On the night of April 26, 1986, reactor four of the Russian nuclear power plant Chernobyl exploded, the worst nuclear accident in history. A radioactive cloud spread across Europe, displaced more than a hundred thousand Soviets and eventually claimed thousands of victims. Thirty years later, NEMO Kennislink visited the abandoned 'forbidden zone'. Can the nuclear remains ever be cleaned up?
Absolute tranquility reigns in a post-apocalyptic world. Birds chirp, butterflies flutter and for the rest there is silence. One of the most impressive silences I've ever experienced. Together with my four Dutch travel companions and the Ukrainian guide Igor Bodnarchuk I walk across the central square of Pripyat. This was once a lively town built especially for the workers of the gigantic Chernobyl nuclear power plant a few kilometers away. Thirty years ago, nearly 50,000 people lived in the dilapidated and steadily overgrown buildings around me.
That changed abruptly in 1986. On the night of April 26 of that year, reactor four of the nuclear power plant exploded. Due to human error during a safety test, the temperature in the system rises far too much with a meltdown as result. Parts of the reactor melt during this process. In addition, steam and hydrogen are formed in the overheated reactor (with temperatures well above a thousand degrees), resulting in a series of explosions. They punch a gaping hole in the roof of the power plant, from which large amounts of radioactive cesium, strontium and plutonium escape in the following days.
Disaster tourist
The cloud containing tiny shreds of radioactive material drifts northwards, covering hundreds of kilometers of area with a 'layer' of radioactivity. Most of the material comes down in a region that is now in the north of Ukraine and the south of Belarus. Pripyat is also hit, without the residents realizing it. It took more than a day for the authorities to evacuate the city. The place where I now do an organized tour. Today I am a disaster tourist.
In Pripyat, the Geiger counters beep regularly. The compact radiation meters warn us about places with increased radioactivity. Especially at some Bodnarchuk hotspots calls. A pile of leaves near a drainage pipe, a hole in the asphalt at the abandoned fairground. At a piece of cloth in the reception hall of the former hospital, the counter goes through the roof. The display says 79.8 microsieverts per hour, about 280 times the normal background radiation in the Netherlands. The guide knows all the places by heart. He says he has been to the disaster area about 700 times.
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30 years of no man's land
An abandoned gym in Pripyat.
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30 years of no man's land
A classroom in an abandoned school building.
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30 years of no man's land
Toys in a nursery. Everywhere in the 'forbidden zone' around Chernobyl there are still personal belongings of the people who lived there.
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30 years no man's land
A daycare center, the building is gradually decaying.
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30 years no man's land
The central square of the working-class town of Pripyat. After it was abandoned 30 years ago, the trees are now growing through the asphalt.
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30 years no man's land
Abandoned buildings on the main square of Pripyat.
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30 years no man's land
The bumper cars at the Pripyat fair, which have become a symbol of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
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30 years no man's land
The Ferris wheel at the Pripyat fair, which has become a symbol of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
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30 years no man's land
Pripyat's public swimming pool has been empty for 30 years.
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30 years of no man's land
Cots in Pripyat Hospital.
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30 years of no man's land
Operating room in Pripyat hospital.
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30 years of no man's land
Entrance of Pripyat Hospital.
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The disaster site
Reactor four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, with in the foreground the monument commemorating the disaster that occurred 30 years ago.
Doubt
Who would venture into such a nuclear battlefield? Before the trip I hesitated. As impressive as the desolate scenes surrounding Chernobyl must have been, was it worth exposing myself to what may have been a dangerous dose of radioactivity? However, if you look at the numbers soberly, you quickly seem convinced.
Between the short-lived peaks, the elevated background radiation in Chernobyl is usually less than half a microsievert per hour, 'just' a few times the normal background radiation. At the end of the day, the counter shows a total dose of 0.003 millisievert. And that's okay. For example, travelers in an airplane at high altitude are also exposed to increased (but safe) doses of cosmic radiation. I probably received more radiation during my flight from Amsterdam to Kiev than during my visit to the Chernobyl 'forbidden zone'.
New Safe Confinement
Less fortunate were the firefighters who were the first to be sent to the disaster site to extinguish the resulting fire. Dozens of them died within a few days from the effects of acute radiation sickness. According to the guide, the piece of cloth from just now where the Geiger counter was running was part of a fireman's suit…
The situation at reactor four now appears to be reasonably under control. When I come face to face with the ramp reactor, the Geiger counter in my pocket beeps, but the radiation level is lower than in some places in Pripyat just down the road. The hole in the roof of the reactor building was closed in the months after the disaster with a sarcophagus, a construction that hermetically seals the inside of the reactor. Still, there are concerns, for example about how long this sarcophagus will protect from the radioactive material inside.
While the reactor building and sarcophagus on my left look old, dingy and rusty – it reminds me of the scenes further up in Pripyat – something very different can be seen on the right. Here rises a brand new sarcophagus of shiny metal, the so-called New Safe Confinement (NSC). The dimensions are impressive:according to the builders, the Parisian Notre-Dame cathedral would fit in the more than a hundred meters high hall.
Images of the New Safe Confinement, the second sarcophagus that is eventually slid over the Chernobyl disaster reactor. It is 110 meters high, 165 meters long and 260 meters wide.
One of the builders is the Dutch company Mammoet, a company that specializes in heavy lifting. The Dutch help build and place the sarcophagus. “We lifted the sarcophagus in pieces and at the end of this year we will be called in again to slide the NSC over the old sarcophagus,” Kees de Rijk said later on the phone. He is commercial director of Mammoet and has been involved in planning and construction for about ten years.
Now the completion of the impressive colossus is approaching. On the roof I suddenly notice two workmen, no more than two tiny dots on the immense curved roof. According to De Rijk, the new sarcophagus has two functions. It is intended to protect the old hastily built sarcophagus against weather influences such as rain and snow that have been acting on the steel and concrete for almost thirty years. It is also possible to work on the dismantling of the reactor in the closed hall. The nuclear material can get a safe place for good.
Dismantling
After the accident in reactor four, the remaining three reactors at Chernobyl have been running for years, the last until 2000. Our guide Bodnarchuk tells that thousands of people are now involved in the dismantling process of the intact part of the plant, whereby the radioactive material such as the nuclear fuel is stored safely for the long term.
There are proven methods for the regular demolition of a nuclear power plant, according to André Wakker. He is a former nuclear physicist and business manager at the Dutch company NRG in Petten, which manages its own nuclear reactor and, among other things, advises on the dismantling of old power stations. “This has been 'industrial practice' for at least twenty years and is done by specialized parties with a lot of experience,” he says. “But even if the three other reactors themselves are not damaged, you are of course working in Chernobyl in a difficult environment because of the radiation in the vicinity of the damaged reactor.”
The decommissioning of the badly damaged reactor four is a completely different story. That process is far from a standard job. The parties involved say they want to do this eventually, but it is unclear how and when this will happen.
Without knowing exactly what the situation is in Chernobyl, Wakker says it will be quite a job to get the highly radioactive nuclear fuel - the 'fuel' of a nuclear power plant - from the badly damaged reactor. “In a normal nuclear power plant, this is routine work. It happens every year, for example, when the fuel is changed,” he says. “Without the nuclear fuel, about 99 percent of the radioactivity is already out of the system, making decommissioning a lot easier.”
Wakker explains that with regular dismantling, the reactor can be cleaned up after the nuclear fuel has been removed. The first concerns the metal and concrete parts that were closest to the core and that have themselves become radioactive due to the years of bombardment of neutrons in the reactor. “All this can be done remotely in the reactor vessel by robots, usually at the bottom of the protective reactor pool,” he says. “Eventually you get the parts in, for example, lead containers up and they can go to storage.”
Things will not go that fast in Chernobyl. The disaster reactor was badly damaged and because of the fuel rods still present, it contains much more radioactive material than in a regular nuclear power plant (to be decommissioned). In addition, the high temperature melted the fuel and, along with parts of the reactor, including metal and concrete, leaked through the floor to the floors directly below the reactor. That is a challenging and dangerous environment to say the least, for both humans and robots.
Construction workers and tourists
To this day, the area around the reactor is off-limits, up to 30 kilometers from the nuclear power plant. In some small villages in the wooded region people are living again. They are 'tolerated' as original inhabitants who do not want to leave and who take possible health risks for granted. Because although the area directly at the reactor has been cleaned up somewhat with regard to radioactive material, that is an impossible task for the 60 kilometer large 'prohibited zone'.
Studies conducted in recent years show that populations of wild animals, such as wolves, wild boars, foxes and raccoon dogs, appear to be barely affected by the radioactivity in the area.
Apart from the wildlife, the zone is mainly the domain of tourists, and the construction workers who have the monumental task of dismantling the reactor in this century. Wakker is cautiously optimistic about this:“In principle, Chernobyl can also be cleaned up safely. But not without all kinds of protective measures such as the new sarcophagus, a good plan, sufficient budget and of course a lot of patience.”