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Kevin Mejia Hey guys I won't be able to make it in today I have a Doctors appointment to attend to, but I post the answers to the questions that I needed to answer. I found very detailed articles based on our topic, using Encyclopædia Britannica. Here are the articles name linked to the website; Chernobyl accident Is a short article but containes very good facts regarding the disaster. Ukraine A very long article, 82 pages, however, it gives a clear description of all the AFTER EFFECTS the disaster lead to; environment issues, air pollution, etc...  PROF'S NOTE - IN ORDER FOR MARIA'S LINKS TO WORK, YOU MUST FIRST LOG-IN TO ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA FROM THE BFIT LIBRARY DATABASES PAGE, THEN COME BACK TO THE WIKI AND CLICK ON HER LINKS.
 * MARIA DURAN**

There are also very good videos posted on youtube from Discovery Channel, I'll be posting them after taking some notes from the articles mentioned above. Maria D

What's everyone else up to? did anyone found something to share?] Maria D He Zheng ** I found another good article about [|Chernobyl Accident], it talks about what happening by the time chernobyl been released, Immediate impact, Environmental and health effects of the Chernobyl accident. I think it's a great source.

PROF'S NOTE - THE FIRST SITE IS A .ORG, IS THE INFORMATION FROM A RELIABLE AND CREDIBLE SOURCE? HOW DO YOU KNOW?

THE SECOND SOURCE IS ALSO .ORG, AND IT IS A WIKI... DEFINATELY NOT A CREDIBLE SOURCE FOR THIS PROJECT.

= **Please remember that the Annotated Bibliography is due on 4/20 ** =

-He


 * "Backgrounder on Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident ." ** __United States Nuclear Regulatory Commision . __ 20 April 2010 [].

“Backgrounder on Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Accident ." is a long documentary article. It’s divided into five different catagories, which include Background, Health Effects from the Accident, US Reactors and NRC’s Response, Discussion, Sarcophagus. Basically, this website source talks about what’s happen by the time when the accident happened, and how it’s being effect to human’s health, as well as how reactors and NRC’s Response, and how they divided into three different phases.

-Maria

"** Chernobyl Accident **." //Encyclopædia Britannica//. //Encyclopædia Britannica Online//. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2010 <[]>.

The "Chernobyl accident" is a one page long short article, divided into four paragraphs, all which gives clear facts based on what happened on the Chernobyl accident. The article also mentions that the radiation from the accident on Chernobyl was spread by the wind over Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine and soon reached as far as France and Italy. Millions of acres of forest and farmland were contaminated as well, and thousands of people were evacuated, while hundreds of thousands more remained in contaminated areas. The "Chernobyl accident" article also states that the Chernobyl's disaster sparked criticism of unsafe procedures and design flaws in Soviet reactors, and it heightened resistance to the building of more such plants.

-Mike

McCarthy, John. "**Chernobyl**." 26 january 1996. __Formal stanford.__ 20 april 2010 <[]>.  The web page describes the major flaws in the design of the reactor. Also the human error that could have prevented this entire disaster. It also satiates the differences in seriousness between the Ukrainian government and Russian government.

-Kelvin

The "Program to bring Chernobyl kids to Canada cancelled" is also a one page short article, divided into many other paragraphs, which talks about a certain program that brings children from who were involved in the Chernobyl disaster and gives them the opportunity to live in a family house hold, but Canada is thinking of cancelling this program and have the kids sent back, but the people who’ve organized the program are trying to continue in providing homes for the following kids who have suffered and gone through the horrible incident in Chernobyl.
 * "Program to Bring Chernobyl Kids to Canada Cancelled." ** //Canadian Broadcasting Corporation// [CBC] 18 June 2009. //General OneFile//. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. < [] >

-Mike

" ** World Nuclear Association **."  November 2009. 20 April 2010 [].

The nuclear association web site gives full detail on what happen and Chernobyl, and why it happened. It also shows pictures of the type of reactor at Chernobyl and a detailed picture on what happened. This web site also gives the immediate impact over the course of a year to then region effected by the disaster both in human scale and environmental. Chernobyl even after the disaster was still running reactors 1-3.

-Maria

"**Ukraine**." //Encyclopædia Britannica//. //Encyclopædia Britannica Online//. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010. Web. 20 Aapr. 2010 < [] >. “Ukraine” is a profoundly expanded 82 page long article. The article summarizes; the country’s location, environment , population, geography, and also the well known major nuclear disaster Chernobyl, which created  severe environmental problems in northwestern Ukraine, and other countries. “Ukraine” also stated that agricultural lands near Chernobyl will be unsafe for thousands of years, though some of these areas continue to be occupied and farmed. Furthermore, several thousand precipitate deaths from cancer are expected to continue. He, where did you get the quote used on HOME page? Please remember that we must keep all sources citations in order to do the annotated bibliography! : ) Thanks, **Maria Duran**

MIKE; I found Professional looking templates that you can use for the meeting's MINUTES, on microsoft WORD! Hope you use them : ) Thanks, Maria Duran

· MAKE SURE WE ALL CHECK THE NEW **__Discussion Section;__** where each member of the group contributes their own opinions about this disaster including how a lack of //professionalism, ethics//, or //conscientiousness// may have contributed to this failure. Maria D

DUE NEXT CLASS 04/22/2010 Like we concur on today's class, we are writing at least 2 paragraph based on the topic assigned to each one, as a reminder I’m posting each member question/topic. Please make sure we use the articles posted under the Annotated Bibliography as references. This is worth 12 pts!!!!! After reading each one's paper on next class, then, we will work upon the conclusion. Thanks, MARIA D · The  history of the project/technology, etc- (what was the technology or project meant to do, whom did it benefit, what problems was it meant to solve)? HE

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant project was meant to be like any other power plant that has reactors, could generate electricity, but these reactor are built without containment shells, and that might be the reason why it made the accident even worse, because without those shells, radioactivity materials were being spreading within the range of surrounding area. Chernobyl has four Chernobyl RBMK-1000 reactors, and they were intended to produce power and also to produce plutonium for military use. The unit 4 was destroyed after in the accident, unit 2 was shut down after a turbine hall fire in 1991, unit 1 was closed in 1997 and unit 3 closed at the end of 2000 due to international pressure. These Power plants produce a lot of electrical, and they were the total domestic electricity production in the country. No one did benefit from it, but on the other hand, a lot of innocent lives were being taken from it, as well as how harmful it does to the environment. Besides, it also had other features regarded unsafe in the Soviet Union as well as by experts from other countries. The Soviet Union never exported RBMK reactors, which prove that they put human’s life in dangerous, and careless about the whole project. ( McCarthy) PROF's Note: You need to be more in depth on this: what is the history of nuclear power in general? From what technology was it created? Why did the Soviet's decide to use nuclear power? What other countries use nuclear power? Have their been any other accidents at Power Plants? What are the issues with using nuclear power? What are the benefits?, etc.

· What failed? MIKE

· Why did it fail? Kevin Mejia <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">One of the main reasons that Chernobyl failed was because, “The reactor had several other features which were regarded as unsafe in the Soviet Union as well as by experts from other countries. The Soviet Union never exported RBMK reactors.” RBMK which <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">is an abbreviation of Russian terms meaning reactor of high output, multichannel type or as stated in one of the articles “//Reaktor Golshoy Moshchnosty Kanalny//, which is translated into, high-power channel reactor.” (WNA) This could have been preventable but others working on this power plant should have thought that “Making an experiment with the reactor which involved disabling its safety features.” Wasn’t the greatest idea and “This is the single main cause of the accident. The safety features would have safely shut down the reactor if they hadn't been disabled.”(NFAQ)

<span style="color: #1000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">PROF's NOTE: This is not RESEARCH, this is a paragraph taken from an artilce. What article? (needs a citation). There are many reasons why this technology failed at Chernobyl... look further, as this is a key question in the overall report and should include an extensive amount of information. What is RBMK?

· What were the consequences of the failure? MARIA DURAN

<span class="long_text"> Chernobyl was classified as "The worst accident in the history of nuclear power generation  " by the article "Chernobyl accident  " published on Encyclopedia Britannica. The Disaster caused deaths, brought illness such as cancer due to the exposure to radioactive chemicals, and affected the environment, to mention few.

After the accident <span class="long_text">two hundred people were hospitalized immediately, of whom 32 died. Most were firefighters and rescue personnel involved in the work to control the accident. An estimated 135,000 people were evacuated from the area, including 50,000 residents of Pripyat, Ukraine. (Chernobyl Accident)

Chernobyl accident <span class="long_text"> also produced a radioactive cloud which spread over most of Europe. Initial evidence showed that a serious leak of radioactive material affected other countries, as far as France and Italy. The article "Chernobyl Accident" Stated that between 50 and 185 million curies of radionuclides escaped into the atmosphere, several times more radioactivity than that created by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

Chernobyl contamination did not spread evenly over the adjacent regions, but was unevenly distributed by the wind. The 2006 TORCH report stated that half of the airborne particles were deposited outside Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. A large area of the Russian Federation south of Bryansk was also contaminated, as well as parts of northwestern Ukraine. The Chernobyl Disaster severely affected the environment, "Ukraine" article also published on Encyclopedia Britannica, established that a large amount of land are contaminated by dangerous short- and long-lived radioactive isotopes, notably strontium-90, which can replace calcium in foods and become concentrated in bones and teeth. "Ukraine" also published that "Contaminated agricultural lands near Chernobyl will be unsafe for thousands of years, though some of these areas continue to be occupied and farmed." (Ukraine 8)

TORCH WEBSITE: [] "** Chernobyl Accident **<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">." //Encyclopædia Britannica//. //Encyclopædia Britannica Online//. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2010 <[]>. "**Ukraine**." //Encyclopædia Britannica//. //Encyclopædia Britannica Online//. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010. Web. 20 Aapr. 2010 < [] >.

<span style="color: #1000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">PROF's NOTE: Good start, but be more specific regarding the illnesses people are suffering from today that are considered a side effect of chernobyl. Also, what is the situation in the town of chernobyl today? Has the Soviet Union built any more nuclear plants, or did Chernobyl cause them to cease utilizing nuclear power?

· Who was at fault, and why? Kevin Mejia

The people responsible were the crew itself. Why? You might ask. Well it all started off when the Unit 4 reactor was shut down for maintenance. The whole purpose of the maintenance work was “to determine whether cooling off the core could continue to be ensured in the event of a loss of power.” Since those type of tests were ran each year, they assumed that this test were to be as easy as any other test they’ve done, “but the power delivered from the running down turbine fell off too rapidly, so it was decided to repeat the test using the new voltage regulators that had been developed. Unfortunately, this test, which was considered essentially to concern the non-nuclear part of the power plant, was carried out without a proper exchange of information and coordination between the team in charge of the test and the personnel in charge of the safety of the nuclear reactor. Therefore, inadequate safety precautions were included in the test programmed and the operating personnel were not alerted to the nuclear safety implications of the electrical test and its potential danger.

<span style="color: #1000ff; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive;">PROF's NOTE: A good start, but the information should be more explicit... EXACTLY what happened that caused the accident... what was the order of events? More information is needed. Maybe a nice diagram that shows how the disaster occurred.

· What did we learn from this disaster (including corrective actions, new security measures, redesign, etc. to insure no future failures)? MIKE <span style="color: #008000; font-family: 'Arial Black',Gadget,sans-serif;"> Kevin Mejia Hey guys I won't be able to make it in today I have a Doctors appointment to attend to, but I post the answers to the questions that I needed to answer. @Kevin Mejia, Thanks for posting your work... Can you please cite your quotes?? We need to know which articles you quoted from, in order to fo the formal/final report... I'll let you know what happened today in class. Regards, Maria D.

@HE here is the link to the National Geography's Website where you can find many creditables photos regarding the Chernobyl Disaster. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/04/0425_060425_chernobyl.html

Try this article: Michael Alden

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Chernobyl the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever seen even today there are still parts of the Ukraine are still to radioactive to have anyone live there. But what happened to reactor number 4 to make it explode. There are many factors both mechanical and operator errors that precluded and helped cause this terrible technological disaster. The most serious of which was a flaw in the design of the RBMK reactor one major one is that it was built without a containment shell which would keep almost all the radioactive material in just in case of an accident. The reason the RBMK reactor has no shell is because it was too tall and not only used for power but also used to collect military grade plutonium. The reactor also had something called a positive void coefficient Which John McCarthy states is “the water in the reactor boils in some spot a bubble of steam is produced. In PWR and BWR reactors, this reduces reactivity, causing the nuclear reaction to slow down. In RBMK reactors it can cause the nuclear reaction to speed up.”(McCarthy). The operators at the time also turned of several safety features including the emergency shut off to the reactor that could have stopped this disaster from happening. On the day of the accident there was and experiment was being done to see how long the turbines were to spin and supply power to the circulation pumps. The same test was carried out the year before but power ran out to quickly. So they were testing a new voltage regulator to keep the water continually going to the reactor incase of power failure. Reactors have an interesting characteristic if they is shut down a build of a poison keeps the reactor from being able to be restarted for many hours. This made it difficult to get the 25% of full power needed to run the test. So in order to get as much power as they could most of the control rods for the reactor were pulled out and even then the power level only reached 6%. Strictly against the rules of the planet it was done anyway. The test went ahead anyway and additional water pumps were turned on and were driven under the inertia of the turbine. This provided too far to much water to the reactor a problem in the design increased the water flow even. This additional water flow made it so they had to remove the manual control rods making it extremely dangerous if water was ever to slow around the reactor as it did would make the reactor go critical in seconds. At around 1:20 computers print out read that the reactor was unsafe and should be shut down immediately. The operators choose to ignore it though it isn’t understood why this was done. The normal electrical drive of the water pumps were switched off slowing the water flow to the reactor causing a build up of steam. Making the reactors chain reaction speed making the automatic control rods go down but because of design flaws there insertion was slow. Before they could get all the way down damage occurred preventing them from being fully inserted. Making the chain reaction continue to accelerate producing heat 100 times greater than the reactor was designed for. No one knows the exact cause of the reactors exploding but two loud explosions were heard and glowing material was seen flying out of the top of the structure. Because of Chernobyl and the USA’s near disaster of Three Mile Island two new large organizations were established by the nuclear industry. One of them is Nuclear Safety Analysis Center also known as the (NSAC).What NSAC does is “NSAC carries out very intensive technical analyses ”. The other organization is The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations or INOP “ <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">INPO has established an impressive electronic communication network among power plants, reactor vendors, and centers of expertise all over the world. It also conducts inspections of power plants, offering suggestions and criticisms that are taken very seriously”. Now there is substantial contact between the former Soviet and American reactor safety experts, including many visits in both directions, personal friendships, and lots of informal discussions over cocktails. The above question has been asked and discussed many times, and the Soviet reply runs along the following lines.

Kevin can you please post your work Into the Individual Work section. Thanks Maria D. : )

Did anyone corrected their annotated bibliography? Proofread their work? Are we making a poster to show any visual interpretations?

Mike- are the photos used on the power pont creditable? is that the final power point?

Please remember Prof.Bonk wants us to make a section where we answer; "ethics-- what is the opinion of each team member as to why this accident occurred and who was to blame? Did they exhibit a lack of morals or ethics that led to the accident occurring?". ** I’m concerned because I don’t see any changes and the FINAL project is due tomorrow! ** If anyone makes any changes PLEASE UPLOAD IT! THANKS. ** Maria D. **

**Kevin Mejia** - I added on to one of the questions that I needed to answer.