
Age Level: 4th - 5th Grade
This book was created and published on StoryJumper™
©2014 StoryJumper, Inc. All rights reserved.
Publish your own children's book:
www.storyjumper.com


At first, it was a
very happy place.
The Chernobyl
Accident happened
not in Chernobyl, but Pripyat, a city about 15 kilometers
from Chernobyl. The city was built in 1970, after the
Chernobyl Nuclear Plant was built.
The city was a very happy place, children went to school
and played, adults went to work and there was even an
amusement park!
But disaster struck in the early morning hours on April 26,
1986.


In the early hours of April 26, engineers
working an evening shift (or graveyard
shift) began an experiment to determine
if the cooling pumps in the reactor (the
machine that creates energy) could still
work even if the power went out. The
reactor had control rods that decrease or
increase the amount of power produced.
The rods needed to be lowered so
that the reactor produced only 20% of
the normal amount . However, the
workers lowered the rods much too fast,
almost completely shutting down the
reactor.



The workers were worried that
the reactor might be unstable
and began to raise the control
rods to increase power output.
Still, the output remained at
just 7%, so more rods were
raised. The engineers disabled
the emergency shutdown
system in order to allow the
reactor to work with low power.
The power finally raised to 12%
and the test began. Only seconds
later, there was a sudden power surge.


At this time, the reactor
began to overheat and the
water cooling it turned to
steam.
All but six of the control
rods had been removed,
but the safe number was
thirty!
The emergency shutdown
button was pressed and
rods entered the core, but
their reinsertion moved the
coolant and pushed all of the heat to the bottom.


The power surge caused the
reactor to produce power at
roughly 100 times normal
output. The fuel pellets in
the reactor itself began
exploding, breaking fuel lines.
Two explosions then occurred,
blowing the dome-shaped roof
from the reactor. The radioactive
contents erupted from it like a
volcano!
Air was sucked into the shattered
reactor, igniting the flammable
carbon monoxide. This caused a reactor fire that blazed
for nine days.


Because the reactor itself was not
housed in thick enough concrete,
the reactor building took some
major damage. Large amounts of
radioactive material escaped into
the atmosphere.
Firefighters crawled upon the roof
to fight the reactor fire while helicopters dropped
sand and lead to quell the radiation from above.


The unique type of reactor used exclusively in nuclear
power plants in the then USSR (Soviet Union).
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Age Level: 4th - 5th Grade
This book was created and published on StoryJumper™
©2014 StoryJumper, Inc. All rights reserved.
Publish your own children's book:
www.storyjumper.com


At first, it was a
very happy place.
The Chernobyl
Accident happened
not in Chernobyl, but Pripyat, a city about 15 kilometers
from Chernobyl. The city was built in 1970, after the
Chernobyl Nuclear Plant was built.
The city was a very happy place, children went to school
and played, adults went to work and there was even an
amusement park!
But disaster struck in the early morning hours on April 26,
1986.


In the early hours of April 26, engineers
working an evening shift (or graveyard
shift) began an experiment to determine
if the cooling pumps in the reactor (the
machine that creates energy) could still
work even if the power went out. The
reactor had control rods that decrease or
increase the amount of power produced.
The rods needed to be lowered so
that the reactor produced only 20% of
the normal amount . However, the
workers lowered the rods much too fast,
almost completely shutting down the
reactor.



The workers were worried that
the reactor might be unstable
and began to raise the control
rods to increase power output.
Still, the output remained at
just 7%, so more rods were
raised. The engineers disabled
the emergency shutdown
system in order to allow the
reactor to work with low power.
The power finally raised to 12%
and the test began. Only seconds
later, there was a sudden power surge.
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