Today is the 30th anniversary of the worst catastrophe in the history of civilian nuclear power. It was April 26, 1986 when in Chernobyl - today in Ukraine, then the Soviet Union - a reactor of the atomic power plant exploded. The accident occurred during a test for which the safety systems had been disconnected, a test to check the operation of the turbine in the event of a sudden power failure. Human errors and faulty technique created the conditions for the disaster: about 50% of iodine and 30% of cesium leaked, dispersing into the atmosphere, with an emanation of radioactivity between 50 and 250 million Curies, an amount about one hundred times greater than that of the American bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Although the Japanese disaster that occurred in Fukushima in 2011 has reached the same maximum level of classification on the international scale "Ines", the seventh, the Chernobyl accident is still considered by experts to be the most serious, due to the speed, the extent of the escape of radioactive material and the health and environmental effects in the area. The radioactive cloud moved rapidly towards most of Europe, but according to the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) the explosion brought maximum levels of contamination within a radius of 100 km from the plant.
Only on 27 April, 36 hours after the accident, the 45 inhabitants of Pripyat, a town a stone's throw from Chernobyl, were evacuated, and in the following days around 130 people within a radius of 30 km had to leave their homes. In total, around 350 people were evacuated from the region and forced to move elsewhere. The alarm in Europe came from Sweden on April 28, when anomalous radioactivity was recorded in the country. In the first ten days following the catastrophe, every means was attempted to stop the radioactive leak: military helicopters poured over 1.800 tons of sand and 2.400 tons of lead on the reactor, but only on 6 May did the situation come under control. The then secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, only admitted the disaster on 14 May.
According to the IAEA there were about 4.000 victims directly caused by radiation. However, unofficial figures speak of 25 dead in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. However, there are no certainties about the numbers of people affected by diseases - always unofficial figures indicate 100 cases of thyroid cancer for people of all ages in the three former Soviet republics - and by psychological disorders that may have affected the five million people that even for a short time they were exposed to above-normal radiation just following the catastrophe.
In 2017, a new protective structure 105 meters high, 150 meters long, with a span of 257 meters and a weight of 29 tons should be completed. This sort of gigantic sarcophagus will be transported over the old plant and, according to the planners, will last for at least a century. The storage facility is intended to contain the 20 units of radioactive fuel that were used in the other 3 Chernobyl reactors, which remained in operation until 2000. The delay in the construction of the facility, which was to be completed in 2015, is linked to the difficulty in raising funds: at the end of last year the Chernobyl Shelter Fund had raised 1,3 billion dollars, but over the years the costs have risen to 2,4 billion.
