Environmental Systems and Societies 2019/21

1.1 Environmental Value Systems

CHERNOBYL DISASTER

Year: 1986
Location: North ​Ukraine
Classified as:
Nuclear/environmental disaster

What happened?

The Vladimir Ilich Lenin nuclear power

plant, located in northern Ukraine, on the
night of April 26 (1986), the nuclear base
team was instructed to perform a test to
find out what happened if the main reactor
power supply was cut off and how long
could it take continuing producing energy.
Since the previous days, some tests had been carried out that required reducing the power,
during this a series of imbalances occurred in the reactor 4 of the nuclear power plant, which
resulted in the overheating of the nuclear reactor core and in one or two explosions
successive, followed by fire, which blew the 1200 ton reactor cover and expelled large
amounts of radioactive materials into the atmosphere, forming a radioactive cloud that
spread across Europe and North America. ​Considered as the worlds worst nuclear disaster in
history (​scale 7).

Immediate effects:

Two hundred people were hospitalized immediately, of which 31 died (28 of them due to
direct radiation exposure). Most of them were firefighters and rescue personnel.

Significance:

The Chernobyl disaster also resulted in a large economic and political bill that accelerated
the end of the USSR and promoted an international anti-nuclear movement. The world
began to question nuclear energy as they were aware of the danger it could cause, and
began to consider the use of other means to make energy.

It is estimated that the disaster has cost more than 210,000 million euros in damages.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/topics/reference/chernobyl-disaster/
https://www.nationalgeographic.es/historia/2019/05/el-desastre-de-chernobil-que-ocurrio-y-s
us-consecuencias-largo-plazo