A delegation of Japanese scientists and Ukrainian journalists have visited Prypiat as part of the workshop “From the Ruined 4th Power Unit of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant to a New Safe Confinement” organized by NATO, the state-run specialized enterprise Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP), and the Institute of Nuclear Power Stations’ Safety. The group could not only get firsthand information on the situation in the Exclusion Zone and see the New Safe Confinement, but also hear the specialists who had been dealing with safety in nuclear technologies, including the Chornobyl cleanup, for decades.
Prypiat. Nobody has ever fired a shot here, and the last explosion rang out 31 years ago. Some people were then glad to see a blue glow at night, thinking that the station was getting ready for May Day celebrations. But, in reality, it was the glow of gamma rays from the ruined 4th unit of the ChNPP, one of the most advanced nuclear power stations at the time. It became clear in the morning that something fatal had happened, although far from everybody was aware of the disaster’s degree. The wind was blowing northwards, which saved Kyiv to some extent. Humankind is still only studying the phenomenon known as Chornobyl disaster which the Book of Revelation predicted in the allegory of a bitter star named Wormwood. May Day celebrations were really coming up, and the Soviet leadership eventually decided not to cancel the traditional parades, all the more so that, by a coincidence, it was the 100th anniversary of Working People’s Solidarity Day. Eyewitnesses noticed that Communist Party leaders stood cowering on the October Revolution Square (Independence Square now) dais and peeping at their watches. They seemed to be in a hurry...
THE “TASTE” OF RADIATION
The car with a guide is also running in a hurry across the Zone. It is not allowed to stop at some places. When we asked the driver to stop so we could take a good photo of a torch-shaped stele, he only rushed on in silence. The so-called “red woods” are almost entirely not red now (the woods contaminated in 1986 were bulldozed and buried underground). But as soon as man left these places, bears and roes appeared again in the revived woodland. And not only they. Nature is winning, although scientists claim the ecosystem in Belarus is reviving faster.
Photo by Artem SLIPACHUK, The Day
But when you approach the trees, the radiation dose may reach the yearly limit in an hour, even though the background radiation is quite acceptable five meters away on the road. Prypiat itself is literally wrapped with the forest. The once inhabited highrises have drowned in green leaves. The frozen Soviet-era antiquity, with its symbols, furniture, and telephone booths, is being gradually swallowed by the relentless law of nature. It is good to relax here. A total silence allows you to hear an almost inaudible whisper of the wind, and you won’t notice that you have stepped on a crack in the asphalt, a manhole, or the roadside. And you’d better not do so. A foreign journalist was so much absorbed in photographing that he tried to dive into the entrance of a building. They caught up with and calmed him. The phrase “It’s dirty there!” is not at all about outer cleanliness. Radiation has no taste or smell and reminds people of itself by the crackling of a dosimeter only. Yet scientists say radiation acquires both taste and smell in very high doses. The first people who got into a fight against fire and radiation could feel the smell of ozone in the air (the result of the increased ionization of oxygen) and the taste of metal on the tongue.
THE ISOLATED ATOM
What do we know about the ChNPP accident? What do we know about radiation in general? For example, when the explosion occurred, the station personnel hosed down the radioactive fuel with water, which led to negative consequences, including a self-supporting chain reaction and the increased emission of radioactive steam. The personnel was not warned at all about a number of likely processes (it was not written in the instructions), as a result of which the consequences of the certain actions of operators, who carried out an ill-fated experiment on the night of April 26, were opposite to the intentions. Likewise, far from everybody were aware of the consequences of radiation’s spread and impact, even though the 21st century was round the corner.
“For millions of years, the organisms that eventually evolved into the human being, were forced to live exposed to a radiation that was much higher than now,” radioecologist Serhii Paskevych says. “So it is wrong to say that radiation is an absolute evil. We should understand the way our DNA works. It gets ruined continuously, and the organism always works to renew it. Exhaustion leads to ageing. Nevertheless, the force that renews DNA is very powerful, and humankind can respond to such challenges as the ChNPP blast. Our institute works on simulating all the processes that are potentially dangerous not only at the ChNPP itself, but also across the entire Exclusion Zone. Our goal is to turn Shelter Facility into an environmentally-friendly system.”
Photo by Mykola TYMCHENKO, The Day
According to experts, the accident was not only a Rubicon for the power station’s life – it also catalyzed the establishment of the principles of safety culture in the nuclear sector. Now the ChNPP and the Exclusion Zone have also become a platform for exploring unique natural and manmade processes. One of the main and most difficult goals for scientists is to fully decommission the station and dispose of the entire nuclear fuel, 97 percent of which still remains in the reactor under the sarcophagus (Shelter Facility – “Obiekt Ukryttia”) to be covered now with an arch known as New Safe Confinement (NSC). The latter so far performs the function of isolating the sarcophagus (commissioned in November 1986) from outside water.
SAFETY ABOVE ALL
“The confinement is an intermediate and not the most important stage,” Paskevych says. “A number of very important operations were carried out to build the NSC. The territory needed to be cleared as much as possible of hazardous radioactive elements. There is a very strong background radiation from the ruined reactor at the height of 30-40 meters in the Shelter Facility. So it was decided to build an arch a distance away and then put it on the sarcophagus. So now, before anybody begins to work at the facility, dosimetricians first come to take samples, measure the background radiation, and spot the sources of radiation. The rules of workers’ behavior are established in accordance with this because the duration of work at the facility depends not only on the place, but also on whether the worker stands with his face, back, or side to the source of radiation.”
“I was at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant four years after the accident,” says Viktor Krasnov, head of the nuclear and radiation safety department at the Institute of Nuclear Power Stations Safety. “I must say that, in spite of the ChNPP accident experience, Japanese specialists faced some new risk factors. It is really rather difficult to forecast everything. For example, the cause of their tragedy was a tsunami. The station was isolated from the ocean’s waves with a 7-meter-high dike. Unfortunately, at that time, in 2011, the wave reached 14 meters. So there are many factors – human, technological, and situational – that can cause an accident.”
Photo by the author
As for the safety of staying at the ChNPP and in the Exclusion Zone, Krasnov assures us that there is a special monitoring service. He also shows a map of dangerous areas inside and outside the station. Krasnov himself has worked at the station for 26 years and is convinced that, if safety regulations are strictly observed, there will be no special danger for people to stay here. He believes that some people have a certain phobia and begin to feel something even when approaching the Zone. In reality, it is nothing but autosuggestion. Krasnov shows a photo of the reactor’s orifice in 1986. At present, the radiation level in this place reaches 1,500-3,000 roentgens an hour, while the safe dose for man is 25 roentgens.
“IT WAS UNREASONABLE TO SHUT DOWN THE ChNPP”
Asked by The Day if it was reasonable to shut down the Chornobyl station in 2000, Paskevych said categorically that it was not. He is convinced that the closure of the ChNPP was a political step that resulted in the loss of a powerful supplier of electric energy for the country and of jobs for the personnel. Paskevych absolutely believes in the station’s safety. It will be recalled that the ChNPP had produced 150.2 billion kWh by April 26, 1986. The world community in turn assumed the role of a helper to finally settle the ChNPP problem.
IN 1986 THE MISFORTUNE “BARED ITS TEETH” BY A MERE 3-4 PERCENT
The Japanese delegation and the journalists went from the observation ground, from which the 109-meter Confinement is in plain view, to the personnel room. You can see through its windows the work in progress near the station, which looks like an organized anthill. It is not allowed to photograph from this angle. The station personnel told the Japanese a detailed story of the ChNPP construction, about the developments on April 26, 1986, and the current goals of scientists. The cutaway mockup of the station and the sarcophagus allows one to see clearly what happened inside this structure. Some may even find it hard to think that here, next to the almost futuristic structure of the Confinement, a misfortune lurked and “bared it teeth” to the world by a mere 3-4 percent. The tragedy did not assume a larger scale thanks to 90,000 “liquidators” (on the whole, more than 200,000 people were involved in the Chornobyl cleanup), many of whom literally shielded the world from a major disaster – an uncontrolled nuclear reaction – with their bodies.
The Shelter Facility, which was hastily built in a short time under a high radiation, represents a number of dangers. There are many unstable structures inside – a problem that must be solved immediately. The Confinement itself, under construction since 2007, can minimize hazards to the environment, but experts think the situation inside the NSC will only be worsening. Among those who share this opinion, is Pavlo Krukovskyi who is in charge of NSC heat exchange research and simulation. He says the NSC allows raising the level of radiation safety, reducing the likelihood of ruination by way of dismantling the unstable structures, reducing the consequences of a likely collapse of the facility’s framework, and increasing the Facility’s nuclear safety by preventing atmospheric humidity from penetrating into the clusters of fuel-containing materials (which in turn reduces the risk of such an extremely dangerous process as the abovementioned self-supporting chain reaction).
IT WILL TAKE 100 YEARS TO TURN THE ChNPP INTO A SAFE SYSTEM
“The goal of our NATO-supported project is to measure and make a model of the processes that occur in the Confinement that ‘hangs’ over the Shelter Facility,” Krukovskyi continues. “This model has already been made, and there are 10 measurement points at the facility. We are now exchanging experience with the Japanese who also have a major problem at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. The Confinement has only covered but not fully isolated the sarcophagus. For this reason, we are working to fully isolate it. A very important point is penetration of outside water into the Shelter Facility. This process represented danger both to reactions in the flow itself and to the environment owing to the emission of radioactive vapor. But now radioactive moisture is being condensed in the Confinement. So measuring, analyzing, and forecasting are top-priority operations with respect to the Confinement at this stage.”
While the service life of the Sarcophagus (Shelter Facility) was planned to be 30-40 years, that of the Confinement is 100 years. Within this time, the ChNPP must be turned into an environmentally-friendly system. After all, the NSC is supposed to ensure the implementation of the next stages of this strategy thanks to the durability of NSC structures, the possibility of dismantling unstable structures, and the final withdrawal of fuel-containing materials. NATO is also keen on having the ChNPP-related dangerous factors neutralized. NATO representative Susanne Michaelis not only took part in the workshop, but also visited the ChNPP, Prypiat, and other facilities in the Exclusion Zone together with the Japanese delegation.
According to scientists, the ChNPP Decommission Strategy defines the ultimate condition of the industrial area, from the radiological viewpoint, as “brown spot.” This means that measures should be taken to dismantle the equipment and structures. Besides, the radioactivity of all structures and facilities should be brought to the specified levels. The ground will thus be finally decontaminated as the main source of ionizing radiation.
However, we also ought to remember two more factors – economic and political –associated with this strategy. Asked by a journalist what the installation of the Confinement’s arch helped to achieve, a station employee said jokingly: “Visa waiver.” Yet the abovementioned ultimate goal of the strategy (“cleanup of the area”) is economically unreasonable. For this reason, scientists are mapping out the ChNPP Decommission Concept which will define the final condition of the place as “industrially-developed area.” This kind of approach is supposed, on the one hand, to ease funding from Ukraine’s budget (it will be recalled that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development took part in funding the ChNPP-related work for a long time) and, on the other, to restore economic activities in the Exclusion Zone.
