Depressing facts of the Chernobyl disaster from an expert Greenpeace

There are disputes about what kind of had a blast, if left in the reactor fuel and whether the rescuers died in vain. Do not argue about it: milk fonit 16 times more than the allowable, mushrooms and berries, too, the sarcophagus full of holes, fuel scatters out and even steal it. And nothing can make another 400 years. < Website published an article "Snob" magazine, where experts talk about the very poor state of affairs in Chernobyl a quarter century after the disaster.

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It is not known how much of the radioactive fuel left in the fourth reactor damaged by explosion, which occurred exactly 25 years ago on April 25, 1986, at 1.23. Greenpeace expert Tobias Myunhmayer believes that there remains a significant part of the fuel; In this connection it is very concerned that a cement sarcophagus, crafted after the accident, in poor condition. "It will last another 5 or 15 years, but it can start to break down, it rises a cloud of radioactive dust, and then there is a risk of the new large-scale infection Once inside the sarcophagus is not less than 3,000 cubic meters of contaminated water -. It gets into the ground water" - says Myunhmayer

. An expert from the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, says physicist Konstantin Checherov sarcophagus not merely unreliable but a completely full of holes. "There's about 1400 square meters. meters of slots; winter snow trained premises, and run up to the hares, "- he said to me (in a sensational interview to" Novaya Gazeta "Checherov talks about the 20 years that he spent in research at the station, making measurements directly in the central hall of the reactor)
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However, the unreliability of the sarcophagus little worried researcher: it is known as the author of the hypothesis that the explosion, which happened 25 years ago, there was no steam, and nuclear, and almost all the fuel shattered in the stratosphere, covered the northern hemisphere strong. > from his point of view, all the actions of rescuers - and those who have been in the change in the time of the explosion and those who then dumped from helicopters are a set of chemicals - after the explosion were in vain: the people proceeded from the fact that more remained inside the reactor fuel and It begins melting. "Thirty people - direct victims - died in vain. Do anything it was too late. We had to just stand back and wait "- says Checherov

. Remaining in the reactor fuel - much of it or too little - can, according Checherov, scatter through the cracks in the form of an aerosol (that it was not enough to put an iron sheet 2 × 2 meters of the pipe and cut a treacherous shunt in the ventilation system, but no one has not yet been made). But the main risk, according to an expert - the theft of fuel; it has happened twice already, and there is no guarantee against repetition of such practices.

In any case - and then Myunhmayer and Checherov agree - radioactive materials from the fourth reactor to be fully buried (as, in fact, of the reactors number number 1, 2, 3, but it is easier with them: these units were not destroyed, and fuel stored there compact, in protected form). How and when - is unclear: they exist in the form of dust and contaminated trash inside the reactor. "Probably, for it does not take earlier than 400 years", - says Checherov, believing that by the time the radioactivity should be significantly reduced, and the work will be possible

. Victims of Chernobyl - everything is already dead, or wait for the new? "Not all, - says Myunhmayer. - Areas in a wide radius around the station are infected, and new cases of cancer and other diseases are inevitable In March this year we found a village about 150 kilometers west of the nuclear power plant, in which the milk dose of radiation exceeds the norm by 16. time. The same applies to the different gifts of the forest - mushrooms and berries. People continue to eat this contaminated food. " All these people need resettlement and full medical care, where they are now getting.



via snob.ru/thread/43#entry_34822