When the problem seemed to be literally buried, scientists working inside the reactor continued their hunt for nuclear fuel. Scientists recovered radioactive material by hand A quarter of a million construction workers on the Chernobyl sarcophagus reached official lifetime limits of radiation. Forced to build straight on to the damaged, red hot hull of Chernobyl Unit Four, the Russian energy authorities faced the biggest civil engineering task in history. Something had happened in the core of the reactor.Įngineers began work on the construction of a concrete sarcophagus to surround the failed reactor to stop rain getting in and triggering a second explosion. Inexplicably on May 6th, the emissions stopped. It is now known that, despite those sacrifices, almost no neutron absorbers reached the core. The intense radiation killed several pilots. To prevent this, the Red Army initially bombed the reactor with neutron absorbers and other chemicals. At the time, they had been worried that the uncontrollable reactor might explode again, and had to assume that a self-sustaining chain reaction was possible. Radiation emissions were still dangerously high and the scientists were exposed to levels of radiation that would be considered almost suicidal in the West. The investigation, dubbed Complex Expedition, was driven by the fear that there could be a second accident at Chernobyl if the missing nuclear fuel - plutonium, uranium and other extremely radioactive elements - was not located and contained. In the aftermath of the disaster at Chernobyl, a team of soviet scientists risked their lives by going back into the reactor to investigate the scale of the damage. Soviet scientists work in areas of intense radiation ![]() ![]() BBC News | Chernobyl | Containing Chernobyl?
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