Chernobyl radiation surge "cause for concern," say scientists
Scientists monitoring the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine are detecting increased fission reactions inside an inaccessible chamber built around the radioactive ruins of a reactor that suffered a catastrophic meltdown in 1986—and they aren't sure why.
New Scientist reported this week that since 2016, researchers have detected a 40% surge in neutron emissions from a sealed room containing large amounts of corium, a highly radioactive and hardened lava-like material containing much of the uranium fuel from Reactor Four of the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant, the site of history's worst nuclear disaster.
Scientists say the increased emissions are indicative of a growing nuclear fission reaction, but they don't know whether the surge will burn itself out, as has previously occurred in other parts of the former plant, or if further intervention might be necessary.
"There are many uncertainties, but we can't rule out the possibility of [an] accident," Maxim Saveliev of Ukraine's Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants (ISPNPP) told Science earlier this month.
