Early in the morning on April 26, 1986, the Unit 4 reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) exploded. The lessons and legacy of this catastrophe—the world’s worst nuclear accident—continue to be widely studied and debated thirty years later, with a multitude of competing views variously apportioning blame on the actions of staff and management, on the flawed design of the reactor, on defective Soviet “safety culture” (a phrase born of this accident), and on what might be termed the residual risk inherent to the nuclear power industry generally.
Chernobyl has cast a long shadow; efforts to clean up the disaster have outlasted the collapse of the economic and political system in which the initial response took place, and have outlasted the operational life (and revenue-generating career) of the power plant. The site today is a conflicting juxtaposition of death and renewal, depending on how one experiences it. A veritable tourism industry shuttles visitors daily from Kyiv to the remains of deserted Pripyat, an open graveyard of the material culture of the late Soviet Union. On the other hand, ChNPP is a prestigious workplace for thousands of skilled workers who live in relative comfort in the model town of Slavutych, Pripyat’s replacement to the east. Workers I have met convey the sense that this is not “just a job,” but that their work matters and has special significance. The old “Sarcophagus,” constructed hastily to entomb the damaged reactor, has long been showing its age, and is due to be encapsulated within a massive arch called the New Safe Confinement probably within the coming year. Many innovative engineering accomplishments have gone into this structure. ChNPP is also pioneering the methods and technologies for decommissioning RBMK power stations (of which it is the first to enter this phase).
I am a four-time visitor to ChNPP. Though my career work in nuclear engineering has mostly concerned particle accelerator applications, I have long been fascinated by Chernobyl and drawn there like a moth to a flame. Most recently, I’ve led groups to ChNPP to learn the fundamentals of radiation metrology and protection in a practical setting. What follows below is a selection of photos I took at Chernobyl over my recent trips. It is arranged in no particular order, emphasizing the power plant itself (but with a couple pics from Pripyat thrown in). My intention in this diary is that others may find these views interesting or informative, as we remember this accident on its 30th anniversary.
P.S.: For anyone interested in a recent academic analysis of the causes, circumstances, and context in which the accident occurred, I highly recommend Sonja Schmid’s new book Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry (mitpress.mit.edu/...). Her writing has clarified by own thinking on causal perspectives a great deal, and I was very fortunate to have her along on last year’s visit to the power plant.
Note: all photos below are available for anyone’s use (with attribution).