Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are focusing
all our attention on April 26th, 1986. A date
etched in history. Definitely. The location.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, specifically
Unit 4, right beside the planned city of Pripyat.
And what happened there in the early hours was
just... Seismic. Yeah. An explosion. So catastrophic,
it remains one of only two incidents ever rated
level seven. That's the absolute maximum severity
on the international nuclear event scale. Right.
And, you know, when you look at the sheer cost,
Chernobyl is in a league of its own. You mean
financially? Yeah, absolutely. Our sources confirm
it's the single most expensive disaster in history.
Yeah. Total estimated costs, containment, health
fallout, economic impact. It's staggering. Over
700 billion U .S. dollars. Wow. That number is
hard to even grasp. It really challenged everything,
didn't it? Political systems, science. Fundamentally,
it forced a reckoning. So our mission today is
to take this, well, this mountain of source material,
the reports, the declassified files, scientific
analyses, and try to piece together a clear narrative.
It's complex. How did a safety test? A test designed
specifically to improve safety. Exactly. How
did that lead to the reactor's complete destruction?
The core meltdown. And releasing, what was it,
400 times more radioactive material than Hiroshima
and Nagasaki combined. That's the estimate. It's
almost unbelievable. It wasn't just one mistake,
though. That's key. Right. It was systemic. Systemic
flaws, yeah. Institutional denial is where engineering
failure met, well, a kind of human arrogance,
almost. So to understand the catastrophe, we
have to start at the beginning. We have to. with
the reactor itself, the RBMK design, and the
dangers literally built into it. Okay, let's
get into this. Nuclear reactors make heat through
fission, obviously. But the critical thing, even
after shutdown, you still need cooling. Absolutely
critical. It's because of decay heat. Explain
that a bit. Decay heat. So even when the main
chain reaction stops, the leftover bits, the
fission products, and the fuel, they're still
radioactive. They keep decaying and releasing
heat. And that's significant? Yeah, yeah. About
6 % of the reactor's full thermal power. Now,
6 % sounds small, maybe. But in a massive reactor
like Chernobyl's Unit 4. Which was 3 ,200 megawatts
thermal. Yeah. That 6 % is more than enough energy
to cause a core meltdown if your coolant stops
flowing. Catastrophic overheating. And the RBMK
needed a lot of coolant flow. Just immense amounts.
These RBMK -1000s were giants. They used ordinary
water circulated by these huge electrically driven
pumps. How much water are we talking? The documentation
points to over 45 million liters per hour per
reactor, just to keep things stable across all
those individual fuel channels. It's a staggering
volume, which demands constant, reliable electricity.
Exactly. And that brings up the nightmare scenario.
A station blackout. What happens if the grid
goes down? How do you keep those vital pumps
running? Okay, so that's the safety gap they
were worried about. Precisely. In a total blackout,
you've got backup diesel generators, but there's
a lag. How long? Between 60 and 75 seconds for
them to spool up to full power. And you needed
that full power 5 .5 megawatt just for one main
pump. A whole minute or more with potentially
no cooling. That's the window of vulnerability,
that minute where decay heat could just skyrocket
temperatures. And bridging that specific 60 -second
gap, that was the entire point of the test on
April 26th. That was the goal. It was purely
theoretical at that stage. Could the turbine
itself help? The idea was harnessing the turbine's
rotational momentum, its inertia. As it spins
down after the steam is cut off, could it generate
enough leftover electricity? Enough to power
those main coolant pumps. For at least 45 seconds.
That was the target. To cover most of that diesel
startup time. Okay, makes sense in theory. But
this wasn't the first time they'd tried this
test. No, far from it. The sources highlight
a really troubling history here. Attempts in
82, 84, 85, they all failed. Failed how? Like
explosions? No, not catastrophically back then.
More technical glitches. Problems keeping the
excitation voltage stable on the generator. Or
sometimes the recording equipment just didn't
work properly. But the fact that they kept trying.
It suggests a strong push from somewhere. Maybe
pressure to just pick the box, show full safety
compliance, you know. What's really alarming,
though, is the note that the people writing the
test procedure, they didn't even know how the
RBMK behaved under these specific low power conditions.
That's more than just a glitch. That's a systemic
failure. Yeah. A huge institutional blind spot,
almost denial. And the whole environment. The
sources mention a general... Lack of safety culture.
Yeah. And we see chilling proof of that with
the emergency core cooling system, the ECCS.
The failsafe. What happened there? It's designed
to flood the core with water if a major pipe
breaks. Standard procedure. But they manually
disabled it for the test preparations. But then
the test got delayed. The key of grid controller
asked them to wait. And that ECCS system, it
was left disabled for 11 hours. 11 hours running
without that ultimate safety net. Exactly. Yeah.
Now, the ECCS being off didn't cause the explosion
directly, but operating a reactor like that without
its fundamental last line of defense for half
a day, it's just blatant disregard for protocol.
cutting the seatbelt before a risky maneuver.
Which brings us to the reactor's core design
flaw, the thing that made the RBMK so uniquely
dangerous. The positive void coefficient, yeah.
Let's break that down. Why was this feature so
hazardous? Well, first, you need to understand
why it was built that way. Unlike Western reactors
using water for both cooling and moderating neutrons.
Moderating means slowing neutrons down for fission,
right? Correct. The RBMK was different. It was
a dual -purpose design. Not just power, but historically
it was good for making weapons -grade plutonium.
Ah. So it used graphite blocks as the main moderator.
Big stacks of it. Okay, graphite moderates. What
about the water then? In this setup, the water
flowing through the fuel channels was primarily
the coolant. but it also absorbed a significant
number of neutrons. So water took neutrons out
of the reaction. Yes. And here's the deadly quirk.
A positive void coefficient means that when that
water coolant boils and turns into steam, steam
bubbles or voids, that steam is much less effective
at absorbing neutrons than the liquid water it
replaced. Oh, I see. So less water or more steam
means fewer neutrons get absorbed. Leaving more
neutrons free to cause more fission. Which generates
more heat. Which causes more boiling, more steam.
Exactly. A positive feedback loop. More boiling,
more steam voids, higher reactivity, more heat,
even more voiling. A runaway train. In certain
situations, especially at low power, yes, it
could accelerate catastrophically. Most modern
reactors have a negative void collector. Boiling
slows things down. a natural brake. The RBMK,
in certain modes, had a built -in accelerator
pedal for when things started to go wrong. So
you have the dangerous design, the disabled safety
systems, and bad timing throws another wrench
in the works. The human element. That delay from
the Kiev grid controller pushed the test off
the experienced day shift. And onto the night
shift. Who had much less time to prepare for
this really delicate, complex experiment. It
was actually in the control room. Key players.
Anatoly Dyatlov, the deputy chief engineer. He
was supervising, reportedly putting immense pressure
on the crew to get the test done. Then Alexander
Akimov, the unit shift supervisor. responsible
for the reactor itself, and crucially, Leonid
Toptunov, the senior reactor control engineer.
How experienced was he? Barely. He was only 25
and had just three months of working independently
on that console. Inexperience plus high pressure.
The recipe for disaster. And the first problem
they hit wasn't instability. It was the power
dropping like a stone. Right. They were aiming
for 700 to 1 ,000 megawatts thermal for the test.
They got down to 720 milliW, which was fine.
But then. It just plummeted. Yeah. Unexpectedly.
Down to maybe 30 milliW thermal or even less.
Practically shut down. Why? What caused that?
Something called xenon poisoning. Xenon, like
the gas? Yeah, xenon -135. It's a byproduct of
fission, and it's really good at absorbing neutrons,
kind of like control rods do. It poisons the
reaction. Okay. Normally, at high power, the
neutron flux is so intense, it burns off this
xenon as fast as it's created from decaying iodine
-135. But when they lowered the power... The
neutron flux dropped too. Exactly. So the xenon
wasn't being burned off quickly enough. It built
up... rapidly choking the reactor, soaking up
all the neutrons. So the reactor just died down.
Pretty much. And this is where the really bad
decision started. Under pressure to get the power
back up for the test. Demense pressure from Dyatlov.
They decided to basically brute force it. Override
the xenon poisoning. By pulling out control rods,
lots of them, manually removing them far beyond
safe limits to flood the core with enough neutrons
to overcome the xenon absorption and get the
power level back up. That sounds incredibly risky.
It was beyond risky. It was reckless. By 12 .39
a .m., they managed to nurse the power back up
to about 160 milliJoules. Still way below the
700 milliW they needed for the test. Way below.
But the cost was stability. To get even that
160 millioad, they had pulled out almost every
single control rod. Out of 211, maybe only six
or eight effective rods were left in the core.
Wow. Plus, to try and manage temperatures, they
were running the main coolant pumps way too fast.
Excessively high flow rate. What did that do?
It meant the water entering the core was already
very close to boiling point. So you had almost
no control rods left. And the coolant was prying
to turn into steam at the slightest provocation.
The reactor was hypersensitive to that void effect.
A ticking time bomb. And the worst part, they
didn't even know how dangerous it was. That's
the damning institutional failure. The RBMK design
lacked a crucial safety feature, real -time monitoring
of the operational reactivity margin, the ORM.
The ORM. Basically, a measure of how many effective
control rods are inserted and how quickly the
reactor could be shut down if needed. It tells
you your safety margins. And they didn't have
that reading. No real -time calculation available
to them. They had absolutely no idea their ORM
had dropped way below the mandatory minimum,
which was equivalent to having at least 15 rods
fully inserted. Regulations required an immediate
shutdown if the ORM fell that low. But they couldn't
see it. They were flying blind. Totally blind.
On the very edge of criticality without a functioning
speedometer or safety gauge. And in that state,
they started the test. At 1 .23 and 4 seconds
AM, they shut off the steam supply to the turbine.
It started to coast down, just like the test
plan intended. But the power to the pumps? Immediately
started dropping as the turbine slowed, which
slowed the water flow through the core. Less
water flow. More steam. Those voids started forming
rapidly. And that positive void coefficient,
which had been sort of held in check by the massive
water flow. Now it took over. It started driving
the reaction rate up. Yeah. Power began to climb.
They must have seen it on the control panel.
Oh, yes. They realized they were losing control.
At 1 .23 and 40 seconds, Akimov slammed the AZ
-5 button. The emergency shut down. Scram. The
last resort. Witnesses said the control room
was calm, though. Maybe they thought, OK, test
failed, shut it down, believing the AZ -5 would
work. But it didn't. It did the exact opposite.
And this is where the design flaw becomes utterly
lethal. Even if the reactor hadn't been unstable,
the AZ -5 itself was fundamentally flawed. OK,
this is the core of it, the control rods. Why
did pushing the shutdown button trigger the explosion?
It's one of the most horrifying design flaws
imaginable. The RBMK control rods weren't solid
boron carbide, the stuff that absorbs neutrons.
No. What were they? They had tips, about 1 .3
meters long, made of graphite, the same stuff
used as the moderator. Graphite tips on the neutron
-absorbing rods. Why? It was meant to enhance
the neutron economy when the rods were fully
withdrawn, pushing water out of the channel.
But when the rods were almost fully out, like
they were that night, the space below the absorber
part of the rod and the lower part of the core
was filled with a column of water. Water, remember,
absorbs neutrons. Right. So when they hit AZ
-5, the rods start moving down. The graphite
tip goes in first. It displaces that column of
neutron -absorbing water below it. And graphite
moderates neutrons. It doesn't absorb them well.
Exactly. So for those first critical seconds
of insertion, the graphite moving into the bottom
of the core actually increased the neutron population
and the reaction rate locally. It momentarily
boosted the power. Instead of shutting it down.
Precisely. A massive localized power surge right
at the bottom of the core. This was the positive
scram effect. Had anyone ever realized this could
happen? Tragically, yes. It had been observed
and documented at another RBMK plant back in
1983. But that information, classified, never
put into the operating procedures. The operators
had no warning. Unbelievable. So the power surge
was... Immediate and huge. Instantaneous. Seconds
after the button push, the output rocketed. Yeah.
It went way past 530 millidobby levothermal almost
instantly. Some models suggest it might have
spiked to 10 times the reactor's normal operating
power before things physically broke apart. What
broke first? The fuel rods themselves fractured
from the thermal shock. The fuel channels ruptured
violently. Leading to the first explosion. A
massive steam explosion. The coolant instantly
flashed a high -pressure steam mixing with fragmented
fuel. It blew the reactor vessel apart. And the
lid? The 1 ,000 -ton upper biological shield,
they called it Elena, was ripped off and blasted
straight up through the roof of the reactor building.
Gone. Shaking all the cooling pipes with it.
Severing everything. Guaranteeing the core was
now exposed, open to the air. And then the second
explosion just seconds later. Yeah, two or three
seconds later. Even bigger. More powerful. estimated
maybe 225 tons of TNT equivalent. What caused
that one? It's still steam. That's debated. The
consensus is likely further steam explosions,
maybe hydrogen combustion. But this second blast
did the final damage. It completely pulverized
the core, ejected burning graphite blocks and
fuel chunks hundreds of meters away. Which ironically
stopped the chain reaction. By dispersing the
fuel, yes, the nuclear reaction stopped. But
it started a massive graphite fire. Fueled by
the superheated graphite hitting the oxygen in
the air. There are these accounts for people
outside seeing strange lights. Alexander Yurchenko's
account is chilling. He was just outside Unit
4, saw this very beautiful, intense, laser -like
beam of blue light shooting upwards from the
destroyed reactor hall, flooding up into infinity.
What was that? Ionized air glow. just a raw visual
manifestation of the immense radiation and energy
release physics made visible and terrifying.
You mentioned the cause of the second blast is
debated. What's the alternative theory? The nuclear
fizzle hypothesis. It suggests the second blast
wasn't just steam or hydrogen, but involved a
very brief, uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction,
a prompt criticality in a small part of the dispersed
fuel. Like a tiny nuclear bomb? A very small,
inefficient one, yes. A fizzle. The evidence
cited is weirdly high. Xenon -135 levels measured
days later, hundreds of kilometers away in Sharapovets.
Why is that significant? Xenon -135 decays really
fast. Half -life is only about eight hours. To
detect it so far away so soon, proponents argue
it must have been blasted high into the atmosphere
very quickly, like in a nuclear event, rather
than just drifting slowly from the fire plume.
It's not the mainstream view, but it's out there.
Meanwhile, back at the plant, firefighters are
rushing in. Absolute heroes, but completely unaware
of what they were facing. The first unit, led
by Lieutenant Voldemar Pravik, they just saw
a fire at the power plant. Their job was to put
out the fire. Exactly. Prevented spreading to
the adjacent Unit 3, which was still operating.
Yeah. The big danger was the roof it was covered
in bitumen, which is basically asphalt. Highly
flammable. So they went up onto the roof of the
turbine hall. Straight into hell. They found
chunks of graphite scattered everywhere, burning
debris, intense heat. And the radiation. Unimaginable
levels. They described feeling pins and needles
on their skin, a metallic taste in their mouths.
Classic signs of massive radiation exposure.
They didn't know it was a reactor itself. One
firefighter famously said, we didn't know it
was the reactor. Is it the reactor or not the
reactor? They were getting fatal doses in minutes.
Compounding this tragedy was the failure to even
measure the radiation accurately at first. Utter
chaos and denial. The control room instruments
were useless off the scale. Most portable decimeters
they had were low range, only up to about 3 .6
rungens per hour. They maxed out instantly. Were
there any high range detectors? Yes. One capable
of reading up to 1 ,000 R -second, a lethal dose,
very quickly. But it was either locked away,
couldn't be found, or was buried in the debris.
They couldn't get an accurate reading. Which
led Akimov, the shift supervisor... To refuse
to believe the reactor core was actually destroyed.
He saw the damage, the graphite, but the available
low readings contradicted it. He clung to the
idea the reactor vessel was intact. And sent
his men. Sent his crew members totally unprotected
into highly radioactive areas to manually open
water valves, trying to pump cooling water into
what he thought was a damaged but intact core.
A fatal decision based on bad information. Bad
astrophic. Those workers received lethal doses
almost immediately. Akimov himself, Toptunov,
many of the firefighters and plant workers who
were there in those first hours. They died agonizing
deaths from acute radiation syndrome, mostly
within three weeks. So the immediate horror of
the explosion gives way to denial, political
denial from the Soviet Union. A culture of secrecy
that cost precious time. The explosion was 1
.23 a .m. Saturday. The world didn't know officially
until Monday, April 28th. And it wasn't the Soviets
who broke the news. No, it was Sweden. Workers
at the Forsmark nuclear power plant over 1 ,000
kilometers away set off radiation alarms just
going into work. Their shoes were contaminated.
Sweden demanded answers, and that forced Moscow's
hand. And Pripyat, the city built for the plant
workers, 50 ,000 people living right next door.
They weren't evacuated for 36 hours. 36 agonizing
hours breathing contaminated air. And when the
evacuation finally happened... It was under false
pretenses. Beased out, told it was temporary.
Just for three days, they said. Pack only essentials.
So people left. Everything. Pets, photos, documents.
Everything. Believing they'd be right back. The
initial 10 -kilometer evacuation zone quickly
became 30 kilometers. Eventually, 135 ,000 people
were permanently displaced. And Moscow insisted
on the May Day parade. Incredible, isn't it?
Issued a directive not to cancel the May Day
celebrations in Kiev, just downwind. Keep up
the appearance of normality even as invisible
poison rained down. Peak Soviet denial. Once
the scale sunk in, though, there was this immediate
fear of something even worse. A secondary steam
explosion, yeah. The nightmare scenario 2 .0.
Explain that. They realized the reactor core
debris had melted into this lava -like mass corium,
they call it. A mix of fuel, concrete, sand,
incredibly hot, maybe 1 ,200 degrees Celsius
or more. And it was melting downwards. Melting
through the concrete reactor floor. And directly
below that floor were huge pools of water. The
bubble pool is part of the pressure suppression
system. Thousands of tons of water. If that molten
corium hit the water. Bang. A massive thermal
explosion. Like dropping molten metal into water,
but on a radioactive, gigantic scale. It could
have ejected vastly more radioactive material,
potentially destroyed the other reactors. Just
unthinkable. Which led to this incredibly dramatic,
heroic moment. The Chernobyl divers. Three engineers.
Alexey Naninenko, Valery Bezpilov, and Boris
Barinov. They volunteered. Volunteer for what?
To go down into the flooded, pitch black basement
corridors beneath the reactor, wade through highly
radioactive water, find the valves for the sluice
gates, and open them to drain those bubbler pools.
Knowing the risk. They were told it was certainly
a suicide mission. The radiation levels were
astronomical. They went anyway, found the valves
in the dark by feel, opened them, the pools drained.
Did they survive? Early reports said they died
quickly. That was misinformation, part of the
mythology. Amazingly, they all survived. They
received high doses, yes, suffered health problems
later, but they lived for many years. Annanenko
is reportedly still alive today. They were decorated
as heroes decades later. But was their sacrifice
actually needed? I read later analysis suggested.
That's the tragic irony, potentially. Later probes
found the corium had actually started dripping
into the water before they drained it. But instead
of a massive explosion? What happened? When the
molten corium hit the water, it cooled rapidly,
fragmenting into this porous, pumice -like ceramic
material. Relatively stable. Some of it even
floated. So the giant steam explosion might not
have happened anyway. But they didn't know that.
They acted based on the terrifying possibility.
Absolutely. Heroism based on the best, worst
-case knowledge they had. At the same time, they
were worried about the ground under the reactor.
Yeah, contaminating the groundwater was a huge
concern, that corium mass sinking deep into the
earth. What was the plan there? Freezing the
ground? That was the ineffable wild idea. Use
oil drilling tech to inject liquid nitrogen,
create a frozen barrier underneath. Quickly realized
it was impractical. That's dead. They brought
in miners, coal miners, subway builders from
Moscow and Kiev. Their task, dig a tunnel 150
meters long directly underneath the reactor foundation.
Why the tunnel? The original plan was to install
a massive heat exchanger in it, a concrete pad
cooled by pipes to solidify the ground and draw
heat away if the corium kept melting down. Did
they build it? They dug the tunnel, working in
brutal heat and high radiation. But by the time
it was ready, they realized the corium had curved
and stabilized enough on its own. The active
cooling system wasn't needed. So the tunnel?
They filled it with thousands of tons of concrete.
Not for cooling, but for structural support.
To shore up the foundation of the damaged reactor
building, prevent it collapsing further. Now
the cleanup on top. Getting rid of the debris,
especially on the roofs, that's where the robots
came in. Or rather, where they failed. They needed
to clear about 100 tons of intensely radioactive
debris fuel fragments, graphite chunks off the
roof surround the reactor, particularly Unit
3's roof, to prepare for building the first shelter.
High -tech solution, right. Remote control robots.
They tried everything. Soviet moon rover chassis,
German police robots, Japanese models, about
60 different machines. Sent them up, pushed the
debris off. How did that work out? Terribly.
The gamma radiation fields were just too intense,
fried the electronics, cooked the batteries.
Most of the robots failed very quickly. Even
the heavily shielded ones. Oh, so technology
wasn't the answer there. Not at all. Valery Legasov,
a key scientist in the response, famously said,
We learned that robots are not the great remedy
for everything. The machines couldn't handle
it. Which left? People? The biorobots. Human
liquidators. Mostly young military conscripts.
Doing the roof cleanup manually. 90 % of it,
yes. Shoveling highly radioactive graphite off
the roof. 3 ,828 men did that specific job. How
could they possibly survive that? Extremely short
shifts. They'd run out, shovel maybe one or two
loads, and run back. Maximum exposure time was
40 to 90 seconds. Even then, they absorbed huge
doses, an average of 25 rem each, for that roof
work alone. Just incredible bravery or perhaps
ignorance of the true long -term risk. A mix
of both, probably. Duty, orders, maybe not fully
grasping the invisible danger. But it got the
job done at immense human cost. And all this
was to prepare for the sarcophagus. The first
containment structure, built incredibly fast,
between June and November 1986, a monumental
feat of engineering under impossible conditions.
What was its main purpose? Stop the ongoing release
of radioactive dust, shield the environment from
the exposed core, and crucially, protect the
thousands of workers still operating the other
Chernobyl reactors, especially Unit 3 next door.
They work in crane cabins heavily shielded with
lead. But it was never meant to be permanent.
No, it was a temporary fix designed for maybe
30 years max. It was rushed, built remotely,
full of gaps, structurally unsound in the long
run. Which led to the massive structure we see
there today. The new safe confinement, the NSC.
That gigantic arch, 105 meters high, 256 meters
long, the largest movable land structure ever
built. When was that put in place? Construction
started around 2010, finished nearby, and then
it was slid over the top of the old sarcophagus
in Unit 4 between 2016 and 2018. An incredible
project. And its purpose? Designed to last 100
years. It seals off the site, contains the remaining
radioactivity, and crucially, houses the remote
-controlled cranes and equipment needed for the
next phase. Slowly. carefully dismantling the
original sarcophagus and the reactor debris underneath.
When is that cleanup supposed to finish? The
current schedule aims for completion around 2065.
A century after the accident. Let's talk about
that long legacy. 400 times Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It's not just the amount, but the type of radioactive
stuff released. Right. Different isotopes behave
differently. Their danger depends on volatility,
how easily they spread, and their half -life,
how long they stay radioactive. What were the
main culprits from Chernobyl? Three big ones
stand out. First, iodine -131. Very volatile,
spread easily. Short half -life, only eight days.
So the danger was intense, but brief. Intense
initial danger, yes. Got into the air, onto grass,
cows ate the grass, people drank the milk. It
concentrates in the thyroid gland. Responsible
for a lot of the initial radiation dose, and
crucially, the later thyroid cancers. Okay, what
else? After the iodine decayed... Then you worry
about the long -haul isotopes. Cesium -137 is
key. Half -life of 30 years. Released as an aerosol,
fine particles that drifted far and wide settled
into the soil. And it stays dangerous for decades.
Yeah. It gets into the food chain, mimics potassium
in the body, can accumulate in muscles, including
the heart. It's a major reason large areas are
still uninhabitable. And the third one? Strontium
-90. Half -life of about 29 years. Chemically,
it behaves like calcium. So it goes to... Bones.
Exactly. Accumulates in bones, irradiates the
bone marrow, another long -term hazard. And the
spread wasn't uniform, was it? It depended heavily
on weather. Totally. Wind patterns, rain. That
determined where the worst fallout landed. About
100 ,000 square kilometers were significantly
contaminated across Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.
But it went much further. Oh, yes. Irregular
patches, hot spots appeared all over Europe.
Heavy rain washed contaminants out of the clouds,
especially over mountains. The Alps, Welsh mountains,
Scottish Highlands, Norway. Some sheep farming
restrictions still exist today because of Chernobyl
cesium in the soil. And the Soviets even tried
to control the weather. There's documented evidence
of the Soviet Air Force seeding clouds, deliberately
causing rain over parts of Belarus. Why? To try
and wash the radioactive particles out of the
air before the clouds reach major cities like
Moscow. It worked in a way, but it meant incredibly
contaminated, heavy black rain fell on towns
like Gomel in Belarus instead, just shifting
the disaster. Let's turn to the human health
impact. We know about the immediate deaths. 30
confirmed direct deaths within the first few
months. Two from the explosions, 28 from acute
radiation syndrome, ARS, among the first responders
and plant staff. A handful more ARS -related
deaths occurred over the next year or so. But
the long -term effects, especially cancer. That's
always been controversial. Highly controversial
and hard to pin down definitively outside of
one clear link. Which is? Thyroid cancer, especially
in those who were children or adolescents in
1986, living in the most contaminated areas.
That iodine -131 exposure. How many cases? By
2005, international studies confirmed over 6
,000 cases in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia that
were attributable to chiroble radiation. Fortunately,
thyroid cancer is usually very treatable if caught
early. How many died from it? Sadly, about 15
deaths were recorded from those thousands of
cases by the mid -2000s. A tragedy, but the overall
mortality rate was low thanks to treatment. What
about other cancers? Leukemia? Solid tumors?
That's where it gets much murkier. Studies have
generally not found statistically significant
increases in leukemia or other cancers in the
wider population that can be definitively linked
only to Chernobyl radiation, outside of potentially
higher risks among the liquidators who receive
the largest doses. But it's complex, hard to
separate from other factors. But the health impact
wasn't just physical radiation effects. There
was immense psychological damage. Massive. The
fear of radiation itself caused widespread anxiety,
stress, psychosomatic illnesses. People were
terrified, often fueled by sensational media
or lack of clear information. And this fear had
real consequences. Devastating ones. Studies
estimate that perhaps 100 ,000 to 200 ,000 elective
abortions occurred across Europe in the months
after Chernobyl. Abortions performed because
of fear of radiation damage to the fetus. Exactly.
even in places where the actual radiation dose
received was negligible from a medical standpoint.
In Greece alone, an estimated 2 ,500 excess abortions
were attributed solely to Chernobyl fears. Researchers
concluded this was a tragic, unjustified consequence
driven by panic, not medical necessity. Let's
look at the environment, the exclusion zone.
2 ,600 square kilometers, what happened there?
Immediately downwind, disaster. About four square
kilometers of pine forest died quickly. The needles
turned reddish -brown, became known as the Red
Forest. It was eventually bulldozed and buried.
Water contamination, too. A major worry, especially
the Pripyat River feeding into the Dunipa Reservoir
system, which supplies water to Kiev. They built
huge underwater dikes, silt traps, even a massive
underground clay wall 30 meters deep to try and
stop contaminants leaching into the groundwater.
But paradoxically, the zone today is thriving.
In terms of wildlife, yes. It's the ultimate
irony. With humans gone... The lack of competition
has turned the exclusion zone into a massive
accidental nature reserve. Wolves, wild boar,
elk, lynx, Przelski's horses reintroduced. Populations
are booming. Nature is resilient when people
leave. But the contamination is still there.
You mentioned wild boar in Germany. Yeah, it's
a weird anomaly. Wild boar in some parts of Germany
still test above the legal limit for cesium -137
consumption. For decades, everyone assumed it
was all Chernobyl fallout. That's not. Recent
studies analyzing isocope ratios, specifically
cesium -135 versus cesium -137, found that in
many German boars, a significant chunk of the
contamination actually matches the signature
of atmospheric nuclear weapons testing from the
1950s and 60s. Wow, so Cold War testing fallout
is still cycling through the ecosystem. Seems
so. It gets locked in the soil. oil taken up
by fungi like truffles which boar love to eat.
It shows just how incredibly persistent this
stuff is in the environment. A nuclear legacy
lasting generations. And we can't forget the
people who went back. The Samosli. The self -settlers.
Mostly elderly people, maybe around 180 or so
today, who illegally returned to their ancestral
homes inside the zone. They refused to leave
or came back despite the risks. How do they survive?
Assistance farming, basically. Living off the
land they know. It's a complex human story, defiance,
attachment to home, maybe a different perception
of risk, a testament to resilience of a sort.
Okay, back to the reactor site itself. Inside
that huge new safe confinement arch, the danger
isn't over, is it? No, there's an ongoing scientific
concern. Deep within the ruins, you still have
tons of that corium fuel mass mixed with debris
covered in radioactive dust. And it's still potentially
reactive. Potentially. Remember, water slows
neutrons down, making fission more likely. Well,
rainwater still seeps into the structure as that
water evaporates or levels change. It changes
the neutron environment. Exactly. If water levels
drop in certain areas where fuel debris is concentrated,
it could theoretically allow neutron activity
to increase, maybe even leading to self -sustaining
fission reactions again, not an explosion. but
the smoldering nuclear reactions. Has this been
detected? There were worrying signs. Between
2017 and 2020, instruments detected neutron density
doubling in one inaccessible subreactor room.
It seemed to stabilize in 2021. but it's being
watched very closely. What's the risk if it starts
up again? The main fear is not a big power surge,
but that sustained fission would generate heat,
dry out the remaining material further, and potentially
release more radioactive dust and aerosols inside
the NSC, making the plan dismantling incredibly
difficult and hazardous. It's a simmering threat.
Finally, the political impact. Chernobyl wasn't
just a technical disaster. It was a system -shattering
event. Mikhail Gorbachev himself later said Chernobyl
might have been the real cause of the collapse
of the Soviet Union. How so? The sheer scale
of the disaster, combined with the attempted
cover -up and the obvious incompetence in managing
it, completely eroded public trust in the government
and the entire Soviet system. It forced Gorbachev's
hand on his policy of glasnost openness. Because
they couldn't hide this. They couldn't hide something
impacting half of Europe. Glasnost, intended
to strengthen the system through transparency,
ended up exposing all its flaws and contradictions,
accelerating its demise. And declassified files
later showed the flaws were known much earlier.
That was the ultimate indictment. KGB files released
years later confirmed that scientists knew about
the RBMK's key design flaws, the positive void
coefficient, the graphite tips problem, as early
as 1973. 13 years before the accident. 13 years.
Reports went up the chain to the Central Committee.
And they were essentially buried, classified,
ignored in favor of meeting energy targets and
maintaining political face. It was a systemic,
top -down failure long before Dyatlov, Akimov,
and Topchunov were in that control room. Catastrophe
wasn't just possible. It was practically baked
in. And the economic cost still being felt today.
Hugely. Sources indicate Chernobyl still eats
up something like 5 -7 % of Ukraine's entire
national budget every single year. Belarus is
heavily impacted too. The cleanup, healthcare,
social support, it's a multi -generational burden.
It changed the world's view on nuclear power
too. Absolutely. Triggered a massive global downturn
in new reactor construction. Fueled anti -nuclear
movements, especially in Europe. Germany's decision
to phase out nuclear power has roots in Chernobyl.
It starkly demonstrated the potential consequences
when complex technology meets human fallibility
and institutional secrecy. The cost of that secrecy
was infinitely higher than the cost of openness
would have been. It really underscores the terrifying
intersection of technology, human factors, and
political systems. You had the human errors pulling
rods, disabling safety systems. You had the catastrophic
technical flaws, the void coefficient, the graphite
tips. And amplifying it all was the political
failure, the culture of secrecy, the denial.
A perfect storm on every level. So the cleanup
continues until 2065, potentially. The environmental
impacts, like on Norwegian sheep farming, could
last a century. And yet, there's still a chance
of fission starting up again inside the containment.
It leaves you with a really profound question,
doesn't it? In our increasingly complex, interconnected
world, how do we make sure these hidden institutional
flaws, these buried warnings, don't turn seemingly
small errors into global crises that span generations?
Chernobyl proved the biggest danger wasn't just
the atom, it was the arrogance and secrecy surrounding
it. What lesson from all this resonates most
strongly with you? What's the enduring takeaway?