29 years have passed since two explosions destroyed the reactor unit 4 of the NPP located in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in the former Soviet Union. I'm 38 years old now. Therefore I was 9 years old when the tragedy happened. The same my wife was. She was a little schoolgirl living in Minsk, Belarus, also former Soviet Union Republic. A chain of mistakes was responsible of the disaster. Not only was an explosion in a nuclear power plant. It was the beginning of decades of radioactive contamination in thousands of kilometres in the surroundings of the NPP.
Literature about this accident is vast and wide. Yet I want to share a document made by JRC (Joint Research Center, European Commission):
http://rem.jrc.ec.europa.eu/RemWeb/pastprojects/Atlas.aspx
This document represents a very interesting approach to study not only the Cs-137 deposition after fall out, but also it aims to analyse the consequences of the catastrophe. It contains maps at three levels: European, national and local scale. All data has been validated and inter-comparisons carried out. It is a good piece to understand the dimensions of what happened and the problems we must face up to.
- Gutierrez-Villanueva, J.L.
- Santander, Spain
- I'm a physicist with a Ph.D on natural radioactivity. My Ph.D. Thesis is entitled "Radon concentrations in air, soil and water in a granitic area: instrumental development and measurements". I'm working at the university of Cantabria (Spain) and currently at the SLU university as postdoctoral researcher.
