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The Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion Facts

The Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion Facts
The Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion was a devastating nuclear disaster that occurred on April 26th, 1986 in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The plant was located in the (then) Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union, near Pripyat. Uncontrolled reaction conditions resulted from a hurried stress test in which safety systems were shut off and design flaws resulted in and explosion and plumes of radioactive isotopes (atom with excess nuclear energy) being released into the atmosphere for nine days. This fallout fell over western USSR and Europe. The event was classified as a level 7 event according to the International Nuclear Event Scale. The only other event with this classification was the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Interesting The Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion Facts:
The Chernobyl Nuclear disaster caused the direct deaths of 31 people including 2 in the plant and 29 subsequent deaths to employees and fireman from acute radiation syndrome.
It is estimated that a minimum of 5% of the radioactive reactor core was released during the steam explosion and resulting fires.
There was an increase in thyroid cancers as a result of the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster but according to UNSCEAR there was no major public health impact 20 years following the incident.
The Chernobyl 4 reactor was destroyed in the reactor explosion.
At the disaster scene 237 people were originally diagnosed with acute radiation syndrome. This number was later reduced to 134 confirmed cases.
As of 2008 there were 64 deaths attributed to radiation from the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster. This number is estimated to be capable of rising to as high as 4,000.
It is estimated that approximately 150,000 pregnancies were ended for fear of radiation exposure following the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster. It is now believed that this fear was unfounded and the media and some health professionals were wrong in this assumption and contributed to the panic.
Some workers at the Chernobyl Power Plant received lethal doses of radiation on less than a minute when the reactor exploded.
When the firemen arrived on scene to the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster they were not informed as to how dangerous the debris and smoke was to their health. They were not told it was a reactor.
The fire alarm activated at 1:26 and all of the fires, except the one contained in reactor 4, were out by 6:35.
Following the explosion and fires at Chernobyl, the nearby city of Pripyat was not evacuated immediately. People began to become ill only hours later.
On April 27th the evacuation of Pripyat began. People were told to bring only the essentials. They were told it would only be a few days. Today much of what they left behind remains where they left it.
The exclusion zone has since expanded and remains in place today.
Radiation levels set off alarms in Sweden on April 28th, only two days after the explosion at Chernobyl. It wasn't until the alarms in Sweden went off, 610 miles away, that the Soviet Union admitted the incident had taken place.
Operator error and design flaws are the two main reasons believed to have caused the Chernobyl Nuclear disaster.


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