Maybe in 3,000 years, scientists will know how to fix Chernobyl

Maybe in 3,000 years, scientists will know how to fix Chernobyl By McClatchy Washington Bureau, adapted by Newsela staff on 05.03.16 Word Count 728 A rusting amusement ride is seen in the abandoned city of Prypiat, near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Photo: REUTERS/Gleb Garanich PRIPYAT, Ukraine Before the explosion that changed their world, the boys imagined shiny new bumper cars. It has been almost 30 years since a nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The disaster changed a small village in Ukraine forever. Hundreds to millions of people died in the explosion. The world may never know the real number. Millions more became sick. Today, the area near the reactor is both a refuge for wildlife and a radioactive ghost town. Much of Eastern and Central Europe continues to deal with problems from the explosion and nuclear fallout. Reactor Number 4, which overheated and led to the explosion, is still an unfixable problem. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 1

Bumper Car Excitement The night before the disaster, the group of boys were thinking about shiny blue and yellow cars. The 10-year-olds could not wait to drive the colliding cars at a new amusement park opening soon. The bumper cars were supposed to be turned on May 1, 1986. Too excited to wait, Alexandr Sirota and his friends snuck down into the new park after dark. They saw the new Ferris wheel and looked at the bumper cars they could not wait to drive. We d sit in the cars and make car noises, says Sirota, who is now 40. It was everything we could imagine wanting in life at that time. As young boys, our lives seemed perfect. Sirota thought about the cars before he went to bed on April 25, 1986. He kept thinking about cars after he woke on April 26 and rushed off to school. As he slept, his world changed. Emergency In Reactor 4 After 1 a.m., Chernobyl engineers were getting nervous. They had spent the last day testing Reactor 4. They wanted to see how it would handle a shutdown in electricity and then switch to an emergency power supply. Thirty years later, nuclear scientists still do not agree on what went wrong. Nuclear plants create energy by splitting uranium atoms and setting off a nuclear reaction. At Chernobyl, the reaction got out of hand. Engineers tried to slow the nuclear reaction by inserting control rods into the center of the reactor. Instead, the reaction sped up. In a matter of seconds, the temperature inside the reactor increased 3,000 degrees. The water used to cool the uranium suddenly evaporated. In the sealed-off reactor the steam had no place to go. That s when the roof blew and 10 tons of uranium blasted into the sky. Roof Blows, Walls Collapse Georgi Kopchinsky was one of the people in charge of nuclear power for Ukraine at the time. Today he still gets nervous when he talks about Chernobyl. He admits it is a very tough topic for him. This is in part because he say scientists should have known it could happen. Three years before Chernobyl, he says, a similar problem was found at other plants with the same kind of controlling devices. No changes were made. This was our arrogance at the time, Kopchinsky says. "It was a horrible mistake. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 2

After the roof blew, the walls collapsed. The superheated uranium melted and consumed all that fell into it. All that remained to protect the world from a 2,000-ton radioactive mass was the concrete base and four thin walls. Above was only the open sky. Ten tons of radioactive waste flew into the air and spread out over Europe. European governments later put together a report. The report showed the radiation had polluted 40 percent of the continent. No Way To Fix It It is difficult to guess how long Ukraine must stay on guard. Some experts think the Chernobyl area will not be safe again until the year 4986. A similar span of time would stretch from before the founding of Rome to now. Tetiana Verbytska is an expert at the National Ecological Center of Ukraine. She believes most people do not understand how difficult the Chernobyl situation is. She warns there is no fix for it. We don t have the technology to fix the problem, she says. She goes on to say there is not a system for developing the technology. There is no money to pay for the technology. "The solutions for our Chernobyl problems are very much seal it for now. We will have smart children and smart grandchildren who in 100 years or so will figure out what to do. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 3

Quiz 1 Why does Georgi Kopchinsky say that he and the others in charge of the nuclear plants were too arrogant? He thinks they were not prepared for the task at hand and needed more training. He thinks they made a mistake in trusting the workers to handle the problem on their own. He thinks they made the disaster worse by telling everyone how safe the nuclear plants were. He thinks they should have made changes to the plants to correct the problems, but they did not. 2 According to the article, what is the relationship between Chernobyl nuclear waste, technology and money? Scientists have the money to clean up the nuclear waste, but they have not yet developed the right technology. Scientists have invented the technology to clean up the nuclear waste, but they do not have the money to pay for it. Scientists do not know how to clean up the nuclear waste, and they do not have the technology or money to figure it out. Scientists have been trying to develop technology to clean up the nuclear waste, but they ran out of money recently. 3 Overall, the article is organized around: a young boy whose life was affected by a terrible event an event that has led to serious harmful consequences the idea that nuclear energy is too dangerous for humans to use scientists who are investigating an event to find out what went wrong This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 4

4 What is the BEST way to describe the structure of the sections "Bumper Car Excitement" and "Emergency In Reactor 4"? Both present a sequence of events. Both present a problem and a solution. "Bumper Car Excitement" presents a cause and "Emergency In Reactor 4" presents an effect. "Bumper Car Excitement" presents a main idea and "Emergency In Reactor 4" presents details. This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 5

Answer Key 1 Why does Georgi Kopchinsky say that he and the others in charge of the nuclear plants were too arrogant? He thinks they were not prepared for the task at hand and needed more training. He thinks they made a mistake in trusting the workers to handle the problem on their own. He thinks they made the disaster worse by telling everyone how safe the nuclear plants were. He thinks they should have made changes to the plants to correct the problems, but they did not. 2 According to the article, what is the relationship between Chernobyl nuclear waste, technology and money? Scientists have the money to clean up the nuclear waste, but they have not yet developed the right technology. Scientists have invented the technology to clean up the nuclear waste, but they do not have the money to pay for it. Scientists do not know how to clean up the nuclear waste, and they do not have the technology or money to figure it out. Scientists have been trying to develop technology to clean up the nuclear waste, but they ran out of money recently. 3 Overall, the article is organized around: a young boy whose life was affected by a terrible event an event that has led to serious harmful consequences the idea that nuclear energy is too dangerous for humans to use scientists who are investigating an event to find out what went wrong This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com. 6