There are different accounts to this story but the basic plot to this story is that on April 26, 1986 in Chernobyl, a city that was at the time part of U.S.S.R. (now part of Ukraine), there was one of the world's most fatalistic nuclear disasters. The disaster at Chernobyl marks the "only accident in history of commercial nuclear power where radiation-related fatalities occurred." .
Experts generally agree that there are three factors that contributed to the incident at Chernobyl:.
1. There was a design fault in the Soviet reactor.
2. Poorly trained personnel & poor communication between the different departments of the plant.
3. Violation of safety precautions. Many safety procedures were disregarded.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant was made up of 4 graphite reactors. The number 4 reactor was the one that exploded. Even though the reactors are known to be unstable at low power settings, the reactor crew wanted to perform a set of controlled experiments to see how long turbines would spin and supply power at these low temperatures. Then the experiment went wrong, very wrong. With its flawed design, the flow of coolant water diminished and power output increased. The surge in power coupled with the unstable reactor caused the reactor to melt down at the core. .
There were actually 2 explosions of the number 4 reactor. With the first explosion, fuel elements ruptured and took off the cover plate of the reactor with it. Second explosion followed, burning fuel and graphite. Both released clouds of radioactive material for a period of 10 days. As a security measure against the rising nearby river, the Bryaat River, a concrete wall was driven 30 meters into the ground to stand between the reactor and river. It is still standing but is known to be a shabby structure that needs to be replaced. .
A total of 12 x 1018 Bu of radioactivity was released. This exposed the Chernobyl people to radioactivity 100 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb.
