Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

Essential Question: What are the long term affects of a nuclear disaster on the environment?

But First! Environmental Issues We Have Studied: United Kingdom? Germany?

Today We Will Add: The Ukraine: Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster When? April 26, 1986 Where? Ukraine

What Is It? The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster would be the worst nuclear disaster EVER in history, and still is today.

What Happened? One of the nuclear reactors at the Chernobyl Plant exploded. Tons of radioactive material surrounded the plant, poisoning the land and the water.

Drinking water was unsafe for months. Eating the fish from surrounding waters was unsafe for years. Nearby forests turned brown and died. A 30-mile area around the power plant was abandoned by humans. No one lives there today. No one. It is estimated that the area surrounding Chernobyl will not be safe for at least another 900 years.

Iodine 131Cesium 137 Strontium 90Plutonium Absorbed by the thyroid, as it is unable to determine the difference between normal and radioactive iodine. It causes cancer and other disorders in the thyroid gland. The body is fooled into thinking this element is calcium. It gets absorbed into bones and causes leukemia and many other cancers, as well as deformities of the skeletal system. Mistaken for potassium by the body, which is needed in every living cell. It then concentrates in muscles. The most toxic substance known to man, Plutonium does not exist in nature. It is absorbed into the blood system and causes varieties of cancers and blood disorders.

PBS News (11:42) Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster 25 Years Later (2011)

Voices From Chernobyl “He was producing stool times a day. With blood and mucous. His skin started cracking on his arms and legs. He became covered with boils. When he turned his head, there’d be clumps of hair left on the pillow.” “I changed the sheet on him every day, and by evening it would be covered in blood. I pick him up, and there are pieces of skin on my hand” “Pieces of lung, his liver were coming out of his mouth”

What Do You Think This Means? “Chernobyl is like the war of all wars. There’s nowhere to hide. Not underground, not underwater, not in the air.”