History UsefulNotes / Chernobyl

* ArtifactOfDoom: The "Elephant's Foot," a lump of corium (lava made from melted nuclear core; bad news, obviously) that ended up in the basement, was so radioactive when formed that even ''seeing'' it meant that you had moments to live. It was so bad that even the robots sent in to photograph it broke down after being near it for too long, so the best they could do was set up a large mirror to look at it around the corner in the hallway. Even now it's not safe to be near it or similar formations too long, but at least the radiation level has dropped off enough that sneaking a brief peek from a few meters off shouldn't give you an instant case of fatal radiation poisoning.

* CompanyTown: Pripyat was this before the disaster. As was typical in the USSR for their key industry and military sites, the Soviets built an entire town near the plant to house its workers and their families. It possessed twenty schools, fifty stores and restaurants, ten gyms, and even an amusement park. Its population at the time of the disaster in 1986 was 49,360. After the disaster, the Soviets built an entire new town just for the evacuees, called Slavutych.

* DisasterDominoes: There were a great deal of different events that had to happen in order for the Chernobyl disaster to occur:
** The colossal size[[note]]The reactor vessel itself being about 20m wide and 15m tall, with most PWR and BWR designs being about 5m wide and 10-15m tall[[/note]] of the RBMK reactor design and its loading assembly (itself a side-effect of being designed to be both cheap to make, run and maintain as well as being usable for producing weapons-grade plutonium if necessary) made a full-sized containment vessel and containment structure too expensive for the USSR to consider.
** Construction was rushed so people like Bryukhanov could get completion bonuses. This meant things like the roof being made of combustible rather than fireproof materials, and the turbine safety test being conducted ''after'' the plant went into full-scale operation rather than before.
** Several design flaws were present in the RBMK reactor design - some unknown at the time; others known, but classified and hidden even from the reactor operators.
*** The standby pumps - designed to cool the core in the event of a loss of grid power (a likely possibility in the Cold War) took a long time to get up to speed (mostly due to the sheer size of the thing), which is what necessitated the alternative turbine safety procedure being attempted in the first place.
*** Insertion time of the control rods was very slow, at around 20 seconds, compared to much less than five seconds for most reactor designs.
*** The design of the control rods (the tip being of graphite instead of boron like the rest) was such that whilst being inserted they ''speed up'' the reaction rather than slowing it down.
*** The high "positive void coefficient" of the design - basically, the hotter the reactor gets (or the less water there is being pumped through), the more steam bubbles form, which serves to not only cool the reactor less effectively but also to speed up the reactions as well; prime conditions for a runaway reaction.
** Dyatlov changing the parameters of the test, intended to be carried out at a minimum power level of 700-1000MW, to only 200MW. Several automatic safety systems were ordered to be disabled by Dyatlov in order for this to happen, since the RBMK was unstable at low power.
** Being unable to start the test on time (as another power station went offline earlier that day and Chernobyl was asked to stay operational longer) meant that the staff trained to complete the test had already gone home.
** Rushing to complete the test led to the power level in the reactor dropping too quickly to almost nothing (a process known as reactor poisoning), at which point ''all'' of [[DangerousForbiddenTechnique the reactor control rods were removed]] in order to raise reactor power to the 200MW Dyatlov wanted for the test. [[GoneHorriblyRight It worked]].[[labelnote:*]]Metaphorically, what the operators did was like operating the throttle on an engine that was idling too low and on the verge of stalling; the power kept dropping so they kept opening the throttle -- that is, removing control rods to increase output -- to counteract the failing, until the throttle in question was wide open, leaving nothing to stop the now ''enormous'' amount of power from going completely out of control when the "engine" finally did react.[[/labelnote]]
** When the test was started, the coolant pumps winding down resulted in too little coolant being pumped through the core, resulting in steam bubbles forming and the reactor beginning a runaway feedback loop.
** When reactor power began to surge, Akimov hit the emergency shutdown button at which point the counter-intuitive design of the control rods made the overheating reactor even hotter, ultimately resulting in the reactor exploding.
* DrivenToSuicide: Valery Legasov, a prominent chemist and member of USSR's Academy of Sciences. With the miscommunication going on, he was sent to investigate the then "small incident" at Chernobyl, only be horrified at the full-scale of the catastrophe; he worked frantically to avert a second steam explosion. He later hanged himself, leaving behind a series of recorded tapes, detailing how disillusioned he had become of the Soviet government's secrecy censoring key details of the Chernobyl disaster and its failure to confront the reactor design flaws. Legasov's suicide caused shockwaves through the industry. [[note]]This page would likely not even exist without him blowing the whistle on the authorities' attempted cover-up.[[/note]]
* FailsafeFailure: The AZ-5 system was intended to act as a SCRAM system, shutting off the reactor in an emergency. However, due to the graphite-tipped control rods, which actually increased reactivity before suppressing it, the already unstable reactor exploded when ~200 control rods were inserted at once, bringing its power output to about 30,000 MW, possibly much higher - Chernobyl's nominal output was around 3,200 MW.

* WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong: Gods. ''Almost everything'' in that safety test that could go wrong ''did''.

* In episode 3 of Series 21 of ''Series/TopGear'', The Final Challenge involves the hosts trying to run out of fuel so that they don't have to drive into this area. [[spoiler: Only Creator/RichardHammond succeeds. The other two, Creator/JeremyClarkson and Creator/JamesMay, end up having to drive into the exclusion zone, taking necessary precautions, and Clarkson runs out of gas in Pripyat.]] The duo had to go through Pripyat at night, an absolutely terrifying experience as it is almost pitch black.

* An AllohistoricalAllusion in ''Literature/{{Worldwar}}'': As the result of being hit by the Dora cannon, a Race starship explodes. By chance, this ship holds the majority of the fleet's nuclear ordnance, The bombs do not go off, but they do spread radioactive contamination across a wide area in the Ukraine. When a joint Soviet-German mission captures some of the uranium, two of them are running close to an abandoned village. The German officer asks what the village is called; the Soviet partisan replies it is Chernobyl.

* In episode 3 of Series 21 of ''Series/TopGear'', The Final Challenge involves the hosts trying to run out of fuel so that they don't have to drive into this area. [[spoiler: Only Richard Hammond succeeds. The other two end up having to drive into the exclusion zone, taking necessary precautions, and Jeremy Clarkson runs out of gas in Pripyat.]] The duo had to go through Pripyat at night, an absolutely terrifying experience as it is almost pitch black.

* ''Huns and Dr. Beeker'' has "Ghost Town," which details the human cost of the disaster.

%%* BrownNote: The "Elephant's Foot," a lump of corium (lava made from melted nuclear core; bad news, obviously) that ended up in the basement, was so radioactive when formed that even ''seeing'' it meant that you had moments to live. It was so bad that even the robots sent in to photograph it broke down after being near it for too long, so the best they could do was set up a large mirror to look at it around the corner in the hallway. Even now it's not safe to be near it or similar formations too long, but at least the radiation level has dropped off enough that sneaking a brief peek from a few meters off shouldn't give you an instant case of fatal radiation poisoning.

* In ''Wolves Eat Dogs'', ArkadyRenko investigates an oligarch who was DrivenToSuicide after someone poisoned him with highly radioactive cesium chloride, due to his role in the disaster. Part of the investigation takes place in the dead zone around Chernobyl.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpidermanTheAnimatedSeries'': In ''The Six Forgotten Warriors'' arc towards the end of its run, the BigBad has a base of operations beneath the power plant. Inevitably, Spidey, a bunch of mercs, Kingpin and the Sinister Six all end up outside, which is when they​ all take notice of their surroundings. [[DumbMuscle Rhino]] doesn't see what the big deal is, Kingpin is nonplussed, while Scorpion, Vulture and Doc Ock are having a collective OhCrap[[note]]In the comics, Doc Ock is explicitly a nuclear physicist, so he of all people would understand the danger they are in[[/note]]. The prospect of radiation poisoning steers both teams to call it a draw and leave pronto.

* ''WesternAnimation/SpidermanTheAnimatedSeries'': In ''The Six Forgotten Warriors'' arc towards the end of its run, the BigBad has a base of operations beneath the power plant. Inevitably, Spidey, a bunch of mercs, Kingpin and the Sinister Six all end up outside, which is when they​ all take notice of their surroundings. [[DumbMuscle Rhino]] doesn't see what the big deal is, Kingpin is nonplussed, while Scorpion, Vulture and Doc Ok are having a collective OhCrap. The prospect of radiation poisoning steers both teams to call it a draw and leave pronto.

* The opening sequence of ''Film/MySpy'' starts with a mission involving a plutonium deal, which quickly goes south before the spy makes a getaway. This gets him in trouble for derailing intelligence gathering.

** The concrete room beneath the reactor, where the Elephant's Foot is located. The thing is a mass of corium ('nuclear lava' if you will) which has flowed and (not quite) solidified down there after eating the reactor's floor. It is so radioactive that it makes this room one of the most dangerous environments on Earth, people actually can't stand nearby too long without dying. Back in the first months and years after the disaster, it could kill a grown man in mere ''minutes'', nowadays it still takes several hours of being exposed to it.

The site of what is often regarded as the worst disaster in nuclear power history, the Chernobyl (AKA Chornobyl or V.I. Lenin Memorial) Nuclear Power Plant was one of [[UsefulNotes/SovietRussiaUkraineAndSoOn USSR]]'s biggest and most modern nuclear plants, designed to give power to the city of Kiev / Kyiv[[note]]"Kiev" is the transliteration from Russian to English, while "Kyiv" is the transliteration from Ukrainian to English. Nowadays, most Ukrainians ''don't like'' "Kiev" being used.[[/note]], Ukrainian SSR (now {{UsefulNotes/Ukraine}}). The disaster was the first accident to score a 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, its highest rating (the only other with this rating is the Fukushima Daiichi disaster of 2011), and surrounding areas remain uninhabitable to this day.

* NuclearNasty: As a place of radioactive contamination, many stories portray the area as a source of these. While radioactivity has [[https://www.livescience.com/65563-chernobyl-radiation-effects-body.html nasty effects on living bodies]], monstruously mutated organisms are mostly Main/{{averted}} in real life. Local animals are not affected by the radiation heavily (not living long enough to see effects) and some even adapt to the radioactive environment.

* WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong: Gods. ''Almost everything'' that could go wrong ''did''.

Containment cost the Soviet Union 18 billion rubles,[[note]]The Soviet ruble was on a 1:1 exchange rate with the United States dollar at the time; adjusted for inflation, this would be roughly USD $39 billion in 2015[[/note]] and has cost hundreds of billions of dollars in containment and treatment since. The disaster was also a major factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 -- the immense cost of cleanup[[note]]not to mention the Afghanistan War was still going on at the time and was itself a huge drain and cost for the Soviet government[[/note]], the fact that attempting to cover up the incident only made it worse, Valery Legasov's testimony and his tapes coming to light after his suicide, the human toll of the disaster and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's push for more openness to the world (his ''glastnost'' policy) all cascaded and led to the superpower dissolving five years after the incident. The Chernobyl disaster led to 31 immediate deaths, with cancer deaths in Soviet Union estimated to be in the ''thousands'', and estimations vary ''wildly'' on the effects and number of deaths the radioactive cloud caused throughout Europe. Cow milk in some parts of Ukraine still has ''five times'' the safe level of radiations as of 2019.

** The basement of Pripyat hospital is covered with EmptyPilesOfClothing (which were worn by the liquidators, and are highly radioactive), and just walking into the room without adequate protection means significantly increased cancer risk.

* AbandonedHospital: The Pripyat hospital, which took in the first radiation casualties of the accident (most of them were liquidators). Their clothes are still piled in the basement, and make that building the most radioactive place in the area other than the actual reactor.

* FailsafeFailure: The AZ-5 system was intended to act as a SCRAM system, shutting off the reactor in an emergency. However, due to the graphite-tipped control rods, which actually increased reactivity before suppressing it. The already unstable reactor exploded when ~200 control rods were inserted at once, bringing its power output to about 30,000 MW, possibly much higher - Chernobyl's nominal output was around 3,200 MW.