When the flow finally began to slow down and come to a halt it created an unusual shape which became known as the ‘elephants’ foot’. The melted core flowed down into the reactor building in a way that resembled lava rolling down the side of a volcano, melting concrete and stainless steel reactor components as it went. The last major fuel sampling campaign was made in 1991, when a team of researchers, including a scientist named Dr Boris Burakov, from the Khlopin Radium Institute in St Petersburg, entered the building and made a beeline for the melted fuel to collect a sample.īut how did the inside of the reactor come to be such a chaotic space? “At the time of the disaster, the reactor would have reached temperatures higher than 2000 degrees celsius,” explains Claire. Entering the reactor to see the extent of the chaos inside means risking high doses of radiation, but when robotic tools aren’t available, this is the only option. It’s someone’s job and they get a high dose of radiation doing it,” says Claire. “They have guys who go into the reactor to assess the status of the fuel, which is corroding badly and creating radioactive dust. “The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development are bank-rolling the decommissioning operation, but it’s still down to scientists to understand how to safely remove the melted fuel.” “It costs a lot of money to tackle a project of this magnitude and in Ukraine they don’t have quite enough.” Claire explains. However, that also means navigating the challenges of a country with the second lowest GDP per capita in Europe. She and her team have been working with Ukrainian scientists to understand what’s going on inside the extraordinary environment of Chernobyl's stricken reactor unit 4-and how it can be decommissioned safely. Dr Claire Corkhill is a Research Fellow in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Sheffield. But Chernobyl’s end was very much unplanned. Normally this happens when the reactor has reached the end of its working life, as is the case with Magnox reactors at Sellafield on the north-west coast of the UK. Support for refugee students and scholarsĭecommissioning a nuclear reactor means safely removing all the radioactive fuel and contaminated infrastructure and deconstructing the building piece by piece.Conferences, events, visitor accommodation and weddings.Worldwide Universities Network at Sheffield.Research centres, institutes and networks.Coronavirus: our research and innovation.
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