Chernobyl: The Ongoing Story of the World's Deadliest Nuclear Disaster

by Glenn Alan Cheney

The 1986 explosion at the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl was a human as well as environmental catastrophe, and this thorough account of the accident examines its causes, the response of the Soviet... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Library Binding
• Language: English
• ISBN: 002718305X
• ISBN13: 9780027183054
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: New Discovery Books
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.4" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 12 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 7 to 12

Customer Reviews

This attempts to understand the radioactive aftermath

The reactor at Chernobyl was too large and too well engineered to produce the kind of explosion that is considered typical for weapons, but it was capable of reaching temperatures that were much higher than mere fireman could cool by spraying water on the blaze.For most of the people involved in fighting the fire, the temperature was a minor problem compared to the radioactive storm of particles and rays released in the reaction. The operators in the control room thought they had some control over the reaction long after two explosions had flipped the concrete lid over the reactor and blew the roof off a large building. Everyone who was not vaporized immediately knew that the reactor core had not exploded in the typical mushroom cloud catastrophe which is so familiar from hundreds of weapons tests. Due to a fire, they did not have access to equipment which could have told them how high the level of radiation being released from the core had grown, but that level was so high, it could have produced panic, so large numbers of people would never be told. Medical science is not really up to date on what people who are subject to such a subatomic particle ambush can expect for the rest of their lifespan, and all the doctors in the Soviet Union worked for the government, which never planned to tell the people much about anything.The book, CHERNOBYL THE ONGOING STORY OF THE WORLD'S DEADLIEST NUCLEAR DISASTER by Glenn Alan Cheney, makes an honest effort to look at everything that people might learn from studying all the forms of subatomic particle ambushes that took place as a result of the Chernobyl secret circus stunt. The sense of condemnation which drives this book is fought by those who had avoided for so long the question: Who is Oedipus here, and who the Sphinx? The science found itself starting off on a strange foot:"The victims suffered from radiation and heat burns. Their skin was browned like toasted marshmallow. In some places it was black like burned marshmallow. Their skin cracked, blistered, peeled, hung in strips. . . . Their hair fell out." (p. 43)."The world outside the Soviet Union knew more about what was happening than the victims it was happening to. On April 28 Sweden registered the first signs of a radioactive mishap. A monitoring station noticed rising levels of radioactivity. Further analysis revealed a bizarre array of rare isotopes, a combination not normally produced by an atomic explosion or a nuclear reactor leak. One of the isotopes was ruthenium, which melts only at 4,050 degrees F (2,250 degrees C)--a temperature found only on the sun, in a melting nuclear reactor, or, for an instant, in a nuclear bomb. An assessment of atmospheric conditions pointed at the Soviet Union. Sweden announced the discovery and made diplomatic inquiries to Moscow. At first Moscow admitted to nothing but later conceded a trifling accident, a quick and minor release of radioactivity." (p. 83).This book ought to be praised mos