Chernobyl’s Lesser Known Design Flaw: The Chernobyl Liquidator Medal—An Educational Essay

Michael Mcintire,John Luczaj

doi:10.3390/j2030023

Abstract

The honorary Chernobyl Liquidator Medal depicts pathways of alpha, gamma, and beta rays over a drop of blood, signifying the human health impacts of the Chernobyl accident. A relativistic analysis of the trajectories depicted on the Chernobyl Liquidator Medal is conducted assuming static uniform magnetic and electric fields. The parametric trajectories are determined using the energies of alpha (α) and beta (β) particles relevant to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident and compared with the trajectories depicted on the liquidator medal. For minimum alpha particle velocity of 0.0512c, the beta particle trajectory depicted on the medal is highly unlikely to have come from a naturally occurring nuclear decay process. The parametric equations are used to determine the necessary beta energies to reproduce the depicted trajectories. This article documents the unfortunate misrepresentation of a famous scientific experiment on an honorary medal and illustrates the importance of better communication between artists and scientists.

Highlights

While developing a college course on radioactivity and the environment at our university, we have discovered a surprising discrepancy in the design of this medal that we have not found published elsewhere
Our goal is to compare the radii of curvature in constant magnetic and electric fields of alpha and beta trajectories on the medal to show that the beta trajectory is depicted as too large, relative to the alpha particle
The magnetic parametric equations describing relativistic trajectories charged in that a static depicted on the uniform magnetic field and a static uniform electric field were used to analyze the trajectories that are depicted on the Chernobyl Liquidator Medal (CLM)

Summary

Introduction

Station in Ukraine was one of the world’s worst nuclear accidents and is considered a defining moment in the history of nuclear energy. It resulted from a poorly executed electrical engineering experiment performed on a RBMK-style reactor, which resulted in the release of approximately 14 × 1018 Becquerels of radiation (as of 26 April 1986 and including noble gases) [1]. The 20th anniversary of the accident brought worldwide attention to the human, ecological, and economic impacts resulting from the disaster that were evaluated as part of the Chernobyl Forum [2].

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Discussion

Conclusion