Chernobyl: The Disaster and Its Research Paper

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In contrast, nuclear systems today are planned to respond to disasters. Even the Japanese power plants had extensive fail-safe mechanisms. The problem was, that while the Japanese had prepared for the possibility of an earthquake, they had not prepared for the danger of a tsunami following shortly afterward: "all the affected reactors initially managed to shut down automatically as planned, and begin emergency cooling operations. None of the reactors, for example, suffered damage that prevented the insertion of the control rods. When the Fukushima-1 lost power, the backup diesel generators started up as planned. But they were then knocked out an hour later, apparently by the tsunami" ("Japan's nuclear crisis," CS Monitor, 2011). Chernobyl, in contrast, was caused by human error, and the plant had no fail-safe mechanisms for even a single disaster.

While the operators at Chernobyl may have been poorly trained, the firefighters who worked to contain the fire were supremely competent -- and sacrificed their lives heroically in the line of duty. The "firemen from the town of Pripyat, Ukraine" took "their hoses onto the roof and directed water into a hole that opened onto blazing fires and exposed fuel rods" (Barringer 2011). The volunteer plant employees and firefighters at Chernobyl who tamed the burning reactor suffered lasting consequences for their heroism, even if they survived the event.

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Within three months, 28 had died from radiation exposure and 19 were dead from radiation burns. 106 others developed radiation sickness, with "nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and dropping blood counts that left them highly vulnerable to infections" (Bradsher & Tabuchi 2011:2). Years later they continued to suffer "from cataracts, severe scarring from the radiation burns to their skin and an increased number of deaths from leukemia and other blood cancers" (Bradsher & Tabuchi 2011:2). The helicopter pilots "who flew through radiation-laden smoke spewing from the reactor to drop fire-extinguishing chemicals on it" suffered the highest rates of exposure.

The lives of the firefighters, workers, and people who died in the blast or from the subsequent environmental aftershocks of the Chernobyl disaster cannot be brought back, but we can learn from their mistakes. While the nuclear industry is far safer than it was in 1986, the problem of safety and planning has clearly not been solved. However, better communication and sharing of knowledge regarding safety within the industry has improved, even though the dangers that can be posed to nuclear power plants are clearly just as virulent as ever, whether they are human-generated or originate in the natural world.

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