How bad was Chernobyl disaster! Pt.1

src

You've probably seen or at least heard about HBO's new miniseries Chernobyl it's a fantastic drama and richly deserves all the awards it'll probably win but just how accurate is the series how bad was the Chernobyl disaster,

let's rewind to April of 1986 the Vladimir island nuclear power plant more casually referred to as Chernobyl after the nearby town that used to be the only landmark in the area was destined to be a problem this plant home

to inherently flawed RBMK reactors is located just outside the town of Pripyat in the northern part of Ukraine near the Belarusian border around 1:00 a.m. on the 26th of April 1986 Chernobyl workers conducted what was meant to be

a routine test this test was intended to simulate a power outage and required workers to intentionally disable emergency safety and power regulation systems long story short thanks to a combination of reactor design flaws and user error reactor number four

suffered a catastrophic meltdown vaporizing the water in the tank and causing an explosion that blasted radioactive graphite into the surrounding area this exposed the destroyed reactor core to air and sparked a graphite fire which sent

up a massive plume of radioactive smoke as well as what was described as a very beautiful beam of bluish light which was one visual indication of ionized air surrounding the fire two men were killed immediately in the explosion and a further twenty nine died from

acute radiation poisoning in the days and weeks after the event though a later report puts the total number of short-term deaths at 54 among them a helicopter crew attempting to douse the fire and a physician and journalist who arrived shortly after the explosion

but the initial damage from the explosion and the radiation poisoning of those nearby was just the beginning of the problem what came later would cement Chernobyl's place as the worst nuclear disaster in history unfortunately for the people of Pripyat the town

was not evacuated immediately and people started falling ill reporting uncontrollable coughing and vomiting severe headaches and a persistent metallic taste it took approximately 36 hours before the order to evacuate the town was given this was intended

to be a temporary measure and as such most people left all their belongings behind the evacuation soon became permanent so the city of Pripyat stands as a sort of irradiated time capsule with homes left almost exactly as they were on that April day in 1986

the roughly 53,000 citizens were initially moved only a short distance away but over the next 10 days the evacuation zone would grow to 30 kilometers and has remained that size to this day based on later estimates the reactor.