On This Day in History: April 26

Chernobyl

AUDIO VERSION HERE

Anyone who has raised a toddler in the last 30 years has made a joke about them “having a meltdown” or “going Chernobyl.” April 26, 1986 was the day shit glowed in the dark at that Soviet-era power plant.

--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: April 26, 1986--

The explosion of Reactor #4 qualifies as a “colossal fuck up.” Corruption in the Soviet system of government is largely to blame for the catastrophe. Despite what you might have seen on HBO, the explosion was no one person’s fault, but rather owed to an organizational structure of overly compliant workers taught not to question authority, and where cutting corners was the norm. But for dramatic purposes, it’s easier to point a camera at one actor and say, “This guy. This fucker right here is the villain.” Well, the TV show presented a few villains, but it was bigger than that.

Additionally, the death rate from the explosion may have been, uh, well, overblown. There is much debate on this subject. The official death toll is in the dozens, but a 2005-06 report by the United Nations attested that as many as 4,000 may die over the long-term due to radiation exposure. Others say the death toll was and is far higher, but it must be pointed out that having an anti-nuclear agenda is a thing, and some will misinterpret data and twist reality to push such an agenda.

The truth is that we can’t know for certain how many died from the Chernobyl explosion, except that it was a monumental tragedy that qualifies as probably the single largest anthropogenic disaster in human history.

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If you saw the HBO special, you will recall that three engineers volunteered to drain millions of gallons of water from beneath the burning reactor in the days immediately following the meltdown. They had to wade through highly contaminated water to do so, donning only light protection from the radiation. One of those three men lived for another 19 years, and the other two are still alive today.

I repeat that the Chernobyl disaster was a colossal fuck up that happened due to what can perhaps best be described as ingrained fuckery in the Soviet system of government. But its legacy, along with the negative portrayal of nuclear power in The Simpsons (really—there are research studies about this) has served to taint international opinion on what is one of the safest and cleanest methods of power generation humans have ever created.

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