Saturday, April 30, 2005
More Chernobyl Memories
Well, I have gotten some interesting reactions to yesterday's post about my visit to Chernobyl, so I guess I'll keep going. You'll recall, I decided to post because an acquaintance of mine is trying to raise money to help maintain the sarcophagus that surrounds the pile of horrifically radioactive waste that used to be the reactor. Here is a picture I took of that acquaintance, Dr. Alexi Yablokov when I met with him in Moscow about a week before I went to Chernobyl.
The visit itself was, for me, quite exciting. My wife thinks I'm a little different that way. I grew up in tornado country and loved to go outside and look for them when most were in their basements for protection. She took me to the site of Mt. St. Helen's and witnessed my utter joy at seeing the raw power that had wrecked havoc on the area she grew up in. I have vociferously declared my desire to witness from a safe location an actual nuclear explosion. So, the opportunity to visit this disaster just made me giddy.
The most extraordinary thing about it was the relative normality. When you approach the "30 km exclusion zone" you are stopped and inspected as I depict here.
But checkpoints were, when I was there - it was still the Soviet Union, so commonplace that you hardly paid attention. At the 10 km limit you changed everything, clothing, transportation all of it. Nothing but your naked, carefully showered body was allowed out of the 10 km zone. You were issued very raw woolen uniforms that you returned on departure. It felt like a scene from Dr. No, so again, it was kind of cool.
But aside from the isolation that I discussed yesterday, things seemed most normal. Birds flew around, plants grew. Now bear in mind I was there 7 years after the accident, but still one kind of expected to come up on some glowing pile or something.
The sarcophagus was, of course the highlight. Recall the reactor ran out of control and caught on fire. The resultant steam explosion blew the building apart. Thus the highly radioactive smoke and ash from the fire now rode high into the atmosphere and it was this radiation that was first detected in western Europe.
There were two essential problems. One was to get the fire out. Unlike a fire in your fire place, this one would keep burning forever, and at temperatures hot enough that the fire would work it's way through the crust of the planet. The other problem was what to do with the extraordinarily nasty pile of radioactive goo and debris that the extinguished fire would leave behind.
The fire was put out with huge amounts of boron sand. The boron quenched the nuclear reaction and the sand robbed the fire of oxygen. The sand was placed on the fire the hard way, and at the cost of many lives. People flew over and stood near a giant burning pile of radioactive garbage to dump the sand on it. There was no other way, and almost all died.
There simply was no way to handle the mess that was left, so they decided to build a giant container around it -- this is the sarcophagus. They imported miners to dig below and construction people to work above to build the giant box I described yesterday. With the fire out and by carefully controlling shifts, these people, save for some of the miners, did not die quickly or acutely. However, the cancer rates among these people are unimaginable. Most are now, some 20 years later, dead.
Needless to say, witnessing the sarcophagus from it's exterior is all any one can really do. To monitor inside, usually holes are drilled and cameras inserted, but on rare occasions, people have entered, for extremely brief periods in extremely protective lead lined suits, but the interior is a hell on earth and the risk enormous.
And now, the sarcophagus rots, threatening to once again release its contents to the greater world. I am searching for ways for the average citizen to contribute to the efforts to help maintain the sarcophagus. When I find them, I will let you know.
Do you still want more about this? Let me know. I really am afraid to bore you.
UPDATE
Here are parts one and three in my series on my visit to Chernobyl.
The visit itself was, for me, quite exciting. My wife thinks I'm a little different that way. I grew up in tornado country and loved to go outside and look for them when most were in their basements for protection. She took me to the site of Mt. St. Helen's and witnessed my utter joy at seeing the raw power that had wrecked havoc on the area she grew up in. I have vociferously declared my desire to witness from a safe location an actual nuclear explosion. So, the opportunity to visit this disaster just made me giddy.
The most extraordinary thing about it was the relative normality. When you approach the "30 km exclusion zone" you are stopped and inspected as I depict here.
But checkpoints were, when I was there - it was still the Soviet Union, so commonplace that you hardly paid attention. At the 10 km limit you changed everything, clothing, transportation all of it. Nothing but your naked, carefully showered body was allowed out of the 10 km zone. You were issued very raw woolen uniforms that you returned on departure. It felt like a scene from Dr. No, so again, it was kind of cool.
But aside from the isolation that I discussed yesterday, things seemed most normal. Birds flew around, plants grew. Now bear in mind I was there 7 years after the accident, but still one kind of expected to come up on some glowing pile or something.
The sarcophagus was, of course the highlight. Recall the reactor ran out of control and caught on fire. The resultant steam explosion blew the building apart. Thus the highly radioactive smoke and ash from the fire now rode high into the atmosphere and it was this radiation that was first detected in western Europe.
There were two essential problems. One was to get the fire out. Unlike a fire in your fire place, this one would keep burning forever, and at temperatures hot enough that the fire would work it's way through the crust of the planet. The other problem was what to do with the extraordinarily nasty pile of radioactive goo and debris that the extinguished fire would leave behind.
The fire was put out with huge amounts of boron sand. The boron quenched the nuclear reaction and the sand robbed the fire of oxygen. The sand was placed on the fire the hard way, and at the cost of many lives. People flew over and stood near a giant burning pile of radioactive garbage to dump the sand on it. There was no other way, and almost all died.
There simply was no way to handle the mess that was left, so they decided to build a giant container around it -- this is the sarcophagus. They imported miners to dig below and construction people to work above to build the giant box I described yesterday. With the fire out and by carefully controlling shifts, these people, save for some of the miners, did not die quickly or acutely. However, the cancer rates among these people are unimaginable. Most are now, some 20 years later, dead.
Needless to say, witnessing the sarcophagus from it's exterior is all any one can really do. To monitor inside, usually holes are drilled and cameras inserted, but on rare occasions, people have entered, for extremely brief periods in extremely protective lead lined suits, but the interior is a hell on earth and the risk enormous.
And now, the sarcophagus rots, threatening to once again release its contents to the greater world. I am searching for ways for the average citizen to contribute to the efforts to help maintain the sarcophagus. When I find them, I will let you know.
Do you still want more about this? Let me know. I really am afraid to bore you.
UPDATE
Here are parts one and three in my series on my visit to Chernobyl.
