• Question: will they build on chernobyl in the future?

    Asked by anon-232570 to Mark, Liam, Laura, Kasia, Gina, Felix on 19 Nov 2019.
    • Photo: Felix Warren

      Felix Warren answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is a interesting example of nuclear safety with a mixture of positives and negatives. To my understanding reactor No.4 had its safety systems fail during a test of those safety systems causing an explosion, this was handled with care but was still a disaster. On the positive side due to the amount of other safety systems in place and the effort put into dealing with the fallout the other 3 reactors where able to continue operation for a number of years before the site was decommissioned. Apparently a number of people still live in the area and are starting to move back. I hope that given time the area can fully heal from the disaster.

    • Photo: Mark Johnson

      Mark Johnson answered on 19 Nov 2019:

      The area around the Chernobyl power plant is largely uninhabited, but apparently a handful of people do still live there despite the radiation levels. It’s hard to say when Chernobyl will be safe enough for people to go and re-develop the area, but there’s still a huge effort going on to contain the reactor itself in a permanent way. In 2016, engineers finished an enormous steel dome (the “New Safe Confinement”) that permanently encloses the damaged reactor

    • Photo: Liam Gaffney

      Liam Gaffney answered on 20 Nov 2019:

      The reactor has now been covered over with a large concrete cocoon to make it safe for the next few hundred to thousand years. The land around the area of the reactor still has high radiation levels but the town has started to become habitable again and some people have moved back. Maybe they will rebuild the town in the future and flourish. There’s certainly a lot of money to be made from tourism!

    • Photo: Laura Sinclair

      Laura Sinclair answered on 20 Nov 2019:

      Interesting question. I visited Chernobyl in 2018.

      People still live and work in Chernobyl. The nuclear power plant didn’t close until the 2000s, but power plants aren’t left idle so there are many workers there. You can even eat at the canteen there.

      I stayed at a hotel in Chernobyl. People live in town and surrounding villages. There are small shops.

      Radiation levels are still high in places, of course. Wild animals can carry radiation (contamination) around the zone as well. It will be a very long time before it becomes officially habitable again.

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