Why Chernobyl was called Chernobyl? History of Chernobyl

Probably, today there is no person who would not be familiar with one of the most famous places on Earth - Chernobyl. Information about Chernobyl today can be found not only in books, but also in numerous Internet resources. This word, first of all, is associated with an explosion at a local nuclear power plant. The catastrophe in Chernobyl occurred on April 26, 1986 , having perpetuated the city. Its history is actually much more ancient.

Where did the name come from

First we need to understand why Chernobyl was called Chernobyl. Who and when gave this city the name? There is an opinion that the name is related to the Chernobylnik, or the more famous wormwood. The thing is that this plant is very common in the locality where the city was founded. Wormwood here literally grows whole fields. There are other versions of why Chernobyl was called Chernobyl. The accident at the NPP in 1986 caused mystical legends and speculation. This is the prophecy of the ancients. "Black life" - a dark combination, a harbinger of trouble.

Ancient history of the city

When and where is the first mention of the name "Chernobyl"? The history of the city begins with a mention in the chronicle, dated 1193 year. It is from there that the story of Chernobyl known to many now begins. This mention was connected with the prince of Kiev, who was hunting in the vicinity of the town. There are no earlier references to the village.

At that time the city of Chernobyl was famous for the fact that representatives of various faiths peacefully coexisted in it. There were Catholics, Jews, and Orthodox.

The thousand-year history of Chernobyl holds another interesting fact. On the Pripyat River, at the point of its confluence with the Dnieper, in the thirteenth century, the combined Lithuanian and Ukrainian troops inflicted a crushing defeat on the governor of the khan Batu, Kaidan. The governor went to the region of Pripyat in order to collect tribute. After the attack, Kaidan barely blew his feet off the battlefield. He did not return to the city of Chernobyl and his surroundings for a tribute.

The city during the Great Patriotic War

This terrible war was the most bloody in the history of mankind. It is known that the war claimed more than 60 million lives. Historians count the total number of victims to this day.

The Second World Side did not pass around Chernobyl, which by the time of the fascists' invasion was already a fairly sprawling city with good infrastructure and prospects.

The Germans were eager to conquer the city with great zeal. The terrain on which Chernobyl is located is on a hill. In addition, it is surrounded by the rivers Pripyat and Uzh, which for enemy troops seemed beneficial from the point of view of military tactics. From this site, all transport routes were perfectly controlled, from land to river.

August 25, 1941 the city was occupied. It managed to be repulsed only during the repeated offensive of the Red Army on November 17, 1943. Today in memory of those tragic events, the Glory Park was established with memorial signs and monuments to the brave inhabitants of Chernobyl established in it.

Postwar fate

The city was considered a strategically important object, therefore considerable forces were thrown on its restoration. The enterprises that were evacuated at the beginning of the war returned as a matter of priority, residential houses, objects of social importance were built: kindergartens, schools, hospitals. In a hurry the military was sent to the city with families for work and permanent residence. Literally a few years later, Chernobyl again became a flourishing city.

Construction of nuclear power plants

When planning the construction of nuclear power plants, various sites were considered, including in Kiev, Vinnitsa and Zhytomyr regions. But this area was chosen for the construction of the station. Is this the answer to the question "why Chernobyl was called Chernobyl"? Still, a prophecy? But everything is much more prosaic. The choice fell on Chernobyl, as the land at the site of the future station turned out to be almost infertile. In addition, a large amount of clay in the soil made it possible to build such a large-scale complex as an atomic station. The area had the necessary resources for water supply, met all the requirements of the transport interchange and, most importantly, provided a sanitary protection zone.

May 1970 - the grandiose construction began. Construction equipment began to dig a pit for the future of the first power unit, the construction of which was completed in 1977. At the same time, it was launched. Then, in the period from 1978 to 1983, the remaining units were completed and put into operation, including the infamous fourth power unit.

By the way, we can not fail to mention that in the same 1970 the representatives of the party were pegged at the site of the future satellite of the station, the city of Pripyat. And the construction of this town was conducted in parallel with the work at the station.

Typical day

Chernobyl, April 26, 1986. For the residents of the city it was the most usual day. In the evening, when the next shift shifted from the nuclear power plant and another arrived, the station was in normal operating mode.

Employees changed into working dressing gowns and took their places behind the control panels. On this day, at the fourth power unit, the turbine tests of the reactor were planned for a "run-out". The essence was to check whether the station could for some time after an emergency or emergency power outage maintain its work due to the residual rotation of the generator's turbine. The chief engineer of the station A.S. Woodpeckers.

The Chernobyl Explosion

As soon as the time came, and all the necessary preparations were completed, the test began. Eventually, events began that led to a terrible catastrophe. For unknown reasons, the reactor power was dropped to very low values of 500 megawatts, while the normative act prescribed to conduct tests at capacities from 700 to 1000 megawatts. The second error consisted in leaving too few graphite rods, which were used to control the reaction. At the time of the explosion in the core, there were only four of them, which eventually led to overheating of the reactor and its explosion. Subsequent investigation for several years has established an inadequate design of the absorbing rods.

Several more specific moments were noted, which together could have caused the Chernobyl disaster to occur. Many now call this explosion atomic, but this is not so. The explosion was thermal, and such a force that the protection of the reactor (weighed as much as 500 tons), like a lid from a teapot, flew into the air and collapsed back.

The explosion in Chernobyl turned out to be just a giant scale. Frightened, the country's leadership for a long time concealed the true size of the accident. Only when reports from other countries began to report a sharp increase in the radiation background, the Soviet leadership had to admit the fact that there had been a grand catastrophe in Chernobyl, which had not yet happened all over the world.

Liquidators of the Chernobyl accident

In the explosion, two employees of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were immediately killed, and another 31 employees died within a few weeks of radiation sickness. Of all the employees who were at the time of the accident at the station, only 6 people survived.

Immediately at the place of the explosion arrived firefighters who showed real heroism, courage and courage. Knowing the deadly danger, they stood as a wall near the blazing radioactive fire and extinguished the fire, despite multiple burns and all worsening health. In fact, they became a living shield in the path of deadly radiation. Six firefighters extinguished the radioactive flame, died of burns and acute radiation sickness a few weeks after the accident.

Pilots of helicopters from the air dumped sand and boron carbide into debris to extinguish the remains of the reactor and prevent it from exploding again.

Scientists, realizing what risk they are taking, carried out the necessary inspections and measurements directly in nuclear heat, so that the liquidators had accurate data for effective decontamination work.

When robots were used to drop the fading pieces into the active zone, they simply burned all the chips from a large amount of radiation. Then the soldiers had to work, who dumped the debris into the collapse of the core, using ordinary shovels.

Medics, police, military, workers, miners, drivers, research workers - a total of more than 600,000 people took part in the liquidation work for several years. The catastrophe in Chernobyl, apart from official employees, attracted even more than one million volunteers who helped in the work to eliminate the terrible consequences of the accident. People cleared the forest and burnt damaged trees, dumped radioactive land in mines, watered nearby territory to reduce radiation levels, helped with evacuation, provided first aid.

After the crash

Official sources kept silent about the true scale of the Chernobyl catastrophe and the real disastrous consequences. The next day the city lived its usual life. A stream of citizens rushed to the market, schoolchildren went to school, someone went on vacation to the forest or to the river, many went to the dachas. There were cafes, shops, cinemas, the palace of weddings. The accident, of course, could not go unnoticed by ordinary citizens, but few understood the true extent and estimated the possible terrible consequences of the explosion. Those who understood this immediately left the city together with their family. The overwhelming majority felt anxiety only when the city began to drive cars and water the sidewalks with water to reduce the radiation background.

Only the next day it was announced the urgent need to leave the contaminated city. Then, probably, many once again thought, why Chernobyl was called Chernobyl ... More than 500 thousand city dwellers were taken to 1000 buses. The USSR did not yet remember the evacuation of such a scale.

The city of Pripyat with a population of almost 70 thousand people was depopulated literally in a matter of hours. In parallel, the evacuation of villages was going on, some of which were later destroyed, and their remains were buried in order not to spread radiation. At first, in order to avoid panic, people were told that they were leaving for a while, although scientists and military understood that no one would return here.

Exclusion Zone

Autumn, Chernobyl in 1986. After the debris had been removed and the surrounding area was most disinfected, work began on the Shelter object, better known as the Sarcophagus. With the help of it, later, it was possible to close the reactor-hazardous fragments of reactor No. 4. Work to strengthen the emergency facilities and decontamination measures are carried out to this day.

Scientists from all over the world come to Chernobyl to study the effects of critical radiation doses on living organisms, to develop methods for eliminating the consequences of a nuclear explosion.

A special zone was formed around the station, which everyone today is known as the Zone of Alienation. In total, it was divided into three parts: the first is the station and directly to the city of Pripyat, the second was occupied by most villages, and the last ring was held near the city of Chernobyl.

The pernicious consequences of the Chernobyl explosion

All the participants in the liquidation of the Chernobyl accident were injured without exception. Tens of thousands of people died through excessive doses of radiation, many became invalids. In subsequent years, statistics noted a sharp increase in mortality from cancer, a general weakening of the nation's health. Such high mortality is caused, first of all, by untimely evacuation of residents, negligence and criminal connivance by officials, a desire to remain silent and to hide the truth.

Today Chernobyl is an object of extreme tourism

How does Chernobyl live today? Photo confirm that this is a lifeless and deserted place. Of course, in abandoned apartments currently live people working in the exclusion zone. Here is located one of the offices of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

For extreme tourists, the Chernobyl-Tour organization operates. Here you can order a one-day or a few days trip to the Exclusion Zone. There you can also take a booklet called "Chernobyl. History of the city ", which briefly tells about the past and present of this settlement.

People can see with their own eyes a place where many years ago one of the most massive disasters of the twentieth century and the whole history of Russia broke out. There is a sculptural composition dedicated to the firemen who fought heroically in the reactor fire. The St. Ilyinsky Church operates on the territory of the city, where every year on April 26 a large-scale service is held in memory of all those who died from the Chernobyl accident.

Tourists can drive through the whole of Chernobyl, photos are allowed to be made without restrictions. For some, this trip is just satisfaction of curiosity, for someone - a tribute to the memory of the deceased heroes and proof of how destructive the "peaceful" atom can be.