The Chernobyl Disaster
Saturday, 26 April 1986. 01:23:40 AM. Explosion. A wave of shock shook the Earth. The windows in the building of Pripyat started getting luminous, one after another. The sound and shock wave of the explosion made every living being wake up. A beam of blue light heading straight towards clouds could be seen from the windows of upper apartments in the buildings of Pripyat. With fire surrounding it, the blue light looked beautiful.
People started gathering, trying to know what just happened. Those who were firemen received calls to their duties. Some miles away from the town, in the heart of the forest, something strange just happened at Chernobyl nuclear power plant. To get a clear view of the power plant, some people moved to a railway bridge outside the town. Yes, it was a fire. But nobody knew about the blue beam. The firemen reached the site and hasted to put water on fire. Strange stones were lying everywhere, hot enough to burn hands. Inside the power plant, in the control room, Comrade Dyatlov was informed that Reactor core no.4 had exploded. But comrade refused to accept saying that the reactor couldn’t explode. Dyatlov and Viktor, the chief director of the plant told everybody that it was a mild fire and everything was fine, but it wasn’t. With the explosion, Immense radiation escaped the core and ionized the air, forming a blue light beam. the graphite of the core spread everywhere on the ground and floor.
The ash formed dense clouds. Radiation from the explosion
reached far off the Soviet Union, even detected in Sweden. Ash falling off the sky, at the bridge, with people smiling and cheering, making a memorable moment. The firemen felt something happening to them, collapsing, spreading panic. Nobody knew it was radiation sickness since they had taken a dangerous dose of radiation. In the hospital, the nurse ordered to remove the clothes of every fireman and throw them in the basement. Emergency at the hospital. Till morning, panic spread everywhere. Some of the firemen were sent to Moscow. The news of the explosion spread in the whole soviet union. The state didn’t want to reveal about the disaster, but the radiation was detected at other places. Americans took photos from the satellite. The whole world became aware.
Comrade Boris Schcherbina, Deputy chairman of the council of ministers of the
USSR, with Valery Legasov, A nuclear scientist, Visited the site. Valery and Boris did every possible thing to stop the fire and radiation. Tons of Lead, clay, and boron were thrown from helicopters into the core, Pripyat was evacuated, and infected animals were killed to stop the spreading of mutation. The temperature in the core rose to such a high level that melted sand, making lava-like material that started sinking. Now another problem proceeded. The lava-like material could sink to enough depth that could contaminate the groundwater, eventually reaching the river, with a risk of death of every individual that uses water. Millions could die. Miners were then asked to dig down below the concrete pad below the core and replace the soil below the pad with a material that could stop the sinking of lava sand. The task was completed. Pilots of helicopters, Debris removers, miners, and soldier risked their lives since they all absorbed a fatal level of radiation. The 2000 roentgen radiation level was detected around the core, more than enough to cause a painful death with a day or two and cause the electronic circuits to stop, thereby making it difficult to operate with different devices. The accident happened during a test being performed inside the power plant. The explosion was similar to an atomic blast, close to Hiroshima. Though it didn’t cause any sudden deaths, but many slow deaths. No one knows how many. The firemen who visited the explosion site died within a few weeks, painfully. People who went to the bridge faced sickness and died. The bridge today is called THE BRIDGE OF DEATH.
Those who worked in the power plant at the time of the explosion and were close to the reactor core or saw in it, most of them died. But the soviet union didn’t keep any official record of deaths. Valery presented the
fault in the reactor in the court as 14 RBMK reactors of the same kind as
Chernobyl were working in the Soviet. but considering it treason, the state abandoned him. He took his life after two years. After his suicide, Soviet Union corrected the fault in all other reactors to prevent any event like Chernobyl. Today the area is abandoned for human living and is declared uninhabitable for 20,000 years. The exploded reactor no. 4 core is covered by a metal covering to avoid radiation leakage.
