“When the lava enters the tanks, it will cause approximately 7,000 cubic meters of water to overheat and evaporate, causing a significant thermal explosion. Our estimates are between two and four megatons. It will destroy absolutely everything within a 30-kilometer radius, including the three remaining reactors at Chernobyl.
Then, all the radioactive material in the nuclei will be ejected with virulence and propagated by a large seismic wave. It can reach approximately 200 kilometers and could be lethal to the entire population of kyiv and much of Minsk. The radiation release will be immense and will impact Soviet Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, as well as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and East Germany.”
Since, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, AEMET published meteorological reconstruction that explained why Spain was left out of the radioactive cloud that affected a good part of Europe, I can’t forget those words from the miniseries which HBO released a few years ago. Mostly because it was pure luck.
Pure luck? But Ukraine is very far away. That’s what we used to think, that Spain was spared the hardest part of the Chernobyl hit because we were so far away. However, data from meteorologist Benito Jose Fuentes They say something else: three successive atmospheric reconfigurations that, at the critical moment, sent the radioactive cloud in another direction.
But let’s go step by step. Indeed, on April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant became an unstable “pressure cooker” whose explosion spread radiation throughout much of the continent. In fact, that radiation reached Spain shortly after: there is evidence of air filters in Valencia that detected the radioactivity on May 2, 3 and 4.
However, we avoided the worst of the blow. According to Fuentes Lópezthe peninsula was at least twice (on April 29 and the days before May 2) “one turn of the wind” away from receiving a direct blow.
Reconstructing the disaster. Sources Lopez has published a simplified simulation that reconstructs on a cartographic scale the evolution of the wind at medium and high levels of the atmosphere. This simulation is what gives us the fundamental keys.
To begin with, at midday on April 26, a high pressure ridge extended between the Chernobyl zone and Scandinavia. This caused the winds (at 1,700 meters above sea level) to channel the pollutants to the north and Belarus, the Baltic republics, Sweden and Finland took the first hit.
The world found out what was happening, precisely, through the sensors of a Swedish nuclear power plant two days later.
Spain plays it. On April 29, the pattern changed and a storm in the Mediterranean (and a ridge in Portugal) turned the wind towards Central Europe. According to Fuentes López’s simulations, with this new direction it was a matter of hours before the radioactivity reached Spain.
However, between May 1 and 2, a trough pushed the radioactive cloud towards Great Britain (and the Portuguese ridge acted as a wall that diverted the rest of the smaller clouds towards Italy and the Balkans).
A reminder. The curious thing about all this is that, according to AEMET datathe dispersion was due to higher atmospheric waves at high levels and not to surface patterns such as storms and anticyclones. That is to say, the work (in addition to a mind-blowing work of atmospheric history) is a reminder that we normally relate to a small part of the weather.
That, of course, is a mistake. The atmosphere is a very complex creature full of levels, teleconnections and strange relationships. We are at stake understanding it better.
And I am no longer talking about climate change, or phenomena of that type. I’m saying that in most cases, as we already explained many expertsthe profound psychological, social and cultural consequences “turned out to be a much bigger problem than the radiation.” At the climatic level they will also be. And we really don’t know how to handle them well.
Image | AEMET
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