Chernobyl Date: April 26, 1986 Place: About 80 miles north of Kiev, Ukraine. AP. ... Problem: A failure involving the water pumps allowed pressure to build up inside the reactor core; ...

The turbines’ stop valves were closed so steam no longer turned them, and the water pumps powered by the slowing turbines started to run down. However, the reduced flow of water – alongside design ...

at 1.23.04 am, they began the test: they turned off the turbine generator to see if its residual power would keep the water pumps ticking over till the diesel generators kicked in in the next 45 ...

Keeping the water moving requires pumps, ... The Chernobyl meltdown originated in what was meant to be a demonstration of the plant’s safety, ...

9 A pump in the turbine hall of Chernobyl's Unit 4. 10 The ruins of the turbine hall in Unit 4. When the reactor exploded, falling radioactive debris set the roof of the building on fire.

Chernobyl’s No. 4 nuclear reactor exploded on April 26, ... The Ukrainian staff grew concerned that the water pumps used to help cool the spent nuclear fuel rods would stop working.

It’s designed to prevent the kind of runaway reaction that happened at Chernobyl in 1986. Damage to the water pumps, or loss of the electricity that keeps them running, could still cause a ...

The Chernobyl plant, which closed in 2000, has fuel rods containing 230 kilograms (500 pounds) of uranium, and they are submerged in water at least 15 meters (49 feet) deep, with an active cooling ...

On April 26, 1986, technicians at Chernobyl conducting a test inadvertently caused reactor number four, which contained over 200 tons of uranium, to explode, flipping the 1,200 ton lid of the ...

Encasing reactors at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant in concrete would present much more of a challenge than Chernobyl, according to an executive of the firm whose pumps are helping cooling ...

This is because the fuel storage ponds are very deep, and it would take a long time for the water inside them to boil down, even if the cooling pumps were to stop.

That afternoon, as Serhii Plokhy observes in “Chernobyl Roulette,” “Russian aggression turned the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster into an instrument of war.” Grab a Copy ...