Chernobyl: Anatomy of a Man-made Catastrophe

I've just visited the site of the worst nuclear accident in history: the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.

The accident cost the lives of hundreds of first responders, shortened the lives of many thousands or even tens of thousands in the surrounding areas, forced the evacuation of people from a large area of Ukraine and Belarus, and spread contamination throughout all of Europe. Areas as far away as Corsica experienced an uptick in thyroid cancer, resulting from the release of radioactive iodine.

Now contained in a second sarcophagus (pictured above), the immediate vicinity of exploded Reactor #4 has been rendered relatively safe. However, much of the exclusion zone is still quite radioactive, so it's best to stick to known tour routes.



The Ukrainian town of Pripyat was the largest settlement to be abandoned. As a Soviet "Model City", it had a substantially higher standard of living then most parts of the USSR. It had plentiful electricity from the power plant, and was lit up like a Christmas tree. The town also enjoined priority when being resupplied; it largely avoided the shortages that perpetually plagued the USSR.
The 50,000 townspeople were evacuated two days after the incident, after already receiving high doses of radiation. They were not told the reason for the evacuation, and were told they would return soon. The inhabitants would never be able to return, and became radiological refugees.

We were warned not to eat any fruit we found, which seemed silly until we realized great looking apples grew everywhere.

The exclusion zone is incredibly beautiful. This would have been a nice place to live if not for nuclear catastrophe, or communist oppression.


The accident was a tragedy, but was also completely avoidable. The reactor itself was not built to proper safety specifications, and contained several design flaws that contributed to the accident. The reactor had a high Positive Void Coefficient, which means that steam bubbles increase the level of free neutrons in the reactor. This raises the energy in the reactor and produces more steam, creating a feed-back loop. Additionally, the graphite control rods had a fatal flaw. When they are engaged, they displaced neutron-absorbing water before they reached their proper positions. This meant that the emergency shutdown had the opposite of the intended effect; it actually increased the reactor energy. We're not exactly sure what happened in the last moments before the accident, but its likely a shutdown attempt precipitated the explosion.
The catastrophe was also caused by extreme maleficence on the part of the crew and on the part of communist administrators in Moscow. The administrators ordered a dangerous and completely ill-advised test of the systems in which all of the safety mechanisms were to be shut off, or even manually subverted. Throughout the day leading up to the accident the crew constantly received blaring alarms, and irregular readings. They should have aborted at that point, but instead tried to force the reactor back into the acceptable range, creating an extremely dangerous reactor configuration. Yet they still persisted with the test.
Early in the morning of April 26, 1986 Reactor #4 exploded. Minutes later, it exploded again. Now exposed to the air, the graphite caught fire, sending a plume of radioactive dust and gas miles into the atmosphere.
People often use Chernobyl to decry the use of nuclear power everywhere. What they fail to realize is that Chernobyl is an example of people intentionally doing everything wrong! At every step of the way people were criminally maleficent. That's why to me, Chernobyl is a historical example of statism failing. Only government could create a confluence of events maddeningly stupid and reckless enough to produce this catastrophe.
Chernobyl was caused by Statism; without care for consequences officials ordered a flawed reactor constructed, ordered the safety mechanisms shut off, and out of pride or arrogance refused to abort the tests when trouble started.
This would not of happened in a free society.