Chernobyl

The Chernobyl disaster occurred when technicians at the power station, near Pripyat in the north of Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, ran a test on reactor number four to simulate shutting it down during an electricity blackout. A combination of reactor design flaws and technician errors meant that…

Nataliia Khodymchuk’s last evening at home was like many that had come before. She stayed in the neat confines of her three-bedroom apartment in Kyiv, slicing garlic to preserve and knitting socks and scarves to send to Ukrainian soldiers. She moved slowly; the November light faded outside her windows as…

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On April 26, 1986, Soviet engineers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were conducting a safety test. Doomed by a fatal design flaw and pushed to the limit by human negligence, reactor 4 exploded amid an attempted shutdown during a routine procedure, setting off a chain of events that ultimately…

In the novel When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift, the Chernobyl disaster and its legacy is extrapolated to a near future where natural habitats are depleted and precarious. This work of eco-fiction deftly explores issues of possible paths to a future where animals return to a nature depleted…

Leader and Physics Forty years after the world’s biggest nuclear disaster, the safety of Chernobyl hangs in the balance – though not because of the radiation risk By New Scientist Facebook / Meta Twitter / X icon Linkedin Reddit Email Shutterstock/lux3000 Tell someone you are visiting New York for work…

Anatoly Doroshenko is tasked with entering Chernobyl’s reactor 4 to take vital radioactivity readings Mykhaylo Palinchak The shattered remains of Chernobyl’s reactor 4 are one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. Not only are the ruins physically dangerous, but they are highly irradiated, pitch black and shrouded by a…

Society When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Chernobyl lay on the path to the capital Kyiv. When the plant was occupied by Russian troops, meteorologist Lyudmila Dyblenko fearlessly continued taking vital measurements to monitor the nuclear exclusion zone By Matthew Sparkes Facebook / Meta Twitter / X icon Linkedin Reddit…

Anatoly Doroshenko is tasked with entering Chernobyl’s reactor 4 to take vital radioactivity readings Mykhaylo Palinchak The shattered remains of Chernobyl’s reactor 4 are one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. Not only are the ruins physically dangerous, but they are highly irradiated, pitch black and shrouded by a…

The conflict in Iran – but also the war in Ukraine – show not only that AI is radically changing the economics of war (which may be good news), but also that we may be heading towards some kind of “Chernobyl moment”. We may soon experience a disaster that will…