Japan’s Nuclear Contamination Is Spreading All Over The Island

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Doug Nicodemus

Literally. They are finding “hot particles” in places away from even the evacuation and controlled zones. This thing looks like it could get out of hand. I am convinced that it will stay a local event. And I am convinced that when people report that the entire Island could become uninhabitable they are mistranslating things Japanese Officials are saying. Still, something that I thought would be over by August or September is going to be around until next year.

http://www.naturalnews.com/032751_Fukushima_strontium.html

Fukushima: Strontium levels up to 240 times over legal limit near plant, uninhabitable land area now the size of 17 Manhattans

Sunday, June 19, 2011 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Representing the first time the substance has been detected at the crippled plant, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) reported on Sunday that seawater and groundwater samples taken near the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan have tested positive for radioactive strontium. And according to a recent report in The Japan Times, levels of strontium detected were up to 240 times over the legal limit, indicating a serious environmental and health threat.

Radioactive strontium, which is known to accumulate in bones and eventually lead to diseases like cancer and leukemia, is one of at least three “hot particles” being continually released by the damaged plant, according to experts. The others include radioactive cesium and plutonium, both of which are implicated in causing birth defects, cancer, and death.

“We are discovering hot particles everywhere in Japan, even in Tokyo,” said Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president with 39 years of nuclear engineering experience, to Al Jazeera. “Scientists are finding these everywhere. Over the last 90 days these hot particles have continued to fall and are being deposited in high concentrations. A lot of people are picking these up in car engine air filters.”

TEPCO has allegedly installed a new water decontamination system that it claims will eventually help filter dangerous radioactive isotopes from polluted water, and thus limit environmental and human exposure to the poisons. But that system has already run into several problems as flow rates have been lower than intended.

“Fukushima has three nuclear reactors exposed and four fuel cores exposed,” added Gundersen. “You probably have the equivalent of 20 nuclear reactor cores because of the fuel cores, and they are all in desperate need of being cooled, and there is no means to cool them effectively.”

Al Jazeera also reports that a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government recently explained that roughly 966 square kilometers (km), or 600 square miles, around Fukushima are now uninhabitable due to the unfolding disaster. This massive dead zone area is the equivalent size of 17 Manhattans placed next to each other.

More bad nukes tomorrow. :}

Russian Nuclear Power Plants Are Old And Dangerous

Posted on June 21, 2011 by Doug Nicodemus

Just when you thought there could be no more Chernobyls, this report caused the reindeer to stampede.

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Russian+officials+numerous+shortcomings+at+nuclear+plants+near+Finland/1135267043718

Russian officials: numerous shortcomings at nuclear plants near Finland

Inspection report leaked to Norwegian newspaper

Inspections of Russian nuclear power plants have revealed serious shortcomings in the safety of the plants – particularly in the preparations for earthquakes and other natural disasters.
The difficulties emerge in a report by the Russian state-owned nuclear energy company Rosatom, which was acquired by the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten.
The paper wrote on Sunday that many of the problems apply to Russian nuclear installations in general. However, the greatest risks are in old reactors located in areas near Finland and Norway – on the Kola Peninsula and the St. Petersburg region.

In several countries, including Russia, nuclear power plants have undergone “stress tests” following the nuclear accident which occurred at the Japanese plant in Fukushima in March.
Keijo Valtonen, an official at the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland (STUK), expects that the results of the inspections conducted in Russia will be available in Finland soon.

Russian officials: numerous shortcomings at nuclear plants near Finland

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In addition to the earthquake risk the Rosatom report warns of inadequate reserve cooling systems in Russian plants. Nuclear fuel storage facilities were also shown to be inadequate in some places, and there is a shortage of trained maintenance personnel and inspectors in Russia.
The report lists a total of 31 shortcomings.
According to Valtonen, judging from the deficiencies that were listed, the Russians have made an open assessment of the problems. Norwegian experts also feel that the assessments are reliable.

The report also mentions the Sosnovy Bor nuclear power plant near St. Petersburg, which has been a cause for concern in Finland for some time.
The Sosnovy Bor plant uses the same reactor technology as what was used in Chernobyl, where the world’s worst nuclear accident took place in 1986. A mitigating factor in the matter is that the area is not especially prone to earthquakes.
Nuclear safety has also been assessed in Finland, in the wake of Fukushima. According to Valtonen, the risk reports made at the national level are to be given over to international assessment. “If shortcomings are noticed, drawing conclusions is a matter for each individual country.”

Previously in HS International Edition:
Finnish nuclear industry says Japan scenario unlikely in Finland (14.3.2011)
Steam leak brings Unit 1 of Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant to controlled shutdown (21.2.2011)
Finnish nuclear authority investigates problems in online reporting on Japan (15.3.2011)

Links:
Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority Finland (STUK)

Unfortunately more Tomorrow.

Electric Scooters And Other Electric Vehicles – Maybe, maybe not

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Doug Nicodemus

A hidden premise of mine is that we will have an energy crash in the future and when that happens most electricity will be diverted from the residential market to municipal and national security needs. After that food production and other necessities. Still people have their own electrical generation capacity. Enough to charge batteries so there will be a lot of “light” vehicles around. I don’t think many Volt sized cars will be workable but heh compared to a horse, 40 or 50 miles an hour is not bad.

http://www.electric-bikes.com/

Welcome to Electric-Bikes.com

Practical transportation for errands and short commutes.

Electric bikes are part of a wide range of Light Electric Vehicles (LEVs) that provide convenient local transportation. Generally designed for one person and small cargo capacity, electric bike range, speed, and cost are moderate. For most of us, the majority of our trips are less than 10 miles – within the range of most e-bikes. Clean, quiet, and efficient LEVs offer the advantages of an extra car without the burdens.

To learn more about the range of electric bikes, kits and LEVs, visit our introduction page. Or, click on your favorite type of vehicle below.


Scooters	E-Bicycles	E-Trikes	Conversion Kits	Betterbikes™	Folding E-Bikes

Pedicabs	Motorscooters	Motorcycles	Neighbr. EVs	Commuter Cars	TriTrack Street

The following organizations suppport changing the California Vehicle Code to simplify the rules, reduce barriers, and fairly treat LEVs as viable transportation alternatives.

More next week.

Ugly SB 1562 – This is the worst utility legislation I have seen

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Doug Nicodemus

When it was SB14 I said here that it was a huge rip off and that it stood 150 years of utility regulation on its head. The change in number has not changed the essence. Lisa Madigan will probably sue. As will the ICC. I may never vote for Governor Quinn again. Both my State Rep and my State Senator voted FOR it I am sure. But I didn’t vote for them anyway. This makes dumb and dumber look like Steven Hawking and Einstein. I am not the only one who thinks so.

http://www.occasionalplanet.org/2011/06/01/illinois-smart-grid-legislation-faces-opposition/

Illinois smart-grid legislation faces opposition

Gloria Shur Bilchik

The Illinois legislature is considering a bill that allows electric companies to raise rates for consumers in exchange for infrastructure improvements. Ameren and ComEd are pushing for passage of SB 1652, which would allow yearly rate increases to consumers. Electric companies claim that the improvements listed in the bill would save customers money down the line, in exchange for rate increases now.

The improvements specified in SB 1652 include implementation of a “smart grid” to the Illinois system. The smart grid would allow better monitoring of electricity produced and demand by consumers. This allows the electric grid to support the addition of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, from companies separate from the electric company. The bill states that such additions of renewable energy to the grid would count towards electric company requirements by the state for renewable energy. The smart grid would give second- party producers, consumers and the electric company real- time updates on usage, production and current price of electricity.

The Citizens Utility Board (CUB) initially opposed the measure as being over-generous to the companies, vague on improvements to be performed and expensive for consumers. Improvements to the bill currently include a five- year sunset clause, limiting rate increases to 2.5% annually, and removal of gas utilities from the bill. CUB has recognized the potential of smart grid implementation to save money for consumers, provided implementation is done right. Even with these improvements, CUB states that further changes are required to specify exactly what improvements will be done by the companies. Correct implementation can save consumers money.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and Governor Pat Quinn are on record as opposing the legislation, due to the increased costs for consumers. Madigan points out that ComEd recently received approval for a rate hike worth $156 million. Lobbyists for ComEd started pushing for the new legislation the day after the rate hike had been approved. In a written statement, Madigan said “their legion of lobbyists continues to push legislation that will require consumers to fund billions more in guaranteed profits. This new proposal is just more of the same: a plan that hits consumers where it hurts the most — their wallets.”

Back to beautiful tomorrow.

Nuclear Power Is Massively Impractical – Indeed small is beautiful

Posted on June 1, 2011 by Doug Nicodemus

http://weblog.greenpeace.org/nuclear-reaction/2009/02/energy_generation_small_is_bea.html

Energy generation: small is beautiful

t’s difficult to get your head around the sheer massive size of nuclear reactors. The things are absolutely huge. Just to give you a flavour, in Flamanville, France, where EDF are building a ‘state of the art’ EPR reactor, the roads aren’t wide enough to transport the large reactor components to the construction site.

People sometimes forget that nuclear reactors are just kettles. Great big kettles. The hot nuclear fuel inside the reactor boils water which turns into steam which turns the turbines which generate electricity. Those turbines, as you can imagine, are also huge.

Being so large and heavy, they can’t be transported in any conventional way. Often they’re shipped on giant barges. They’re shipped very slowly and very carefully. Sometimes not slowly and carefully enough. You know where two $10-million 107-tonne turbines destined for the Canada’s Point Lepreau nuclear power station found themselves last October? Spending five days on the bottom of Saint John Harbour.

And that’s another of the major problems with nuclear power and why a so-called nuclear ‘renaissance’ will be impossible to achieve: the nuclear industry has no economies of scale. You cannot increase production of nuclear power stations anywhere near quickly enough to fulfil the promises made by the industry and save us from the worst of global climate change.

Wind turbines and solar energy couldn’t be more different. You can build a working wind turbine in two weeks. The renewable energy industry is a hugely scaleable one. Smaller and more readily available components make it far, far easier to expand production. Want a hundred kilometres of solar cells produced in a day? Mass-produced printable solar cells are already being trialled. The renewable energy technologies are ever improving.

The components of nuclear reactors are too large and complex to mass produce or produce quickly in the same way. Japan Steel Works, the only company in the world currently making specialised steel containers for reactor cores, already has a three year backlog. All those countries boasting of building new reactors in the near future are going to have to join a very slow-moving queue.

Posted by Justin on February 20, 2009 3:03 PM | Permalink

More tomorrow

Militaries Waste Huge Amounts Of Money – In everything they do

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Doug Nicodemus

Let us put aside the fact militaries themselves are a huge waste of money. It is estimated that for every 1 $$$ the US for instance spends on a bullet they get 75 cents in return. That is just if it sits on the shelf. If it is used of course it is worth nothing. Not to mention that lavishing spending on militaries brought Empires from the Egypt to the Soviet Union’s down. But the USA’s Military wastes energy like there is no tomorrow. The worst offenders of course are the Airforce and the Navy. The Airforce in particular spews kerosene byproducts into the upper atmosphere where they do the most harm and the Navy because they burn warm asphalt at sea. Not to mention the nuclear issues both as weapons and power sources. But think about our main battle tank. It is as big as a modest 2 story house and it runs on diesel. So the idea that they want to go to zero energy use is great. But I got my doubts.

http://globalgreenworld.org/?p=736

U.S. Army Launches Plan to Make All Military Bases Net Zero

Posted by Ggw Admin on Apr 19, 2011 in Blog | 0 comments

Over the past couple of years, the U.S. Army has announced several initiatives ranging from solar-powered tents for troops to hydrogen-powered tanks, however this is their most ambitious program yet. With the help of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the U.S. Army is aiming to have all Army installations across the country be net zero.

With funds from the DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), the “Army Vision for Net Zero” program will aim to meet mandates to reduce energy as a result of Executive Order 13514. The order calls for all new buildings to be net zero energy by 2030, and it dictates a 30 percent reduction in water use and a 50 percent reduction in waste that goes to landfills. On top of that, the National Defense Authorization Act also mandates that the Army produce or acquire 25 percent of its energy from renewables by 2025.

“The first priority is less,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy Environment Katherine Hammack said. “If you use less energy, you don’t have to buy as much – or you don’t have to make as much from alternative energy sources or renewable energy sources. So if you look at energy, that is a focus on energy efficiency. If you’re talking about water, then that’s water conservation. Or even if you’re talking about waste, that’s reducing the amount of waste we have in the steam.”

The program already has a poster child in the form of Fort Bliss. The military base boasts solar daylighting in the dining facility, warehouse and gym, energy-efficient windows, utility monitoring and control for heating and air-conditioning systems in approximately 70 buildings, and plans to increase the on-site hybrid waste-to-energy/concentrating solar power plant from 90 to 140 megawatts. The City of El Paso has committed to provide 1 million tons per year of municipal solid waste, which will be transformed into energy by the base.

“The Army’s net zero vision is a holistic approach to addressing energy, water, and waste at Army installations,” Kingery said. “We look at net zero as a force multiplier for the Army that will help us steward our resources and manage our costs.”

Considering that defense is a massive cause of national debt, the plan serves two purposes – reduced spending and “greening” national security. If the military can get on board with renewable energy, it makes you wonder why other areas of government are having such trouble.

+ U.S Army

Images © US Army

More tomorrow

Wasted Energy – Very cool blog

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Doug Nicodemus

I started a meditation on wasted energy last Friday by looking at all the energy we waste by “flaring” natural gas at drilling rigs. We burn more than we use. Then I got distracted by the Corps of Engineers opening the Morganza Spillway which is a huge environmental deal. So I come back to the meditation today. I googled up the issue and this site popped up. It’s a pretty cool blog. They haven’t posted since April so I am hoping I am not hyping a dead blog.

http://wastedenergy.net/

The Palest Green

Posted by wastedenergy on April 6, 2011

Now that enough time has passed to witness what is really happening in Fukushima, I am ready to pass judgment. I notice a lot of other commentators offered their two cents up immediately, as if they could tell the full scale of the disaster from the first few hours. Not me, though. I knew something strange was afoot the instant it happened, but it’s important to keep in mind that one must always do the necessary homework before making ultimate determinations of value. Now that time has come.

The most common argument I see supposed “environmentalists” making in favor of “nuclear power” (which is a misnomer since it is actually a drain on energy over the long run) is that it is “better than coal.” “It’s carbon neutral,” they say, as if to suggest that were the only criterion that mattered, and also as if to ignore the full energy-consumptive effects of the nuclear fuel cycle from mining to ultimate disposal (it’s supposed to get disposed ultimately, right?). But the path to “clean” nuclear energy is laid with many other booby traps, and it takes an eye open to truth and closed to propaganda to catch them all.

In nature, the color yellow often means “Don’t touch me, I will hurt you.”

As I see things today, the quest for nuclear power, hailed as tomorrow’s energy source by those so obsessed with technocracy that they blind themselves to the big picture, represents better than almost any other story our civilization’s descent into madness. We have become truly power-obsessed, seeking cheap thrills today and tossing tomorrow to the winds. Let our children handle the nuclear waste, we keep saying. Well, the children have arrived, and they are ready to take the reins of power now, and we still aren’t any closer to figuring out what to do with this stuff, which keeps piling up in spent fuel pools vulnerable to release into the environment from earthquakes, volcanoes, meteor strikes, acts of sabotage, and all the other hazards that are a natural part of life on Planet Earth. So what makes today’s nuclear scientists so certain that tomorrow we will finally come up with the magic solution that will allow us to seal this stuff forever behind closed doors, especially if we continue to create even more? It’s time to stop kicking the can ever further down the road and face up to the reality we’ve created for ourselves.

Nuclear fission and radiation are natural parts of our existence. Decaying radioactive isotopes are what power the Earth’s geothermal heat, much like nuclear fusion powers radiation from the Sun. We tell ourselves there cannot be a hazard here since it is always around in one form or another. But we overdo it sometimes, and just as with oil depletion, we trick ourselves into thinking what we are doing is perfectly natural by suggesting “there’s always going to be some, so it can’t be so bad.” That is, once again, the continuum fallacy. We presume that just because we cannot draw a clear line between one phenomenon and its much larger version, that there must be no difference at all. The disaster at Fukushima, which has caused radiation levels to spike to millions of times background levels, has proven conclusively that there are real clear and ever-present dangers associated with even the most carefully operated nuclear power reactors, and the silver lining in the event is that it has brought these as well as the dangers associated with the back end of the nuclear cycle into the forefront of discussion and back into clear view. Such a perspective is necessary if we are to take an objective look at the advantages and drawbacks of our different energy options, something many players with vested political and economic interests are not particularly keen on seeing.

Wasting my energy again tomorrow.

We Needlessly Burn 150 Billion Cubic Meters Of Natural Gas Every Year

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Doug Nicodemus

That’s right. On almost every large drilling rig producing large amounts of oil there is a continuously burning flare of natural gas. This is a hold over from the days when natural gas was seen as a nuisance rather than a fuel source. BUT that was over 100 years ago. How long does it take to change the rules.

http://www.stoptheflares.org/

Stop the Flares

Together we will Stop Methane Flaring
The first and only organization working solely on the elimination of natural gas flares and venting! Stop the flares is organized to stop flaring by elevating awareness, increasing research and implementing proven solutions to get results. Stop the Flares will eliminate all flares worldwide by the 2020.

What are flares?

What is natural gas?

Why is methane flaring bad for you?

How does Flaring Methane affect the price of energy?

What could be done with the Flared Gas in Nigeria?

How can you help?

dot dot dot

Why is methane flaring bad for you?
According to the World Bank, flares waste 150,000,000,000 cubic meters of natural gas (methane) each year. This is the equivalent to the energy in 60,000,000,000 gallons of gasoline (estimate).
Wasting fuel increases the cost of energy for everyone!

More tomorrow.

New Way To Be Fuel Efficient – Computer program from U of I

Posted on May 12, 2011 by Doug Nicodemus

Flash! This just in from Website mavin Carol Kneedler who owns and operates www.o3internet.com. As a plug please call her if you have any website work you need done.

http://csl.illinois.edu/news/green-gps-calculates-most-fuel-efficient-route

Green GPS calculates most fuel-efficient route

by Kim Gudeman, CSL Green GPS technology May 3, 2011 – 3:14pm

A new software interface reduces energy consumption in transportation systems.

Green GPS, developed by computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, works like general GPS navigation, except that in addition to calculating the shortest and fastest routes, it also projects the most fuel-efficient route.

“Currently at least 30 percent of total energy in the United States is spent on cars,” said Principal Investigator Tarek Abdelzaher, associate professor of computer science and researcher in the Coordinated Science Laboratory. “By saving even 5 percent of that cost, we can save the same amount of total energy spent on the nation’s entire information technology infrastructure.”

The technology runs on cell phones, which links to a car’s computer using an inexpensive, off-the-shelf wireless adapter that works in all cars manufactured since 1996. The car’s onboard diagnostics system uploads information about engine performance and fuel efficiency to the phone, which uses the data to compute the greenest route.

A grant through the National Science Foundation to Abdelzaher and Robin Kravets, also a member of Illinois’ computer science faculty, is funding a large-scale deployment of the service via the University of Illinois’ car fleet. The Office of Naval Research is funding research related to the technology’s networking component. Researchers — including Dr. Omid Fatemieh, graduate student Hossein Ahmadi and research associate Hongyan Wang — also are collaborating with IBM through its “Smarter Planet” initiative.

Pete Varney, who oversees some of the approximately 500 vehicles used by the Urbana-Champaign campus, hopes research will help maximize fuel efficiency for the fleet. The units will be installed on up to 200 vehicles, including full-size vans that could be carrying 1,000 pounds or more in tools and equipment.

“The less money we can spend on fuel, the more money we can direct toward maintaining other things on campus,” said Varney, director of Transportation & Automotive Services.

In addition, researchers are developing a social network of drivers who can share information about their cars. In the future,

For more see the rest of the article. More Tomorrow.

The Week After Earth Day – Chernobyl

Posted on April 26, 2011 by Doug Nicodemus

I have wanted to say some things about the situation at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant for awhile. The content you see in the Media are just so bogus. First they want to prattle on about a melt down and the chances of an explosion “like Chernobyl”.

I scream at the television, “The reactors scrammed or were off line”. Ten Mile Island and Chernobyl were both online when their catastrophes occurred. Shutting down 10 mile was their big challenge. Chernobyl was an atomic explosion that sent material 4 or 5 miles in the air. Their big challenge was preventing a China Syndrome. Fukushima was always going to be a local nonthreatening event. Dramatic – Tragic – Fool hearty but nonetheless local.

The media want to prittle prattle along about reactor types and containment vessels. They never talk about powerhouse design. Reactors do one thing they generate steam. That is it. And that is why I am opposed to nuclear power in general. There are so many simpler and safer ways to generate steam that nuclear power is a joke. Once promoted by national governments because they wanted to piggy back their nuclear weapons programs on to “local power programs”. So we will use US powerplants an example of power house design and then compare disasters.

Yes, 10 powerplants in the US use the Mark 1 reactors like what were in 4 of the reactors at Fukushima. But in the US there is “triple containment” and “plain water” steam turbine loops. That means that when 10 Mile Island malfunctioned they simply vented a bunch of radioactive steam which immediately killed about 100 people and eventually killed about 300 babies and then turned the reactor off (scrammed). The temperatures soared to 5000 degress, the fuel melted, the cooling system worked and there it sits today with a puddle of melted fuel in the bottom of the reactor vessel. That should have been the end of Nuclear Power as we know it. At Fukushima they have “double containment” powerhouses that uses radioactive water to drive their turbines. All nuclear reactors have to be shielded or sheathed for people to be able to get close to them to operate them. So even Chernobyl had a “single” containment vessel. In Fukushima they had that and a containment pad. Actually the pad was kind of ingenious. It consists of varying layers of concrete, steel, boron and lead. This was supposed to make a China Syndrome impossible because it would self seal the waste if it tried to melt through. BUT they used that argument to actually cheapen and make more dangerous their powerhouse designs. They provided no exterior containment system and they drove their turbines with radioactive steam. Additionally they built the cooling systems on one pad and their power generation systems on a separate pad guaranteeing that the cooling systems would break in an earthquake. So yes, there were explosions at Fukushima but not at the dynamite tonnage level that happened at Chernobyl. Fukushima was like a fire cracker.

While Fukushima is a local event that was a disaster waiting to happen, Chernobyl was a momentous international disaster waiting for someone to pull the trigger. It was a graphite reactor with a single containment wall, sitting by a lake right at the water table with an inadequate cooling system. Pull the trigger they did. The point being the Media does not understand Nuclear Power any better than the public does and yet this “magic genie” produces 20% of this countries electricity. Things have gotta change.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Chernobyl disaster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Changes must be reviewed before being displayed on this page.

This article is about the 1986 nuclear plant accident in Ukraine. For more, see Chernobyl (disambiguation).

Chernobyl disaster
The nuclear reactor after the disaster. Reactor 4 (center). Turbine building (lower left). Reactor 3 (center right).
Date	26 April 1986
Time	01:23:45 (Moscow Time UTC+3)
Location	Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, now Ukraine

Location of Chernobyl nuclear power plant

The abandoned city of Pripyat with Chernobyl plant in the distance

Radio-operated bulldozers being tested before use

Abandoned housing blocks in Pripyat

The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian SSR (now Ukraine). An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive contamination into the atmosphere, which spread over much of Western Russia and Europe. It is considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, and is one of only two classified as a level 7 event on the International Nuclear Event Scale (the other being the Fukushima I nuclear incident, which is considered far less serious and has caused no direct deaths).^[1] The battle to contain the contamination and avert a greater catastrophe ultimately involved over 500,000 workers and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles, crippling the Soviet economy.^[2]

The disaster began during a systems test on 26 April 1986 at reactor number four of the Chernobyl plant, which is near the town of Pripyat. There was a sudden power output surge, and when an emergency shutdown was attempted, a more extreme spike in power output occurred, which led to a reactor vessel rupture and a series of explosions. These events exposed the graphite moderator of the reactor to air, causing it to ignite.^[3] The resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive smoke fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area, including Pripyat. The plume drifted over large parts of the western Soviet Union and Europe. From 1986 to 2000, 350,400 people were evacuated and resettled from the most severely contaminated areas of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.^[4]^[5] According to official post-Soviet data,^[6]^[7] about 60% of the fallout landed in Belarus.

The accident raised concerns about the safety of the Soviet nuclear power industry, as well as nuclear power in general, slowing its expansion for a number of years and forcing the Soviet government to become less secretive about its procedures.^[8]^{[notes 1]}

Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus have been burdened with the continuing and substantial decontamination and health care costs of the Chernobyl accident. Thirty one deaths are directly attributed to the accident, all among the reactor staff and emergency workers.^[9] A UNSCEAR report places the total confirmed deaths from radiation at 64 as of 2008. Estimates of the number of deaths potentially resulting from the accident vary enormously: the World Health Organization (WHO) suggest it could reach 4,000;^[10] a Greenpeace report puts this figure at 200,000 or more;^[11] a Russian publication, Chernobyl, concludes that 985,000 excess deaths occurred between 1986 and 2004 as a result of radioactive contamination.^[12]