The explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, of course, can be considered the largest man-made disaster in the history of mankind. This is not the first and not the last tragedy related to nuclear energy, but so far there is nothing comparable in scale to what happened on April 26, 1986 . And I really want to believe that it will not. The consequences of that accident still make themselves felt, although many of the victims have long been dead. However, the radiation that killed them has a detrimental effect on their children and grandchildren.
All this, of course, raised doubt in the minds of many people: how safe is the use of atomic energy in general ? This question is all the more acute since most of the materials on Chernobyl are still not declassified. And with the causes of the disaster, not everything is clear that it only adds fuel to the fire. Immediately after it, all the blame was entirely assigned to the station personnel. However, given that the composition of all the commissions included, first of all, people who designed the reactor and the station itself, it is difficult to assume a different result. Now there are several versions of why the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant did occur: these are the design flaws of a particular type of reactor, the defect in the equipment of a particular station, the failure of the reactor cooling system, the experiment conducted that evening, and violation of the technical regulations by the station personnel .
It is impossible to say with certainty that out of all this that really caused a disaster. Most likely, there was a combination of all these factors. Ironically, an experiment was conducted that evening to ensure station safety in the event of an emergency.
An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant could have caused much less damage if it had not been decided then how to maintain secrecy as long as possible. Even the residents of the settlements closest to the station, until the last, were sure that nothing dangerous had happened, although it was necessary to begin the immediate evacuation of the population.
The population began to be exported only after 2 days, on April 28. It was then that the Soviet media gave information about the Chernobyl tragedy, although foreign publications have already written a lot about it. And it is not known how many games of secrecy would continue if the gusty wind had not brought radioactive clouds to Europe.
And here you can see the difference in the attitude of the governments of the countries towards their citizens. The first increased radioactive background recorded workers of one of the nuclear power plants in Finland. Even before it was found that the problem was not of a local nature, the population of the surrounding cities and towns was evacuated.
The explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant occurred late at night. Firefighters were the first to arrive at the scene. They quickly realized what really happened, however, despite the lack of appropriate equipment, they completed their work, and by morning the fire was extinguished. Over the next few days there was no way to approach the reactor, since its temperature exceeded the mark of 5000 degrees. And a cloud formed over the station, consisting of a huge number of tiny radioactive particles.
When the temperature dropped, a huge moat was dug around the station. The remains of the exploding reactor were piled into it. Then it was all flooded with a thick layer of solid concrete to avoid radiation leakage. But nothing could be done with the cloud of destructive ashes, and over time it completely circled the earth. Unfortunately, because of this, the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant affected almost every corner of our planet.
But most of all, the disaster affected those who eliminated its consequences. And here, in many ways, the desire to hide what happened and its consequences from the country's inhabitants played a role again. Doctors have instructed everyone who does not have obvious signs of radiation sickness to diagnose “vegetative-vascular dystonia. Because of this, those who liquidated the consequences of the explosion experienced difficulties proving that their condition caused an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
It is hard to imagine how enormous harm this catastrophe caused to the entire planet. Its consequences still make themselves felt: the number of cancer patients and children born with various malformations, including with Down's syndrome, has increased.