Chernobyl Disaster Essay

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The Chernobyl accident that took place in 1986 is worst ever nuclear disaster faced by mankind. The accident that took place on April, 1986 is the result of a flawed reactor design and incompetent personals that were not properly trained. As a result of the accident, extremely harmful and toxic radioactive elements were released into the environment, the fallout of which is felt even to this day. The accident had tremendous health, economic, social and environmental consequences and it severely affected the lives of a huge section of population in the countries of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. The main radioactive elements that cause maximum damage to the affected population were iodine-131 and caesium-137. Which iodine-131 is short-lived, caesium-137 has a long life (World Nuclear Association, 2013). The Chernobyl nuclear plant is located in the small township of Chernobyl that had a population of around 12000 in 1986. Very near to Chernobyl is the city of Pripyat that had a population of around 50,000 people. Both these places took the real brunt of the accident and were massively affected. The nuclear plant at Chernobyl was utilizing the RBMK-1000 reactors built in the Soviet Union and it had major design flaws. On the early morning of April 26, 1986 the personals at the plant hastily lowered the super heated nuclear fuel rods into the water that is used for cooling the reactors. This created lots of steam that in turn increased the nuclear reaction particularly in the reactor number 4. This produced an immense amount of energy casing a massive explosion in the reactor. The explosion completely destroyed the reactor and released harmful radioactive agents into the environment. The explosion at reactor 4 was immediately followed by an even bigger explosion that completely destroyed the reactor building structure. Super heated graphite and other reactor components
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