THIRTY YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF CHERNOBYL

THIRTY YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF CHERNOBYL

There were four reactors at Chernobyl. In 1982 reactor #1 had a meltdown but was fixed. In 1986 reactor #4 exploded in “The Chernobyl Disaster” and was permanently shut down. In 1991 reactor #2 caught fire, the roof collapsed and it was permanently shut down. In 1996 reactor  #1 was permanently shut down. In the year 2000 reactor #3 was permanently shut down. The government of Ukraine hopes to have cleanup of the site finished by the year 2065...

What happened on April 26, 1986...

A safety inspector at the Kursk Nuclear Reactor wrote a report entitled “The accident in Block 4 of the Chernobyl power station and nuclear safety in RBMK type reactors” which blamed the Chernobyl explosion on design flaws. This was very brave-to speak the truth in the USSR! Even today it is thought that DESIGN flaws created an atmosphere in which Chernobyl exploded. It wasn’t lazy human operators.

In fact the human operators were trying to test the speed at which reactor could heat up/cool down to set up a safety system which would solve a glaring problem with the reactor. You, cold water is flowed over the reactor to cool it down. If the water flows too fast it doesn’t soak up enough heat, which causes the reactor to overheat and turn all the water into steam which blows up the reactor. If you flow the water too slowly the water gets too hot, turns into steam and blows up the reactor. If the water is at the wrong flow rate for somewhere around 435-60 seconds it’ll vaporize and blow up the reactor. Great: just set the water flow rate at the proper speed, right?

Well, here’s the problem: the water pump runs on electricity so if there is a problem with the reactor you can’t run the water pump…KABOOM! So the geniuses (not sarcastic) at Chernobyl set up a generator/water pump that ran on diesel fuel. The reactor has a problem: the diesel generators/fuel pump would kick in and keep the water flowing/flowing at the proper rate so the reactor wouldn’t completely explode. If there was a total loss of power and the control rods were all sent down and all the main reactor nuclear interactions were stopped there would still be a 7% output of heat for a time. Now, that doesn’t sound like much, but the reactor took 7,400 gallons per hour of cooling water. So you think, okay you’d only have to pump around 500 gallons of water per hour and be okay? Not quite since any voids in the cooling channels allow the water to turn to steam and blow up the reactor. Also, that would be too slow a flow rate and the water would heat up way faster than normal and explode.

So no matter what you want the water to keep flowing at its normal rate through the reactor. Thus, they put in the emergency diesel generators to keep the water flowing.  The problem? The diesel generator takes a full 60 seconds to kick in and start the water pumps. For TWO YEARS the people at Chernobyl operated the reactor knowing that any slight problem and they would have no backup! Amazingly, almost three decades later the Fukushima reactor had a similar problem: they too had diesel generators/water pumps...but there was an earthquake and a tidal wave washed away their diesel generators. KABOOM!

So, the Chernobyl scientists decided that it was time fix this problem. They came up with a really neat solution that was similar to regenerative braking systems in hybrid cars. When the reactor lost enough power it would begin the 60 second start up process of the diesel backup generators. In the meantime the steam engines powered by the reactor would turn slower and slower as they ground to a halt BUT they would still be spinning, and it was theorized that these steam engines would still produce a lot of energy as they spun slower and slower-enough to power the water system/generators for around 35 seconds. So, instead of having the reactor un-cooled for 60 seconds it’d be more like 25 seconds or less. Really a super simple and super neat idea!

Like good scientists they wanted to know their baselines: how long did it take for the reactor to lose enough power that the water flow would be affected? What was the exact power output of the steam turbines as they lost energy and moved slower and slower, but were still producing energy that could be tapped like regenerative brake systems? Basically that wanted to test all the components of their system for: how hot? How much energy? How quick? They tested this dying steam engine theory twice before and failed, but they made changes and were going for a third test.

The idea was to run the reactor (but at a reduced rate of power) and shut off the water (steam) flow to the steam engines. The water would flow over the reactor and cool it like normal. It would get hot and turn to steam like normal. Instead of then going to turn the steam engine to produce electricity it would be piped off elsewhere. This would allow the scientists to see just how long it would take for the steam engine to slow down after losing steam. This would also let them see how much energy the steam engine would still produce as it was slowing down-and thus if it was enough to power up the emergency systems for at least part of the 60 second delay until the diesel generators were going full blast.

They reduced the power of the reactor and something horrible happened. Normally when the reactor is running it produces Xenon. Xenon slows down the reactor, but because the reactor is running at full power it burns the Xenon-135 and turns it into Iodine. Great, but at the reduced power during the test the reactor wasn’t making enough power to burn up the Xenon. More and more Xenon kept accumulating in the core which kept slowing the reactor down more and more. Suddenly, the scenario of “what if we lose power and can’t keep the water cooling pumps running” became a real situation!

At that same time an engineer accidentally inserted some control rods too far. As the reactor was slowing down from too much Xenon, he slowed it down even more by hitting the brakes (inserting the control rods).

In a reactor there are many control rods. These rods “soak up” excess radioactivity and slow down the reaction. Pull the rods up and you get more radioactivity, heat, steam and electricity. Push the rods down inside the reactor and they slow down/shut off the reactor. They’re like the brakes in a normal (non-hybrid) automobile: press soft to slow down, press harder to slow faster, press really hard to stop.

At this time the flow rate of the coolant was erratic. The steam pressure and flow were not normal because they were bypassing the steam engine for the test. Everything was going crazy. Luckily they reversed course and took out some fuel rods. This let the reactor start producing more (stable) energy. They dodged a big bullet. So what did they do know? They kept fiddling with the reactor so they could get to their experiment!

They turned on a few extra water pumps. This immediately dropped the water pressure of the coolant and everything started overheating because even though more water pumps were on the water pressure was split among them and dropped creating voids and thus premature steam and heat. While it is true that this design is called a "boiling reactor" if it runs at less than 20% power the bubbles in the water become a problem because the effect of the high temperature that reduced neutron flux goes away. The reactor becomes unstable and can experience uncontrollable power surges. No problem, just increase the flow rate! They did and the reactor got too much flow and lost power again. So they decided to take out even more control rods to increase the reactor power again! Out of 211 rods they removed 193. In this reactor, even during full loss of power they were supposed to remove at most 183 rods. Clearly it was a touchy situation. They were veering from too much steam to too much power to too little power to run the cooling systems. What should they do? Why, they decided that now was the perfect time to finally START THEIR EXPERIMENT!

They shut down the steam engine. This cut off energy to the water flow. The steam engine kept spinning slower and slower, so during their experiment the water flow became slower and slower and this lead to overheating. They turned on the diesel generators. It was estimated that in 39 seconds the diesel generators would be fully running. 

The beginning of the end...

Sadly, at 36 seconds someone (not the automatic systems but a human) hit a special button. In the literature this is called the EPS-5/AZ-5 button. There are photos of this button online. It does something that sounds really good and safe: it inserts all the control rods and slows the reactor down. The problem? Almost all the control rods were taken out, so they all started dropping into the extremely overheated water in the reactor. Sounds good no? The control rods were made of a moderator called Boron. Check my previous posts and/or click on the keyword “Boron” to see the cool uses I’ve had it for in my own experiments.

However, these control rods were tipped with graphite. When all of these graphite tips hit the coolant water at the same time a weird thing happened. They displaced the cooling water by a smidge. The 193 graphite rod ends pushing out desperately needed coolant water was enough to allow a HUGE rise in core temperature and the coolant water flashed over to steam. This shattered a bunch of the control rods! Then everything got worse and the people who were there are mostly dead, but the main thing is the reactor exploded.

It reminds me of when people overheat water in a microwave: if you use a smooth coffee mug you can actually overheat the water and when you stick you a stirring spoon into the water it literally explodes and showers you with hot water! People have been seriously injured this way. Too cool too fast actually overheated things.

The structure of Chernobyl reactor #4 was mounted to the underside of a steel plate that weighed 4 million pounds. Yes! FOUR MILLION POUNDS! What happened to this top plate? It went flying through the roof of the reactor and into the sky.

Then what happened? Another explosion that was even worse!!! This sent hunks of molten core pieces flying around onto the roofs of surrounding buildings. The roofs of the surrounding buildings were water-proofed using bitumen which promptly burst into flames. The roof of reactor #3 (which was still running) also caught fire and was threatening to explode. What is bitumen? It’s basically asphalt, which is kind of like coal mixed with gasoline; although to be fair it is relatively non-flammable. Still though: why not metal roofing? Heck, why not concrete?

The Nuclear Energy Agency put out a great report that includes an in depth explanation of each step of the accident. It's title is, "CHERNOBYL: Assessment of Radiological and Health Impacts. Update of Chernobyl: Ten Years On" which is available free online as a PDF.

Soviet Design: the bitumen roofs were prohibited by the buildings codes and never should have been there in the first place. The whole reactor should have been in a containment building, but it was in a shoddy Soviet building with bitumen smeared roofs.

The graphite tips of the control rods? They caused a huge spike when used at a different reactor nearly 3 years earlier! Graphite was also used as a lining inside the core. Much is made of this graphite igniting when it was thrown into the air during the explosions. It’s simple: the graphite was red hot in the water-filled core. The core exploded and the red hot graphite flew onto the bitumen covered roofs of the nearby buildings. Red hot and no longer covered with water and now exposed to the air they simply caught fire. It was this fire which gathered up the radioactive materials and put it into the air, spreading it all over the world. Much like volcanic ash.

Button EPS-5/AZ-5: there are two scenarios that play out with the safety button that dropped all the control rods. One says that everything was fine and mellow and they decided to shut down the reactor after all the craziness of the moments before. The other says that things got even worse and someone hit the safety button. Either way it made things worse.

The reactor was a type RBMK. This type of reactor was refused a patent in the Soviet Union because of design flaws when it was proposed in 1967! Victor Bobrv who was acting Head of State Laboratory Registry of Inventions has stated that he sent back the first application for a the RBMK to be registered…but then a month later in the Soviet run newspaper Pravda it was announced that the problem of nuclear reactor design efficiency had been solved. Then from 1971 to 1975 the RBMK type reactor made up two-thirds of the Soviet planned nuclear capacity. Alla Yaroshinkskaya wrote a book titled “Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth” which delves into this briefly.

The design was around 30% efficient and there were other problems: it used graphite and regular water (instead of heavy water) to control runaway nuclear reactions. Regular water turns to steam and thus you lose part of your moderation. A cheap but difficult way to run a reactor if things go wrong and you get too much steam. Steam creates a void. The void is empty and doesn’t help slow the nuclear reaction: leading to more heat and more steam leading to more nuclear reactions, and on and on until it explodes.

Alla Yaroshinkskaya’s book titled “Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth” centers more on what was happening at the time: the people, the scientists, the propaganda, town hall meetings that grew heated, etc. It’s a bit hard to follow the book in parts, but I suppose that in itself reflects the mood at the time (and for years afterwards). She even lists some of the previously secret documents uncovered after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The cover up is worse than the crime! 

Although I don’t consider what the operators did foolish or criminal-the cover up which started that very day of what happened and what the dangers to the public from radioactivity were!

After reactor #4 exploded the roof of reactor #3 caught fire. The staff wanted to shut down #3 and get to safety but were told to keep working like nothing had happened. After about three and a half hours they couldn’t take it, disobeyed orders and shut down #3. Most of the #3 workers then were able to leave, some stayed behind to control the shut down and cooling off of their still intact reactor. Stay in a burning building surrounded by the worst release of radioactivity in human history. An American would say, “I’d get another job!” but in the old Soviet Ukraine “the job gets you!” The local government office would assign you a job. They would allocate your food allowance.

If people are getting sick or dying as a result of radiation levels rising past the ‘safe’ background level-just raise what is considered the ‘safe’ background level! In a classified communication (Secret Protocol #9, May 8^th, 1986) the Ministry of Health of the USSR changed the acceptable minimum radiation levels. It said, “…in certain cases these levels can e multiplied by 50…” If people are dying in a flood because the water has risen 25 feet above flood surge, just recalculate ground level to minus 25 feet: then there is no flood and nobody has died because of it.

Because the Soviet Union was so poor and because they didn’t evacuate most of the people who should have been evacuated: the farmers near Chernobyl / Kiev kept farming! The Soviet Minister of Health put out another order (Secret Appendix to paragraph 10 of Protocol #32 August 22^nd, 1986) which decided that they would USE THE RADIOACTIVE FOOD produced near Chernobyl but “distribute the contaminated meat as widely as possible throughout the USSR.”  

A Soviet man came up with a name for this trading of bad food for good: “Equilization”. The people forced to live in the radioactive area would be given clean food, their bad food would be shipped all over the rest of the USSR and given to normal people (without their knowledge). This would spread out the radiation all over. Soviet thinking: if everyone is just a little sick-then nobody is sick and everyone is healthy. If all the contaminated food is spread out, then less people would get sick from eating smaller portions of it...or something like that. I re-read it over and over and couldn't figure out why they'd feed poison to their own people.

  

Why would the people stand for this? It was a secret. Also, it was the Soviet Union. You couldn’t just go out and buy un-irradiated food. Go out? “Let’s see your travel papers comrade!” Buy some food? “Let’s see your voucher for food allowance of this particular item….sorry, but: DENIED COMRADE!” Go eat some glowing potatoes. 

Also, the government set production targets for food growth. Remember, the Soviet government owns everything-even the food you produce is theirs. They didn’t lower the farm production targets in affected areas. In one instance they actually increased the target of blood donations…from people living in an irradiated area!

The Deputy Prosecutor General of the Soviet Union, Victor Andreyev stated that between “-89 47,500 tonnes of meat and 2 million tones of milk over the permitted level of pollution were produced…a large part of these products were sent out of the contaminated zones of Ukraine, Byelorussia and Russia…” and consumed by other Soviet citizens. Other officials are on record as having allowed contaminated products to be consumed.

The Socialist government did try to help. They built brand new houses for the workers at the other reactors at Chernobyl to live in…right near the old radioactive ones. Right in the still to this day radioactive part of town! Soldiers came and killed everyone’s pet cats and dogs and pulled up the floorboards of some houses and carried away the dirt that was under the floorboards. They built a new school building in the death zone and then later came back and dug up a few inches of the soil around the outside of it and carried the dirt away. They collected the radioactive food still being farmed there and gave it to unknowing victims all over the Soviet Union to ‘equalize’ the radiation. Of course there was rumor early on that the radioactive food should come nowhere near Moscow.

There were three sets of information in those times: the lies given to the people, the half-truths given to Socialist ally countries directly affected by the radiation plume, and finally the truth! The “truth” was that tests were being done on thousands of people, but the results of those tests were never shared with the patients, or their doctors. The lab sent them straight to Moscow, who then churned out feel good, happy stories. One in particular was about birds singing in the night air above Pripyat (the town north of Chernobyl). While radioactive garbage was raining down from the sky the Soviet government decided to go ahead with the Soviet May Day Parades! All those people exposed with no knowledge! Cesium in the form of radioactive iodine has a half life of 8 days. Take iodine pills for 8 days and you don’t die of thyroid cancer. Did they do that? No, they held a parade on day 6! Keep in mind that the radiation reached Norway after passing through these people first. To be fair, one communiqué relates the desire to shorten the festivities from 4 to 2 hours. And that was just the Cesium! It has been said that the reactor belched out, “the entire Periodic Table!”

Western nations sent experts in. The experts went home and said everything was terrible; but the Soviet controlled newspapers and TV said, “the visiting experts say everything is great. Don’t worry-be happy!” The mere presence of honest experts from the west provided a photo-op that was used to disseminate lies. Look up ‘useful idiot’ in relation to propaganda. When the government controls the media, they can make anyone seem to say anything.

Manufacturing Acetylene (with a Twist of Lime!)

Manufacturing Acetylene (with a Twist of Lime!)

A raw lump of calcium carbide is a grey, slightly metallic looking object. It smells like ozone, stale air from and old tire plus sulfur. Ozone is the smell of electricity in air: the smell of slot cars and toy electric trains.

These combinations of weird smells add up to something familiar, but I couldn't remember what-until I looked at the chemical reaction notation. Then I had a "Proust Moment", only with lime and not lemon cookies. I just had this memory of the smell and seeing my fingers caked with acidic sludge. More on that later.

As you can see in the video, it will not catch fire when a flame is held to it. Once I add water with a syringe it produces Acetylene gas which does ignite. Acetylene burns so well it's used in welding torches!

Calcium carbide is CaC2, written on my sample as CaCa.
Water is H2O.

CaC2 + 2H2O = C2H2 + CA(OH)2

C2H2 is Acetylene, the gas shown burning in the video.
CA(OH)2  is a grey, sludge that smells a bit like... Plaster of Paris!

Back as an undergrad I took a sculpting class. After carving a huge limestone rock I polished it with wet sandpaper and water. The result was this same stinky sludge called slaked lime. Plaster of Paris uses gypsum, while fancier lime plaster uses slaked lime. They smell pretty similar, though lime plaster will burn your skin (as I found out while sanding my sculpture). I remember my fingers burning and that smell of slaked lime, just like Proust was inspired to write 2000 pages after he smelled a lemon Madeline cookie.

Meow-that's funny. I have a Proust Memory Moment every time I smell ferns...of people yelling at me to not kill ferns. I don't listen though.

Strangely enough, I was texturing my hallway ceiling and BOOM there was that smell again! Turns out that the stuff I was glopping on had carbide in its ingredient list.

Placing a lump of calcium carbide into a container and dripping water into it is how old miner's helmets worked (but never do this: read below).  A pipe/nozzle system allowed the acetylene gas to rise out of the water and lime sludge: this way the flame doesn't sputter like in the video.

However: miner's helmets are precision instruments with small valves. You may think, "what of he put the lid on that container with the water and calcium carbide and then poked a little hole in the top and lit it?" NEVER, EVER do that!!! I guarantee that it will instantly explode, sending pieces of the container shredding through the room!

Acetylene welding torches often pop while people are using them. It's scary and can blow through your weld-but that flame is out in the open. Contain acetylene (even just a bit, like a bowl with turned inward edges) and you get a bomb with shrapnel! People put acetylene in paper cups laying sideways and ignite them: loud bang, perforated eardrums and wads of paper embedded in your eyeball. It will be the loudest (and last) thing you'll ever hear.

Just laying a piece of paper over the container is enough to make the acetylene explode instead of burn.

If you fill a container with acetylene past 29psi it can explode all by itself-no flame needed! To be able to put acetylene into welding tanks they have to dissolve it into acetone. That lets it get up to 250psi, so it will squirt out of the tank/hose/nozzle while welding-instead of just exploding the tank.

 Acetylene in contact with brass or copper forms even more dangerously explosive compounds!

Acetylene is the scariest, most unstable thing I've ever been around...and that's coming from someone who's experimented with neutron radiation.

Leave it alone.

So, besides antique mining helmet lights and ceiling plaster what is calcium carbide and the acetylene it produces good for? Something insanely high tech:  thiol vinylation reactions which bind molecules of things like fluorescent markers to biomolecular material being studied. I love fluorescent and phosphorescent stuff!

Kind of like: the glow in the dark fluorescent stuff "clicks" onto the cancer cells. This is called "click chemistry". Thiol bind with acetylene using these methods. Click chemistry focuses (somewhat) on creating reactions that mimic nature, are modular (click together) and are one pot reaction: tons of glassware and tubes and stuff looks cool, but scientists would rather through a bunch of stuff in a bucket and get to work, not spend time synthesising things with a gillion steps.

Another cool thing the carbide and water reaction is good for? Polymers! Search around and you'll find my older posts about polymer. See: everything comes full circle over and over again for me.