Word: chernobyl
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Stung by the Western reporting, the Soviet media launched a week-long counterattack. Each limited disclosure about Chernobyl was followed by a shrill TASS account of nuclear problems in the U.S. and Europe. On Wednesday the Soviets went further. In a three-minute news brief carried on all three Moscow channels, an announcer lashed out at the foreign coverage. Said he: "Some news agencies in the West are spreading rumors that thousands of people allegedly perished during the accident at the atomic power station. It has already been reported that in reality two people died and only 197 were hospitalized...
Soviet citizens received vastly less information about Chernobyl than was available to the outside world. In Kiev, foreigners were the first to learn of the seriousness of the accident when authorities warned West German technicians on Tuesday that the Chernobyl area was being sealed off. Most of the Soviet Union spent last week in a festive mood for the annual May Day pageant, which combines celebrations of international worker solidarity with the rites of spring. Amid the red flags and bunting that adorned Moscow's bridges and thoroughfares for the four-day holiday, headlines about the ruined reactor would have...
...When the water boils away, the molten core sinks into the earth in the so-called China syndrome, a term used by scientists, and popularized by the 1979 movie of the same name, that mordantly suggests that the radioactive mass might plunge all the way through the earth. The Chernobyl plant had no such pool, by contrast, and engineers expect the reactor to be consumed by intense heat...
...four huge RBMK-1000 reactors at Chernobyl were mighty but in many ways outdated machines. "It's a crude technology," said a senior Administration official. "They haven't changed it in 30 years." Although capable of producing 1,000 MW of power (vs. 850 MW for a typical U.S. nuclear generator), the Chernobyl unit had some design features dating back to the atomic pile that Enrico Fermi used in 1942 to create the world's first chain reaction at the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. Both systems employed graphite to moderate the nuclear reaction. Most U.S. units regulate with...
...Enrico Fermi Institute at the University of Chicago and a strong nuclear power proponent: "Those of us who know something about Soviet safety policy have wondered how they have gotten away without a big accident for as long as they have." The lack of a containment structure for the Chernobyl reactor, which might have limited the emission of radioactivity into the atmosphere after the explosion, is only the most glaring example...