A while ago, when I was touring around my parents in law's home, I went to a deserted village called Borkatte near karkala. It was nearly barren with fallen tress and broken houses. At the same time I was reading this book called Midnight in Chernobyl. I could relate to the state of village of Pripyat being deserted due to nuclear blast.
The book - Midnight in Chernobyl is a documentary of events that led to the largest nuclear outage on the face of earth on April 25th 1986. That was around the time I was born and my father kept telling me stories about what happened in Chernobyl nuclear blast. Since I knew only what my father had told me, I was intrigued to fill myself with details and so I read this book.
Soviet Union assumes answers to most of the energy problems in nuclear energy. They decide the place to be Pripyat which is a small village near the regional capital Chernobyl. Victor Brukhanov a nuclear scientist is assigned to the project to build first ever atomic power plant in Ukraine from scratch. The project would cost 400 million rubles. Victor painstakingly goes through every stage of facility building to dealing with authorities and labourers.
The shape of the plant is dependent on functionality in the most economical ways the stations designers can conceive. The plant commission makes several important recommendations to develop safety regulations to protect reactors in the event of coolant loss. Recommendations to devise a faster acting emergency protection system are also made. Despite the apparent urgency, the reactor designers fail to act on any of the recommendations. Instead the Soviet Govt orders more of the reactors to be built. In the years that follow, there would be even more serious accidents in the nuclear reactors else where in the Soviet union and all of them would be covered up for the fear that it would tarnish the ostensibly spotless record of the peaceful reactor.
The key safety system of the reactor # 4 is ascertained to protect it during a blackout. The designers develop a run down unit which is the crucial safety feature of the reactor #4 and must be tested before it was approved for use in 1983. In 1986, the tests were overdue for more than 3 years and the first scheduled maintenances for the reactor #4 gave the opportunity to conduct trial in the real world conditions. From here, the things start to fall. During the test, the reactor shuts down and destroys itself. There would be a loud noise of the explosion and a mushroom like cloud blossoming in to the sky. The highest levels of emergency alerts are summoned. It is a terrifying and apocalyptic sight and the worst is yet to come. The damaged reactor is running low on water coolant. Extinguishing fire with water is counterproductive as it burned more savagely. The blast released explosive hydrogen and radio active steam. The levels of emitting radiation was such that a man would absorb a lethal dose in less than 4 minutes.
The need for secrecy lead to the false report that the accident was something that could've been controlled and contained. The people's lives were kept at risk. After elaborate investigations, the failure of the reactor was blamed on the incompetence of the operators. There was a thick long block of wall constructed to contain the radiations as an aftermath. Its called sarcophagus. The people and directors who were penalised for the disaster were released in 1990.
25 years after the incident, the Ukrainian government decided to build a tourist center around the exclusion zone in Chernobyl. It is considered safe for short visits.
The book is a horrifying documentation of the events. I was so moved by the events that I watched the Chernobyl documentary on Netflix. The stories of Dyatlov, Victor, Alexander Yuvchenko and Nikolai Formin are heart rendering.
The book - Midnight in Chernobyl is a documentary of events that led to the largest nuclear outage on the face of earth on April 25th 1986. That was around the time I was born and my father kept telling me stories about what happened in Chernobyl nuclear blast. Since I knew only what my father had told me, I was intrigued to fill myself with details and so I read this book.
Soviet Union assumes answers to most of the energy problems in nuclear energy. They decide the place to be Pripyat which is a small village near the regional capital Chernobyl. Victor Brukhanov a nuclear scientist is assigned to the project to build first ever atomic power plant in Ukraine from scratch. The project would cost 400 million rubles. Victor painstakingly goes through every stage of facility building to dealing with authorities and labourers.
The shape of the plant is dependent on functionality in the most economical ways the stations designers can conceive. The plant commission makes several important recommendations to develop safety regulations to protect reactors in the event of coolant loss. Recommendations to devise a faster acting emergency protection system are also made. Despite the apparent urgency, the reactor designers fail to act on any of the recommendations. Instead the Soviet Govt orders more of the reactors to be built. In the years that follow, there would be even more serious accidents in the nuclear reactors else where in the Soviet union and all of them would be covered up for the fear that it would tarnish the ostensibly spotless record of the peaceful reactor.
The key safety system of the reactor # 4 is ascertained to protect it during a blackout. The designers develop a run down unit which is the crucial safety feature of the reactor #4 and must be tested before it was approved for use in 1983. In 1986, the tests were overdue for more than 3 years and the first scheduled maintenances for the reactor #4 gave the opportunity to conduct trial in the real world conditions. From here, the things start to fall. During the test, the reactor shuts down and destroys itself. There would be a loud noise of the explosion and a mushroom like cloud blossoming in to the sky. The highest levels of emergency alerts are summoned. It is a terrifying and apocalyptic sight and the worst is yet to come. The damaged reactor is running low on water coolant. Extinguishing fire with water is counterproductive as it burned more savagely. The blast released explosive hydrogen and radio active steam. The levels of emitting radiation was such that a man would absorb a lethal dose in less than 4 minutes.
The need for secrecy lead to the false report that the accident was something that could've been controlled and contained. The people's lives were kept at risk. After elaborate investigations, the failure of the reactor was blamed on the incompetence of the operators. There was a thick long block of wall constructed to contain the radiations as an aftermath. Its called sarcophagus. The people and directors who were penalised for the disaster were released in 1990.
25 years after the incident, the Ukrainian government decided to build a tourist center around the exclusion zone in Chernobyl. It is considered safe for short visits.
The book is a horrifying documentation of the events. I was so moved by the events that I watched the Chernobyl documentary on Netflix. The stories of Dyatlov, Victor, Alexander Yuvchenko and Nikolai Formin are heart rendering.
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