The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident

The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident The Chernobyl disaster was a fire at a Ukrainian nuclear reactor, releasing substantial radioactivity within and outside the region. The consequences to human and environmental health are still felt to this day. The V.I. Lenin Memorial Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station was located in Ukraine, near the town of Pripyat, which had been built to house power station employees and their families. The power station was in a wooded, marshy area near the Ukraine-Belarus border, approximately 18 kilometers northwest of the city of Chernobyl and 100 km north of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station included four nuclear reactors, each capable of producing one gigawatt of electric power. At the time of the accident, the four reactors produced about 10 percent of the electricity used in Ukraine. Construction of the Chernobyl power station began in the 1970s. The first of the four reactors was commissioned in 1977, and Reactor No. 4 began producing power in 1983. When the accident occurred in 1986, two other nuclear reactors were under construction. The Chernobyl Nuclear Accident On Saturday, ​April 26, 1986, the operating crew planned to test whether the Reactor No. 4 turbines could produce enough energy to keep the coolant pumps running until the emergency diesel generator was activated in case of an external power loss. During the test, at 1:23:58 am local time, power surged unexpectedly, causing an explosion and driving temperatures in the reactor to more than 2,000 degrees Celsius- melting the fuel rods, igniting the reactor’s graphite covering, and releasing a cloud of radiation into the atmosphere. The precise causes of the accident are still uncertain, but it is generally believed that the series of incidents that led to the explosion, fire, and nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl was caused by a combination of reactor design flaws and operator error. Loss of Life and Illness By mid-2005, fewer than 60 deaths could be linked directly to Chernobyl- mostly workers who were exposed to massive radiation during the accident or children who developed thyroid cancer. Estimates of the eventual death toll from Chernobyl vary widely. A 2005 report by the Chernobyl Forum- eight U.N. organizations- estimated the accident eventually would cause about 4,000 deaths. Greenpeace places the figure at 93,000 deaths, based on information from the Belarus National Academy of Sciences. The Belarus National Academy of Sciences estimates 270,000 people in the region around the accident site will develop cancer as a result of Chernobyl radiation and that 93,000 of those cases are likely to be fatal. Another report by the Center for Independent Environmental Assessment of the Russian Academy of Sciences found a dramatic increase in mortality since 1990- 60,000 deaths in Russia and an estimated 140,000 deaths in Ukraine and Belarus- probably due to Chernobyl radiation. Psychological Effects of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident The biggest challenge facing communities still coping with the fallout of Chernobyl is the psychological damage to 5 million people in Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. The psychological impact is now considered to be Chernobyls biggest health consequence, said Louisa Vinton, of the UNDP. People have been led to think of themselves as victims over the years, and are therefore more apt to take a passive approach toward their future rather than developing a system of self-sufficiency.† Exceptionally high levels of psychological stress have been reported from the regions around the abandoned nuclear power station.   Countries and Communities Affected Seventy percent of the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl landed in Belarus, affecting more than 3,600 towns and villages, and 2.5 million people. The radiation-contaminated soil, which in turn contaminates crops that people rely on for food. Surface and ground waters were contaminated, and in turn plants and wildlife were (and still are) affected. Many regions in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine are likely to be contaminated for decades. Radioactive fallout carried by the wind was later found in sheep in the UK, on clothing worn by people throughout Europe, and in rain in the United States. Chernobyl Status and Outlook The Chernobyl accident cost the former Soviet Union hundreds of billions of dollars, and some observers believe it may have hastened the collapse of the Soviet government. After the accident, Soviet authorities resettled more than 350,000 people outside the worst areas, including all 50,000 people from nearby Pripyat, but millions of people continue to live in contaminated areas. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, many projects intended to improve life in the region were abandoned, and young people began to move away to pursue careers and build new lives in other places. In many villages, up to 60 percent of the population is made up of pensioners, said Vasily Nesterenko, director of the Belrad Radiation Safety and Protection Institute in Minsk. In most of these villages, the number of people able to work is two or three times lower than normal. After the accident, Reactor No. 4 was sealed, but the Ukranian government allowed the other three reactors to keep operating because the country needed the power they provided. Reactor No. 2 was shut down after a fire damaged it in 1991, and Reactor No. 1 was decommissioned in 1996. In November 2000, the Ukranian president shut down Reactor No. 3 in an official ceremony that finally closed the Chernobyl facility. But Reactor No. 4, which was damaged in the 1986 explosion and fire, is still full of radioactive material encased inside a concrete barrier, called a sarcophagus, that is aging badly and needs to be replaced. Water leaking into the reactor carries radioactive material throughout the facility and threatens to seep into the groundwater. The sarcophagus was designed to last about 30 years, and current designs would create a new shelter with a lifetime of 100 years. But radioactivity in the damaged reactor would need to be contained for 100,000 years to ensure safety. That is a challenge not only for today  but for many generations to come.

Asyndeton Definition and Examples

Asyndeton Definition and Examples Asyndeton is a  rhetorical term for a writing style that omits conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses. Adjective: asyndetic. The opposite of asyndeton is  polysyndeton. According to Edward Corbett and Robert Connors, The principal effect of asyndeton is to produce a hurried rhythm in the sentence (Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 1999). In his study of Shakespeares style, Russ McDonald argues that the figure of asyndeton works by means of juxtaposition rather than coupling, thereby depriving the auditor of clear logical relations (Shakespeares Late Style, 2010). Examples and Observations He was a bag of bones, a floppy doll, a broken stick, a maniac.(Jack Kerouac, On the Road, 1957)Joona walks through the Christmas market in Bollns Square. Fires are burning, horses are snorting, chestnuts are roasting. Children race through a stone maze, others drink hot chocolate.(Lars Kepler, The Hypnotist. Trans. by Ann Long. Picador, 2011)Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom!(Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, 1953)She was young, she was pure, she was new, she was nice,She was fair, she was sweet seventeen.He was old, he was vile, and no stranger to vice,He was base, he was bad, he was mean.He had slyly inveigled her up to his flatTo view his collection of stamps.(Flanders and Swann, Have Some Madeira, MDear)Why, theyve got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed: by poisons, by firearms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison, subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth. Suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under the wheels of trains, under the wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from steamboats. But Mr. Norton, of all the cases on record, theres not one single case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train.(Edward G. Robinson as insurance agent Barton Keyes in Double Indemnity, 1944) It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts.Cold; tempest; wild beasts in the forest. It is a hard life. Their houses are built of logs, dark and smoky within. There will be a crude icon of the virgin behind a guttering candle, the leg of a pig hung up to cure, a string of drying mushrooms. A bed, a stool, a table. Harsh, brief, poor lives.(Angela Carter, The Werewolf. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, 1979)I have found the warm caves in the woods,filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,closets, silks, innumerable goods(Anne Sexton, Her Kind)In some ways, he was this town at its beststrong, hard-driving, working feverishly, pushing, building, driven by ambitions so big they seemed Texas-boastful.(Mike Royko, A Tribute)Anyway, like I was saying, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Deys uh, shrimp-kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo. Pan fried, deep fried, stir-fried. Theres pineapple shrimp, le mon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. Thatthats about it.(Bubba in Forrest Gump, 1994) Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls deified among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.(Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1852-1853) Functions of Asyndeton When [asyndeton] is used in a series of words, phrases, or clauses, it suggests the series is somehow incomplete, that there is more the writer could have included (Rice 217). To put it somewhat differently: in a conventional series, writers place an and before the final item. That and signals the end of the series: Here it is folksthe last item. Omit that conjunction and you create the impression that the series could continue. . . Asyndeton can also create ironic juxtapositions that invite readers into collaborative relationships with writers: because there are no explicit connections between phrases and clauses, readers must supply them to reconstruct the writers intent. . . Asyndeton can also quicken the pace of prose, especially when it is used between clauses and sentences.(Chris Holcomb and M. Jimmie Killingsworth, Performing Prose: The Study and Practice of Style in Composition. SIU Press, 2010) EtymologyFrom the Greek, unconnected Pronunciation: ah-SIN-di-ton