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Conducting Safety Tests
Chernobyl workers were conducting safety tests in order to find out what they could do if they lost power. This caused them to disable crucial safety units. -
Reactor Overheats
A less experienced worker named Leonid Toptunov was part of the reason the reactor overheated. Reactor capacity started rapidly declining, causing the reactor to almost shut down. -
Starts Protocol
The main engineer, Anatoly Stepanovich Dyatlov, then took over to attempt to control the reactor. To increase the reactor's power, he took out the control rods. The reactor's capacity shot to dangerous levels, until it was well over 10,000% power. -
Explosion
In order to try to lower the heat and power, they put the rods back in. The heat and pressure caused the rods to warp, which sparked small reactivity, which quickly turned into a huge explosion. The separate explosions triggered a large fireball to shoot out, blowing off the steel and concrete lid of the reactor. -
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Cause of Explosion
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What Authorities Did to Deal With It
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Ignoring the Disaster
Mikhail Gorbachev, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, decided to not tell the other members of the Soviet leadership. -
Brainstorming
Boris Shcherbina (Soviet politician-vice chairman of the Council of Ministers-crisis management) then arrived to help think of how to handle the situation. Nothing was done until another explosion happened, which was caused by a chain reaction. -
Evacuation
After lots of convincing, they were finally able to convince Shcherbina that the town needed evacuated. -
Controlling the Explosion
Firefighters and police arrived at the scene, but unfortunately none of them were told of the dangerous radiation levels. They attempted to control the situation. -
Refusing to Leave
Armen Abagian (director of a nuclear power research in Moscow) began protesting to Shcherbina that the city needed to be evacuated, but officials again declined. -
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Aftermath
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Worst in History
The fire from the reactor and explosion burned for ten days after the initial explosion, and it is considered the world's worst nuclear explosion. -
Sarcophagus
The reactor is now covered in a huge, steel concrete sarcophagus. It was built like that in hopes that the covering would last for over 100 years. -
Health Was Affected
The exposure to radiation caused about 20,000 cases of thyroid cancer. 31 people died from the initial explosion, the thermal heat, and cardiac arrest. Long term effects from the radiation
include: leukemia and cataracts -
Mental Health
Diagnosis's of PTSD rapidly increased after Chernobyl, along with anxiety and depression disorders. -
Where It Is Today
The city of Pripyat, the city that was near Chernobyl, is now completely abandoned. You can book a tour there, but it is a little dangerous as the radiation levels are very, very high.
