April 25, 1986, 1 a.m.: Chernobyl’s operators begin reducing power at reactor No. 4 in preparation for a safety test, which they have timed to coincide with a routine shutdown for maintenance. The test is supposed to determine whether, in the event of a power failure, the plant’s ...
But after infamous nuclear disasters like those at Chernobyl and Fukushima, questions about its safety remain.Sam In this programme, we’ll be finding out how green nuclear power is by asking: when it comes to the climate, is nuclear...
On the last weekend in April, a cloud of radioactive material blew across Scandinavia. The culprit was a reactor at one of the Soviet Union’s largest nuclear power stations, at Chernobyl. The catastrophe did not burst into the headlines all at once, as catastrophes generally do in t...
Eh, yes without containment there could be some weather caused release of additional material, but the containment around an operational reactor is designed to withstand explosions, large over-pressures, the release of highly radioactive gases. That's long in the past at Chernobyl. We don't buil...
At Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, nuclear power plants released radioactive substances into the atmosphere during nuclear accidents. And in the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, a nuclear crisis raised fears about radiation and questions about the safety of nucle...
Ionizing Radiation: The energy is used to separate the electrons from the atomic and molecular bonds from the different elements like water or any living tissue, as the radiation can easily pass through such elements. An example of it is X-rays. ...
Its chain reaction is much closer to what happens in a nuclear bomb and it doesn't work through a moderator. That's why a fast-breeder reactor could, theoretically, run out of control and cause a nuclear explosion. Photo: Nuclear nightmare: In the days following the Chernobyl nuclear power...
s nuclear reactors. Due to a constellation of mechanical and human errors, the reactor’s automatic cooling system didn’t cool down the reactor as expected, and a partial meltdown occurred. For hours, the radioactive core of the reactor was left uncovered, causing radiation levels to spike ...
Dr. Ken Buesseler is currently on Bikini Atoll, studying the residual radioactive impacts of nuclear testing that took place there. This picture was taken on January 18, 2015. We were able to send Ken a Safecast Nano radiation detector, and will be posting data from the instrument to the...
Free T3 and Free T4 tests measure the levels of active thyroid hormone circulating in the body. (When these levels are low, but your TSH is in the normal range, this may lead your physician to suspect a rare type of hypothyroidism known as central hypothyroidism. I’m working on an artic...