Chernobyl's Historic Sarcophagus to Be Dismantled

Photo credit: NurPhoto - Getty Images
Photo credit: NurPhoto - Getty Images

From Popular Mechanics

The most famous nuclear disaster site in the world is getting partially dismantled. Workers are taking down Chernobyl's "sarcophagus," once meant to keep the reactor's radioactive materials locked inside, before it falls on its own accord.

SSE Chernobyl NPP, the Ukrainian company that manages the former reactor, called the area, also known as the Shelter, "one of the most powerful symbols" of the catastrophe. The dismantling will begin after the New Shelter Containment (NSC) is in full working operation. Currently, the NSC controls part of the confinement. Earlier this year, the European Union handed off control of the NSC to Ukraine.

The sarcophagus dates back to the chaotic months in the aftermath of the 1986 disaster, when the Soviet Union was struggling to contain the nuclear explosion. Giving the rest of the world half-truths about the extent of the disaster, Soviet officials sent in thousands of workers to carry out a cleanup operation. These workers, poorly trained and often unaware of the dangers they faced, were known as "liquidators" and recently gained an uptick in fame through HBO's hit Chernobyl mini-series.

Among other tasks, the liquidators built the sarcophagus in a startlingly fast 206 days, using 400,000 cubic meters of concrete and 16 million pounds of steel.

"We worked in three shifts, but only for five to seven minutes at a time because of the danger,” a liquidator named Yaroslav Melnik told the BBC in 2017. “After finishing, we'd throw our clothes in the garbage.”

The sarcophagus has proved to be an astonishing structure, protecting the world from the corium, uranium, and plutonium within. It was also a structure built at great human cost, with approximately 31 workers dying of acute radiation sickness.

It takes nothing away from the under-trained, stressed, sick, and overworked builders of the sarcophagus to say that it was also poorly built. The building lacks any welded or bolted joints, meaning that an earthquake would easily destroy it. Holes in the roof have let in rain, which has in turn led to corrosion.

“The Soviets lowered the beams into that sarcophagus using helicopters and the whole structure of the roof was in fact built the same way, using helicopters,” Vince Novak, the Director of Nuclear Safety at the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, told the BBC in 2017.

“They were just sitting there and what quickly became apparent was that either these beams were sliding or that the wall was moving,” Novak said. “It came to a point where further movement of an inch or so would have led to the huge beams falling down. You would have a collapse of the shelter.”

By 1999, it was clear that the structure would have to be replaced. In sharp contrast to the conditions immediately following Chernobyl's explosion, the international community came together to raise money and properly plan an NSC, in what was known as the Shelter Implementation Plan. These guidelines still structure how the NSC will be put into place.

Photo credit: SERGEI SUPINSKY - Getty Images
Photo credit: SERGEI SUPINSKY - Getty Images
Photo credit: Chernobyl NPP
Photo credit: Chernobyl NPP

"As per Shelter Implementation Plan," reads the press statement, "the dismantling of these unstable building structures (so called early dismantling) is to be commenced following the NSC takeover for operation and to be completed by the end of 2023."

Source: Business Insider

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