Activity C: The Chernobyl Disaster Teacher’s Briefing Activity C: The Chernobyl Disaster Further notes Plenary activity Curriculum links Materials for Students Question sheet Map cards A3 map Download this resource www.cnduk.org/activity-c 23 Activity C: The Chernobyl Disaster: Activity overview Concepts to examine Overview Nuclear accidents, the effects of – In pairs or small groups, students match up the cards of information about the radiation on humans, the effects of effects of the nuclear fallout from Chernobyl and discuss its effects. radiation on the environment. Instructions Materials and space needed – Split the students into pairs or small groups and provide each group with a Tables for pair/small group work, A3 copy of the map of Europe. maps of Europe (if you do not have – Instruct the students to match the cards detailing the effects to the access to a colour photocopier, then corresponding countries on the map. further copies of the map are – In their pairs or small groups, ask the students to write down the countries in available. distance order from the disaster. For each country, students should also list one effect the radiation had on that area. Learning outcomes – Go around the class asking groups in turn to feed back a country (and one By the end of the lesson: effect) in distance order. All students should be able to identify what sort of power station Plenary exploded and name an effect. To discuss: – Imagine that you and your family had to leave your town at short notice due to Most students will be able to name a nuclear disaster. What single item would you take with you? How would you some of the effects and match them feel? to the country where they occurred. – Why do you think that older people have returned to Pripyat, despite the high danger of getting ill? Some students will be able to compare the disaster to other – The Chernobyl disaster is an example of how catastrophic the release of nuclear explosions and discuss the radiation can be from a nuclear disaster. What other causes of nuclear disasters similarities and differences. can you think of? – Do you think a disaster like Chernobyl could happen in Britain today? 24 Activity C: The Chernobyl Disaster: Further information Where is Chernobyl? dangerous for varying lengths of time Illnesses and deaths Chernobyl is about 1,500 miles from depending on their half-life. For Immediately after the accident about Britain, 60 miles north of Kiev, capital of example: radioactive iodine-131 has a 30 people died but this was just the Ukraine in eastern Europe. Now an half-life of 8 days, caesium-137 over 30 beginning of the deaths and illnesses. independent country, in 1986 Ukraine years and plutonium 24,000 years. A Although it is impossible to say with was part of the Soviet Union. Just to the wide range of radioactive elements were certainty that a particular cancer has a north is the international border with thrown out by the explosion and fire. particular cause, statistics imply that the Belarus, then also part of the Soviet accident at Chernobyl has had a Union. Belarus was to be the country All radioactive materials are carcino genic catastrophic effect on the populations worst affected by the disaster. The – that is they can lead to cancer in of nearby areas. According to the nuclear power station was Soviet people and animals. Different radio - United Nations Committee on the designed and built. active materials are likely to affect effects of Atomic Radiation: different parts of the body. Iodine-131, What caused the Chernobyl for instance, attacks the thyroid gland, Among the residents of Belarus, the Disaster? particularly in babies and young Russian Federation and Ukraine, there In the early morning of 26 April 1986, children. had been up to the year 2002 about one of the four reactors at the 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer reported Chernobyl nuclear power station ran What happened to those in children and adolescents who were out of control while engineers were nearby? exposed at the time of the accident, running safety tests. Within four Direct casualties of the explosion were and more cases can be expected during seconds, a power surge of 100 times rushed off to hospitals as far away as the next decades. Notwithstanding normal output led to a violent explosion Moscow. Then it became clear that problems associated with screening, and fire. The 1,000 tonne concrete top because of the intense radioactive many of those cancers were most likely of the reactor building was blown off fallout, all the surrounding population caused by radiation exposures shortly and huge chunks of blazing, radioactive would have to be evacuated. Police after the accident. (UNSCEAR, 2007) material were blasted into the air like a surrounded Pripyat, the nearest town volcanic explosion. The reactor burned (2.5km away), set up road blocks and Other reports predict deaths from furiously and highly radioactive debris prepared to deal with any panic. related cancers to be in their thousands. was scattered around and inside the As scientists and medical experts learn reactor building. The reactor burned for On Sunday 27 April, at 1.50pm, local more about the long-term effects of a week, spewing out radiation, and was radio announced the start of a mass radiation exposure, estimates of the eventually put out by helicopters evacuation. At 2pm, 1,100 buses began numbers who will die as a result of the dumping tonnes of sand, and to pick up the 40,000 residents. Almost disaster increase. The World Health firefighters and site workers fighting the all belongings had to be left behind. Organisation expects to see a steep rise blaze. Hundreds of thousands of Sunday lunches were left on tables, pets in the number of cancers over the next people, many of them soldiers, were and livestock abandoned. By 4.20pm 30 years among the local population drafted in to clean up the site. They had the town was empty. On 3 May, the (including up to 40% of the children) very little in the way of protective total evacuation zone had to be and the liquidators. clothing and were only allowed into the extended to a 30km radius. In early reactor building for 90 seconds at a June another 35,000 people had to be Chernobyl today time. They were called the ‘liquidators’. moved as more highly radioactive spots In November 2016 the Chernobyl plant further away were discovered. In all, was covered in steel to make it safer. The clean-up work continued for two more than 110,000 men, women and 95% of the radioactive material is still years as the entire reactor building was children were evacuated. This area, within the plant, and storage facilities sealed in a huge concrete tomb-like officially called the exclusion zone and are also being built for the radioactive structure known as the Sarcophagus. known locally as the Dead Zone, is still waste. People today suffer ill health, more than three decades later, empty – with medicines difficult to come by, and What radioactive elements were except for a few hundred elderly people they are also angry and grieving. Many released? who have returned to their land. Pripyat feel angry about the disruption to their Different radioactive elements remain is a ghost town. lives. 25 Question sheet The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster Visit: bit.ly/1beSWTR What happened? 1. What date(s) did the reactor begin to fail? 2. What happened when the reactor exploded? 3. What was released that was so dangerous? Visit: bit.ly/15CdztC 4. How many people were evacuated? Visit: bit.ly/i4HCDm The Liquidators 5. Who were the liquidators? 6. Look at the photos – Which one stands out to you? Why? Visit: bit.ly/1beTPvy The Ghost Town 7. Look at the 12 pictures of the abandoned town of Pripyat – Which one stands out to you? Why? Visit: bbc.in/1a9dUDA (Note, this page is from 2006) The Children of Chernobyl 8. Why do Keisha’s family and others host children from Belarus? 26 2 7 Russia – borders to the The Chernobyl nuclear United Kingdom East of Ukraine power station, Ukraine – to the West Germany – to the West Russia is about 150km from An explosion in the plant The worst affected British areas Belarus – on the North the power plant and was also Germany was affected by happened when there was a were hill farms in Cumbria, Border with Ukraine heavily affected. The ground radiation too despite being power surge and there was not North Wales and South West was contaminated as the wind 1,050km away from the Belarus is a country just 13km enough water to cool down Scotland. People in these areas blew radioactive dust over Chernobyl plant. North of the power plant. It was the reactors. The top blew off were warned not to drink areas of the country. People heavily affected by the radiation. like a volcano and released lots rainwater. There were food scares as some here also contracted thyroid of radiation areas received a lot of radiation. Children were particularly cancer and many children are Until 2012, there were sheep Also more children were born affected and were 100 times The people sent in to battle the still ill from the effects. It is farms in Wales (2,250km from with disabilities and illnesses more likely to develop thyroid flames were called ‘liquidators’. estimated that in Belarus, the plant!) that were specially and studies have linked this to cancer than before the accident. The radiation made them ill Ukraine and Russia alone more monitored and some sheep the disaster.