R.+Weidner+Nuclear+Powerpoint+2

The nuclear explosion is Chernobyl was tragedy that occurred in 1986 in the country of Ukraine. It was around one in the morning when one of the reactors in the nuclear power plant exploded. It happened when the workers were doing experiments with the safety system. When they were testing, the reactor failed to receive enough coolant and had heated up. The reactor became unstable and unpredictable.When the workers tried to insert the control rods, a reaction occurred.

An excessive amount of steam in the reactor caused a break which destroyed a part of it. Soon after that fires were caused by the high heats and exposure of graphite to oxygen. Debris was shot miles away and smoke covered miles of ground all the way to Belarus. The entire city was evacuated. At least 5% of the radioactivity was carried with the smoke. 28 people died in the following months. In total there have been 56 deaths due to the radioactivity from the plant.



During the problems with the safety tests the automatic shutdown mechanisms were turned off. Due to poor design in the reactor, a power surge occurred. When the steam exploded the plate off, fission products flew into the atmosphere. Following that the explosion of graphite occurred and burned for 9 whole days. there was a major relief effort including 5,000 tonnes of material dumped onto the fires to put it out.

Most of the radioactivity that was released turned into to dust and debris shortly after it's release. Most of the deaths were of fireman who worked up close with the fires. Immediately, people were given radiation doses and those who were evacuated received them shortly after. Today the reactor is covered in a concrete shelter. There has been massive reconstruction to the nuclear plant including repairs to the roof and removal of all material containing the radioactivity. This disaster has been a prime example for other plants all over the world. Everyone wants to make sure nothing like that ever happens again.

__**BIBLIOGRAPHY**__:

- http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.htm - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl - http://www.uic.com.au/nip22.htm