Written by: Maneth Perera

The Chernobyl Disaster is one of the worst nuclear disasters in human history. Around 160,000 km2 around the nuclear plant were affected, and large portions of Russia and Ukraine were rendered inhabitable for life. We see effects trickling down to today with nuclear monstrosities sitting around the power plant, and high rates of specific diseases in the generations sprouting from ancestors who cleaned up the disaster. Let’s zoom in on these effects, so maybe we can stop history from repeating itself.

Initial Disaster

On April 26, 1986, a low-power test was run on one of the reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine. A power surge hit the reactor aggressively, causing the nuclear core to rapidly overheat. Control rods meant to manage the core’s temperature were not inserted in time, and there weren’t enough control rods in the first place, meaning the core got hotter and hotter (Hill, 2020). Workers and technicians were in a panic as they attempted multiple emergency shutdowns of the core, but it was too late.

Figure 1

A cross-section of RBMK reactor 4, the reactor that blew up and caused the tragedy. One can see the fuel rods, control rods, and water cooling system encased around the core with many tons of concrete and steel.

Source: Andrew Leatherbarrow in Chernobyl 01:23:40

The core reached such high temperatures that the control rods broke apart into pieces, and the water used in the cooling systems throughout the reactor started to vaporize and increase the pressure within the core. Although the core was surrounded by a few tons of steel and concrete, the pressure had built so high that, coupled with the radioactive energy, the core burst, sending the core lid flying and collapsing the entire reactor.

The nuclear fuel rods, control rods, and other machinery were disintegrated or melted into each other as the nuclear compounds inside were able to release uncontrolled amounts of ionizing radiation into their surroundings. The floors and basement sublevels collapsed as melted nuclear sludge made its way down (Hill, 2020). Meanwhile, the nuclear waste sitting on the surface was now exposed to the open air, where it released plumes of irradiated ash and toxic chemicals into the atmosphere. As air moved into the reactor core, it was ionized by the extreme temperatures and helped ignite even more explosions as it reacted with graphite blocks and other parts of the core (International Atomic Energy Agency, 2016).

The Elephant’s Foot

The Elephant’s Foot is a nickname for the material that had eaten through the basement of the nuclear plant. Slowly oozing its way through pipes and melting steel, the material came to rest as it started cooling down in a deep part of the basement. The Elephant’s Foot is made up of a material known as “corium”, which is an umbrella term for the composite material that results when a nuclear core melts down and combines multiple highly radioactive materials together (Hill, 2020). An extremely rare material, only created 4 other times during other nuclear meltdowns, corium used the laws of chemistry to continue irradiating the environment for the coming decades.

In a nuclear reactor, we generally see heavy elements such as Uranium and Plutonium. These elements release photons, electrons, and neutrons from their nucleus in an attempt to move down to a more stable atomic configuration, but in the process hit other atoms with their ejected particles. This initiates chain reactions as atoms release energy when ejecting particles that hit other atoms, making them also release particles and forming a cycle. Mainly beta decay is what makes atoms drop down into stable configurations, although gamma decay also occurred for certain compounds in Chernobyl. Additionally, lighter elements with special isotopes such as Iodine, Strontium, and Cesium are excited by these stray particles, leading them to release more radiation themselves. These atoms all have a long half-life, allowing them to release particles for a long time, thus making the Elephant’s Foot a self-sustaining source of pure radiation. In fact, uranium oxide, one of the molecules found in Chernobyl’s corium, can generate up to 2000° Celsius by itself just through nuclear fission, half as hot as the surface of our sun (Hill, 2020).

Figure 2

A depiction of the different types of radioactive decay.

Source: sciencenotes.org

Initial Adverse Effects

Many of these extremely hot and volatile molecules fragmented apart and generated intense energy within the Elephant’s foot, which ionized the air of the surrounding room in which it’s located. Many photographs of the Elephant’s foot have a grainy quality to them, not because of a poor resolution, but because the camera is trying to capture irradiated air. Spending simply 2 minutes by the Elephant’s foot was enough to cause long-term radiation sickness, and 4 minutes meant an almost-certain death sentence (Hill, 2020). The radiation would smash through your cells, leaving you with fatigue, nausea, internal bleeding, fever, hemorrhaging, and other acute side effects.

Figure 3

A timed selfie taken by technician Artur Korneyev, showing the grainy air quality along with a lens flash of him by the Elephant’s Foot.

Source: Artur Korneyev

A hastily made shelter was constructed around the plant shortly after the disaster, but it collapsed over the years due to disrepair and the high temperature emanating from the facility. Animals who were born around the area presented with strange physical deformities (Britannica, 2019). Ecosystems were disrupted as wind blew radioactive ash northwards towards other countries to land in more water sources. Many people died from radiation sickness due to close proximity to the Chernobyl disaster, with 2 deaths from the initial explosion and 28 deaths from the initial cleanup crew (International Atomic Energy Agency, 2016).

Long-Term Safety Risks

A short amount of time spent, even outside of the room, would still lead to many early deaths for the liquidators who came to contain the disaster. The compounds in the Elephant’s Foot had a wide array of adverse health effects on them. Iodine is linked to thyroid cancer, strontium-90 is linked to blood cancer (leukemia), and cesium causes spleen issues and liver failure (Britannica, 2019). Radionuclides, or the unstable atoms that try to break down and release radiation, flew up into the atmosphere, tainting the air. They seeped into the surrounding soil, moving into groundwater reservoirs and getting picked up by the water cycle. They then found their way into aquatic life and moved up the food chain to impact the people of Europe and Western Asia to this day.

Figure 4

A slide picture from an unknown Russian photographer who was sent down to take one picture. This picture is famously haunting as it led to the photographer dying of acute radiation sickness just days later.

Source: Dr. William Zoller of the University of Washington

Rates of thyroid cancer skyrocketed in adolescents and teens in the years after the disaster with around 1800 documented cases, much higher than baseline (International Atomic Energy Agency, 2016). Studies done on radionuclides found a higher presence of radioactive material in many foods within Europe. Agricultural fields have had radioactive particles move into their soil and add carcinogenic compounds to produce. Thousands of people were evacuated from nearby villages in the wake of the disaster, and those areas are still deemed an exclusion zone due to the hundreds of radioactive materials landing there (World Nuclear Association, 2024).

Conclusion

The gross safety violations by technicians at the Chernobyl nuclear plant sent ripples through decades of history, leading to safety risks for the people of today. The area around Chernobyl is now uninhabitable for most animal and plant life, and the facility is scorched. Containment efforts and research into the special materials made during the disaster are still ongoing, as we learn more about the mistakes of those in the past. As engineers create new and modernized power plants with more safety regulations, we can’t forget the cast foot of Chernobyl sitting in the basement, a deadly reminder of the power within nuclear reactors.

Sources

Britannica. (2019). Chernobyl Disaster. In Encyclopedia Britannica. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Chernobyl-disaster

Hill, K. (2020). The Elephant’s Foot – Corpse of Chernobyl [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIWu8rbWLGo

International Atomic Energy Agency. (2016, November 7). Frequently Asked Chernobyl Questions. IAEA. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/chernobyl/faqs

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (2022, March 1). NRC: Backgrounder on Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident. Nrc.gov; United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/chernobyl-bg.html

World Nuclear Association. (2024, April 26). Chernobyl Accident 1986. World-Nuclear.org; World Nuclear Association. https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident