{"id":28133,"date":"2019-05-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-24T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ashleydev.com\/2019\/05\/24\/cna-response-to-hbo-miniseries-chernobyl-2\/"},"modified":"2020-08-27T11:26:41","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T15:26:41","slug":"cna-response-to-hbo-miniseries-chernobyl-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cna.ca\/fr\/2019\/05\/24\/cna-response-to-hbo-miniseries-chernobyl-2\/","title":{"rendered":"CNA Response to HBO Miniseries Chernobyl"},"content":{"rendered":"

The worst nuclear accident occurred in 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, sixty miles north of Kiev, Ukraine, in what was then the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

Thirty-three years later, Chernobyl is now a critically-acclaimed HBO miniseries, which will run for five weeks during May and June.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a spoiler: Almost all the problems associated with the Chernobyl incident were particular to the Soviet-era reactor and the secretive government response.<\/p>\n

The Chernobyl accident was a unique event at a type of rudimentary reactor complex that was becoming rare in the Soviet Union, and no longer exists at all.<\/p>\n

Chernobyl reactor versus CANDU<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is almost impossible that an accident like the one at Chernobyl could happen in a commercial nuclear plant found in Canada or the U.S.<\/p>\n

The RBMK reactor at Chernobyl was never built by any country outside the USSR because it is a flawed design.<\/p>\n

It is also significantly different from Canadian CANDU reactors in several ways as the chart from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd below shows.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Containment<\/strong><\/p>\n

Containment is an airtight building made of concrete and steel that prevents harmful radioactivity from escaping the reactor in the event of an accident.<\/p>\n

The Chernobyl reactor had no containment. The key factor in the widespread dispersion of radioactivity was the energy released from the burning graphite moderator and the absence of a containment structure capable of withstanding that energy.<\/p>\n

CANDU reactors, like most Western designs, have a containment structure designed for its maximum credible accident, while its moderator is low-temperature, low-pressure water instead of graphite.<\/p>\n

Design flaws<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chernobyl also lacked other safety mechanisms that are considered standard design in the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

The root cause of the Chernobyl accident was a design flaw in the shut-down system that no other reactor in the world has.<\/p>\n

The CANDU and RBMK designs have some fundamental differences. CANDU reactors use a heavy water moderator, while RBMK use graphite. Graphite can be a very useful material in a safe reactor design. But in an unstable design like the reactor at Chernobyl, it was fuel for the fire that resulted from the explosion.<\/p>\n

Safety culture<\/strong><\/p>\n

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) concluded that a \u201clack of safety culture\u201d existed within nuclear power plants in the former Soviet Union, including Chernobyl.<\/p>\n

Chernobyl was a testament to the former Soviet Union\u2019s poor construction materials and techniques, and absence of safety culture.<\/p>\n

In the years prior to the accident, managers ignored safety rules laid down by engineers so production quotas could be met. Workers and lower-level managers were afraid to raise objections when they saw something wrong.<\/p>\n

Health impact<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2006 the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) undertook a study<\/a> to follow up on health effects.<\/p>\n

Of the plant staff and emergency workers exposed to the huge core doses and toxic smoke at Chernobyl, 28 died from acute radiation sickness.<\/p>\n

The UNSCEAR report also said Chernobyl was responsible for a “substantial fraction” of about 6,000 thyroid cancers among people who were children or adolescents at the time of the accident. By 2015, 15 cases had proved fatal.<\/p>\n

“To date, there has been no persuasive evidence of any other health effect in the general population that can be attributed to radiation exposure,” the study concluded.<\/p>\n

According to a 2005 World Health Organization (WHO) report, a maximum of 4,000 people might yet exhibit some ill effects as a result of radiation exposure attributed to the Chernobyl release (as opposed to other sources of radiation, such as natural background radiation or medical procedures).<\/p>\n

For context, about 1,000 people die per year mining coal in China; about 2,000 people die per year in road accidents in Canada; and more than 3,000 people die per year from fire in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The worst nuclear accident occurred in 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, sixty miles north of Kiev, Ukraine, in what was then the Soviet Union. Thirty-three years later, Chernobyl is now a critically-acclaimed HBO miniseries, which will run for five weeks during May and June. Here\u2019s a spoiler: Almost all the problems associated with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[537],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-28133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-talknuclear"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCNA Response to HBO Miniseries Chernobyl - Association nucl\u00e9aire canadienne<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cna.ca\/fr\/2019\/05\/24\/cna-response-to-hbo-miniseries-chernobyl-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"fr_FR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CNA Response to HBO Miniseries Chernobyl - Association nucl\u00e9aire canadienne\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The worst nuclear accident occurred in 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, sixty miles north of Kiev, Ukraine, in what was then the Soviet Union. 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