Tag: Chernobyl

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Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster (2019) by Adam Higginbotham is a history of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster that occurred in Soviet Ukraine in 1986. It won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction in 2020. Higginbotham spent more than a decade interviewing eyewitnesses and reviewing documents from the disaster, including some that were recently declassified.[1] Higginbotham considers it the first English-language account that is close to the truth.[1]

Source: Midnight in Chernobyl – Wikipedia

I stumbled upon Adam Higginbotham’s Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster via Libby. I decided to read it with all the discussion around embracing nuclear power in Australia as coal is wound down, as well as big tech’s embrace of small reactors to run data centres. I had wondered if I was exaggerating with regards to my emotive response to the dangers and drawbacks associated with embracing nuclear power.

It is strange reading something where you already know the outcome, especially after watching the HBO series, yet Higginbotham writes in such a captivating manner that still you do not want to stop.

Adam Higginbotham’s “Midnight in Chernobyl” is a gripping, miss-your-subway-stop read. The details of the disaster pile up inexorably. They include worn control rod switches, the 2,000-ton reactor lid nicknamed Elena, a core so huge that understanding its behavior was impossible. Politicians lacked the technical knowledge to take action, while scientists who had the knowledge feared to provide it lest they lose their jobs or lives.

Source: Looking Again at the Chernobyl Disaster by Robert P. Crease

Although I was often left wondering about how we actually know what was said. For example, clearly the workers did not speak in English. He also does a good job of balancing between the complex technology and the politics.

Higginbotham describes young workers who were promoted swiftly to positions of terrific responsibility. In an especially glaring example of entrenched cronyism, the Communist Party elevated an ideologically copacetic electrical engineer to the position of deputy plant director at Chernobyl: To make up for a total lack of experience with atomic energy, he took a correspondence course in nuclear physics.

Source: An Enthralling and Terrifying History of the Nuclear Meltdown at Chernobyl by Jennifer Szalai

The Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986, feels like it is a story of one shortcut after another. Whether it be choosing the right method (water as the coolant, not graphite), wearing appropriate protective clothing, get the batteries for the dosimeter, tell your superior about the safety test, close your window, don’t run over the hoses, tell the world etc.

Reading Midnight in Chernobyl, it feels easy to think that it would not happen here and now. We have better technology, the politics is different, but nowhere is perfect?

Bookmarked Forest Fires Are Setting Chernobyl’s Radiation Free by Jane Braxton Little (The Atlantic)

Fire also imposes one more stress on Chernobyl’s ecosystems, a decidedly human wrench thrown into their long recovery from nuclear disaster. Induced by climate change and sparked by human activity, fire here is only slightly more natural than radiation. Persistent and widespread fire may destroy soil organics and radically redistribute the accumulated radionuclides, Yoschenko said, altering soil chemistry. Changes in soil chemistry will alter plants, which in turn will affect the food chain and animals dependent on it. And larger, more intense fires could destroy the forests entirely, obliterating their ability to keep what’s in Chernobyl in Chernobyl. “Keeping forests healthy is the main ingredient to preventing the migration of radionuclides outside the zone,” Zibtsev told me.

For now, Chernobyl’s forests and grasslands are continuing to process cesium, strontium, and other radionuclides. Even the roots of the contorted trees in the Red Forest are taking up radionuclides, holding and stabilizing them in an ecosystem’s gift to the humans who created these contaminants. That process promises to continue—at least until the August fire season gets underway.

Jane Braxton Little discusses the forests that surround Chernobyl and the purpose they serve in stopping the spread of radiation and the dangers of forest fire. At least there was one positive to the Australian bushfires.
Watched The truth about Chernobyl? I saw it with my own eyes… from the Guardian

Kim Willsher reported on the world’s worst nuclear disaster from the Soviet Union. HBO’s TV version only scratches the surface, she says

In reviewing the show, Cameron Williams argues that,

Today, scientists are trying to warn us of an existential threat to our health and safety: climate change. Once again, government drags its feet.

If we take anything from Chernobyl, it should be this: put science before politics.

In 2019, we may have grasped the extreme dangers of radiation, but the war on the truth is ongoing — it’s eternal.

One of the challenges that this show highlights is the challenges associated with telling a clear narrative. Although there is no debate about Chernobyl and the disaster that occurred, making sense of the how and why is a bit more difficult. This was highlighted by the fictional scientist who combined the rolls of a number of scientists who go unmentioned.

Bookmarked Chernobyl’s radiation legacy: Zombie reactors and an invisible enemy – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (mobile.abc.net.au)
Linton Besser, Mark Doman, Alex Palmer and Nathanael Scott report on the invisible legacy that is nuclear radiation that will continue to haunt parts of Europe for hundreds and even thousands of years. As Sofia Bezverhaya, a resident who lived then and still now within 30 kilometres of the Chernobyl reactor:

This fallout was an “invisible enemy”, Sofia said. Although she “neither saw it nor felt it [and] it had no colour and no taste”, it would go on to take the lives of many of those close to her.

People are still suffering the ill effects from eating contaminated food, such as milk and berries.

As of January, of the 2.1 million people registered with Ukraine’s health authorities for treatment for Chernobyl-related illnesses, 350,000 were children.

The biggest concern is that with ageing facilities and lapsed safety standards due to financial pressures, it is feasible for another catastrophe to occur:

“This is why we call them zombie reactors, because on the one hand, we have them running. We use the electricity from them. And from the other hand, we understand that there are safety shortcomings in those reactors that might lead to an accident with the potential major consequences.” Iryana Holovko said.

The episode of Foreign Correspondent can be viewed here:

via ABC Weekend Readspo

Bookmarked How plants reclaimed Chernobyl’s poisoned land (bbc.com)

Trees and other kinds of vegetation have proven to be remarkably resilient to the intense radiation around the nuclear disaster zone.

Stuart Thompson discusses the rewilding of the environment around Chernobyl. This reminds me of the discussion of radioactive blueberries on the Guardian’s Today in Focus podcast.