Quote:
Originally Posted by red-beard
In the USA there have been no deaths. Unfortunately, there were PLENTY at Chernobyl. Many of them firefighters, sent to their deaths, never knowing they were going into a deadly radiation zone.
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That is not entirely correct I saw films of the soldiers getting briefed before going to do there patriotic duty and they were made aware of their conditions unfortunately they were walking into conditions that were worst case, irradiated material ejected from a burning core (the graphite moderator had ignited and was provided its own fuel for the fire) the General that was briefing the men was in a 5 rem/hr field which is bad for you laymen and it only got worse from there robots that they tried to use to push the chunks back into the core failed because the electronic circuitry used was not radiation hardened and failed before they could do the job so the men were briefed to go out grab 1 irradiated chunk of mat. and throw it in the core and leave unfortunately that was enough. The helicopter pilots that were trying to put out the fire were directly in the "shine" from an uncovered and burning core so they were in an unbelievable dose rate, the firefighters did what they do all over the world try to make thing safe even if it means their death, the major in charge of the fire brigade that responded actually lived many years after the accident and toured giving his accounts of what happened there. Just a side note I saw a characterization survey of the area and the dose rates at the surface of the cooling lake were near lethal levels. Experts speculate that the sarcophagus is near collapse and if it does the release of radioactivity would be worse than the original accident.