Chernobyl
This is my collection of rare photos I have salvaged from around the web of the Chernobyl reactor core and the immediate accident area.
Here's the long story on where these came from:
I assembled this gallery in 2004-05 after I found myself coming across some amazing pictures on Chernobyl. Everywhere you looked had ominous photos of Pripyat and the exclusion zone. But myself, I was interested in seeing right into the heart of the beast, to see what happened to the fuel, and to see the devastation at the centre of ground zero.
I spent many hours and days searching. I used russian search engines, american search engines, russian spellings, misspellings, and even searched for abbreviations and russian nuclear jargon in order that I could dig up old reports. One report contained the black & white photos you see here with the numbers on them, and has since gone offline a long time ago. I'm glad I grabbed them when I did.
While there may be many more pics on the internet that have been dug up since I did my initial searches in 2004, I like this collection, and will strive to keep it online for perpetuity.
Some of the comments are more fascinating than the photos. Engineers, clean-up workers, environmentalists, students, and people of all sorts have visited, debated nuclear energy, helped with translations, and provided first-hand insight I never thought I'd see. Thank you! And please let me know what you think of the Chernobyl/Chornobyl accident, the Japan meltdowns of 2011 and/or nuclear energy in general.
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Date: 02/07/04
Owner: Kerry
Size: 24 items
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f413
Also under the reactor in the water pond, loosely translated from russian: 1 fuel lava, 2- parosbrosnye pipes with a diameter of 420 mm, 3 - concrete poured in 1986, 4 - a metal tube, limiting the flow of the fuel lava.
Date: 13/07/04
Views: 167142
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f412
Also in/near the water pond beneath the reactor, loosely translated from russian: 1 - fuel lava, 2 - concrete poured in 1986, 3 - the parosbrosnye pipes with a diameter of 280 mm.
Date: 13/07/04
Views: 185362
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f431
Underneath the reactor, loosely translated from russian: 1 - Fuel lava, 2 - poured concrete in 1986, 3 - the enclosure of passage to otm. 3.00 m, 4 - door into pom. 214/2, 5 - cable of koroba.(Of ris.ya.e.y.).
Date: 13/07/04
Views: 182151
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f411
In a water pond beneath the reactor, loosely translated from russian: 1 - pumice-covered fuel lava, 2 - concrete added in 1986, 3 - parosbrosnye pipes, 4 - steam take-off tubes.
Date: 13/07/04
Views: 185562
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65813_cropped
Colour photo of more fuel slag. TCM is a russian acronym meaning "Fuel Containing Mass (FCM)" in english.
Date: 28/07/04
Views: 502467
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image003
Molten reactor fuel, aka "corium", represents a mixture of mostly uranium dioxide (fuel) and various metals incorporated from containment apparatus. Photo from the
Date: 28/07/04
Views: 379380
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image1
Control room for reactor 4 as of May 2001. Copyright © 2003 Robert Polidori
Date: 28/07/04
Views: 262834
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fruin10m
Construction of the sarcophagus over reactor #4 at Chernobyl.
Date: 02/07/04
Views: 224444
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constr_works
"Shelter object construction in difficult radiation hazardous conditions has been executed due to arduous, self-sacrificing work of hundreds thousand people, representatives of the different professions: designers, miners, builders, assemblers, scien
Date: 29/04/05
Views: 329340
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chernowreck2
Reasonable diagram of what reactor #4 at Chernobyl probably looks like.
Date: 09/06/04
Views: 314173
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UK_CH_104
Russian diagram of the 4th-block Chernobyl reactor. There's concern the lid might collapse, spewing up radioactive contaminants.
Date: 27/08/04
Views: 324692
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sar
So-so movie from within the sarcophagus. Can't see much detail but interesting nonetheless.)
Date: 31/07/04
Views: 374023
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