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Chernobyl Reactor Plant built
Chernobyl The reactor was built in 1977 and lasted for a while until it exploded in 1986. It was built 80 miles in the marshlands of northern Ukraine. It's first reactor went online in 1977, the second in 1978, third in 1981. Two more were planned for construction for later years. A small town was also built next to it to house the workers and their families. -
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Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail responding to the disasterhttp://goo.gl/ntTPn Gorbachev was the General Secretary of CPSU from 1985 to 1991. He resigned when he knew the Soviet Union was falling in 1991. 1991 was also the year that Ukraine delcared their independence from the Soviet Union. He reacted to the disaster by saying that he "Didn't know the extremes of the situation". -
The exact minute of the explosion
Timeline minute by minute
1:23.44 am, the operator realized a mistake in the reactor, and pressed the emergency shut down button. But, this was the thing that made the reactor hit its last straw. Normally it would have worked, but reactor number four was not working under normal conditions and had the opposite effect and exploded, killing 31 people on the spot. -
Chernobyl Disaster
ChernobylChernobylLate in the day, a badly conducted experiment went wrong, which resulted in a humungous explosion, which threw a 1000 ton roof completely free of the entire building which allowed 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the atmospere and downwind.
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Pripyat Evacuated
The plant operator's town of Pripyat was evacuated on April 27th, 1986. Pripyat had approximatly 45,000 residents. They had to be evacuated because all of the radiation had the ability to cause mutations -
The News Spreads
No reports were released until the third day after the Chernobyl explosion. Then, Swedish authorities correlated a map of enhanced radiation levels in Europe with wind direction and announced to the world that a nuclear accident had occurred somewhere in the Soviet Union. Before Sweden’s announcement, the Soviet authorities were conducting emergency fire fighting and clean-up operations but had chosen not report to the accident or its scale in full.
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Sarcophagus
Chernobyl SacrophagusA protective cover is placed over the reactor called the "Sarcophagus." It is said to protect the enviroment for 30 years from the dangerous radiation. The cover locked in 200 tons of radioactive corium, 30 tons of highly contaminated dust and 16 tons of uranium and plutonium. To go inside the dome is nearly impossible due to the extremly high amounts of radiaiotn that have been built up in it. -
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Children of Chernobyl
Children of chernobylChildren of ChernobylIn 1990 a foundation by the name of Children of Chernobyl was createed to provide safety for the children affected by the nuclear disaster. It acts as a foster program where a family will take in a child and rasie them and care for them as their own. The program has been spread to countires and cities all around the world. Depending on your location or personal desire the process varies. Some families will foster children for only a certain amount of time and other will adopt them full time. -
Ukraine Independence
http://goo.gl/UTnPX Ukraine is now a Presidential parlimentary, and they adopted their first post-Soviet constitition on June 28, 1996. Before they declared independence, they were apart of the Soviet Union, which led them to be communist. Even though this was sometime after the explosion, it is still significant event in the history of Ukraine. -
Construction of Radioactive Waste Management Facility
In 1999 a contract was made for the construction of radioactive waste management facility. The purpose of the contract was to store 2,500 used fuel assemblies from the first three units and other operational wastes. The contract also contained a processing facility which was able to cut the fuel assemblies and put material in canisters. -
A silver lining
it turns out that the radioactive cloud may have a silver lining. Recent studies suggest that the 19-mile (30-kilometer) "exclusion zone" set up around the reactor has turned into a wildlife haven. Roe deer bounce though the deserted houses while bats roost in the rafters.
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Reconstruction Begins
The work on a new cover for the reactor begins. The old reactor that was built right after the accident is breaking down and not protecting. Planning and preperation for this consrufction has been going on for the past three years. The new cover is 180 meters and 20,000 tons and will be placed on rails to be slid over the old cover, costing a total of 1.17 billion dollars.
