Chernobyl

I. Intro

1. The workers at Chernobyl were careless and unsafe.

2. The Russian-made power plant was unsafe.

3. More safeguards should be in place.

Thesis: Environmental problems caused by Chernobyl could have easily been avoided through safety precautions.

II. Body.

A. Argument 1. The workers at Chernobyl were unsafe.

1. Workers didn't know how to deal with fire.

2. Workers made uncertified tests.

3. Alarms were turned off.

Mini-conclu: harder testing and training should be done.

B. Argument 2. The Russian-made power plant was unsafe.

1. Regulations were lax

2. Russian safety at the time was bad

3.

Mini-conclu: reactors should be made safe, no matter who operates it

C. Argument 3. More safeguards should be in place.

1. Safe guards shouldn't be able to be turned off.

2. Reactor exploded without warning.

3.

Mini-conclu: Reactors should be built safer.

D. Counter Argument.

The destruction of the power plant named "Chernobyl" caused the evacuation of over 45,000 people causing problems not only physically for the people of Chernobyl, but economically and environmentally for the entire world over the next several years. This explosion was due to a test performed by the workers that was unsafe, and required the removal of safety measures throughout the plant. These workers should be better trained and if they were better trained, the explosion would not have taken place. The safeguards in the plant should not only have been in place, but should be found more in power plants around the world and the Design of the Russian-made power plants were unsafe. In short, Environmental and economical, as well as physical problems caused by the destruction of Chernobyl could have easily been avoided through simple safety precautions.

On April 25, 1986, the technicians at Chernobyl power plant began turning off safety precautions for a test during a routine maintenance check. This test was conducted by the technicians to "determine how long the turbine generators would continue to produce electricity to run the water pumps necessary to cool the reactor after the normal electrical supply had been interrupted. The technicians systematically disconnected power regulation and emergency cooling systems which would have automatically shut the reactor down and interfered with the test" (Robert and Hauser, 25-26). "They made six fatal errors which sealed everyone's fate. Soviet officials claimed that if the technicians would have avoided at least one of those mistakes, then the plant could have been saved" (Gray, 12). As this test began, the flow of steam and coolant to the reactor's core slowed, and with no water in the core to keep it cooled, the reactor overheated, and it seconds caused a chain reaction. The reactor exploded at 1:23 AM. The 1000 ton steel cover plate on reactor propelled upward, causing the roof to collapse, and started over 30 fires to begin burning. "The radioactive cloud from Chernobyl was bigger than Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (Robert and Hauser, 25-26). In reality, the explosion released 15 to 20 times the radiation of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing combined.

Safety precautions can be seen