Research Paper on "Chernobyl Disaster"

Research Paper 15 pages (4354 words) Sources: 10

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Chernobyl Disaster

The disaster that occurred at Chernobyl changed the way the world views Nuclear Energy. It caused a lot of damage to the surrounding environment as well as to people's physical and mental well-being. It not only affected the immediate area but also many other areas as well. Russia determined after this disaster that there were totally not prepared for crises of this magnitude. This disaster led too many changes in the country's communication in regards to emergency preparedness. This disaster also led to many other countries changing their views in regards to nuclear energy and its overall uses.

Mechanism of Incident/Injury

In April 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident was the result of a faulty Soviet reactor structure together with severe errors carried out by the plant workers. It was a direct result of Cold War segregation and the consequential deficiency of any security. The Chernobyl tragedy was a distinguishing occasion and the lone mishap in the history of commercial nuclear energy where radiation-related losses happened. Nevertheless, the structure of the reactor is distinctive and the catastrophe is therefore of slight significance to the rest of the nuclear business external to the then Eastern Bloc (Chernobyl Accident, 2010).

The Chernobyl Power Complex is situated about 130 km north of Kiev, Ukraine, and about 20 km south of the boundary with Belarus. It was made up of four nuclear reactors of the RBMK-1000 design, units 1 and 2 being built from 1970 and 1977, while units 3 and 4 of the same structure were finished in 1983. Two more RBMK reactors were being built in the same place at the time of the disaster. On the southeast side of the plant, there was a manmade lake positioned alongside the river Pripyat, a branch of the Dniepr. It was built in order to supply chill water for the reactors. This region of Ukraine is portrayed as Belarussian-type woodland with a little populace concentration. About 3 km removed from the reactor, was the city of Pripyat that had 49,000 people. The old town of Chornobyl, which had a populace of 12,500, is about 15 km southeast of the reactor. Inside a 30 km radius of the power plant, the entire populace was between 115,000 and 135,000 (Chernobyl Accident, 2010).

Source: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html

Casualty Figures

The misfortune damaged the Chernobyl 4 reactor, killing thirty workers and firemen inside three months and a number of additional deaths afterward. One individual was killed instantaneously and a second died in hospital shortly after as a consequence of the injuries they received. Another person was reported to have died at the time from a coronary thrombosis. Acute radiation syndrome (ARS) was initially identified in 237 individuals on-site involved with the cleaning. Twenty eight people reportedly died as a consequence of ARS within a few weeks of the mishap. Nineteen more consequently died between 1987 and 2004 but their deaths cannot completely be accredited to radiation contact. No one off-site experienced heightened radiation effects even though a huge amount of youth thyroid cancers identified because the accident is liable to be due to exposure to radioactive iodine fallout. In addition, great parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia and beyond were infected in a variety of amounts (Chernobyl Accident, 2010).

Medical Response

This accident resulted in acute radiation illness of 134 people and the death of thirty employees at the reactor site. It also fashioned the possibility to unfavorably influence the well-being of roughly five million people living in lands where soil pollution concentration is high. Additionally, nearly 800,000 accident recovery employees who partook in clean-up actions and were exposed to radiation are being constantly examined by way of medical examinations. Because of extensive radioactive fallout, such mishaps are not restricted to the country where the accident took place. This means that international labors must be taken on for awareness and reaction in the event of future mishaps (Souchkevitch, 1997).

Local response

In order to put out the fire and stop a severe misfortune as well as any additional considerable discharge of fission products, boron and sand were dispensed on the reactor from the air. Additionally, the injured unit was entombed in a provisional solid sarcophagus, in order to bar additional discharge of radioactive material. Control actions were taken in order to decrease radioactive pollution at and close to the plant site incorporated cutting down and burying a pine forest of roughly one square mile. The three additional units of the four-unit Chernobyl nuclear power station were afterward resumed. The Soviet nuclear power administrators offered a preliminary report on the mishap at an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) meeting in Vienna, Austria, in August 1986 (Backgrounder on Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident, 2009).

Following the disaster, admission to the vicinity in a 30-kilometer (18-mile) radius about the plant was shut down, except for people needing executive admission to the plant and to the direct vicinity for examining and dealing with the results of the mishap and process of the unharmed units. The residents left the most profoundly polluted regions numbered roughly 116,000 in 1986 and another 230,000 individuals in succeeding years. Pripyat, the town next to Chernobyl where the majority of the employees at the plant lived prior to the disaster, was emptied a number of days following the disaster, due to radiological pollution. It was incorporated in the 30-km Exclusion Zone surrounding the plant and was shut down to all but those with official access (Backgrounder on Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident, 2009).

Government response

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) believed that they were able to cope with the results, at least until 1989, when it asked for help from the WHO and the IAEA to assess the results of the disaster in environmental and health conditions. In reply, the IAEA fashioned the International Chernobyl Project, which supervised a visit to the distressed regions and made a complete report on radiological results and defensive actions. Afterwards the team was broke up. Public apprehension was extensive, and the questions put forth by the public to IAEA specialist panels at public meetings showed the degree of this worry. Subsequent to the crumble of the U.S.S.R., the results became the accountability of three newly sovereign states: Ukraine, Russian Federation, and Belarus, the poorest and most seriously affected. Other UN associations then became more concerned. In May of 1991, the WHO headquarters initiated the International Project on the Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident with greater than $20 million in financial support, principally from Japan. The European Regional Office of the WHO had a sturdy plan in place, subsequent to its original reaction to the mishap, to help its member states supplementary to the U.S.S.R. In their reactions to the disaster. In October 1991, the European Regional Office of the WHO opened an office in Rome with a task including the influences of ionizing radiation on well-being. This headquarters rapidly became concerned with the influenced countries. Over the subsequent year or two, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs began fundraising and supplied humanitarian support for the three now very economically disadvantaged countries, as did the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the European Commission, the Red Cross, the Sasakawa Foundation from Japan, the United States, Netherlands, Germany, and several other countries, non-governmental associations, and charities. A lot of these associations, the EC, United States, and Japan, among others, also sustained research (International response to the Chernobyl accident, 2008).

Economic issues

Separately from the clear massive cost of crisis assistance and relocation, the disaster has also taken on an enormous toll on the region's capability to generate wealth. The affected regions which were once the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, particularly in the Ukraine, included what was formerly the most productive land in the U.S.S.R. The area which once supplied food for people all through the Soviet Union is now condensed to bringing in everything. No one maintains that if it were not for Chernobyl the region would be a financial marvel, but it is irrefutable that the tragedy has had a distressing impact on the financial system. Nowadays, even safe food crops produced in the region are almost impossible to sell for the reason that no one believes that they are harmless. The affected area also includes an enormous area of woods, which is now polluted. Timber was once a kind of hard money in this area, but it, too, is now unfeasible to sell. These complexities leave the different governments with enormous and ever growing trade deficits, and as a result there are very few funds for enormous clean up and resettlement projects (Chernobyl a continuing Disaster, 2000).

Communication issues

It has become very obvious from the original responses of the capable national authorities that they were unsuspecting for an disaster of such scale and they had to make choices, as the disaster developed, on standards that could have been recognized in advance. This also meant that too many associations were concerned with… READ MORE

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