The site of the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) remains an unique location, as what’s left of the No. 4 reactor is the only place in the world where you …. Sampling the Elephant’s Foot and Chornobyl’s Tedious Corium Clean-up.
4 reactor is the only place in the world where you can find significant amounts of what is called corium. An amalgamation of nuclear fuel, fuel rod cladding and whatever materials like concrete that the molten mass came into contact with, Soviet scientists initially struggled to make sense of this material, leading them to even have it shot at to get samples. In this video documentary by [That Chernobyl Guy] these struggles by scientists both in and outside the USSR to comprehend this wholly new material are detailed.
Much like trinitite – created by a US nuclear weapons test – these are amalgamations of material combined under extreme conditions. In the case of the ChNPP accident, the botched turbine spin-up test and disabling of all safeties by the operators allowed the bottom core chain reaction to run unconstrained, producing the massive steam explosion that flipped the biosafety lid of the RBMK reactor, while also fully melting the core material that then melted through the concrete below the reactor. Although this Elephant’s Foot is only a tiny fraction of the total mass of corium inside the No.
4 reactor, it got rather infamous for supposedly being highly radioactive and lethal.
ChuckysCarnage 