2011 Books – Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

Long before the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan this year, I’d been reading about the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. But since the disaster hit, I thought I’d pick up a few more book on the topic. What is interesting, the best books available (ones written by Grigori Medvedev can coast over $4300, that was the price the last time I checked Amazon.com). So I’ll suffice with the two books I already had on hand.

The first book by W. Scott Ingram is part of the “Environmental Disasters” series. It’s like a layman’s textbook of what happened. It gives a non-scientific run through of the events, so anyone could understand what was going on.

But back in 1977, after 6 years of construction, the Chernobyl plant went online. One thing I found contradictory to another book I’ve read: Ingram says that Chernobyl was not a meltdown – but rather an explosion. But we’ll see in my next book that Chernobyl not only had a meltdown, it had two.

One of the first things I picked up on was the the Soviet Union used RBMK-type reactors and the U.S. used PWR reactors. The difference between the two is that PWR use water as the moderator whereas the RBMK reactors use graphite.

This is important because during an emergency, a procedure known as scramming is done – and that consists of, primarily, the dropping of the controol rods into the core to stop the fission. In the water pressured PWRs that took, at the top end, 4 seconds to do. In the graphite RBMKs it could take up to 20 seconds.

In the early 80s, USSR plant operators found that running reactors for long periods of time on less than half power made them unstable. “The gap in time allowed the core to continue to heat. This, in turn, overheated the water in the cooling system, causing it to boil and explode in a matter of seconds.” (Page 21)

So instead of improving the scramming procedure (which would have cost time and money due to needing a complete redesign), Soviet nuclear engineers came to a solution: run the reactors at full power all of the time.

To quote Ingram, “There is only irony in the fact that the events leading to the worst nuclear power accident in history began with a safety test.” (Page 28)

Here is the timeline:
April 26, 1986 – midnight, new shift workers enter the control room at Reactor 4.

• Note: most had worked at Chernobyl, but few knew emergency procedures.
• There had never been an emergency drill, not even a fire drill.
• They believed the nuclear industry was “accident free”

12:00am – workers began to follow the procedure for lowering the output to the required amount for the test.

• Note: Emergency Alert System had been shut off to prevent it from responding to the test as if it were an accident

Shortly after 12:00 – water level in the cooling system down to less than 1% capacity.

• Lack of water caused the reactor to overheat.

1:20am – Energy level in the reactor was suddenly rising; b3egan to completely shut down the reactor by reinserting the control rods to stop the fission process.
1:22am – Pressure in the water-cooling system increased 100 times the safety level
1:23am – Extreme pressure burst the pipes
Followed immediately by another blast that destroyed the cylinder around the core and ripped the 1,000 ton roof off the reactor building.

Within seconds, tons of radioactive dust and debris what shot miles up into the atmosphere. While the influx of air to the building ignited the graphite core.

The book goes on to talk about how much debris (and size of) got scattered outside of the reactor. He talks about the lack of preparedness of everyone, firemen, policemen, even scientists on how to deal with the disaster. He also talks bout how the people were not immediately evacuated. And of course, the steps taken to put out the fire (which is still burning over 25 years later).

He ends the book talking about some of the environmental and health hazards of the accident, and presents the off-tossed about figure of 4,000 deaths. Which others close to the accident (were either on-site or dealing with it from within the government) put the number as high as 500,000 deaths.

All in all, it’s a very easy read. Only about 80 pages, and until you get to the figures at the end (death toll), it’s pretty accurate in comparison to other books I’ve read on the topic. It’s something a 6th grader could easily read and understand. It doesn’t get you bogged down in the science, but gives you enough detail to pique your interest further.