theGIST Issue 12

Science in the Spotlight
Chernobyl:
"What is the cost of lies?"
If, like me, you've watched HBO
miniseries Chernobyl, you may have,
as I did, found yourself freaking out.
I started googling frantically. My
panic increased as the nuclear plant
technicians in the show continued to
say: "it isn't possible". Like the "unsinkable"
Titanic, they were evidently
wrong. I wondered if present-day
nuclear safety experts could be
wrong too. A cold sweat began to
form as I realised that the closest
nuclear power plant to Glasgow is
only 37 miles away, easily close
enough to spell my doom (roughly
eighteen times the distance from
Pripyat to Chernobyl, but certainly
close enough to suffer the effects of
a nuclear fallout — or so my panic
led me to believe).
After stressing irrationally for several
hours, I collected my thoughts.
Considering that fear largely comes
from a lack of understanding, I've
decided to learn all there is to learn
(in a short space of time) about
Chernobyl. Why do we use nuclear
power? What went wrong, and what
is the legacy of Chernobyl — on the
people affected, the surrounding
area, and the surprising tourist trade
that has emerged in the exclusion
zone.
Nuclear Energy
We have known about the potential
damage nuclear energy can
cause for longer than we have used
it as a commercial power source. In
August 1945, atomic bombs were
dropped in the cities of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. In Hiroshima, approximately
60-80,000 people were
killed instantly, though further
deaths from acute symptoms, subsequent
cancers, and illnesses associated
with radiation poisoning led
to over 200,000 deaths by 1950; in
Nagasaki, roughly 140,000 deaths
are estimated [1]. If the bombs had
been detonated closer to the
ground, the death and injury toll
could well have been higher still.
It's had a cultural impact too. The
Japanese language has a word, Hibakusha,
to describe people who
have been affected by the atomic
bombs. All this, six years before
nuclear was ever used as an energy
source and nine years before it was
harnessed for commercial means
[2].
And yet, it is an undeniably efficient
source of energy. According to
the US Office of Nuclear Energy, a
single nuclear reactor can produce
energy equivalent to 431 wind turbines
[3]. It's also a steady energy
source, as wind and solar energy are
reliant on weather that might not always
be predictable or consistent.
Despite economic issues around
disposing toxic waste products (depleted
fuel can have uses in new
types of reactors), it is also far
cleaner than burning fossil fuels and
has very low net CO 2
emissions.
www.the-GIST.org
It's also much safer than you
might think. Writing for Physics
World, nuclear engineer Una Davies
pointed out that "nuclear power has
the lowest number of deaths per
kilowatt-hour of electricity generated"
[4]. This seems totally counterintuitive
to the way nuclear power
is represented in the media, and yet,
when you consider the effects of
fossil fuels on air pollution and climate
change, it makes a lot of
sense. Proportionally, there are also
fewer accidents in nuclear powerplants
compared to those for harvesting
other energy sources. In order
to meet EU pledges of the Paris
Agreement, to cut greenhouse gases
by 40% (compared to 1990 levels)
and to achieve a 32.5% increase in
energy efficiency [5], it may be difficult
to rule out nuclear as an option.
What Went Wrong in
Reactor 4?
The show goes some way to explaining
this in the final episode. The
reactors used in Chernobyl were Soviet
RBMK designs. RBMK stands for
'reaktor bolshoy moshchnosty
kanalny', translated by the World
Nuclear Association to mean 'highpower
channel reactor'. During a
safety check to test how long the reactor
could be sustained in the event
of a power outage, a flaw in the
design led to a power surge, and water
(usually used to cool the system)
reacted with the fuel to create intense
pressure [6]. In The Chernobyl
Podcast which accompanies the
series (I strongly recommend listening
if you too have an unquenchable
appetite for all things Chernobyl),
show creator Craig Mazin tells the
presenter how, when researching the
accident, he was struck by the irony
of the explosion occurring during a
safety test. Human error and flawed