The Chornobyl disaster is considered the largest in the history of the nuclear power industry. It led to disastrous medical, economic, social, and humanitarian consequences. Radioactive cesium contaminated 3/4 of the territory of Europe. How it happened, and why it is essential to talk about the events of 1986 now — in this article.
What happened?
On April 25, 1986, the Chornobyl NPP was scheduled to shut down Unit 4 for a routine maintenance check. It was decided to use the reactor shutdown to conduct a number of tests, in particular, to study the capabilities of the turbine generator in the event of a power outage. The experiment began on April 26 at 01:23. The situation got out of control, and at 01:25, with an interval of several seconds, two explosions occurred. The reactor was destroyed entirely. Fires broke out.
The main blazes were extinguished in an hour, and the full outbreak was contained by 5 a.m. on April 26. However, an intense fire broke out in the central hall of Unit 4, which was fought using helicopters until May 10. At 8:00 a.m. on April 28, the radiation level at units 3 and 4 was 1000-2600 micro roentgens per second.
Eleven tons of nuclear fuel were released into the atmosphere. As a result, a cloud of radioactive dust floated over the European part of the USSR, most of Europe, and the eastern part of the United States for two weeks. Approximately 60% of the radioactive substances settled on the territory of Belarus.
For ten days, from April 26 to May 6, the release of radioactivity from the damaged reactor lasted at tens of millions of Curies per day before decreasing. As a result, 8.5 million residents of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia received significant doses of radiation in the days immediately following the accident, and about 500,000 died from the effects of radiation. In addition, 2,293 Ukrainian cities and towns with a population of approximately 2.6 million people were contaminated with radioactive nuclides, most of them residents of the then-Ukrainian SSR.
Also, as a result of the release of radioactivity into the environment, almost a third of Ukraine's territory, with a total area of 200 thousand square kilometers, was contaminated with radioactive elements, and 52 thousand square kilometers of farmland were excluded from agricultural use.
Two workers died on April 26: Valerii Khodemchuk under the ruins of the reactor and Volodymyr Shashenok from exposure to direct, high-level radiation. Then, within a few months, 30 plant employees died of acute radiation sickness.
In addition, more than 600,000 people were involved in the cleanup of the disaster, and about 170,000 of them became disabled due to the enormous doses of radioactive exposure.
How was the disaster dealt with?
Moscow controlled the Chornobyl NPP, so the central leadership de facto removed the republican (Ukrainian) leadership from decision-making in handling the emergency.
In the afternoon of April 26, a special commission was set up to assess the extent of the accident and determine the priorities for its elimination. On April 29, an Operational Group of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee was formed in Moscow to coordinate efforts to minimize the accident.
The military of the chemical, aviation, engineering, and border guard branches and medical units of the USSR Ministry of Defense, Civil Defense, and the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs took part in the relief efforts. In addition, in the summer, military reservists and freelancers were involved. According to incomplete data, 600,000 people participated in the cleanup and many developed radiation sickness due to exposure.
The firefighters who were among the first to arrive at the accident scene fought the fire without any protective equipment because they had not been warned of the danger. It was they who stopped another potential disaster, a hydrogen explosion.
After the fires, which lasted until May 10, were extinguished, more than 600,000 responders were deployed to build a protective structure over Chornobyl's 4th reactor. The Shelter was erected in record time — just 206 days.
What doubled the aftermath of the disaster?
In short, the Soviet authorities concealed the truth.
The information about the disaster was immediately classified as secret by the party and state leadership of the USSR and the Soviet special services. At the same time, the KGB organized surveillance of those who knew about the accident. Those who demanded the truth about the Chornobyl accident and publicly spoke about the government's responsibility for the accident and the cover-up of its aftermath were detained by the KGB for "slandering the Soviet system" or "spreading panic rumours.”
For two days, the world knew nothing about the explosion. The Soviet press and television remained silent about the accident until it was reported abroad. Then, on April 27, a sharp increase in radiation levels was recorded in Denmark and Sweden, after which the Swedish authorities demanded an explanation from Moscow. Instead, in radioactive Kyiv, thousands of people, including children, took to the streets in a festive demonstration on May 1 to show the world that nothing had happened.
The first official announcement in the USSR under pressure from the international community was made on April 28. At 9 p.m., the main television news program Vremya reported succinctly: "An accident has occurred at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant. One of the nuclear reactors has been damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. The victims are being provided with assistance. A government commission has been set up." However, only on May 9 did the Minister of Health provide cautious advice on safety measures.
Was there an evacuation?
Thirty-six hours after the accident, at noon on April 27, the local population was informed of the "temporary evacuation" of residents of Prypiat, the closest town to the Chornobyl nuclear power plant with a population of about 50,000.
In order not to cause panic, people were told that they would be able to return home in three days. So, they could only take their personal belongings and documents with them. Thus, 44.5 thousand people were evacuated, and the remaining residents were assigned to emergency work.
Festive demonstration in the centre of Kyiv, May 1, 1986. Source: Radio Svoboda
On the evening of May 1, the wind from Chornobyl turned to Kyiv. The radiation levels in the city began to rise rapidly. Nevertheless, the May Day parade took place. On May 2, the 6th day after the accident, the Soviet leadership finally decided to evacuate the population from the 30-kilometer zone around the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, and by May 6, more than 115,000 people had been evacuated.
Hundreds of small villages that were at the epicenter of the contamination were bulldozed to the ground. The 30-kilometer zone around the Chornobyl nuclear power plant is now the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone.
Reports of the USSR, IAEA and declassified KGB documents: what are the real causes of the disaster?
The Soviet leadership wanted to hide the root causes of the disaster at all costs.
Therefore, a special commission was set up to investigate the grounds of the accident, which named the human factor as the primary factor in the disaster, as if the Chornobyl operators themselves had brought the reactor to such a dangerous state. The corresponding report was presented at the IAEA session.
The IAEA, based on the report of the USSR representatives, issued the INSAG-1 Report in September 1986, which practically repeated the verdict of the Soviet government commission. Much later, only in 1993, the IAEA issued a new report in which it recognized that the cause was not the human factor, but the RBMK-1000 reactor, which was designed in violation of technical regulations, and the staff was not informed of the dangerous shortcomings of the reactor. In other words, there was no documentation indicating the possible catastrophic consequences of operating this reactor.
According to declassified KGB documents, it is now certain that the Soviet authorities knew the true causes of the accident and theoretically knew about the danger of operating the reactor. In addition, accidents had occurred earlier at the Leningrad NPP in 1975 (Russia), the Chornobyl NPP in 1982, and the Ignalina NPP in 1983 (Lithuania), which also operated RBMK-1000 reactors. There were also radiation leaks in 1982, 1983, and 1984 at the Chornobyl NPP. Finally, deficiencies in the reactor design were discovered at the Ignalina NPP. Experts had proposed modernizing the RBMK core design before the disaster, but their advice was ignored.
Why is it relevant to analyze the events of 1986 now, in 2023?
It would seem that the Chornobyl disaster warned all of humanity about the dangers of careless handling of radiation. Unfortunately, however, the Russian Federation is once again putting the entire world in danger.
After the full-scale invasion, Russian troops seized the Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia NPPs. The Chornobyl NPP was liberated in the spring of 2022 (in addition to hazardous radiation exposure, the Russians held staff hostage and stole or destroyed equipment worth millions of hryvnias). However, the Zaporizhzhia plant is still occupied — the Russians are currently using it to store military equipment and weapons, as well as for nuclear blackmail. From the territory of ZNPP, among other things, Russians regularly shell the neighboring Ukrainian-controlled cities of Nikopol and Marhanets. In addition, the Russians have mined the adjacent areas. And because of the hostilities, the power supply for the plant's own needs from the Ukrainian side is periodically interrupted, jeopardizing the cooling of the nuclear reactors.
On October 5, 2022, Russian President Putin issued a criminal "decree" on appropriating the occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP. The Russian corporation Rosatom created and registered a management company in Moscow to run the Ukrainian NPP. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian staff of the plant is being intimidated, tortured, and killed. Although the IAEA is currently present at the plant, negotiations on the demilitarization of the territory have been unsuccessful because the Russian military refuses to leave the nuclear power plant and remove military equipment and weapons.
In the last Statement on the Situation in Ukraine from April 21, the IAEA Director General stated that currently, there are severe risks to the nuclear safety and security situation at ZNPP. He said that IAEA experts at ZNPP have heard shelling almost daily in the past week due to military activity. IAEA experts also reported that ZNPP's current situation is significantly impacting the nuclear power plant's maintenance capability because of measures taken by Russian invaders: reduced staff, no external contractors, and a lack of spare parts needed for maintenance.
Compilated by Olena Pozniakova