stunning example of
what can happen when you combine arrogance, dangerous technology, and international politics.
But the true story of this nuclear meltdown has long been hidden behind propaganda.
Here's the untold truth of Chernobyl.
If you were to imagine a likely scenario for a nuclear accident, you'd probably picture
something going wrong deep inside the reactor - a glitch that spawned another glitch, snowballing
until the entire system broke down.
It's a lot harder to imagine a terrible accident that happened during routine maintenance - but
that's exactly how the Chernobyl disaster went down.
On April 26, 1986, workers were testing the plant's No. 4 reactor to see how the cooling
system might work under limited power.
Before they did that, however, they turned off the power-regulating system and the automatic
shutoff system so they wouldn't be annoyed by all the safety warnings and other anti-explode-y
interruptions.
"It doesn't know we're running a test."
During the test, something went wrong.
There was a power surge, which caused fuel pellets inside the reactor to explode, which
in turn caused an explosion large enough to blow the roof off the reactor.
When air mixed with the carbon monoxide gas inside the reactor, it started a fire that
burned for nine days.
Meanwhile, a cloud of radioactive material exited the reactor and entered the atmosphere,
and then a bunch of people died.
All because of a very simple, very preventable human error.
The severity of nuclear accidents is measured by the International Nuclear Event Scale,
or I.N.E.S.
In 1998, the Hunterston B nuclear power plant in Scotland lost its connections to the electricity
grid during a storm, and the reactors were left without forced cooling for about half
an hour.
Staff was able to restore power, and a serious incident was avoided.
You've probably never heard of this event because it was I.N.E.S.
2, a mere "incident" on the scale of "no big deal" to "full on catastrophe."
Three Mile Island, which you probably have heard of, was designated as an I.N.E.S.
5, or "accident with wider consequences."
In 1979, the No. 2 reactor at the plant partially melted down, and roughly 2 million people
received a dose of radiation equal to about one sixth of what you might get during a routine
chest X-ray.
Only Chernobyl and the 2011 Fukishima Daiichi nuclear disaster, in which the impact of a
tsunami caused three meltdowns at a nuclear plant in Japan, rated the highest INES rating
for a nuclear accident: a seven.
That might not seem so bad compared to 5, but like the Richter scale for earthquakes,
the ratings are logarithmic, which means that a 7 is roughly 100 times worse than a 5.
And just to put that into perspective, Chernobyl released about 100 times more radiation than
the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
You've probably imagined that the landscape and waters around Chernobyl - officially referred
to as "the exclusion zone" - are full of radioactive mutants.
There definitely is some concern that mutations linked to radiation exposure could be passed
down through generations of wildlife, but the animals living near Chernobyl aren't exactly
Godzilla.
They might have developmental abnormalities, but any severely mutated animals don't usually
survive long enough to reproduce.
The Chernobyl accident did have some impact on the local wildlife though, but it's not
the radiation, at least not directly.
It's the fact that human beings fled the radiation, leaving the animals an environment completely
free of humans, which actually allowed the animal population to flourish without being
hunted or having their populations controlled.
That said, things aren't totally rosy for the animals that live in the exclusion zone.
Some of the birds living there have malformations like abnormally shaped beaks or significantly
smaller brains.
The trees in the exclusion zone grow more slowly, too, and there are fewer insects - populations
of butterflies, bees, and grasshoppers appear to be diminished, and so are spiders.
That might seem like a plus for arachnophobes, but it also means you can't get your hopes
up for getting bitten by a radioactive spider and gaining its proportionate strength and
stickiness.
The animals that don't have any outward signs of radiation poisoning are still radioactive,
and thanks to a lack of human interference in their migration, some radioactive fauna
like wild boar have been discovered as far away as Germany.
The weirdest thing happening in the exclusion zone has to do with the decomposers, the organisms
responsible for breaking down organic matter.
Things don't rot they way they're supposed to, and dead trees were still not decomposing,
even 20 years after the accident were still not decomposing.
So wildlife may be thriving, but the exclusion zone is still a creepy nightmare place.
In the years following the accident at Chernobyl, many people assumed the worst.
Two people lost their lives in the initial explosion, with many more deaths to follow.
One hundred thirty-four people received dangerous doses of radiation and suffered from acute
radiation syndrome - 28 or 29 of those people died in the first few months, and 19 more
died as the years passed, although some of those deaths were unrelated to radiation exposure.
Even knowing that, however, it's very difficult to determine the real impact on the rest of
the people who were exposed.
Experts in 1986 predicted up to 40,000 cancer deaths, but that's only 1% of what they would've
expected for that population without the disaster.
Statistically speaking, the increase - if there is one - is impossible to measure.
And really, there aren't that many people who got a dangerous dose of radiation.
For most individuals, it was the equivalent of a couple CAT scans.
There was a dramatic increase in thyroid cancer among people who were exposed as children,
and an increase in the rates of leukemia and cataracts among Chernobyl workers.
But other than that, studies performed by the United Nations say there wasn't a measurable
increase in solid cancers among people who were exposed to Chernobyl radiation.
Believe it or not, some people in the exclusion zone refused to leave despite the fact that
they were ordered to evacuate from an increasingly radioactive area.
Or rather, they did leave when they were ordered, but they refused to stay gone.
"This is an evacuation, you understand?
You have to come with me.”
“Why?"
Roughly a thousand people, mostly older women, actually moved back into the exclusion zone
not long after they left in the initial evacuation, and around 100 of them are still there, 30
years after the disaster.
Most of these people had roots in the area - some families had been there for centuries.
At first, the evacuees were relocated to other cities in Ukraine, but they kept trying to
go home until officials finally let them.
It was widely believed they would all quickly succumb to the fatal effects of radiation,
but hey, sometimes people would rather die than leave the only home they've ever known.
Perhaps surprisingly, the women who went back to the exclusion zone appear to have longer
life expectancies than those who did not.
One potential reason?
Forcibly relocated people often suffer from alcoholism, unemployment, and the breakdown
of their social circles.
Or perhaps, not unlike the wildlife near and around Chernobyl, these people just thrive
in a land free from the interference of other humans.
Chernobyl was a terrible disaster, but at least they got it all cleaned up and nothing
bad can ever happen there ever again, right?
Except that they didn't actually get it all cleaned up.
They didn't even clean up most of it.
"Every rock, every tree, the very ground itself, has absorbed a dangerous amount of radionuclides."
Despite over 600,000 "liquidators" working to clean up Chernobyl in the years after the
disaster, there remained 200 tons of uranium inside reactor No. 4, and for the first 30
years after the accident the stuff wasn't even very well contained.
Shortly after the disaster, the Soviets built a "sarcophagus" around the reactor in an effort
to contain the radiation, but it was never intended to be a permanent solution.
The original sarcophagus was built from 14 million cubic feet of concrete and took 206
days to complete.
The new sarcophagus, completed in 2018, took 15 years to build and assemble and was so
massive that it took 18 ships and 2,500 trucks just to transport it from Italy to Chernobyl.
The new structure is expected to last 100 years, but it's still unsettling to think
that the best way to clean up a nuclear disaster site like Chernobyl is to not clean it up
at all, but just drop a giant pile of concrete and steel over the top of it and hope it seals
in all the bad stuff long enough for it to not be this generation's problem any more.
It's not just the radiation they're confining to Chernobyl, either.
In 1986, workers discovered a kind of "black lava" inside a steam corridor underneath reactor
No. 4.
They dubbed it the elephant's foot, which sounds adorable - except that unlike the foot
of your kid's favorite animal at the local zoo, this "Elephant's Foot" could deliver
a lethal dose of radiation in about five minutes.
Even 10 years after the elephant's foot was formed, standing next to it foot for just
over eight minutes would have caused mild radiation sickness, and standing there for
an hour would have caused death.
And the foot isn't just sitting there.
It's still melting into the base of the plant.
If it ever meets ground water, it could cause another massive explosion, or it could simply
leech radiation into the local water supply.
Either way, that's not the kind of danger you can just lock up.
Fortunately, it won't be there forever.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, it'll only be about 3,000 years before the
area around Chernobyl becomes habitable.There are some experts who call that three-millenia
window a pretty optimistic estimate.
The director of the Chernobyl power plant said it would take, quote, "at least 20,000
years."
That's about 733 generations of your grandchildren before the radiation is gone, so don't start
shopping for a vacation home there just yet.
Chernobyl had four functioning reactors, and before the accident, the Soviets were building
a fifth and sixth as well.
Then, after the explosion, Soviet officials understandably decided not to continue construction
on the two unfinished units.
What isn't easy to understand is that their change of plans did not include also shutting
down the other three reactors.
In 1991, five years after the original disaster, a fire damaged reactor No. 2, and it had to
be shut down.
In 1996, after reports of elevated rates of thyroid cancer started to reach the ears of
the rest of the world, officials finally caved to outside pressure and shut down reactor
No. 1.
But Chernobyl still wasn't finished, and Ukraine stubbornly continued to operate the one remaining
reactor until 2000, when international negotiations finally led to its shutdown.
It's easy to criticize the decision to keep the plant operating, but at the time it made
financial and logistical sense.
The Soviet Union lagged way behind the rest of the world in terms of infrastructure, and
they simply needed those units running to meet the energy demands of their nation.
Today, the plant is shut down but still not completely decommissioned, which means that
Ukraine still needs to figure out what to do with all the depleted uranium and contaminated
equipment.
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