Talk:Chernobyl disaster

Template:Vital article This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 January 2019 and 2 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Syssrq2016 (article contribs).

Grammar

The fist sentence should read: "At the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Pripyat, located in the then Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union (USSR)" instead of: "at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Pripyat, then located in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the Soviet Union (USSR)". It did not physically move.

The section titled "Social Economic Effects" should be renamed to "socioeconomic effects" to reflect proper terminology.

Containing fire

The timeline says all fires were contained at 6:35 - this should probably mention "fires around the power plant": The core continued to burn days after, but there is no description what measures really lead to containing the fire inside the reactor. It just says "It is now known that virtually none of the neutron absorbers reached the core." It is not clear what really stopped the fire.

decay heat was the "fire" and it "stopped" being "red hot" like decay heat always does. With time.

Grammar edit request

There's a rather extended high-comma-count "sentence" with what looks to be a misspelling.

The expected highest body activity was in the first few years, were the unabated ingestion of local food, primarily milk consumption, resulted in the transfer of activity from soil to body, after the dissolution of the USSR, the now reduced scale initiative to monitor the human body activity in these regions of Ukraine, recorded a small and gradual half-decadal-long rise, in internal committed dose, before returning to the previous trend of observing ever lower body counts each year.

minimal-change improvement:

The expected highest body activity was in the first few years, where the unabated ingestion of local food (primarily milk) resulted in the transfer of activity from soil to body. After the dissolution of the USSR, the now reduced scale initiative to monitor the human body activity in these regions of Ukraine recorded a small and gradual half-decadal-long rise in internal committed dose before returning to the previous trend of observing ever lower body counts each year.

length of lead

This has come up before, see..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Chernobyl_disaster/Archive_13#Lead_too_long

Dougsim

Semi-protected edit request on 23 July 2021

The article states that the time of the accident was 1:23:40, it was actually 1:23:45. Not sure how or why this was changed (I wrote a paper on this tragedy in highschool, about 10 years ago) but I know it was 1:23:45 because that's how I opened my paper, and it's the name of the first episode of the docuseries that was made about this accident. Gorehound94 (talk) 12:03, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: I just checked a number of the sources, which all refer to 1:23:40. 1:23:40 a.m. Readings showed the reactor's temperature had climbed to 4,650 C, almost as hot as the surface of the sun. Leatherbarrow recently published a book, called "1:23:40: The Incredible True Story of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster," that recounts the catastrophe's history on its 30th anniversary. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 12:27, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

The source you are referring to should be regarded as entertainment for laymen, and not reliable or definitive, but even so I think you are misinterpreting it. At 1:23:40 reactor power was only 200 MW, or slightly higher. This is the moment the accident began, before any sudden rise in temperatures.Sredmash (talk) 01:38, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Improving this article

This article could use some work to address some issues with inaccurate technical information, tendentious wording and unreputable sources. The biggest issue is citing proper sources which are themselves reputable, rigorous, and cite primary sources (eyewitnesses, experts and data). I will work to trim out passages that rely exclusively on low-quality hearsay sources not based on eyewitness statements, which are especially common with regards to Chernobyl. As I work through the article, please feel free to post concerns and feedback here. Many sources may be in Russian, but I can paraphrase them if needed. Cheers! Sredmash (talk) 00:34, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I made the first round of edits, but still need to go back for some sources (mostly I was editing unsourced paragraphs to begin with). Please post any responses here before. The accident sequence sections have a lot of flow and redundancy issues, which we can likely improve.Sredmash (talk) 03:52, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Violation of neutrality statements on this page.

This article contains politicized statements of questionable ethical background. Mlesch (talk) 23:28, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Nonsense. What matters is sources, and the ones provided are clearly WP:RELIABLE. Even looking at WP:NPOV, the statement of Many Ukrainians viewed the Chernobyl disaster as another attempt by Russians to destroy them, comparable to the Holodomor is valid. Why? The NPOV says - All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. The phrasing of the sentence is as neutral as possible, and the sources used for it are OK and definitely not WP:DEPRECATED. Your reverts will lead nowhere and continuing this edit war is futile.--Cukrakalnis (talk) 00:24, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Do Russian conspiracy theories about the CIA or Gorbachev blowing up the reactor also belong in this article so long as we can find a 'source' for those beliefs? I think not. The passage in question should be replaced by something from Dr. Plokhii's book regarding Chernobyl as a catalyst for Ukrainian pro-independence sentiment. Fringe beliefs are not sufficiently notable to receive attention in this articles, but the disaster's impact on national politics is. Sredmash (talk) 16:03, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Such comparisons are misguided and false. There is nothing even remotely close between Russian nonsensical conspiracy theories and internationally approved statements agreed to by professional historians like Niels F. May, Thomas Maissen, Oleg Bazhan (link to Ukrainian wiki) and respectable individuals like Ivan Drach and Zenonas Prūsas. The passage must be left as is because it is by no measure a fringe belief, considering all the mainstream material mentioning it.--Cukrakalnis (talk) 20:22, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

The "Russians" deliberately blowing up the reactor to harm Ukraine is just as fringe as Gorbachev deliberately blowing up the reactor to harm the Soviet Union. It is literally the same conspiracy theory, just with a different perception of who benefits. The latter is also very popular online, and if I wanted to I could "cite" dozens of articles and TV documentaries about it. An actually balanced and fairer summary of Ukrainian sentiment would not specify the accident as a deliberate attack on Ukraine, but blame the Soviets for placing unsafe reactors on Ukrainian soil and not taking proper steps to protect the populace from fallout.Sredmash (talk) 01:34, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Sourced additions confirming what you have just stated would be very useful. Even then, the contested sentence should remain unremoved.--Cukrakalnis (talk) 17:03, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Is "attempt to destroy them" a direct quote from the cited source? If not, it should be reworded to something more representative of Ukrainian public opinion, where Chernobyl is part of a larger negative Soviet legacy, but not an act of deliberate nuclear terrorism.Sredmash (talk) 19:21, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

"Attempt to destroy them" is indeed a direct quote from one of the sources, whereas the remaining references follow in the same vein. I have added quotes from the sources (and translated one of them) to show that they say indeed support the sentence.--Cukrakalnis (talk) 19:54, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

More grammar

Under "Unexpected drop of the reactor power": "most reports attributed it to Toptunov's mistake, but Dyatlov also that it was due to an equipment failure." seems poorly worded. I might word it "most reports attributed it to Toptunov's mistake, but Dyatlov also said that it was due to an equipment failure." The wording from the referenced text is "Dyatlov [...] in a private communication refers to the system not working properly." Jbboehr (talk) 22:24, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Under "Reactor conditions priming the accident": "The increased coolant flow rate the extra water flow lowered the overall core temperature and reduced the existing steam voids in the core" seems poorly worded. Perhaps "The increased coolant flow rate lowered the overall core temperature and reduced the existing steam voids in the core" Jbboehr (talk) 22:51, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Under "Reactor conditions priming the accident": "This was no apparent to the operators" should probably be "This was not apparent to the operators" Jbboehr (talk) 23:05, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Under "Reactor shutdown and power excursion": "the precise reason why the button was pressed when it was is not certain" seems poorly worded. Perhaps "the precise reason for the timing of the button press is not certain"

Agreed, thanks.Sredmash (talk) 00:42, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Liquidators

The term "liquidator" is used 6 times prior to a pseudo definition given in the section Area Cleanup. It would be better to highlight the definition and use of this term earlier in the article, as it appears prominently throughout the article and is of key interest to the overall narrative. SquashEngineer (talk) 12:39, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

'Failures of Communism' section

This new section needs some work at the minimum. Personally I don't see why a single random editorial in a news periodical is sufficiently noteworthy that it needs an entire section in already overlong article. When you cite an editorial, the result is also editorialized and not a neutral POV. If we leave this section is, someone will go and add a bunch of cited passages for how only a Communist state could muster such a robust response to the disaster (re-housing 50,000 people, etc). More importantly the second sentence is absurd. Fukushima objectively WAS a disaster. It was a Level 7 accident on the INES scale, which is the highest level. Lastly I am not sure that Plokhii is being paraphrased correctly, so a quote would help. Soviet nuclear engineers had MORE latitude to make decisions than their Western counterparts in many places, which was also a factor in the accident. Perhaps this passage is supposed to be referring to the plant director's ability to make decisions to protect personnel and civilians?Sredmash (talk) 17:26, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

@Sredmash: I have come around to your view that the section written should not have been in the Nuclear Debate section, but still think it ought to be in some part of a "cause" or "potential cause" section. If this is in fact an article you plan to edit majorly. Just something you may wish to consider. Thanks. Th78blue (They/Them/Theirs • talk) 21:40, 26 October 2021 (UTC)