Black Dates. Chernobyl, Tomsk; Digest--Collection of Materials and Documents re 10 years of Chernobyl Accident and 3 Years of Serious Incident in Tomsk Region
Tomsk: 1996. Wraps. 56 pages. Minor ink corrections to text noted. Illustrated front cover. Scuff on front cover. Format is 5.75 inches by 8 inches. The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident. It occurred on 25–26 April 1986 in the No. 4 light water graphite moderated reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near the now-abandoned town of Pripyat, in northern Ukraine, approximately 104 km (65 mi) north of Kiev. The event occurred during a safety test which simulated a station blackout power-failure, in the course of which safety systems were intentionally turned off. A combination of inherent reactor design flaws and the reactor operators arranging the core in a manner contrary to the checklist for the test, resulted in uncontrolled reaction conditions. Water flashed into steam generating a destructive steam explosion and a subsequent open-air graphite fire. This fire produced considerable updrafts. These lofted plumes of fission products into the atmosphere. The estimated radioactive inventory that was released during this phase approximately equaled in magnitude the airborne fission products released in the initial destructive explosion. This radioactive material precipitated onto parts of the western USSR and Europe. More