#chernobyl nuclear disaster

[soviet-history-detective]

Атмосфера припятской медсанчасти 126.

The atmosphere of the Pripyat medical unit 126.

[icarusistires]

Gotta love hyperfixations sometimes, How can I be hyperfixated on Jason Todd during his time as Robin and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster at the same time-

[transfaabulous]

Putin repeatedly threatens use of nuclear assault

Belarus rewrites its constitution(?) to remove the part which forbids it from nuclear weapons possession

Russia begins moving some of its nuclear arsenal to Belarus

Russia destroyed the Nova Kakhovka Dam, which, among other things, provided a great deal of water to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to avoid a meltdown

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been concerned since Russia began its occupation of Zaporizhzhia and has monitored the situation closely, despite several delays and roadblocks

Russians stationed at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant have recently begun to reduce their presence at ZNPP

Like. Y'all. Please. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine should matter because it breaks SO many international laws and has caused an enormous global food crisis and because at the end of the day, Ukrainians and Ukrainian sovereignty matter. But even if one doesn't give a shit, one should at least pay attention to the very clear signs that Russia is going to continue its pattern of continual escalation to a further extreme.

Russia has poisoned Ukrainian soil this way before. It is clearly perfectly willing to do so again.

Read the writing on the wall. If you haven't started caring yet, start now.

[academicelephant]

In case you’re interested of what happened in Chernobyl in 1986, Zero Hour’s documentary Disaster at Chernobyl is a must to watch

[cleve-in-a-can]

Not my usual kind of post, but I'd just want everyone who sees this to take a moment to renemeber the tradgety that happend today 38 years ago (26 April 1986.) may we never forget the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and include all the angelic liquidators in your prayers.

[reactor-four-official]

Stained glass windows in the administrative building of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant was one of the largest in the Soviet Union and the poster child of the Soviet nuclear power industry. As such, little expense was spared on details like these windows.

The Soviet Union often used motifs in abstract art to promote Communism and laude their successes.

For more info, check out my reblog of this post.

[ohsalome]

Today is a 37st anniversary of the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant disaster. It's hard to talk about one unprocessed national tragedy while living through another.

The Chornobyl disaster was totally preventable and it took away countless lives of people living in the region, especially in Ukraine and Belarus - both the liquidators and the civillians. Despite the very air and dust being literal poison, the soviets had not only hid this information from the people, but forced everybody to partake in the May the 1st parade - because god forbid we lose our face before the international community as a working class paradise! If not for the nuclear scientists in Sweden who raised the alarm about the dangerous levels of nuclear particles coming from northern Ukraine, who knows what would have happened. It definitely would have been swepped under the rug and forgotten by the international community, together with its victims - just like Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan is barely known abroad.

With russia constantly threatening to turn Zaporhizhzha nuclear plant into second Chornobyl, the wound caused by this tragedy is cut open again.

We all love the HBO Chornobyl series, and I genuinely am grateful to Craig Mazin for the amount of empathy and respect he brought to the series; but for today I indulge you to watch something made by ukrainians, to try to understand what this tragedy means to us and how it influences our lives even today.

For the documentaries, my favourite series by this day remains the "Dragons live here" by Your Underground Humanitarian School Youtube channel, which, unfortunately, can only offer automated english subtitles - they should, however, be sufficient.

As for the feature films, I recommend "Gateway" (you can stream it online with english subtitles here). And here is the official english trailer:

[teeth--thief]

Google Drive full of book PDFs about Chernobyl

Link to the Google Drive if you don't want to click the title: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1kscKFciW6almJA8p-0sUQPO3c0A4AQYe

Note: It will be updated regularly - for as long as I'll be able to find/get new things =) So far I've compiled 41 books in three languages.

Just to repeat what I said in the first post: I'm open to any requests or suggestions or even PDFs themselves, if someone wants to share theirs from their collection. Message me, send me an ask, throw a rock through my window - whatever you prefer, just please, do it yourself because I'm too scared to message anyone, thanks. No fiction - that's the only rule. Any language is welcome - if you want me to look for a certain book in the language of your choice, I'll do that. If you have a book in language other than English, I'd love to add it to the Drive! If you have a better version of whatever PDF I've already got, then I'd be more than happy to do a swap.

Now, some of my reasoning, if anyone's interested: first of all, I think it's important for everyone to be able to access stuff like this. Think of it as a library, minus the "give these back" part. Secondly, I get soooo mad when people are like haha, found this super rare, basically impossible to find, very expensive book! ...I shall now keep it exclusively to myself. Ma'am, you're ruining the vibe and stalling everyone's hobby research but I guess you do you...

List of all the books (under the cut):

In English:

Voices from Chernobyl - Alexievich S.

Chernobyl Reactor Accident - Source Term

Chernobyl - Insight from the Inside - Dr. Chernousenko V.M.

How It Was - Dyatlov A.S.

(ENG+RUS) Chernobyl Booklet

Chernobyl: The Devastation, Destruction and Consequences of the World’s Worst Radiation Accident - Fitzgerald I.

Final Warning. The Legacy of Chernobyl - Gale R.P.

Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster - Higginbotham A.

INSAG-1

INSAG-7

Interesting Chernobyl - 100 Symbols

From Chernobyl To Fukushima - Karpan N.

Manual for Survival. A Chernobyl Guide to the Future - Kate Brown

Chernobyl. Confessions of a Reporter - Kostin I.

The Politics of Invisibility. Public Knowledge about Radiation Health Effects after Chernobyl - Kuchinskaya O.

Memories - Kupnyi A.

Chernobyl 01:23:40 - The Incredible True Story of the World’s Worst Nuclear Disaster - Leatherbarrow A.

Chernobyl Notebook - Medvedev G.

No Breathing Room - Medvedev G.

Chernobyl Record - The Definitive History of the Chernobyl Catastrophe - Mould R. F.

Wormwood Forest - A Natural History of Chernobyl - Mycio M.

Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl - Petryna A.

Chernobyl: History of a Tragedy - Plokhy S.

Ablaze - Story of Chernobyl - Read P.P.

Producing Power: The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry - Schmid S. D.

Chernobyl: A Documentary Story - Shcherbak I.

The Vienna Report

Chernobyl - Crime Without Punishment - Yaroshinskaya A.A.

In Russian:

Chernobyl: Kak eto bylo. Preduprezhdeni - Kopchinsky, Steinberg

Chernobyl. Tak eto bylo. Vzglyad Iznutri - Voznyak Ya. Troitskiy N.

Лучевая болезнь человека (очерки) - Гуськова А.К., Байсоголов Г.Д.

Чернобыль. Как это было - Дятлов А.С.

Чернобыль: 30 лет спустя - Кравчук Н.В.

Живы - Купный А.

Чернобыль - Щербак Ю.

(ONLY Pages 367-383) Чернобыль, 10 лет спустя. Неизбежность или случайность?

KGB files - pre and post accident (includes additional information in Ukrainian)

In Polish: 

Jak to było - Diatłov A.S.

Czarnobyl - Plokhy S.

Czarnobyl - Sekuła P.

Katastrofa w Czarnobylu - Sekuła P.

Czarnobyl. Od katastrofy do procesu - Siwiński W.

[vexwerewolf]

Love how many nuclear science papers in the period between 1986 and 1995 carry the general message of "well this is fucking awful, it should never have happened and Christ we hope it never happens again, but on the other hand this is fascinating"

[soviet-history-detective]

Duga

[naomiknight-17]

#i probably come off sounding pretentious when i get excited about radiation incidents#like. uhm actually hiroshima was an airburst explosion so the fallout is minimal. chernobyl however exploded on the ground and included...#hot particles which blah blah blah

I Would Like To Hear More

@chasm-connected

Okay gosh uhm

I am not an expert in any way, but basically what I was referencing is how the different types of explosions (Hiroshima atom bomb air burst vs Chernobyl reactor meltdown) had drastically different levels of fallout

Let me preface by saying that this in no way is meant to minimize the real destruction, pain and suffering caused by the Hiroshima bombing - that is unspeakably heinous, but that is another post. This is specifically about the science of nuclear fallout

When the Hiroshima bomb exploded, it had not yet reached the ground. The heat and shockwave it produced were extreme and deadly, but the radiation did not stick around as long as one may expect. When that kind of explosion goes off in the air, radioactive particles disperse in the atmosphere and die out relatively quickly. Hiroshima today is a thriving metropolis - forever changed by its nuclear history but safe and livable!

Chernobyl, however, is another story entirely. The exclusion zone is still considered uninhabitable. One could visit and even spend a day or two in the area, but living there every day (as some people do, but again, that's another post) could have serious health effects. The ambient radiation levels are unsafe, even miles from ground zero.

Why?

Well. When the reactor exploded, it sent actual pieces of radioactive fuel into the atmosphere, which rained down all over the immediate area. Not particles that would disperse in the air, whole pieces of active fuel rods just... everywhere. There are still tiny bits of these rods and similarly radioactive materials from the explosion just... hanging out on and in the ground in Chernobyl, continuing to put out radiation. This is in addition to the core of the reactor that actually melted down, but that has been largely enclosed and shielded (though as it continues to slowly degrade there is a risk of further contamination to the ground/groundwater - another post!) The little hot particles everywhere? How do you shield or enclose them? How do you even find them all without putting people in danger? If you could, how long would it take?

There's more to it, of course, and if you want to learn more I highly recommend the Half Life Histories series of videos on YouTube by Kyle Hill. He's an actual scientist who can explain this stuff SO much better than I ever could.

[bat-anon]

[catthrowingupinyourshoe]

I doodled Chernobyl last week not as much detail as I hoped

[dougielombax]

38 years ago today.

What a fucking shitshow.

[rotten-flesh-n-bones]

Anatoly Dyatlov by yours truly. Reddit loved this piece but I know nobody here cares about my insane doings

[reactor-four-official]

A mural on the Pripyat Music School entitled “Music”.

The mural is made from a traditional Italian mosaic style called Smalti. Small, hand cut glass pieces make up the colors of the mural.

Photo Credits: Andre Josse