Eric Schmieman worked for 15 years on the modern engineering equivalent of the Great Pyramid — building a giant protective shield for a damaged reactor at Chernobyl that would protect the world from further fallout from the worst ever nuclear disaster. The steel shell, slid into place over Reactor No. 4 on railroad tracks in…
Five technicians secured by wires worked near the curved top of an arched steel structure that loomed the equivalent of 40 stories high, trying to extinguish the last bits of smoldering insulation left by a drone strike. It was snowing; the temperature was below freezing; the steel was covered with ice. The hole from the…
Many attending the Munich conference will remember the radioactive clouds that spread over parts of Europe after the accident at Chernobyl, which happened when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The accident was initially covered up by the Soviet authorities. “Now the atmosphere is such that everyone is very angry about this news here…