My views today on the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster when I was living in Brussels, Belgium
HBO's miniseries on Chernobyl has brought back the focus to this horrific 1986 nuclear disaster. Readers may want to see this article: ‘Chernobyl’ Ends Its HBO Run As The Highest Audience Rated TV Series In History, https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2019/06/04/chernobyl-ends-its-hbo-run-as-the-highest-audience-rated-tv-series-in-history/, 4th June 2019.
I have not watched the miniseries yet (as it is not available for free on youtube which is my main video viewing platform). But I recently saw its trailer: Chernobyl (2019) | Official Trailer | HBO, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9APLXM9Ei8, 2 min. 38 secs.
I also recently saw the following documentary, or rather what seems to be part of the documentary, on it: National Geographic Documentary 2014 What Really Happened at Chernobyl Full Documentary HD 1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ4qOMN527s, around 45 mins.
Based on what I saw in the HBO trailer, I have some concerns about the HBO miniseries being an over-dramatization of Chernobyl. I found the NatGeo documentary to be much more believable as it had video clips of views expressed by Russian leaders from various fields who played major roles in responding to Chernobyl. This includes then Soviet Union top leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
Watching the NatGeo documentary made a big emotional impact on me. It has led to me writing this post.
You see, I was living in Brussels, Belgium when Chernobyl, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster, happened on 26th April 1986! I was a 23 year old Indian out on his first foreign software development assignment. At that time, I recall watching BBC TV where they were talking about wind directions and speeds in the context of nuclear contamination spread. There was palpable fear and concern about it in Europe. Eventually that fear passed and BBC TV (I watched BBC TV as I could not understand Belgian TV channels which were in French and Flemish) moved on to cover other stuff.
I was just a young guy watching and wondering what's going on. A helpless human being watching the media covering what seemed to be an event threatening the whole of Europe.
Watching the NatGeo documentary a few days ago gave me a lot more information about what had happened then. If I had known all this stuff then, I would have been much, much more panicky than I was then.
Today I am a social media writer with close to 8 years experience in it. I feel it almost my duty now to write a post on some key dangers that Chernobyl disaster exposed Europe to, which included me then, and how some heroic people of the Soviet Union fought to contain the disaster despite having to get exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, as shared by the NatGeo documentary and wikipedia. That's why I am putting up this post.
I should also mention that Space shuttle Challenger disaster, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster, happened a few months earlier on 28th January 1986 while I was in Brussels. I recall an American stranger telling me about it in a Pizza joint (I think it was a USA Pizza chain, perhaps it was Pizza Hut) that we were in, near the Louise Metro station end of Avenue Louise. It did cause fair bit of despair/disappointment even in Brussels.
But what a contrast there was between the USA Space shuttle Challenger disaster and the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union (in Ukraine, then part of Soviet Union)! The Challenger disaster news was well covered in the media. That the disaster occurred got known quickly ***without any cover up***.
But on Chernobyl, there was a ***big cover up*** by the Soviet Union apparatus. I was just too raw even though I was a quite well read young adult of 23 years age, to get any idea then of the scale of the cover up that the Soviet Union apparatus engaged in. And, I repeat, this was a disaster that threatened Europe including Brussels where I was living!
I think the big problem for Europe as a whole to handle Chernobyl was the Soviet Union's cover-up of Chernobyl leaving the rest of Europe to wonder what the hell was going on there! [Please excuse the word, hell, being used but I think it is really appropriate to use here.] Note that the Soviet Union included some parts of Europe (Eastern Europe) including Ukraine and some part of Russia.
This is in marked contrast to the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster, where international media was on top of the story pretty quickly, and the Japanese govt. gave quite decent info. about the disaster so that interested people around the world, with the help of nuclear experts on TV media panels, got some reasonable idea of the damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale tells us that Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear disasters are the only ones to be given the highest Level 7 status (Major Accident) in the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) introduced by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (in 1990).
Some key events (rough timeline) in Chernobyl nuclear disaster and efforts to contain the damage
[Sources for the key events mentioned below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster and National Geographic Documentary 2014 What Really Happened at Chernobyl Full Documentary HD 1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ4qOMN527s]
1) The nuclear accident occurred on 26th April 1986 in a nuclear reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Pripyat in Ukraine. The accident occurred in early hours of 26th April during a safety-test at which time key safety mechanisms were intentionally disabled. The safety-test started at 1:23:04 AM.
2) The analysis is that the first explosion occurred within the reactor (presumed to be a steam explosion like a steam boiler explosion) which tore off the casing of the reactor cover. This is believed to be the first explosion that many heard.
3) A second, more powerful explosion occurred two or three seconds later sending burning lumps of material and sparks into the air above the reactor. Some of this material and sparks fall onto the roof of the building and start a fire. A laser like beam of light was seen above the reactor. The explosion is re-created in the NatGeo documentary video slightly after 2 min. 5 secs.
4) The resulting radiation hazard around the reactor site is deadly. Staff and technicians at the reactor site do not realize how dangerous it is as the radiation level is much higher than the max on the measuring devices that are available to them after the explosion. They attempt to pump water into the reactor. Most of these persons died in the initial weeks after the accident, due to this deadly (fatal) radiation exposure.
5) Firefighters come on to the scene without protective gear for radiation. They try to extinguish the fire. The leader of the firefighter group dies of deadly radiation around two weeks later on 9th May 1986. NatGeo documentary says that 2 firefighters died that day itself and 28 more (I think firefighters and plant personnel) died in the next few months. NatGeo calls them the first victims of Chernobyl.
6) Around 2 min 45 secs in the video, we have Mikhail Gorbachev, then top leader of the Soviet Union, saying that he got the call around 5 AM (of 26th April 1986). Gorbachev says that he was told there was some accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
7) NatGeo documentary (NGD) says that by early morning of that day, radioactive column is rising 3000 feet into the sky and contaminating the clouds!
8) A journalist, Igor Kostin, flies over the plant in a helicopter and is the first to see the gaping hole at the top of the reactor (building). Of course, he also sees the smoke rising from it. The smoke is highly radioactive. Kostin does not realize the danger of getting exposed to that smoke without protective gear. NGD says that Kostin is one of the few early reporters on the scene to have survived the serious exposure to radiation.
9) Wikipedia states:
Although no informing comparisons can be made between the accident and a strictly air burst-fuzed nuclear detonation, it has still been approximated that about four hundred times more radioactive material was released from Chernobyl than by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By contrast the Chernobyl accident released about one hundredth to one thousandth of the total amount of radioactivity released during the era of nuclear weapons testing at the height of the Cold War, 1950–1960s, with the 1/100 to 1/1000 variance due to trying to make comparisons with different spectrums of isotopes released.[106] Approximately 100,000 square kilometres (39,000 sq mi) of land was significantly contaminated with fallout, with the worst hit regions being in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.[107]
...
[Wiki References:]
106. "Facts: The accident was by far the most devastating in the history of nuclear power", https://web.archive.org/web/20110805035908/http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernoten/facts.html. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 21 September 1997. Archived from the original on 5 August 2011. Retrieved 20 August 2011.
107. Marples, David R. (May – June 1996). "The Decade of Despair". The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 52 (3): 20–31. Bibcode:1996BuAtS..52c..20M. doi:10.1080/00963402.1996.11456623. Archived from the original on 27 April 2017. Retrieved 25 March 2016.
--- end wiki extract ---
10) NGD at around 5 min 30 secs shows Gorbachev saying (translation): "The first information consisted of accident and fire. Not a word about an explosion. At first, I was told there hadn't been an explosion. The consequences of such false information were particularly dramatic."
11) The people in nearby city of Pripyat were evacuated with the evacuation beginning on 27th April.
12) NGD: "The clouds filled with radioactive particles are blown north by the wind. On the 28th of April the winds reach Sweden where the rise of radioactivity is detected near one of their nuclear power plants". Hans Blix, chief of IAEA at the time the disaster happened, is shown in NGD saying that the Swedish energy miniser informed him on Monday (26th April was Saturday and so Monday would be 28th April) about this higher level of radioactivity they measured and that they had concluded that it had come from abroad! Blix was asked by the minister whether he/IAEA knew anything about it!
13) NGD then shows Gorbachev saying: "What has happened? An explosion? Radioactive cloud? Serious contamination? It was Sweden that alerted us!"
14) The hot mass in the reactor core continues to burn releasing radioactive gas and dust into the atmosphere. The wind carries that radioactive gas and dust to other places in Europe!
15) Soviet Union air force men use helicopters to dump sand and boron bags through the hole of the reactor roof to seal the reactor and stop the spread of radioactive gas and dust into the air from it. 5000 metric tons of this material was used to seal the reactor. An estimated 600 Soviet pilots risked exposure to dangerous levels of radiation for the thousands of helicopter flights/sorties needed to accomplish the task.
16) There was a risk of the hot mass (more than 1200 degrees Centigrade) in the reactor core burning through the floor of its container and encountering (cooler) water in pools & basement below, which, reportedly, would have caused a big steam explosion and thrown more radioactive material in the air. Some accounts say that this explosion could have put half of Europe at risk! Besides wikipedia, I viewed these varying accounts: https://interestingengineering.com/chernobyl-a-timeline-of-the-worst-nuclear-accident-in-history and https://www.businessinsider.com/chernobyl-volunteers-divers-nuclear-mission-2016-4. What is common in the accounts is that some heroes, most probably the nuclear plant workers, risked their lives by getting into the pools & basement, locating the water release valves and opening it. Pumps were then used to drain the water from the pools & basement. 20,000 metric tons of highly radioactive water got pumped out with the operation getting completed only on 8th May.
17) Many other actions had to be taken in the later months including removal of radioactive debris from the roof of the reactor/plant, creation and installation of a protective sarcophagus covering up the plant etc.
18) The wiki page says that ultimately 500,000 (half a million) people (called liquidators) were involved in damage control, safeguarding from further disaster and decontamination, and the cost was estimated as 18 billion rubles.
19) The countries in Europe that were most significantly impacted by radioactive contamination from Chernobyl disaster are: Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Sweden and Finland.
20) The human cost assessment seems to be a complex one. Readers may want to visit the associated wikipedia section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Human_impact
-----------------
[I thank wikipedia and National Geographic have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extract(s)/quotes from their website/video on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
I have not watched the miniseries yet (as it is not available for free on youtube which is my main video viewing platform). But I recently saw its trailer: Chernobyl (2019) | Official Trailer | HBO, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9APLXM9Ei8, 2 min. 38 secs.
I also recently saw the following documentary, or rather what seems to be part of the documentary, on it: National Geographic Documentary 2014 What Really Happened at Chernobyl Full Documentary HD 1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ4qOMN527s, around 45 mins.
Based on what I saw in the HBO trailer, I have some concerns about the HBO miniseries being an over-dramatization of Chernobyl. I found the NatGeo documentary to be much more believable as it had video clips of views expressed by Russian leaders from various fields who played major roles in responding to Chernobyl. This includes then Soviet Union top leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
Watching the NatGeo documentary made a big emotional impact on me. It has led to me writing this post.
You see, I was living in Brussels, Belgium when Chernobyl, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster, happened on 26th April 1986! I was a 23 year old Indian out on his first foreign software development assignment. At that time, I recall watching BBC TV where they were talking about wind directions and speeds in the context of nuclear contamination spread. There was palpable fear and concern about it in Europe. Eventually that fear passed and BBC TV (I watched BBC TV as I could not understand Belgian TV channels which were in French and Flemish) moved on to cover other stuff.
I was just a young guy watching and wondering what's going on. A helpless human being watching the media covering what seemed to be an event threatening the whole of Europe.
Watching the NatGeo documentary a few days ago gave me a lot more information about what had happened then. If I had known all this stuff then, I would have been much, much more panicky than I was then.
Today I am a social media writer with close to 8 years experience in it. I feel it almost my duty now to write a post on some key dangers that Chernobyl disaster exposed Europe to, which included me then, and how some heroic people of the Soviet Union fought to contain the disaster despite having to get exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, as shared by the NatGeo documentary and wikipedia. That's why I am putting up this post.
I should also mention that Space shuttle Challenger disaster, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster, happened a few months earlier on 28th January 1986 while I was in Brussels. I recall an American stranger telling me about it in a Pizza joint (I think it was a USA Pizza chain, perhaps it was Pizza Hut) that we were in, near the Louise Metro station end of Avenue Louise. It did cause fair bit of despair/disappointment even in Brussels.
But what a contrast there was between the USA Space shuttle Challenger disaster and the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union (in Ukraine, then part of Soviet Union)! The Challenger disaster news was well covered in the media. That the disaster occurred got known quickly ***without any cover up***.
But on Chernobyl, there was a ***big cover up*** by the Soviet Union apparatus. I was just too raw even though I was a quite well read young adult of 23 years age, to get any idea then of the scale of the cover up that the Soviet Union apparatus engaged in. And, I repeat, this was a disaster that threatened Europe including Brussels where I was living!
I think the big problem for Europe as a whole to handle Chernobyl was the Soviet Union's cover-up of Chernobyl leaving the rest of Europe to wonder what the hell was going on there! [Please excuse the word, hell, being used but I think it is really appropriate to use here.] Note that the Soviet Union included some parts of Europe (Eastern Europe) including Ukraine and some part of Russia.
This is in marked contrast to the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster, where international media was on top of the story pretty quickly, and the Japanese govt. gave quite decent info. about the disaster so that interested people around the world, with the help of nuclear experts on TV media panels, got some reasonable idea of the damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale tells us that Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear disasters are the only ones to be given the highest Level 7 status (Major Accident) in the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) introduced by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (in 1990).
Some key events (rough timeline) in Chernobyl nuclear disaster and efforts to contain the damage
[Sources for the key events mentioned below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster and National Geographic Documentary 2014 What Really Happened at Chernobyl Full Documentary HD 1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ4qOMN527s]
1) The nuclear accident occurred on 26th April 1986 in a nuclear reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Pripyat in Ukraine. The accident occurred in early hours of 26th April during a safety-test at which time key safety mechanisms were intentionally disabled. The safety-test started at 1:23:04 AM.
2) The analysis is that the first explosion occurred within the reactor (presumed to be a steam explosion like a steam boiler explosion) which tore off the casing of the reactor cover. This is believed to be the first explosion that many heard.
3) A second, more powerful explosion occurred two or three seconds later sending burning lumps of material and sparks into the air above the reactor. Some of this material and sparks fall onto the roof of the building and start a fire. A laser like beam of light was seen above the reactor. The explosion is re-created in the NatGeo documentary video slightly after 2 min. 5 secs.
4) The resulting radiation hazard around the reactor site is deadly. Staff and technicians at the reactor site do not realize how dangerous it is as the radiation level is much higher than the max on the measuring devices that are available to them after the explosion. They attempt to pump water into the reactor. Most of these persons died in the initial weeks after the accident, due to this deadly (fatal) radiation exposure.
5) Firefighters come on to the scene without protective gear for radiation. They try to extinguish the fire. The leader of the firefighter group dies of deadly radiation around two weeks later on 9th May 1986. NatGeo documentary says that 2 firefighters died that day itself and 28 more (I think firefighters and plant personnel) died in the next few months. NatGeo calls them the first victims of Chernobyl.
6) Around 2 min 45 secs in the video, we have Mikhail Gorbachev, then top leader of the Soviet Union, saying that he got the call around 5 AM (of 26th April 1986). Gorbachev says that he was told there was some accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant.
7) NatGeo documentary (NGD) says that by early morning of that day, radioactive column is rising 3000 feet into the sky and contaminating the clouds!
8) A journalist, Igor Kostin, flies over the plant in a helicopter and is the first to see the gaping hole at the top of the reactor (building). Of course, he also sees the smoke rising from it. The smoke is highly radioactive. Kostin does not realize the danger of getting exposed to that smoke without protective gear. NGD says that Kostin is one of the few early reporters on the scene to have survived the serious exposure to radiation.
9) Wikipedia states:
Although no informing comparisons can be made between the accident and a strictly air burst-fuzed nuclear detonation, it has still been approximated that about four hundred times more radioactive material was released from Chernobyl than by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By contrast the Chernobyl accident released about one hundredth to one thousandth of the total amount of radioactivity released during the era of nuclear weapons testing at the height of the Cold War, 1950–1960s, with the 1/100 to 1/1000 variance due to trying to make comparisons with different spectrums of isotopes released.[106] Approximately 100,000 square kilometres (39,000 sq mi) of land was significantly contaminated with fallout, with the worst hit regions being in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia.[107]
...
[Wiki References:]
106. "Facts: The accident was by far the most devastating in the history of nuclear power", https://web.archive.org/web/20110805035908/http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Booklets/Chernoten/facts.html. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 21 September 1997. Archived from the original on 5 August 2011. Retrieved 20 August 2011.
107. Marples, David R. (May – June 1996). "The Decade of Despair". The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 52 (3): 20–31. Bibcode:1996BuAtS..52c..20M. doi:10.1080/00963402.1996.11456623. Archived from the original on 27 April 2017. Retrieved 25 March 2016.
--- end wiki extract ---
10) NGD at around 5 min 30 secs shows Gorbachev saying (translation): "The first information consisted of accident and fire. Not a word about an explosion. At first, I was told there hadn't been an explosion. The consequences of such false information were particularly dramatic."
[Ravi: This has been one of the stunning things I learned from watching this video. Even the top leader of the Soviet Union was not informed that there had been an explosion in the nuclear reactor! I think this is where media freedom plays such a vital role in democracies in ensuring better accuracy of information about such disasters. Authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union have a natural cover-up attitude towards disasters with this cover-up extending to reports provided to the top leadership of the country!]
11) The people in nearby city of Pripyat were evacuated with the evacuation beginning on 27th April.
12) NGD: "The clouds filled with radioactive particles are blown north by the wind. On the 28th of April the winds reach Sweden where the rise of radioactivity is detected near one of their nuclear power plants". Hans Blix, chief of IAEA at the time the disaster happened, is shown in NGD saying that the Swedish energy miniser informed him on Monday (26th April was Saturday and so Monday would be 28th April) about this higher level of radioactivity they measured and that they had concluded that it had come from abroad! Blix was asked by the minister whether he/IAEA knew anything about it!
13) NGD then shows Gorbachev saying: "What has happened? An explosion? Radioactive cloud? Serious contamination? It was Sweden that alerted us!"
[Ravi: I was just stunned to hear this from Gorbachev (through English translator)! Prior to Fukushima in 2011, the worst nuclear disaster in the world had happened somewhere in the Soviet Union and it took two days (more than 48 hours I presume as the explosion occurred slightly after 1 AM on 26th) for Gorbachev to know of it as a nuclear explosion disaster, and that too from a foreign country that had been impacted by effects of the nuclear disaster! I also have to say that I admire Mikhail Gorbachev for being so frank in this interview.]
14) The hot mass in the reactor core continues to burn releasing radioactive gas and dust into the atmosphere. The wind carries that radioactive gas and dust to other places in Europe!
15) Soviet Union air force men use helicopters to dump sand and boron bags through the hole of the reactor roof to seal the reactor and stop the spread of radioactive gas and dust into the air from it. 5000 metric tons of this material was used to seal the reactor. An estimated 600 Soviet pilots risked exposure to dangerous levels of radiation for the thousands of helicopter flights/sorties needed to accomplish the task.
16) There was a risk of the hot mass (more than 1200 degrees Centigrade) in the reactor core burning through the floor of its container and encountering (cooler) water in pools & basement below, which, reportedly, would have caused a big steam explosion and thrown more radioactive material in the air. Some accounts say that this explosion could have put half of Europe at risk! Besides wikipedia, I viewed these varying accounts: https://interestingengineering.com/chernobyl-a-timeline-of-the-worst-nuclear-accident-in-history and https://www.businessinsider.com/chernobyl-volunteers-divers-nuclear-mission-2016-4. What is common in the accounts is that some heroes, most probably the nuclear plant workers, risked their lives by getting into the pools & basement, locating the water release valves and opening it. Pumps were then used to drain the water from the pools & basement. 20,000 metric tons of highly radioactive water got pumped out with the operation getting completed only on 8th May.
17) Many other actions had to be taken in the later months including removal of radioactive debris from the roof of the reactor/plant, creation and installation of a protective sarcophagus covering up the plant etc.
18) The wiki page says that ultimately 500,000 (half a million) people (called liquidators) were involved in damage control, safeguarding from further disaster and decontamination, and the cost was estimated as 18 billion rubles.
19) The countries in Europe that were most significantly impacted by radioactive contamination from Chernobyl disaster are: Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Sweden and Finland.
20) The human cost assessment seems to be a complex one. Readers may want to visit the associated wikipedia section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Human_impact
-----------------
[I thank wikipedia and National Geographic have presumed that they will not have any objections to me sharing the above extract(s)/quotes from their website/video on this post which is freely viewable by all, and does not have any financial profit motive whatsoever.]
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