Quote:
Originally Posted by tipsygypsy
they are preparing boric acid to dump into reactor. they say that kills the activities of neutron but I don't trust that.
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quote :
The fire was extinguished by a combined effort of helicopters dropping over 5,000 metric tons of materials like sand, lead, clay, and boron onto the burning reactor and injection of liquid nitrogen. Ukrainian filmmaker Vladimir Shevchenko captured film footage of a Mi-8 helicopter as it collided with a nearby construction crane, causing the helicopter to fall near the damaged reactor building and kill its four-man crew.[31]
From eyewitness accounts of the firefighters involved before they died (as reported on the CBC television series Witness), one described his experience of the radiation as "tasting like metal," and feeling a sensation similar to that of pins and needles all over his face. (This is similar to the description given by Louis Slotin, a Manhattan Project physicist who died days after a fatal radiation overdose from a criticality accident.)[32]
.........The worst of the radioactive debris was collected inside what was left of the reactor, much of it shoveled in by liquidators wearing heavy protective gear (dubbed "bio-robots" by the military); these workers could only spend a maximum of 40 seconds at a time working on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings because of the extremely high doses of radiation given off by the blocks of graphite and other debris.
The reactor itself was covered with bags containing sand, lead, and boric acid dropped from helicopters (some 5,000 metric tons during the week following the accident). By December 1986 a large concrete sarcophagus had been erected, to seal off the reactor and its contents.[45]
Many of the vehicles used by the "liquidators" remain parked in a field in the Chernobyl area to this day, most giving off doses of 10–30 R/h (0.7–2 µA/kg) over 20 years after the disaster.
Chernobyl Disaster