Chernobyl

I’m the kind of person that when I have an empty evening, I sit down with some ice cream and watch not a movie or show, but a documentary. I just really enjoy the informative nature of these videos and watching them is always worth it when you’re expanding your knowledge and becoming more aware of topics that interest you. My favorite type of documentaries are historical or architectural ones. This past weekend, I had some time, so I went over to a friend’s house and we sat down and watched a documentary about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and the structure that has been built to cover it up.

For some overview of the history, the Chernobyl disaster happened on the 26th of April 1986. The incident was the result of a safety check gone wrong. The supervisor present at the time of the operation did not follow protocol which resulted in a nuclear chain reaction where a substantial amount of energy was released in a massive steam explosion which took out the roof of the plant and left the exploded reactor open to the outside. The fire that followed spread airborne nuclear contamination throughout Europe and wasn’t contained until nine days later on the 4th of May. As a result of this, there was an estimated 44 deaths from the explosion and the radiation that followed.

The remains of the catastrophic explosion at Chernobyl

After the fire was contained, the effort to cover the reactor immediately went into action. The structure that was to temporarily encase the site was named the ‘Chernobyl Sarcophagus.’ The designing of the structure started only 24 days after the incident; the process was rushed in order to contain the radiation as soon as possible. The workers, named the Chernobyl Liquidators, were drafted by the Soviet Union military to clean up the site and attempt to decontaminate it as much as possible. The sarcophagus was finished in December of that same year and with the hurried construction, it was only meant to last 30 years.

As that 30-year deadline quickly approached, the Ukraine Government knew they had to do something, so the Chernobyl Shelter Fund was founded, and an international design competition was held to design the ‘New Safe Confinement’ structure. In 2007, the winner was announced, and the planning and construction began. Racing against the clock, the building team went to work and created a massive steel arch 600 feet away from its final resting place. The plan was to build the structure on a pair of tracks and once it was complete, the team would slowly move it onto the site where it would be sealed. On November 14, 2016, the operation to move the arch over the reactor began and it wasn’t in place until November 29, 15 days later. To this day, the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement is the world’s largest land-based structure. To take this burden off of the shoulders of future generations, the arch was also equipped with two robotic arms to clean up the sarcophagus and the destroyed reactor over the next 50 years.

Even with this horrific event that put millions of peoples lives at risk, it was a learning lesson for everyone involved, from the workers at the plant to the liquidators to the builders that built the arch. It became a great example of countries working together as multiple nations chipped in to cover the €2.1 billion ($2.3 billion) structure. As the site is still dangerous with radiation, the 30-kilometer (19 mile) Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is still in place, but thanks to all the people involved, the site is now much safer than it was before.

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