The Accident at the Chernobyl' Nuclear Power Plant and its Consequences

Abstract

In the early morning of April 26, 1986, as the culmination of an almost incredible series of errors that began 24 hours earlier, Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear complex, a so-called RBMK-1000 reactor, suffered the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power. There was an uncontrolled nuclear excursion, release of a large amount of energy, possibly comparable to hundreds of pounds of TNT, blowing the top off the reactor. There was no containment, in the traditional American sense, so the roof of the building was blown out, an unprecedented amount of radioactivity was released to the biosphere, and a graphite fire was ignited, which burned for days. The radiation that was released spread through Eastern Europe (the world first learned of it through Swedish observations), bringing with it both official and unofficial protests that the Soviet Union had made no announcement of the radiation release until they were, in effect, caught. In fact, after a few days, the Soviets seemed to recognize that nuclear safety is a matter of international concern, and became quite open in their search for cooperation. They invited officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit the area and to flymore » over the plant, and agreed, in the end, to make a complete disclosure of the details of the accident at a special meeting of IAEA in Vienna, August 25 to 29, 1986. In preparation for that meeting they distributed a lengthy (400 pages) report on the event. This paper reviews this report.« less