What Russia Broke In Chornobyl
By:Giorgio Provinciali
Live from Ukraine ??
Kherson When the sky above Chornobyl turned red on April 26, 1986, 400 times more radioactive material entered the Earths atmosphere than was released at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. This was just 5% of the total released ina catastrophe materialized by a Soviet technological posture radically different from that of the West, which the culture of power and obsession with secrecy allowed to escape human control.
Efforts focused on containing the remaining 95% of radioactive material: 170 tons of irradiated uranium that fused at over 1,200C with control rods, zirconium, graphite, and sand into an incandescent mass that perforated every floor of the building, seeped into the loops, and then cooled in the ground into a then-unknown material that scientists called Corium.
Initially extremely hard, this ceramic-metallic material continued to mutate and deteriorate, eventually turning to dust through spontaneous vitrification and radiolytic disintegration.
An initial containment sarcophagus was built around the structure thanks to the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of workers called liquidators, each of whom performed a single operation in about forty seconds before returning, after having absorbed a radiation dose equal to the maximum a human being can tolerate in a year.
In the late 1990s, that shell deteriorated, creating the risk that the constantly changing radioactive dust which emits 300 to 800 roentgens per hour, lethal within just a few dozen minutes could escape.
Thanks to the joint efforts of 40 nations, at a cost of approximately two billion euros (plus twice the estimated cost of disposing of the material), a steel arch designed to last a century was built.
The worlds finest engineering expertise had allowed humanity to catch its breath because the New Safe Confinement was not a roof. It was time.
One hundred years to contain the destroyed reactor, control humidity, prevent the dispersion of radioactive dust, and dismantle the previous Soviet sarcophagus, which had become unstable.
It was soon realized, however, that the lack of humidity due to the nearly hermetic covering accelerated a self-sustaining chain reaction (in a thermal-neutron system, water acts as a moderator, slowing neutrons through thermalization) known as criticality. In room 305/2 of the Chornobyl power plant, where more than half of the Corium is located, sensors detected radiation levels too high even for drones and robots. Attempts to vaporize various substances were made, but they found that both excess or sudden removal of vapor altered the neutron multiplication factor. Various engineering interventions were employed to find the balance, leading to a dramatic realization: the timeline for containing the catastrophe was much shorter than a century.
By violating what had become a global security laboratory, the Russian army desecrated the zone where humanity had confined the worst mistake produced up to that point by the Moscow regime, occupying the Chornobyl power plant in 2022.
Convoys of heavy and tracked vehicles heading for Kyiv raised radioactive dust, and occupiers who dug trenches raised even more, using the plants protective shell as a shield from which to attack without being attacked. Following the same (il)logic of hostage-taking, applied not to a building but to six VVER-100 reactors, their spent fuel, power lines, auxiliary systems, and the cooling basin, subsequently altered by the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam,Moscow occupied another Ukrainian nuclear power plant the largest in Europe in Zaporizhzhia, attempting to turn it into a shield as well.
In complete disregard for forty years of science, international public money, the memory of the liquidators, and responsibility toward the entire continent, on February 14, 2025, the Russian military bombed the protective shield built around the Chornobyl nuclear power plant.
A high-explosive drone created a six-meter hole through which water leaked, once again altering the already precarious equilibrium within the structure. The domes exposed insulation burned for two weeks, and thatdisaster intentionally caused further shortened the times that depend not on politics but on the isotopes. Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 have half-lives of approximately thirty years. Plutonium-239, on the other hand, has a half-life of 24,000 years. Americium-241 is even more insidious from a historical perspective because it arises from the decay of plutonium-241: its environmental activity will continue to grow, reaching a critical threshold around mid-century, and it has a half-life of approximately 432 years. This means that within about 400 years, its activity will be halved.
The shell was not eternal but designed to give humanity a century. Russia occupied it, struck it, and forced emergency repairs. In Zaporizhzhia, it replicated the same pattern. In Nova Kakhovka, it demonstrated that even water can be a weapon.
Even before the disaster, Chornobyl embodied a Soviet technological posture radically different from that of the West. The RBMK-1000 reactor of Unit 4 was born within a system in which civilian and military production intersected, contaminated, and often justified each other. Graphite-moderated, light-water-cooled, equipped with pressure channels, and refuelable on-the-fly, the RBMK was powerful, economical, and rapid to build industrially, and, precisely for this reason, intrinsically less protected. Its positive void coefficient meant that, under certain conditions, the loss of water in the channels did not quench the reaction but instead accelerated it; the graphite tips of the control rods could initially increase reactivity precisely when they should have reduced it.
Chornobyl was a disaster engineered within the belly of the Soviet system, that is, within the heart of the technical-political apparatus that Moscow controlled, concealed, and protected. Forty years later, Moscow has repeated those same grave errors, demonstrating that Chornobyl is not an event of the past but the technical, historical, and moral proof of a difference in civilization.
In 1.525 days of war,we recorded over 250 videos from ground zero and wrote more than 1,500 articles.
We are doing our best to provide genuine, first-hand reports from zones where almost no press dares to go. This means living in a kill zone constantly. We take the risk, but without your invaluable support, our voices would remain unheard and silent. Without brave people sharing our articles from afar, they would remain unread. Our reports would go unseen, and our efforts would be lost. Theres still a lot of work to do here, as the people around us are also in no better situation.
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Thank you all, dear friends ??
俄罗斯在切尔诺贝利所破坏的一切
作者：Giorgio Provinciali
翻译：旺财球球
乌克兰前线报道??
赫尔松1986年4月26日，当切尔诺贝利上空变成红色时，被释放到大气中的放射性物质量相当于广岛与长崎两次爆炸总量的400倍。那只是整起灾难释放总量的5%。这场灾难源自苏联一种与西方迥异的技术姿态权力文化与对保密的痴迷使其脱离了人类的控制。
随后人们致力于控制剩余95%的放射性物质：170吨在超过1200C高温下与控制棒、锆、石墨和沙子熔结成炽热熔块的放射性铀，这股熔块穿透了建筑的每一层、渗入回路，冷却后在地下形成一种当时未知的物质，科学家称之为核熔融物（Corium）。
这种最初极为坚硬的陶瓷-金属复合物不断发生变异和老化，最终通过自发玻璃化和放射性电离分解而化为粉末。
（图：我和Alla一起前往切尔诺贝利。我们还在这个路牌中提及的另外两个城市做了报道版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
数以十万计的清理者以牺牲换来了最初的密封石棺每人只做大约四十秒的单一操作，随后返回，而此一番行动所吸收的剂量已相当于人体一年所能承受的最大剂量。
上世纪90年代末，那层防护壳开始老化，造成持续变化的放射性尘埃泄漏的风险，这些粉尘每小时发射300到800伦琴，几十分钟内即可致命。
在40个国家的共同努力下，耗资约20亿欧元，另加两倍于估算的物质处置费用，建造了一座设计寿命为一百年的钢质拱形结构。
世界顶尖的工程技术让人类稍得喘息，因为新安全封闭体并不是一个简单的屋顶。这为人类争取了时间。
一百年用于封存被毁反应堆、控制湿度、防止放射性尘埃扩散，并拆除已变得不稳定的苏联时期石棺。
（图：Alla和我从一座2022年俄军占领切尔诺贝利电厂时被当作防御工事的公车站做现场报道，那里在版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
然而随后人们意识到，几乎密封的覆盖导致湿度不足，加速了一种自持链式反应（在热中子体系中，水作为慢化剂，通过热化减速中子），即临界现象。在切尔诺贝利305/2号房间里存放有超过一半核熔融物，传感器检测到的辐射强度连无人机和机器人都难以承受。人们试图蒸发各种物质，但发现蒸汽的过多或骤然去除都会改变中子乘倍因子。为寻求平衡采取了多种工程措施，从而得出一个严峻结论：控制灾难的时间窗远比一百年短。
（图：Alla在拍摄一本书中记载的重要信息版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
2022年，俄军占领切尔诺贝利核电站，亵渎了这个已成为全球安全实验室的区域，破坏了人类为封存莫斯科政权至今所犯下最严重错误而设下的界限。
驶往基辅的重型履带车队扬起放射性尘埃，挖掘战壕的侵略者扬起了更多尘土，利用电站的防护外壳作为掩护，从中实施攻击而免受反击。俄军以劫持人质的逻辑，不是把建筑而是把六座VVER-1000反应堆、其所耗燃料、输电线路、辅助系统和冷却池当作人质；随后在诺瓦卡霍夫卡大坝被摧毁后，莫斯科又占领了欧洲最大的扎波罗热核电站，企图采用相同的做法将其亦变为屏障。
无视四十年的科学成果、国际公共资金、清理者的记忆以及对整片大陆的责任，俄军于2025年2月14日炸毁了围封切尔诺贝利核电站的保护罩。
一枚高爆无人机在穹顶上开出一处六米的洞口，导致渗水，再次改变了结构内本已极不稳定的平衡。穹顶外露的保温层燃烧了两周，这场故意造成的灾难进一步缩短了由同位素衰变速率而不是政治决定的安全期限。铯-137和锶-90的半衰期约为三十年；而钚-239的半衰期则长达2.4万年。镅-241从历史视角看更为稳定，因为它由钚-241衰变生成：其环境活性将继续上升在本世纪中叶左右趋于临界，其半衰期约为432年也就是说大约四百年内其活性才会减半。
（图：在我们的报道中，我们常把乌克兰其余战区的战争场景比作切尔诺贝利的末世状态版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
这层围封并非永恒，而是为人类争取了一个世纪的时间。俄罗斯占领了它，袭击了它，并迫使人们进行紧急修复。在扎波罗热，俄军做了同样的事情。在诺瓦卡霍夫卡，它证明了连水也能成为武器。
即便在灾难发生前，切尔诺贝利就已体现出一种与西方截然不同的苏联技术取向。4号机组的RBMK-1000反应堆产生于一个民用与军用生产交织、相互污染并常以彼此合理化的体制中。石墨慢化、轻水冷却、压力通道、即可在运行中换料的设计让RBMK具有高功率、低成本、便于快速工业化建造的特性，但也因此本质上更不安全。其正空泡系数意味着在某些条件下，通道内水的损失非但不会抑制、反而会加速反应；控制棒石墨端帽在最初应当减小反应性的瞬间却可能增加反应性。
切尔诺贝利是一场在苏联体制腹地酝酿的灾难在莫斯科所控制、隐瞒并保护的技术-政治机器核心内被设计的灾难。四十年后，莫斯科却再次犯下同样严重的错误，证明切尔诺贝利并非过去的事件，而是技术上、历史上和道德上文明差异的一个明证。
（图：Alla和我一起进入切尔诺贝利区版权所有，Giorgio Provinciali）
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