my essay
Chernobyl Paper The nuclear disaster that happened at the Chernobyl power plant was one of the most catastrophic nuclear accidents that the world had ever seen. It left the world shocked and scarred. The event occurred on April 26, 1986 at 1:23 a.m. at Chernobyl near the city of Pripyat in Ukraine (former USSR). Reactor number four at the power plant had a massive power surge that caused the reactor to blow up. As a result to the explosion, very dangerous amounts of lethal radiation were spread throughout the atmosphere. On the day of the industrial accident, there was a junior team that was performing a safety test to determine if the turbines could produce enough energy to keep the pumps that cool the reactor running if there was a loss of power until the backup reactors turned on. There was a man named Uri who was the operator in charge of the massive turbines that power the reactor. Leonid Toptunov controls the rods of the reactor which give it more power, but the power started to plummet which he was not expecting but he eventually solves the problem by increasing the power and thinks the reactor is stable at this point. Then, Boris, the man in charge of the water pumps, starts to add water but too much is being added too quickly, which means there is not enough steam to power the turbines and the turbines power the water pump. To help, Leonid increases the power to produce more steam to make the pumps pump water, but this means that the core is at really high temperatures because Leonid increased the power a lot. They think everything is stable but they don’t know the temperature is dangerously high. They proceed with the test anyway and tell the operator to shut down the turbines. The reactor’s temperature skyrocket and it starts to destroy the core and the number four reactor eventually explodes. Right outside of the plant, there was a fisherman that became an eyewitness to the explosion and said, “It was like a volcanic eruption.” (“Meltdown in