Thirty-five years after the worst nuclear accident in history, fission reactions have been recorded in the masses of uranium buried inside one of the reactors at Ukraine’s Chernobyl power plant. This was reported by the journal Science, which cites several scientists, stating that the cause is not yet clear.
Reactor number 4, where the accident occurred in 1986, is covered in a ‘sarcophagus’ of concrete and steel, which was further strengthened by a new structure in 2016. According to Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield, fuel is “like embers in a barbecue”. Ukrainian scientists speculate that it may be a consequence of the dehydration of the nuclear fuel that was buried after the catastrophe.
Maxim Saveliev, from the Ukrainian Institute for Nuclear Safety, explains that the number of neutrons produced – the signal that a fission process is underway – is slowly increasing, which means that there are a few years to neutralize possible risks. . “There are many uncertainties, but we cannot rule out that an accident will occur,” he said.