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Hertston -> RE: Chernobyl Revisited (3/29/2011 12:17:24 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: bairdlander
The pic cleanup workers (Liquidators) going to the Chornobyl Plant is pretty scary.Wearing dust masks to go clean up radiation?
The whole thing was frightful. The first firefighters there didn't even know it was a 'nuclear' incident and were trying to put out a fire in the exposed reactor core with hoses in the usual fashion. Most were dead within a couple of months, some within a couple of days.
Then there were the 'biorobots'(they called themselves that). Assorted chunks of materials direct from the core explosion ended up on the roof, and with attempts at using remote-control robots to throw them back into the building failed they just used soldiers instead. "Strap on a gas mask and a lead plate, run like hell, pick up a chunk or two of lethally radioactive crap, carry it to the hole and chuck it back in. Then leg it back."
The biggest heroes, though, to my mind were the coal miners drafted in to dig a tunnel under the reactor, so that a barrier could inserted to prevent the molten contents of the core dropping down to the water table, which would have been absolutely catastrophic. These guys knew the risks (including that of a 'meltdown' landing on their heads), only had masks, and chose not to wear those as the heat was so intense they just couldn't work when doing so.
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