April 25, 2016, marked the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, the worst disaster in the history of nuclear power generation. The Chernobyl power station, located in the town of Pryp’yat (now in Ukraine), consisted of four 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors. During the night of April 25–26, 1986, technicians began a series of ill-fated tests on the Unit 4 reactor. Error followed error as emergency systems were bypassed or shut down, until, at 1:23 AM on April 26, the reaction went out of control. A series of explosions blew the lid off the containment structure (which was rudimentary by Western reactor standards). The reactor core partially melted down, and a great amount of radioactive material was released into the atmosphere.
The Soviet response was initially concerned with concealing the incident from the West, but on April 28 Swedish monitoring stations reported abnormally high levels of wind-transported radioactivity and pressed for an explanation. The Soviet government admitted there had been an accident at Chernobyl, thus setting off an international outcry over the dangers posed by the radioactive emissions. A week passed before the heat and radioactivity leaking from the reactor could be brought under control, and it took months to fully enclose the reactor core in concrete and steel (the structure was later determined to be unsound).
In many ways, the cost of Chernobyl is still being calculated, but in September 2005 the Chernobyl Forum, comprising seven United Nations organizations and programs, the World Bank, and the governments of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, published a three-volume, 600-page report assessing the impact of the accident on public health. Approximately 50 emergency workers had died of acute radiation sickness shortly after the accident, and 9 children had died from thyroid cancer because of radiation exposure. Between 50 and 185 million curies of radionuclides escaped into the atmosphere—several times more radioactivity than that created by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. It was estimated that an additional 3,940 people were likely to die from cancer during a prolonged period after the accident.
Hundreds of thousands of “liquidators” were tasked with the removal and disposal of contaminated material from the area around the plant, but, three decades after the accident, Pryp’yat remains a ghost town. Today the Ukrainian military limits access to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a 1,100-square-mile “dead zone” centered on the reactor, but much of the area has been subject to looting in the past. Amid the crumbling Soviet-era architecture, trees burst through the pavement and plants have overtaken many structures. Although radiation levels remain dangerously high in many areas, the absence of humans has made the Exclusion Zone a de facto nature preserve. Ironically, the area’s postapocalyptic atmosphere has been a draw to tourists, with this year’s somber anniversary and the 2011 Fukushima accident in Japan sparking additional interest in the site. Although access to the Exclusion Zone is tightly controlled, thousands visit each year.
Disasters of Historic Proportion