Not wormwood, but might as well have been
Contrary to popular belief, Chornobyl (the proper spelling of Chernobyl) does not mean wormwood (Artemisia absinthium; the city is named after the more mundane species Artemisia vulgaris L. or mugwort) in Ukranian, thus preventing it from representing the Biblical disaster foretold in Revelation 8:10-11.
Chernobyl was, however, the worst peacetime nuclear disaster the world has yet seen, far surpassing the Three Mile Island incident.
What sets both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island apart from the horrific effects of the nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is, of course, that the two Japanese blasts of 1945 were deliberate.
The American and Ukranian disasters happened because, like any good act of hubris, the people responsible were convinced that nothing could possibly go wrong.
The entire nuclear experience has been fraught with hubris-laden events. In December of 1942, Dr. Enrico Fermi achieved the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, with a natural uranium device moderated with graphite. Fermi conducted the process using the first demonstration reactor, Chicago Pile 1, though some of his graduate students were concerned that the reaction would melt into the ground under the stadium bleachers. In November of 1955, an experimental breeder reactor in Idaho partially melted down during a test; the cause was attributed to operator error. In October of 1957, the plutonium production reactor at Windscale in England caught fire and spread approximately 20,000 curies of radioactive iodine across Great Britain and northern Europe. During 1957, Soviet nuclear facilities near Kyshtym in the Urals exploded due to poor waste handling procedures, spreading contamination over an enormous area. In January of 1961, the reactor at Idaho Falls went out of control causing a rupture of the building; the damaged core was reported to have emitted more than 500 rems per hour. In October of 1966, the Enrico Fermi experimental breeder near Detroit was the site of what was considered an "uncomfortably close call," as its core partially melted. Although a runaway reaction was prevented, the reactor was permanently disabled. In March of 1979, equipment failures and human error contributed to a partial core melt at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. In January of 1983, the Atomic Industrial Forum, a pro-nuclear power group, published a statement that "No member of the public has been injured or killed from a reactor accident at a commercial nuclear power plant... No plant employee ever has exhibited clinical evidence of serious injury from radiation... The nation's most serious commercial nuclear plant accident (the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island) did not alter this unparalleled record of safety." This language, of course, smacks of industrial-grade hubris...
In April of 1986, runaway reactions during a test at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor near Kiev in the Ukraine caused a series of explosions that ruptured the containment structure and sent massive amounts of radiation throughout the Northern Hemisphere; the incident at Chernobyl resulted in over 75 million people being exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation. In August, Soviet medical experts predicted an increase of nearly 30,000 cancer-related deaths over a 50 year period due to exposure to radiation from Chernobyl.
One site gives a capsule history that "Russian engineers and scientists began preliminary tests on Chernobyl power plant's reactor. In order to control the experiment, the automatic control system was shut down. Stability was reached at very low power outputs, but manual control of the water pressure wasn't maintained and, without the automatic system, the control rods couldn't be reinserted in time. Within three to four seconds, the reactor went from five percent output to one hundred times its normal level. The water in the reactor flash-boiled, and the steam carried nuclear material out of the reactor into the environment. Several thousand volunteers died on the scene, and it is estimated that 7,000 to 10,000 volunteers died in total. The Ukrainian birth defect rate is now double the world average, 150,000 were put at risk for thyroid cancer, over 800,000 children may contracting leukemia, and two million acres of land (one fifth of the usable farmland in the Ukraine) was, and remains, completely unusable."
In the aftermath, the Russians eventually admitted that workers on the site were overruled by superiors, and safety practices were ignored because "nothing can go wrong". Eventually, they built a 'sarcophagus', a pile of 300,000 metric tons of concrete, to try and encase the destroyed reactor. (Twenty years later, of course, it is leaking. They are now trying to build a super-sarcophagus, designed to last a hundred years. The pile of nuclear material it contains may well be 'hot', however, for thousands of years.)
Before that, of course, the Soviets tried to conceal everything: that an accident occurred at all, that it was of significant magnitude, that their efforts to control it had failed, that the public was in danger, that many firefighters and construction workers were being killed or maimed in the cleanup efforts, and that the danger would both spread and last a long time.
Hubris killed thousands of Ukrainian and Russian workers and soldiers, poisoned wide areas of Central Europe, and will continue to sicken children in the Ukraine and Belarus for decades to come.
Chernobyl was, however, the worst peacetime nuclear disaster the world has yet seen, far surpassing the Three Mile Island incident.
What sets both Chernobyl and Three Mile Island apart from the horrific effects of the nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is, of course, that the two Japanese blasts of 1945 were deliberate.
The American and Ukranian disasters happened because, like any good act of hubris, the people responsible were convinced that nothing could possibly go wrong.
The entire nuclear experience has been fraught with hubris-laden events. In December of 1942, Dr. Enrico Fermi achieved the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, with a natural uranium device moderated with graphite. Fermi conducted the process using the first demonstration reactor, Chicago Pile 1, though some of his graduate students were concerned that the reaction would melt into the ground under the stadium bleachers. In November of 1955, an experimental breeder reactor in Idaho partially melted down during a test; the cause was attributed to operator error. In October of 1957, the plutonium production reactor at Windscale in England caught fire and spread approximately 20,000 curies of radioactive iodine across Great Britain and northern Europe. During 1957, Soviet nuclear facilities near Kyshtym in the Urals exploded due to poor waste handling procedures, spreading contamination over an enormous area. In January of 1961, the reactor at Idaho Falls went out of control causing a rupture of the building; the damaged core was reported to have emitted more than 500 rems per hour. In October of 1966, the Enrico Fermi experimental breeder near Detroit was the site of what was considered an "uncomfortably close call," as its core partially melted. Although a runaway reaction was prevented, the reactor was permanently disabled. In March of 1979, equipment failures and human error contributed to a partial core melt at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history. In January of 1983, the Atomic Industrial Forum, a pro-nuclear power group, published a statement that "No member of the public has been injured or killed from a reactor accident at a commercial nuclear power plant... No plant employee ever has exhibited clinical evidence of serious injury from radiation... The nation's most serious commercial nuclear plant accident (the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island) did not alter this unparalleled record of safety." This language, of course, smacks of industrial-grade hubris...
In April of 1986, runaway reactions during a test at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor near Kiev in the Ukraine caused a series of explosions that ruptured the containment structure and sent massive amounts of radiation throughout the Northern Hemisphere; the incident at Chernobyl resulted in over 75 million people being exposed to dangerously high levels of radiation. In August, Soviet medical experts predicted an increase of nearly 30,000 cancer-related deaths over a 50 year period due to exposure to radiation from Chernobyl.
One site gives a capsule history that "Russian engineers and scientists began preliminary tests on Chernobyl power plant's reactor. In order to control the experiment, the automatic control system was shut down. Stability was reached at very low power outputs, but manual control of the water pressure wasn't maintained and, without the automatic system, the control rods couldn't be reinserted in time. Within three to four seconds, the reactor went from five percent output to one hundred times its normal level. The water in the reactor flash-boiled, and the steam carried nuclear material out of the reactor into the environment. Several thousand volunteers died on the scene, and it is estimated that 7,000 to 10,000 volunteers died in total. The Ukrainian birth defect rate is now double the world average, 150,000 were put at risk for thyroid cancer, over 800,000 children may contracting leukemia, and two million acres of land (one fifth of the usable farmland in the Ukraine) was, and remains, completely unusable."
In the aftermath, the Russians eventually admitted that workers on the site were overruled by superiors, and safety practices were ignored because "nothing can go wrong". Eventually, they built a 'sarcophagus', a pile of 300,000 metric tons of concrete, to try and encase the destroyed reactor. (Twenty years later, of course, it is leaking. They are now trying to build a super-sarcophagus, designed to last a hundred years. The pile of nuclear material it contains may well be 'hot', however, for thousands of years.)
Before that, of course, the Soviets tried to conceal everything: that an accident occurred at all, that it was of significant magnitude, that their efforts to control it had failed, that the public was in danger, that many firefighters and construction workers were being killed or maimed in the cleanup efforts, and that the danger would both spread and last a long time.
Hubris killed thousands of Ukrainian and Russian workers and soldiers, poisoned wide areas of Central Europe, and will continue to sicken children in the Ukraine and Belarus for decades to come.
posted by Rico at 20:30
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