A road trip through Chernobyl

[pennylane]

Hmm. I was reading it while listening to Sting - We Work The Black Seam. Sort of adds emotional resonance...

 

[JoeKing]

actually both a partial meltdown and explosion occured (from pressure built up due to steam)

Info take from this site

What happened leading up to the Cherbobyl disaster

1. The reactor was powered down for a test sequence to determine if one of the turbogenerators could supply power to feedwater pumps until standby diesel generators came on line in the case of a local power failure. The test sequence involved the following dangerous steps

a. Instead of the design based 22-32% full power, the power was inadvertantly lowered to 1% of full power, an extremely unstable situation because of the positive void coefficient. Edwards reports that the operator failed to reprogram the computer to maintain power at 700-1000 MW(t).

b. Essentially all the control rods were pulled out of the core, to the point where they could not shut down the reactor rapidly if needed. This step was taken to get the power back up, but it only reached 7%, still well below the design parameters for the test. The reason the power could not be brought back up was the "xenon trapping" or "xenon poisoning" effect. Xenon is a decay product of I-135 and is a strong neutron absorber which "poisons" the fission reaction. It reaches an equilibrium at normal operating power levels by being "burned away" by neutron absorption and further decay. When the power level was decreased from the 1600 MW level, you had lots of I-135 to decay into xenon, but a small neutron flux with which to burn it away, so it built up rapidly. Excellent description of this on pg 45, ref 5. Good one paragraph summary of accident on p46, ref 5.

c. In order to keep the reactor from automatically shutting down under these conditions, they had to disconnect the emergency core cooling system and several of the automatic scram circuits.

d. All eight cooling water pumps were running at the low power, compared to a normal six even at full power, so there was nearly solid water with almost no void fraction, which increased the vulnerability to any power excursion which produced boiling.

2. The turbogenerator was tripped to initiate the test, which caused the switching off of four of the eight recirculation pumps. (This would have scrammed the reactor if the automatic scram circuit had not been disconnected.)

3. Reduced coolant flow caused voids to form rapidly in the pressure tubes, increasing reactivity because of the positive void coefficient.

4. Within seconds, with rapidly rising power, an emergency manual scram was ordered, but the almost fully withdrawn rods could not insert negative reactivity fast enough because of their slow speed. Also, an unexpected displacement of water from the control rod tubes occurred, further adding to the positive reactivity.

5. The core went to prompt criticality, overheating and shattering fuel rods and flashing the coolant into steam. Fuel channels were ruptured.

6. Steam pressure blew the 1000-ton steel- and cement-filled biologic shield off the top of the reactor, severing all pressure tubes(some 1600 of them) and exposing the hot core to the atmosphere. Reference 3 says power reached 100 times operating maximum and the explosive force was about 1 ton of TNT.

I made a shockwave movie using the pictures from that site
Watch it here

For some reason the music and images don't synch up properly the first time through, but the second time through everything should work fine....unless you've got a crappy computer

It's about 6.5 megs.. I'm probably going to run out of bandwidth so if anyone can host it, please PM me.

 

[freegeeks]

I remember that the core was exposed and that they tried to absorb the radiation by using helicopters to drop lead and sand in it

 

[Lounatik]

I was watching something on TLC or PBS,dont remember which, and they showed the firefighters battling the blaze, knowing full welll that they were dead men firefighting. Scary stuff indeed.



Peace


Lounatik

 

[Gravity]

A friend of mine was in a school about 7 miles away when the meltdown occurred. He was 11 then. There was no warnings for weeks after the accident. They just went about their normal business. Even after they were told of the danger, there was no immediate departure since moving costs money and most folks could barely afford to eat and clothe themselves.

Interesting article. I think the discoverey chan did a story on this several years ago with mobile cams that ventured inside the plant and then into the core where the meltdown was.

 

[Azraele]

Sad and creepy.

 

[DurocShark]

Nobody mentioning that she's cute?

Seriously, I'd love to get in there and shoot some serious photos. She's got some great ones of the wild horses and such...

 

[rh71]

Seeing that map she marked up, there's a river that runs right through the heart. I don't know much about radiation and how it spreads, but wouldn't it get into the water flow heading both north/south of the hotspot ?

 

[rh71]

Things like the new swimming pool ... how is it that even after many years of nobody being around... can it look like it was actually vandalized ? Things don't just fall from the ceiling and the glass doesn't just break over time...

 

[geno]

Jesus Christ, this stuff sends chills down my spine....very very scary

very eerie seeing how everything was just dropped, and left like it was, knowing these villages haven't been inhabited for years and years...

 

[burnedout]

I was in Germany when the Chernobyl reactor blew in '86. There were all kinds of warnings stating that we shouldn't take our pets outside on the grass or go swimming in outdoor pools/lakes. That summer, we took a military-grade radiac meter and surveyed the grass, trees and such on our Kaserne. Sure enough, the readings were much higher than usual.

If I remember correctly, the reason the Soviets finally admitted to the disaster was because of abnormal radiation readings from the fallout in Scandinavia.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: freegeeks
I remember that the core was exposed and that they tried to absorb the radiation by using helicopters to drop lead and sand in it

The men flying those died like two weeks later.

 

[GTaudiophile]

I have always been intrigued by the event. It is all very creepy. Too bad peronsal video cameras weren't around at the time, as it would have been cool to see all these events documented they occured. Where are the vids of the robots that went into the reactor core?

 

[XZeroII]

wow, good read

 

[GTaudiophile]

More Info...

Check out this diagram. You know that cement isn't doing much to stop that "lava" from leaking into the ground.

 

[cliftonite]

crazy stuff

 

[Psorak]

It puts in perspective too, if this happened at/near your home.
So if you have a reactor anywhere within a few hundred miles you should take interest in what they're doing. (Especially if you're in the direction of the prevailing winds. )

 

[LAUST]

Containment field

Doesn't it stop here now?



Also some 3 mile island info Our design even way back then appears to be far superior in safety

 

[dpopiz]

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
More Info...

hmmm do I smell propaganda?

 

[geno]

Originally posted by: dpopiz

Originally posted by: GTaudiophile
More Info...

hmmm do I smell propaganda?

Yeah no sh!t, that thing reeks of bias....

 

[drum]

Originally posted by: fanerman91
Hmm. I was reading it while listening to Sting - We Work The Black Seam. Sort of adds emotional resonance...

i was listening to Eternal by evanescence , i got that same effect. good read by the way, some good links posted as well

 

[RollWave]

wow....that is crazy! Those photos are so creepy

 

[RollWave]

anyone know if there are actually videos of the thing blowing up or whatever happened online? Also are there any pics of the place as it happened/as it is now from a closer standpoint?

 

[JoeKing]

I made a shockwave movie using the pictures from that site

Watch it here

For some reason the music and images don't synch up properly the first time through, but the second time through everything should work fine....unless you've got a crappy computer

It's about 6.5 megs.. I'm probably going to run out of bandwidth so if anyone can host it, please PM me.

 

[freegeeks]

Originally posted by: burnedout
I was in Germany when the Chernobyl reactor blew in '86. There were all kinds of warnings stating that we shouldn't take our pets outside on the grass or go swimming in outdoor pools/lakes. That summer, we took a military-grade radiac meter and surveyed the grass, trees and such on our Kaserne. Sure enough, the readings were much higher than usual.

If I remember correctly, the reason the Soviets finally admitted to the disaster was because of abnormal radiation readings from the fallout in Scandinavia.

I remember that also

It was adviced not to eat vegetables from your own garden. I was 10 when the disaster happened and we were forbidden in school to play outside on the grass field because of the radiation

I also clearly remember the firefighters who were dropping stuff on the core while they knew they would be death in a few days. They also used helicopters to drop lead and sand on the exposed core.
90% of the pilots died within a few weeks because of direct exposure.