Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is a nuclear power plant in Ukraine that became widely and infamously known around the world due to an accident that occurred on the night of April 25-26, 1986. It is located in Polesie, on the banks of the Pripyat River, just 11 km from the border with neighboring Belarus. The station is surrounded by a three-kilometer sanitary protection zone, to the west of which is the abandoned town, or ghost town, of Pripyat. The capital of Ukraine, Kiev, is relatively close to the site, 110 kilometers away.

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Video: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

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General Information

For more than three decades now, the Chernobyl plant has remained a more than eloquent testament to the dire consequences to which careless and irresponsible handling of the so-called “peaceful atom” can lead. The NPP was supposed to compensate for the shortage of electricity that took place in the 60-70s in the central regions of Ukraine, but in the end its operation turned into a disaster, the echoes of which are still felt today. The word “Chernobyl” has become a noun symbolizing nuclear disaster, radiation contamination, radiation sickness, empty and lifeless space, where everything that could die out died out. And such analogies are by no means exaggerated: the exclusion zone around the plant represents just such an area.

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Over time, however, attitudes towards the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began to change. It and the surrounding area are no longer perceived in the mass consciousness as a factor of unconditional and high risk to health and life. The place of the catastrophe is becoming popular among tourists, especially foreigners, and this despite the rather high cost of excursions. In 2018, for example, 70 thousand people visited the place, and in 2019 about 150 thousand travelers are expected. Interest in the exclusion zone around the nuclear power plant was also fueled by the 2019 mini-series “Chernobyl,” produced in the genre of historical drama by the American TV channel HBO and the British TV network Sky, which took the first place in the MDB rating, surpassing the leader of the last few years – the famous “Game of Thrones.”

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Meanwhile, the Chernobyl zone as a tourist destination is not developing so quickly. Tour operators organizing excursions here are not too many due to the fact that guides need to undergo special training. It is possible to get directly to the exclusion zone only through special checkpoints with limited access capacity, which creates additional inconveniences, although such obstacles can hardly stop travelers and connoisseurs of everything new, mysterious and unexplored. On the positive side, it should be noted that the routes are slowly expanding, many previously closed areas are becoming accessible, some of them can be reached by water – by kayak. There are plans to open additional checkpoints in the future.

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History of nuclear power plant construction

In the former Soviet Union, nuclear power was perceived as the energy of the future. It was believed that the “peaceful atom” would completely replace thermal and hydroelectric power plants in the distant future. Based on this doctrine, in June 1966, the USSR government approved a plan for the phased commissioning of nuclear power plants. One of these nuclear power plants was to be Chernobyl, the first on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR.

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The decision that the plant would be located exactly where it is now was not taken immediately. Before that, in 1965-1966, specialists of the All-Union Design Institute “Teploelektroproekt” were looking for a suitable site, having surveyed a total of 16 sites in the Kiev, Vinnitsa and Zhitomir regions. In the end, they decided on the right bank of the Pripyat River, a tributary of the Dnieper, on a site located 4 km from the village of Kopachi and 15 km from the district center of Chernobyl in the Kiev region, not far from the Yaniv station of the single-track railway line Chernigov – Ovruch. The land in this area was found to be unproductive for agriculture. The study also showed that the site meets water supply, transportation and sanitary protection zone standards.

Construction of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began in 1970. According to the project, its generating capacity was 6,000 MW. The first power unit was launched in 1974, the second – in 1975. In 1981, the third power unit was put into operation, and two years later – the fourth and last one, which would become the “gravedigger” of the entire facility and the surrounding area. But at that time hardly anyone could foresee such a development, so the first 100 billion kWh of electricity generated by ChNPP in August 1984 was perceived as a great achievement. Together with the Kursk and Lenin nuclear power plants it became in a short time one of the three most powerful in the Country of Soviets. In 1986, its total capacity had already reached 4,000 MW.

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A new facility, especially such a dynamically developing and promising, required the participation of significant human resources, so simultaneously with the construction of the station was the construction of Pripyat – one of the youngest cities in the Soviet Union. And young from the point of view of its inhabitants, whose average age was only 27 years. Engineers and scientists from all corners of the vast country came here with their families for permanent residence, where they were given apartments with all amenities – before the accident there were already 47.5 thousand people living here. Many even compared Pripyat to Baikonur, as it was considered as prestigious to live and work here as in the satellite city of the cosmodrome of the same name. Characterized by its modern infrastructure, it was called the city of power engineers, the city of the future, and also “atomic city”. On May 1, 1986, the grand opening of the city’s amusement park was scheduled, but the terrible disaster put an end to these plans. As well as on the future of the entire city…

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Accident September 9, 1982

Throughout its existence, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has experienced two accidents. The first – about which the general public knows almost nothing – took place on September 9, 1982. The day before, during a test run of the reactor of the first power unit, scheduled repairs were performed. But something went wrong, and the fuel assembly was destroyed. There was an emergency explosion of the process channel No. 62-44, which deformed the graphite masonry of the core. As a result, a significant amount of radioactive substances was released into the reactor space. This accident would not have had such consequences if the emergency protection had been triggered and if the reactor unit had not been kept at 700 MW for 20 minutes after the channel rupture, which is a very long time.

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The accident also affected the Unit 2 reactor space, into which about 800 kg of water was released. The latter, vaporizing, provoked a sharp increase in pressure, as a result of which the hydraulic gates were squeezed out, and the vapor-gas mixture from the reactor space rushed under the bell of the wet gas holder. Then, having mixed with the radioactive vapor-gas mixture from the reactor space of Unit 1, it escaped through the emptied seals of Unit 2 into the ventilation pipe and from there into the atmosphere. Radioactive substances contaminated a fairly large area. It took about three months of repair and restoration work to eliminate the consequences of this accident. However, Channel No. 62-44 was not brought back to life. The section of the core directly adjacent to it was permanently taken out of operation.

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After the incident, the designers developed and implemented measures to prevent similar situations, but four years later such a large-scale catastrophe occurred at ChNPP, in comparison with which the first accident may seem a minor incident with insignificant consequences.

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The accident on April 26, 1986

On that terrible night, nothing foreshadowed trouble. The station was operating in normal mode, specialists were conducting design testing of turbine generator No. 8 at Unit 4. Suddenly, at about 1:24 a.m., there was an explosion. It was so strong that it completely destroyed the reactor. Partial collapse befell the power unit building and the roof of the engine room. The explosion triggered more than three dozen fires in the premises and on the roof, which were completely extinguished by 5 a.m. The explosion caused a fire in the premises and on the roof. Brigades of the military unit, Pripyat and Kyiv firefighters worked at the accident site. Joint efforts managed to localize the fire and prevent it from spreading to other power units.

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In addition, in the first hours of the accident, the equipment of the fourth power unit was shut down and the neighboring third unit was completely stopped. However, on the evening of April 26, a massive fire broke out in the central hall of Unit 4. Due to the fact that the reactor explosion caused a severe radiation situation and the burning was of great intensity, helicopter equipment was used to extinguish the fire, as it was clear from the beginning that regular means would not work.

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In the first days after the disaster, the liquidators worked at Chernobyl without the necessary protective equipment and, having received a dose of radioactive exposure incompatible with life, soon died. The so-called active stage of the accident lasted 10 days, during which there were extremely intense releases of radioactive elements. Among them are isotopes of uranium, plutonium, as well as cesium-134 and cesium-135, whose half-life is respectively 2 years and 30 years, strontium-190 (its half-life is 29 years), iodine-131 (its half-life is one of the shortest – 8 days). In the first days, the hot jet above the destroyed reactor rushed to a height of more than a kilometer, reducing later to a few hundred meters.

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When the Chernobyl disaster occurred, the country’s leadership did not initially realize the real scale of what had happened. According to Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev recalled in private conversations with him that the special services first reported to him about the fire at the plant and only then did more complete information begin to arrive. However, it was concealed from ordinary citizens, explaining it by the need to avoid panic among the population. Thus, on April 28, a TASS report was circulated that spoke of an “accident” at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

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At the time when foreign journalists were sounding the alarm bells about the threat to human life, about the radioactive cloud heading toward Europe, traditional May Day parades were being held in Kiev and other cities in Ukraine and Belarus. Kiev citizens marched along Khreshchatyk and October Revolution Square (today’s Independence Square), dressed up, with flowers, with red flags and banners, not even realizing that at that moment the radiation level exceeded the background level by several dozen times.

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Eyewitnesses to the tragedy were many residents of Pripyat, who watched the explosion at the reactor from their apartment windows, but they were not immediately informed about what exactly happened and the scale of the accident. All day on April 26, people quietly walked the streets, breathing in the already contaminated air. Evacuation of the population of the “atomic city” began only the next day. Residents were forbidden to take their pets, belongings, and toys with them, and – again, to avoid panic – were given the false hope that they would be able to return to their homes in three days. But that didn’t happen 30 days later, 300 days later, or 33 years after the accident…

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The Soviet government hid the details of the accident for two weeks. The General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev, made an official address to the country’s citizens about the accident on television only on May 14. “For the first time we have actually faced such a formidable force as nuclear energy out of control,” he noted, recognizing the extraordinary and dangerous nature of what happened at the plant. Subsequently, already after the collapse of the USSR, Mikhail Sergeevich said in one of his interviews: “Chernobyl made me a different person.”

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Meanwhile, while the authorities remained silent, the radiation that had broken free was doing its black deed. After the explosion, a wind blowing from the southeast drove the radioactive cloud toward the Scandinavian peninsula. After flying over Sweden, Finland and Norway, it returned back to Ukraine. A change of wind direction to the west changed the trajectory of the contaminated cloud, and it sailed through Poland and Czechoslovakia and hovered over Austria. In the Alps it cleared and headed back to Poland. It is possible to enumerate for a long time what countries were “visited” by the deadly radiation from Chernobyl. Perhaps, there is no place on Earth, over which the radioactive cloud formed by the explosion did not leave its trace.

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But the most affected, of course, were Ukraine and Belarus, not to mention the area immediately adjacent to the nuclear power plant. The first victim of the “peaceful atom” was Valery Khodimchuk, a senior inspector of the main circulation pump of Unit 4, who died in the explosion. The second employee received serious injuries, from which he died the next morning. The 104 injured were taken to Moscow’s Hospital No. 6 on April 27. Another 134 employees, as well as members of fire and rescue teams, became ill with radiation sickness, of whom 28 died in the next few months.

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According to the World Health Organization, the total number of people who have died due to the accident, or may die in the future, is 4,000. Of this total, a total of 50 emergency workers died from acute radiation sickness, and 9 children died from radiation-induced thyroid cancer. Some 3,940 more people may die from radiation-induced cancer and leukemia, according to WHO estimates.

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But there are even scarier numbers. A total of 600,000 people from all over the Soviet Union were involved in the cleanup of the Chernobyl accident. Of these, 60,000 died and 165,000 became disabled.

Three decades after the accident does not lose the relevance of the question: what caused it? There are different versions. According to one of them, the reactor that exploded initially did not meet safety standards and had weaknesses in its design. Other possible causes include the unfinished operation regulations, insufficient qualification of the personnel and their negligent attitude to the protection systems during the tests. But it is difficult to say which of them is the truth or at least as close to it as possible. It is possible that there was a combination of all these factors.

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Chernobyl nuclear power plant after the accident

The power of the explosion at Chernobyl’s Unit 4 was equivalent to the 80 atomic bombs dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. The accident at the Chernobyl plant was assigned the seventh – maximum! – danger level. The release of radioactive elements amounted to about 50 million curies, which is 400-500 times higher than the contamination of Hiroshima after the bombing. They contaminated about 200,000 km² of land. The lion’s share of this huge area, about 70%, is in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

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To prevent further spread of radiation, the reactor destroyed by the explosion was covered in late 1986 with a special engineering structure known as the Shelter facility. It is also referred to as a “sarcophagus.” There are no other structures similar to it in the world. This sad symbol of the Chernobyl catastrophe was erected on the basis of the latest construction research, which had not been used until then. It was built under radiation conditions that posed a direct threat to the health and lives of the builders. In addition, the Shelter, which was designed from May 20 to August 20, 1986, is the largest structure in the world, which was built using remote methods.

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The actual installation of the “sarcophagus” took place from June to November of the same year. The facility was erected around the clock, using the shift method. One shift sometimes involved up to 10 thousand people. Builders removed and moved 90 thousand m³ of soil, collected more than 7 tons of steel structures, laid about 400 thousand m³ of concrete, and all this in five months.

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The shocking pace of the works could not but affect their quality. The technologies were not fully observed and not in everything. For example, some of the support beams were simply lying on the ruins of the destroyed reactor, and part of the roof was covered with large-diameter pipes that were not even fixed. Over the years, the old sarcophagus began to deteriorate, and it became necessary to cover it with a new one. Construction of the latter began in 2007. The facility was named the New Safe Confinement (NSC) or simply “arch” because it is an insulating arch structure. It was originally scheduled to be completed in 2012-2013, but that timeline was pushed back several years due to insufficient funding. At the end of November 2016, the NSC was thrust over the reactor building, and it was not finally commissioned until July 10, 2019. “The Arch,” due to its 100 m height, 257 m width and 165 m length, has become the largest movable ground structure.”

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As for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as a whole, it was decided to close it down. The timeline for decommissioning the power units was approved by the Supreme Soviet and the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR on February 17, 1990. After a fire broke out at the second power unit on October 11, 1991, the leadership of the Ukrainian SSR ordered to shut it down immediately. Two years later, it was planned to shut down the first and third power units, but the Ukrainian government proposed to continue the operation of ChNPP. However, under pressure from the world community, the final decision to decommission the plant was still made.

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Beginning in December 2000, in preparation for the shutdown, the plant’s capacity was gradually reduced. On December 15, a teleconference between Chernobyl NPP and the National Palace “Ukraine” was organized, during which President Leonid Kuchma gave the order to permanently stop the plant’s operation. And immediately, live on air, the emergency protection key on the reactor of the third power unit was turned, and the Chernobyl NPP stopped generating electricity. This happened at 13:17.

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Meanwhile, the process of decommissioning the plant cannot be considered complete. According to the approved schedule, it should happen in 2064. Until that date, the reactors will remain in a mothballed state until their radioactivity is reduced.

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Chernobyl zone as a tourist destination

So-called Chernobyl tourism is becoming increasingly popular, and it is completely safe. If you compare the exclusion zone in the first years after the accident and now, the difference is obvious. Nature begins to awaken actively, rare species of plants and animals appear. Although, and no one hides it, there are still places with significantly elevated and potentially lethal levels of radiation in the Chernobyl zone to this day.

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This is due to the fact that radiation does not spread evenly, but settles on the contaminated territory in “islands”. So we get a paradoxical, at first glance, the situation when directly near the station radiation background does not exceed 300 micro-roentgens per hour, but at a distance from it, even a considerable distance, it can be noticeably higher. The most dangerous in this regard is considered to be the stele “ChNPP named after Lenin” – the radiation level here at times reaches an extremely dangerous mark of 1200 micro-roentgen per hour.

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Travelers are not allowed on these “islands”, choosing safe routes for them. Of course, while in the exclusion zone, a person receives additional radiation exposure to three types of ionizing radiation: alpha, beta and gamma. However, they cannot cause harm to health.

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In 2017, the 30-kilometer exclusion zone received official status as the Chernobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve, which is already called the No. 1 tourist attraction in Ukraine. This is a unique place where you can see wildlife as you will not see it anywhere else. Here live together wolves and deer, beavers and turtles, bears and wild horses. More than 50,000 people visit this reserve every year, and the development of tourism is helping to nurture the local economy. However, there are no fashionable hotels, entertainment centers, cafes, restaurants and souvenir stores here. The Chernobyl zone, although open to tourists, continues to be a protected military territory and the center of electricity distribution between neighboring Ukraine and Belarus.

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Of genuine interest to travelers is Pripyat, a real ghost town. No one lives in it, but time has not ruled over its landscape and special atmosphere. After the accident at the plant, the surrounding villages were buried in the ground with the help of excavators, but the “atom town” did not cease to exist. A year after the disaster, residents were allowed to return briefly to take some of their belongings.

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Like the entire exclusion zone, Pripyat is guarded by police and patrols, but constant vigilance did not save it from the intrigues of looters and looters. Perhaps there is not a single apartment left that has not been entered by thieves who stole all the most valuable things. The military plant “Jupiter”, which functioned until 1997, and the swimming pool “Lazurny”, which closed a year later, were completely looted. At the moment, the town continues to operate a pumping station supplying ChNPP with water, a laundry, its staff and garages for trucks.

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A tour of the city will take you back to the 80s of the last century. Pripyat is a small piece of the Soviet Union of the era of developed socialism not only in Ukraine, but in the entire former USSR. Graffiti of those years has been preserved on the walls of houses. Everywhere there are portraits, posters and slogans associated with Lenin and the CPSU, they can be seen in schools, kindergartens, palace of culture, hospital, hotel, police station. Looking at all this, one cannot escape the impression that one has traveled to that seemingly serene past, for which the bulk of the older generation is nostalgic. Only the emptiness and ominous silence around you brings you back to reality. In Pripyat is not only deserted – even birds in the sky will not see.

For today’s youth, an excursion to Pripyat is a unique opportunity to get a visual representation of the times of the Soviet Union. It is not necessary to be the owner of a rich imagination, to imagine how prosperous was this city of power engineers, and what brilliant prospects awaited it, not happening in April 1986 this terrible catastrophe. It is true that all the buildings are of the same type, built of concrete, and in this respect Pripyat was no different from other Soviet cities. Some houses are hidden under the crowns of overgrown trees and are barely visible, while others have collapsed either from time or under the weight of the large amount of snow that fell on them.

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How to legally enter the Chernobyl zone

The organization of tours to the 30-kilometer exclusion zone of the Chernobyl NPP is engaged in several Ukrainian operators, the largest of which is the company “Chernobyl Tour”. Buses with fans of “radiation recreation” go there every day, especially since after the release of the TV series “Chernobyl” demand for excursions to these ominous places doubled. Some extreme tourists find official excursions here too boring and turn to the services of illegal guides. The latter are ready to lead those wishing to secret paths and provide overnight accommodation in some abandoned house in the best traditions of spy movies. Of course, for the appropriate payment. But is it worth taking such a risk, considering that the exclusion zone is a protected object? Violation of the regime is punishable under Ukrainian law.

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Tourists who legally come to the abandoned town of Pripyat and quite comfortably existing district center of Chernobyl, which is home to the workers who maintain the station, are given individual dosimeters and taught how to use them. Thus, people, as they call it, kill two birds with one stone – both on an excursion and basic knowledge of how to act in case of a radiation disaster to survive.

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A few days before the trip, the tourist must apply to the operator who has an official authorization to operate in the exclusion zone. Leaving his passport data, he makes a prepayment. For citizens of Ukraine, a one-day excursion will cost a minimum of 49 dollars, for citizens of foreign countries – in 99 dollars and above.

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Personal data about a potential tourist is checked by special services. If a person for some reason does not cause confidence, he will be denied a visit to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Those who are allowed, the tour operator will issue passes. When the group is formed, the day and place of gathering in Kiev is appointed, where it is met by the guide and seated in the bus. Travel time to the CEZ is one and a half hours. Then tourists pass into the territory through a checkpoint.

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