The Chernobyl station was situated at the settlement of Pripyat, about 65 miles north of Kiev in the Ukraine. Built in the late 1970s
on the banks of the Pripyat River, Chernobyl had four reactors, each
capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of electric power. On the evening
of April 25, 1986, a group of engineers began an electrical-engineering
experiment on the Number 4 reactor. The engineers, who had little
knowledge of reactor physics, wanted to see if the reactor's turbine
could run emergency water pumps on inertial power.As part of their poorly designed experiment, the engineers disconnected the reactor's emergency safety systems and its power-regulating system. Next, they compounded this recklessness with a series of mistakes: They ran the reactor at a power level so low that the reaction became unstable, and then removed too many of the reactor's control rods in an attempt to power it up again. The reactor's output rose to more than 200 megawatts but was proving increasingly difficult to control. Nevertheless, at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, the engineers continued with their experiment and shut down the turbine engine to see if its inertial spinning would power the reactor's water pumps. In fact, it did not adequately power the water pumps, and without cooling water the power level in the reactor surged.
To prevent meltdown, the operators
reinserted all the 200-some control rods into the reactor at once. The
control rods were meant to reduce the reaction but had a design flaw:
graphite tips. So, before the control rod's five meters of absorbent
material could penetrate the core, 200 graphite tips simultaneously
entered, thus facilitating the reaction and causing an explosion that
blew off the heavy steel and concrete lid of the reactor. It was not a
nuclear explosion, as nuclear power plants are incapable of producing
such a reaction, but was chemical, driven by the ignition of gases and
steam that were generated by the runaway reaction. In the explosion and
ensuing fire, more than 50 tons of radioactive material were released
into the atmosphere, where it was carried by air currents.On April 27, Soviet authorities began an evacuation of the 30,000 inhabitants of Pripyat. A cover-up was attempted, but on April 28 Swedish radiation monitoring stations, more than 800 miles to the northwest of Chernobyl, reported radiation levels 40 percent higher than normal. Later that day, the Soviet news agency acknowledged that a major nuclear accident had occurred at Chernobyl.
In the opening days of the crisis, 32 people died at Chernobyl and dozens more suffered radiation burns. The radiation that escaped into the atmosphere, which was several times that produced by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was spread by the wind over Northern and Eastern Europe, contaminating millions of acres of forest and farmland. An estimated 5,000 Soviet citizens eventually died from cancer and other radiation-induced illnesses caused by their exposure to the Chernobyl radiation, and millions more had their health adversely affected. In 2000, the last working reactors at Chernobyl were shut down and the plant was officially closed.
The Great Toronto Fire started, and raged for two days. Firefighters from London (Ontario), Niagara Falls, Hamilton, Peterborough and Buffalo joined Toronto firemen battling the flames, but bitter cold and a lack of adequate water pressure made the fire hoses almost ineffective. There were no fatalities, but the fire caused an estimated $12 million damage and destroyed 104 buildings, leaving 14 acres of the city's business core in ice-covered ruins.
