Chernobyl 01 Quotes

“Those whose bodies were recovered are buried in welded zinc coffins, to prevent their radioactive remains from contaminating the soil. Even”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Doctors and nurses were also irradiated because the patients they treated were so contaminated that their own bodies had become radioactive. Initially,”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Watch and clock faces, fingernails, military instrument panels, gun sights and even children’s toys glowed with radium, hand-painted in factories by young women working for the United States Radium Corporation. The unsuspecting artisans would lick their brushes - ingesting radium particles each time - to keep the tips pointed during the precision work, but years later their teeth and skulls began to disintegrate.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“I am sure that at the end of the world, in the last millisecond of the Earth’s existence, the last man will see what we have just seen.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“The principal concern of a nuclear reactor - particularly an RBMK reactor, because of its graphite moderator - is that cooling water continuously flows into the core. Without it there could be an explosion or meltdown. Even if the reactor is shut down, the fuel within will still be generating decay heat, which would damage the core without further cooling. Pumps driving the flow of water rely on electricity generated by the plant’s own turbines, but in the event of a blackout the electrical supply can be switched to the national grid. If that fails, diesel generators on site will automatically start up to power the water pumps, but these take about 50 seconds to gather enough energy to operate the massive pumps. There are six emergency tanks containing a combined 250 tons of pressurised water which can be injected into the core within 3.5 seconds, but an RBMK reactor needs around 37,000 tons of water per hour - 10 tons-per-second - so 250 tons does not cover the 50 second gap.92”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“During the first few minutes of the accident, more than 100 alarms went off, and there was no system for suppressing the unimportant signals so that operators could concentrate on the significant alarms.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Radiation had made any ordinary course of action impossible, pushing them to acknowledge that the use of even one nuclear bomb - let alone the 65,000 in existence in 1986 - was unconscionable. Five”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“For those first months, futile attempts to avoid a mass panic took precedent over people’s lives. As”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Soldiers handling reactor graphite by hand shows how uninformed people were in the early days of the clean-up operation.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Radiation’s most well-known pioneering researcher, Marie Curie, died in 1934 from aplastic anaemia brought on by her decades of unprotected exposure to the faint, glowing substances in her pockets and desk drawers.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“NASA scientists calculated in 2013 that nuclear power has actually prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning between 1971 and 2009.68”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Thorium, Polonium and Radium,”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“The New York Post, meanwhile, decided to one-up the hysteria by printing the ludicrous and provocative May 2nd headline, “Mass Grave for 15,000 N-Victims.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“The volume and intensity of radioactive particles thrown into the atmosphere on that night was equal to 10 Hiroshima bombs,”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Vladimir Shevchenko, a filmmaker from Kiev, died within a year of filming harrowing roof-top footage of the ruined reactor and Bio-robots entirely without protection. His cameras became so radioactive they had to be buried.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Adding a proper pressure vessel, built to the standards and complexity required by the RBMK design, was estimated to double the cost of each reactor.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Nearly one in three of all the newborn babies have deformities, mostly internal,” said Alexander Vewremchuk, of the Special Hospital for the Radiological Protection”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Because engineers could not manually screw on connecting bolts or weld seams in many places, nor resolve instances where the underlying building sagged under the additional weight as sizeable components were laid down, the Sarcophagus has many unintended holes.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“would cause traffic jams and prevent a steady departure.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Time and time again Bryukhanov and Fomin were told that the reactor was completely destroyed, and time and time again they disregarded everyone who warned them.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“he shut down Unit 3 himself.159 Along with the firemen, he prevented the possible destruction of a second reactor.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“were exhibiting strong signs of a psychological phenomenon often associated with man-made disasters, known as groupthink. Described as ‘the desire for harmony or conformity in the group [which] results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome,”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“The event was later depicted in the movie ‘K19: The Widowmaker’, starring Harrison Ford.52”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“I did stand to one side, sort of hopefully, but if you’re staring straight at the core of a shutdown reactor you’re going to get quite a bit of radiation.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“A list of just 32 notable coal mining accidents totals almost 10,000 fatalities,”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“France is the country most dependent on nuclear power, providing roughly 75% of its electricity through nuclear power plants, while America and Russia both hover around the 20% mark.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“With everything in place, engineers have begun working towards dismantling the Sarcophagus - estimated to take five years. Assuming that’s completed before 2023, when the Designed Steel Stabilisation Structure holding up the western wall is no longer guaranteed to take the weight, work can begin on removing fuel-containing material from within Unit 4. They’ll have 100 years, which sounds like a lot, but nuclear decommissioning is a notoriously laborious process. Despite the fire at England’s Windscale nuclear plant happening all the way back in 1957, clean-up work isn’t expected to finish until 2041.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“To avoid corrosion of the steel structure, the designers have implemented a clever air-conditioning system that circles 45,000m³ of warm air per-hour within the vicinity of the shelter’s cladding. “There are steel structures that have lasted 100 years, such as the Eiffel Tower, but they last because they’re continually repainted,” said Dr Eric Schmieman, a senior technical advisor from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the US, to Wired magazine in 2013. “We’re not able to do that once we slide this into place - the radiation levels are so high we can’t send people in. So what are we going to do? We are going to condition the air that goes into that space. We’re going to keep the relative humidity in there at less than 40 percent.”278”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“Each half of the arch is made from several sections. Enormous jacks, whose only prior job was raising the sunken Kursk submarine in 2001, were used to lift each stage higher and higher until it reached its full height of 110 meters. Inside are remotely-operated heavy-duty overhead cranes, to be used for moving people and equipment.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster

“The NSC, an enormous, one-of-a-kind arch, 250 meters wide by 165m long, and weighing a colossal 30,000 tons, is being assembled from prefabricated sections at a special holding ground 400m west of Unit 4. The first half was completed at the end of March 2014 and both finished halves were joined together a year later. Though it was originally supposed to be in place over the Sarcophagus by 2005, funds were difficult to come by and the NSC arch was not finished until November 2016. Upon completion, the entire structure was pushed along purpose-built tracks over the existing Sarcophagus, centimeter by centimeter, over the course of two days. It was the largest movable structure ever built. Unlike the original Object Shelter, this new confinement is designed to last 100 years, by which time most decommissioning work on Unit 4 should have concluded.”
― Andrew Leatherbarrow, Chernobyl 01:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the World's Worst Nuclear Disaster