Dr. Robert Oppenheimer was the father of the nuclear bomb and tittle comes from a song by British folk artist Billy Bragg.
Hello everybody.
I bring you a special blogpost today, on
the 30 year anniversary of the Chernobyl accident which occurred when the
fourth reactor let out steam that turned to fire and then caused a nuclear
reaction. This sad occasion has been lost in all
the other news, like the crumbling of the British health care service and the
rise and fall of Trump.
It'd be great if I
could say we have learned from our mistakes, but we haven't. It could so easily
have been America, or England or France that had this accident. Take a moment,
if you will, to think back and then think forward. In an alternate universe, it might
have been Idaho, where small accidents occurred in 1956 and 1961, that had
suffered.
Reading this article,
it just brings home how brutal our environmental history is. We are a cancer, a blight on the world. According
to Bill Gates and his foundation, Mosquitoes kill the most humans, though
indirectly. If you took into consideration the killing of all life, it wouldn't
even be a contest.
On the night of April 26, 1986, Soviet
Union engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear plant conducted a safety test at the
plant’s No. 4 reactor.
As the article says, “In a matter of
seconds, power inside the uranium-and-graphite core of the reactor surged out
of control, setting off a steam explosion that was followed by a fire that
spewed radioactive particles into the atmosphere. “
Fire-fighters went into the blaze knowing
they would die, as did plant workers. Thousands more were poisoned and the
ground rendered severely toxic. Nowadays access within the 18-mile exclusion
zone, which includes the ghost town of Pripyat, is prohibited. But now we have
some progress. An arched shelter designed to enclose the radioactive remains of
the destroyed reactor is almost finished.
The arch, called the New Safe Confinement,
is being built at a cost of over a billion dollars. It is designed to last 100
years. Dehumidified air will be used to prevent rust affecting the stainless
steel structured.
It has been constructed close to the fallen
reactor, and will soon be ready to slide over the ruins. It will be used as a defence
against the final weapon the nuclear power station has left. If the structure
collapses, as it is likely to do, it could, according to the New York Times, “raise
a cloud of radioactive dust and spread more contamination across Ukraine and
into Western Europe.”
Watch this gruesome video about the
toxicity elements if you dare.
They are also going to employ a crane
inside the metal structure to help remove the fuel, the 195 estimated tons of
it. When it first blew, sand, lead and other raw materials were poured on it as
a last-ditch attempt to stop the fire or at least slow it. Unfortunately, it
all combined together into a deadly lava-like substance that infiltrated the
structure then solidified.
Ukraine alone is going to foot the bill.
Russia should assist, but the chances of that happening are slim to none.
We should look back and think, think about
the terrible events and be thankful it did not happen to us. We have wreaked so
much havoc on this ecosystem and have no remorse. Greed and aggression have led
us down some dark paths.
We should have used Chernobyl as a terrible
warning, but we did not. We should all hope it is not a vision of the future,
but a remnant of the past. Let us hope that in thirty years we can loo back with less shame and look forward with more positivity.
Galileo
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