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Grit can mean a lot of things but sometimes it's just a big plan for your everyday life to make you successful.

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In recent years, the concept of grit has received pushback from many psychologists. Some researchers contend that it is a new labeling of known traits. Grit is indeed similar to conscientiousness, a Big Five personality trait: People high in this trait are disciplined, dependable, careful, and goal-directed.

Grit is also comparable to the time-honored construct of "hope," which has been researched for decades. Hope in this context means being determined and having the will and the motivation to reach clear-cut goals.

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Grit is a construct that is said to summon both passion and perseverance in service of a long-term goal. It's a marathon, not a sprint, as they say. In other words, gritty people put in sustained effort over time to achieve a high level of success in their chosen domain.

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Grit describes the personality trait and what or how you can become a successful person.

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Grit - How do you Develop it for a successful Life? 

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Grit - How do you Develop it for a successful Life? 

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This discusses what grit does to help you have a successful life.

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Have you ever met someone who thrives through adversity, and who transforms their pain into opportunities for growth? In her book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Angela Duckworth describes these types of people as possessing grit. From her research, she has found that grit is what separates those who are successful from those who fail.

So, what is grit, you may ask?

Passion + Perseverence = Achievement

In the words of Angela Duckworth herself,

"Grit is sticking with your future, day in and day out, and not just for the week, not just for the month, but years."

The problem that a lot of people face is that they seek the shortcut to success. They want to work less while still achieving more. Unfortunately, that's not how success works.

If you want to achieve your goals, you have to be willing to do anything and everything. I believe that the most meaningful goals require an insane amount of hard work, determination, discipline, commitment, and sacrifice. But get real with yourself - are you ready to go all-in? How bad do you want to succeed?

Why Is Grit Important?

Nothing of value in life comes easily. Success is never a coincidence.

Research indicates that the ability to be gritty - to stick with things that are important to you and bounce back from failure - is an essential component of success.

You can have all the talent in the world, but you will never achieve your goals without effort. This is why grit is the foundation of success.

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What Are the Characteristics of Grit?

The good news is that grit can be developed and mastered over time. However, you first need to adopt a growth mindset. Unfortunately, many people have a fixed mindset.

They are conditioned to believe that their intelligence cannot improve. While a fixed mindset is based in "I can" or "I can't," a growth mindset celebrates the journey from "I can't" to "I can."

Do you see your intelligence as fixed, or do you believe that you can grow and change?

Below are the characteristics of grit. Reflect upon the ones that you resonate with the most and still need to strengthen.

Passion

Where there is passion, there is always a purpose. Passionate people know themselves inside and out. They have a clear understanding of their values, beliefs, and needs.

More importantly, they live in alignment with their truth and inspire others to do the same. Living with passion is about paying attention to and following what makes you come alive inside.

Not everyone will understand your path in life, and that's okay. True grit is being able to tune out others' judgments and stay in your lane.

Perseverance

I've never met a strong person who had an easy-breezy past. Persevering, despite all odds, is about learning how to sit with your darkness and soften into the discomfort.

The only difference between those who succeed versus those who fail is their willingness to persevere and continue failing forward. It's knowing that your desire to achieve your dreams burns brighter than any obstacle.

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Learn how to embrace discomfort and use pain as a tool to grow and become more. Celebrate yourself every step of the way and don't stop until you're insanely proud of the person you've become.

Resilience

Gritty people are resilient, in the sense that they thrive through adversity. They reframe every challenge as an opportunity and do the work to become the master of their emotions.

Research reveals that resilience is a test of how tough you are. Instead, it has everything to do with your willingness to keep trying after others have given up.

Resilient people are conscious enough to know when it is time to surrender to the rollercoaster ride of life. Their ability to soften into what is can make room for what will be.

What Is an Example of Grit?

It was like any other day in my life. I got on my motorcycle and rode off. Because I was just going up the road, I decided not to wear my helmet. Little did I know that this sudden decision would change my entire life.

I was supposed to be back home in 15 minutes, but that didn't happen. Five minutes into riding my bike, I had an accident. I hit my head on the pavement, suffered a traumatic brain injury, and was rushed to the hospital to undergo surgery.

I remember the moment like it was yesterday. This experience left me with PTSD, post-concussion syndrome, chronic pain, and anxiety.

However, it also gave me a second chance to recreate my life and develop unshakeable mental strength and grit.

It's been three years since my accident. I'm not the same person that I used to be. I'm stronger than I've ever been. I chose to transform my pain into power. To this day, I continue to pull upon my grit. It has become my superpower.

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Let me be clear: I'm not special. I was just willing to do what was challenging for many. Giving up was never an option. How I have responded to my knockdowns has determined my success in life.

The obstacles that I faced along my healing journey (and still do to this day) had given me a strength that I never knew I had. Pain can be a gift if you are willing to find its meaning behind all the mess.

When you have the courage to use your pain as motivational strength, you will realize that there is nothing you cannot overcome.

How Do You Develop Grit?

Grit is like a muscle that you train and flex at the gym. You need to do the same thing with your mind. Let's explore what you can do to build mental toughness every day.

1. Practice, Practice, Practice

The fastest way to master anything is to practice and repeat it. To persevere, you have to be willing to step outside of your comfort zone and try new things. This is how you flex your grit muscle.

At the end of the day, grit comes down to what habits you engage in daily. It's about doing the things you know you're supposed to do on a more consistent basis that will contribute to your success.

The more that you invest in your personal growth, the more skilled you will become. In turn, you can keep doing the things that you excel at.

2. Connect With Your Purpose

Gritty people live on purpose.

After studying 16,000 people, Duckworth found that "grittier people are dramatically more motivated than others to seek a meaningful, other-centered life."

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The next time that you encounter an obstacle that tries to take you off course, reconnect with your why. It will be the one thing that motivates you to keep moving forward, even when you feel like throwing in the towel.

3. Don't Give Up

When things get difficult, do you give up easily or use your low moments to push yourself forward and become stronger?

Gritty people look a challenge dead in the eye and give it a wink. They don't quit until they win.

The only failure in life is quitting. Life is supposed to be messy. You're supposed to fail. It's a core part of the human experience. All that matters is how you respond to failure.

It's okay if you fall seven times, as long as you make sure that you stand up on the eighth time. If you can master the art of never giving up, there is no limit to what you can achieve in life.

The Bottom Line

You have one life, so make it a masterpiece.

The only limitations standing in your way are the ones in your mind. When you master your mind, you master your life.

Don't ever give up on your dreams. Strive to be a gritty person in every area of your life.

Your future self will thank you for it.

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More on Showing Your Grit

Featured photo credit: Jack Sloop via unsplash.com

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What Is Grit and How to Develop It for a Successful Life

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Have you ever met someone who thrives through adversity, and who transforms their pain into opportunities for growth? In her book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance , Angela Duckworth describes these types of people as possessing grit. From her research, she has found that grit is what separates those who are successful from those who fail.

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#31 Good habits you should start the year with!

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#31 Good habits you should start the year with!

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#31 habits people might want to use

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Sure, everyone says they're ready for a total reset every Jan. 1, but there are indeed many personal habits that you can improve easily - and often for free. These range from the basics such as exercising more and eating better to finding easier ways to save money. When combined, they just might add up to a new you in the new year.

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Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests. If you're ready to be matched with local advisors that can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now.

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31 Good Habits You Should Start on New Year's Day

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Bad habits may be hard to break, but the beginning of a new year is the perfect time to start some good ones, especially those that cost little or nothing. Take a look at our list of good habits and see what would work for you.

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By Lifehack.org

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We have a new year, a new start and an opportunity to improve habits in our daily lives. These 15 successful habits to begin for the New Year can help make your life easier. Many of these habits we know are good for us, but implementing them on a daily basis takes practice.

For myself, managing my time is tricky. They say it takes 21 days to successfully begin a new habit, or to stop a negative one. Many times I am good with the first few days or week and then some of my old habits begin to creep in and before I know it I've lost momentum. This list includes small yet significant changes that can provide better balance and emotional health in our lives. If we can truly start to implement and live by them, we will be able to handle anything that may come our way in the coming year. Remember, the success of our lives and how we navigate through each and every day is within our control. The key is to realizing what is our responsibility and what is not. Once we can accept that life is truly what we make of it based on our attitude, the better we can maintain balance and peace on a daily basis.

1. Begin Each Day with Time for Yourself

I used to stay up late and get up just in time to get dressed and go to work. After realizing my day starts off rushed and often ends with me being entirely exhausted, I started making myself get up early. Now my morning time is somewhat sacred to me - my time for silence. I have no children awake and I have time for me to think about my day. I use this time for prayer and meditation, but it can just be quiet time before the rush of your day, or even planning time to sort out your day. Each and every day I do this, my day goes so much better.

2. Question your Motives in All that You Do

I used to run my life based on my feelings. If someone upset me, I gave them a piece of my mind or immediately said the first thing that popped in my head. Those habits didn't prove successful for me. I have since accepted my sole responsibility in life comes down to my actions and reactions to any situation and the words that come out of my mouth. Be sure that whatever your response will be in any situation, that your motive behind why you are doing it is true to who you are and what you want. Make sure what you say or do is not something you might regret later because you did it out of anger, spite or revenge.

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Sometimes just taking a moment to ask yourself what your motives are before you say or do something can be a way to keep yourself in check, especially if you are experiencing heightened feelings or emotions.

3. Remind Yourself of What You CAN Control

What can we control in our lives? We cannot control the weather or the company we work for suddenly deciding to lay people off through no fault of our own. We cannot change another human being, only ourselves. Before I tried to control others, and I failed miserably. Once I finally accepted that the only person I can change is me, it became kind of freeing. I can stop worrying about the other person or devising my next plan to try and get them to do this or that. Believe me I wish I could control my children, especially when they are having a meltdown at the grocery store but I cannot. What I can control is how I talk and act around them and the boundaries I set with them.

4. Don't Take Anything Personally

This one is sometimes so hard to do. The truth is hurting people hurt other people. I have been that person at one point in time that hurt others. We need to accept that some people are in a place in their lives that causes them to lash out in anger or bitterness which means we can get the brunt of it. When we realize other people might be in a bad season in their lives and project their negativity towards others that don't always deserve it, we can't own that.

When I started accepting people for who they are and where they are in their life and not taking things personally, my anxiety and worry decreased. I can choose whether or not to have a relationship with that person. I can choose to set healthy boundaries. This can be the same in business as well. Others may get a promotion over you, the company may lay people off and you get the pink slip. It is a business decision that we can't own or control. All we can do is accept it and move on to the next great adventure.

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5. Embrace the Differences in Others

The world is so diverse. We have so many different people in the world which makes it way less boring. If we all thought the same, if we all believed in the same things, where would passion lie? Where would healthy debate go? There is a huge difference in being passionate about something you believe in and being arrogant or judgmental about your passion. This mainly lies with religion and politics or certain life issues. I have seen some hateful memes and posts when scrolling through my Facebook feed. I am almost saddened to see that some adults think it's perfectly fine to chide, ridicule and make fun of someone they don't like or agree with.

If it's a political figure - go vote that person out of office instead of riling up others that don't share the same opinion as you. There is a way to have healthy debates and be respectful of another person's point of view but unfortunately that is not the norm. What happened to the golden rule? How did adults turn so childish in this area? Love and respect people no matter what they believe or whether you agree with them or not. Think before you post!

6. Be Encouraging to Others

We live in a world full of negativity, natural disasters, loss and sometimes plain hatefulness. Terrorism is a reality, race relations are still an issue and most everyday you turn on the news, it seems to get more depressing. We have the power to change what is put out into the world. Tell someone they did a good job today. Ask a co-worker if you can help do anything for them. Call up an old friend and see how they are doing. Tell your waiter or waitress you truly appreciate their service and leave a nice tip. Pay for the coffee of the car behind you in the Starbucks line. Kiss and hug your kids extra today. Meet your neighbors if you haven't already and offer an open door if they ever need anything. We have the power to bring encouragement and love into this world. Why not start today?

7. Make an Overall Goals List

I did not want to make a goals list previously because I did not want to fail. The truth is, it was not horrible for me if I failed at my goal. It was horrible for me to never even try. Failure is a learning experience and there is no reason to fear failure. Statistics show that 50% of people who write down and set goals achieve them over people who do not set goals. If you write your goals down, you have something tangible and real once you make the list. Post it somewhere visible to remind you. Check back every month or so and celebrate even the small steps you have made towards your goals.

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8. Clearly State your Wants and Needs

I used to expect people to read my mind sometimes, my body language and my attitude too. I used to believe they were supposed to figure out what I wanted or needed. That attitude got me nowhere and I just ended up frustrated and confused. We have the right to express our wants and needs in any situation. If we do not ask for anything (or ask for someone to stop doing something) and then do not get what we want, that is on us. I used to care so much what other people thought of me, I wouldn't ask for what I needed because I didn't want to inconvenience the other person. Then, when my needs weren't met - I blamed that person.

9. Practice Gratitude

I used to be a "Keeping Up with the Joneses'" person. I was focused on the next material thing that would make me feel better about myself. As time went on, I also started wanting what my friends had and sometimes resenting what I didn't have in my life. It is a negative place to be, and I later did not feel good at all about myself. Once I started helping others - volunteering and seeing how some people live every single day without the basic comforts of home, my perspective changed. The more I started helping others, the more I realized that I am content and happy with what I do have. There are many online websites that can help you find a cause that is important to you and they will list numerous volunteer opportunities in your area.

10. Quickly Resolve Conflict

For many many years I avoided conflict. I didn't want to hurt people's feelings. I wanted everything to be easygoing and I wanted everyone to get along. Sadly, that is not reality. I avoided and ran away from sensitive subjects and internalized many situations because I did not have the guts to ask the hard questions to work out conflict with others. I still struggle in this area. Now, I am not as afraid of asking the hard questions or hearing the hard answers. I would much rather have a relationship based on honesty and truth rather than one with underlying tensions and issues. The sooner the conflict is resolved, the easier it is to maintain a positive relationship.

11. Own Your Actions and Reactions

"My brother made me do it". These are statements I hear from my children often. They still live in a world where they believe others have the power to make them do something. They have not yet figured out personal responsibility. The sad truth is, as an adult for a long while I still believed others made me do things. I blamed others for my issues and problems and did not own up to my own actions and reactions. Taking responsibility for my part in my life assured that I became more honest about who I was and that I gained integrity in the process.

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"Honesty and Integrity are both essential for success in life - all areas of life. The good news is that anyone can develop honesty and integrity". - Zig Ziglar

12. Spend Time with Nature

There is something freeing and wonderful about witnessing an amazing sunset or getting up early enough for a unique and beautiful sunset. Just as when you were a kid, it can still be fun to go outside and run around in a summer rain shower. There is something magical about nature and the world around us. It's easy to sometimes get sucked into the technical world with smart TVs, tablets, PCs and everything else that is electronic. Don't forget to travel or spend time with nature and remember just how beautiful the world around us can be. It is an instant spirit booster.

13. Dream

Being a responsible adult is boring a lot of the time. It is surrounded by responsibility, work, paying bills and balancing budgets. It is super easy to get wrapped up in the day to day routine and lose your zest for life. When we were younger, we all had dreams of some sort. Don't lose sight of your dreams. It could be something as simple as taking a trip one year to somewhere you always wanted to visit. It could be learning to play a new instrument or any of your 'bucket list' items. Think about some of your dreams, make a list and see if you can make any of them a reality. Not only will you have accomplished realizing that dream, you will be encouraged to dream a little more and to live a truly fulfilled life.

14. Laugh

They say that laughter is the best medicine. My daughter pointed out someone she occasionally saw and said "Mom, why does your friend never smile?" I have in fact seen my friend smile and laugh but not when my daughter was around. I grew up in a household where laughter was a big part of our lives, so I know for a fact it works. Comedic movies can do the trick, as well as close friends who have a great sense of humor. They are ones you do not want to lose. It is easy to laugh with children, as they just want to be silly most of the time. It takes way less energy to smile than frown and the result is much more positive when we laugh and smile.

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15. Dance Like No One is Watching

I might be one of the most horrible dancers on the planet, yes possibly even worse than Elaine Benes from Seinfeld. I rarely used to dance unless I was not exactly sober or if someone put me up to it. Now, I dance often with my daughter because she loves to dance. I love seeing her happy and joyful so in a way I do it for her by overlooking my own insecurities and labeling of myself as 'a horrible dancer'. There are numerous videos out there of people getting down at the local wedding or caught on the video cam at a basketball game. Deep down we all want to dance, so why not do it like no one is watching? Who knows- you might actually bring joy to someone else's day, even if you are a horrible dancer like me. Live your life for yourself, not based on how you think other people want you to live. Just be you. Once I learned that simple yet important fact, life kept getting better each and every day.

Featured photo credit: Ed Gregory via stokpic.com

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15 Successful Habits To Begin For the New Year

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We have a new year, a new start and an opportunity to improve habits in our daily lives. These 15 successful habits to begin for the New Year can help make your life easier. Many of these habits we know are good for us, but implementing them on a daily basis takes practice.

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Grit is the Power of passion and perseverance to make us more successful in our day-by-day life.

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Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance | Angela Lee Duckworth | TED

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this is a video to tell us what the meaning for habits is and what they actually do like for example I will eat more this year. habits are like a new year's resolution but a resolution that will last longer.

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How Habits Can Change Your Life (and Your Brain)

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this video gives people an idea on how to form a secure habit.

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A Quick and easy solution!

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How to build a habit in 5 steps, according to science

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Utilizing scientific research can help you be more successful at creating new habits and sticking to them.

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THE 20 SECOND RULE - HOW TO BUILD A NEW HABIT

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Whether one's aim is to end a disruptive habit or to establish a healthy one, behavior change can be tough. Excuses, fatigue, and the vagueness of goals can spell doom for such efforts. With some focus, however, these obstacles can be overcome.

Experts advise that strategies such as creating a specific and reasonable goal for change, being mindful of how one's environment influences one's plans to progress toward it, and looping in other people who care about one's progress can all help make the process of habit formation more successful.

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Habit formation is the process by which new behaviors become automatic. Someone who instinctively reaches for a cigarette after waking up has a habit, as does the person who laces up her running shoes and hits the streets as soon as she gets home.

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These will Change your Life forever!

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

We are creatures of habit. Everything we think, say and do is a result of deep-seated habits etched into our minds through years and years of repitious behavior. Those very same habits either help to propel us forward or to hinder our progress in life. In fact, the state and quality of our lives right now is a direct reflection of our daily habits.

Habits are an undeniably powerful part of life. They're an integral part of the underlying behavioral psychology that shapes the direction of our lives. They're so integral that a study determined that approximately 45 percent of everything we do on a daily basis is driven by our habits.

Parting ways with our bad habits and replacing them with good habits is by no means a simple task. It takes commitment, willpower and an unwavering desire to overcome our seemingly natural tendencies to think, feel, speak and act in a certain way.
Related: 10 Bad Habits You Must Eliminate From Your Daily Routine
Clearly, for those absolutely committed to things like happiness and success, habits offer the pathway to enrichment in life. They're also the tools we use to help automate our progress towards one end or another, assisting us with the achievement of our goals and the fulfilment of our dreams.

Still, for the most part, we're often left in the dark. We're unsure of ourselves or where to start on the road to developing good habits. What are the best habits to have in your life when you want to succeed or be happy? Are there some that usurp others, providing some secret magical recipe for achieving life's loftiest goals?

What are the best habits to have in life?

While any list of habits concoted might seem subjective, there are, in fact, 25 particular habits that will not only help you to succeed, financially speaking, but will also keep you healthy, happy and fulfilled in life. Focus on these 25 habits, consistently making efforts to instill them into your daily routine, and in time, your progress and momentum towards your goals will skyrocket.

Focus on what you have.

We spend a great deal of time immersed in our problems. But problems are also a sign of life. The only time we'll lack problems is when we're six feet under. And if you want to shift your focus away from your problems, you have to be grateful for what you have. Yes, even for your problems.

Gratitude is the surest pathway to health, happiness and success. It shifts our attention towards what we have rather than what we don't have. It's the natural abundance of simple pleasures and opportunities that we've been afforded with and blessed with that we often take for granted.
Related: Use This Simple Daily Gratitude Habit to Be Grateful Every Day
Smiling is good therapy.

Studies have confirmed that people who smile a genuine smile (also referred to as a Duchenne smile) are happier in life. This is one of the best habits for allowing you to find emotional, mental and spiritual peace-of-mind over time -- simply by placing a smile on your face.

The physiology of our bodies dictates the psychology of our minds. When we frown or slouch or do any number of other things that convey a sense of depression and unhappiness, our mind takes those cues and runs with them. However, once we shift our outward appearance by consciously adjusting ourselves, our inward feelings follow.
Related: Smiling Is Contagious. Customers (and Your Business) Thrive on It.
Good days begin with a healthy breakfast.

Breakfast is an important part of life. Yet, 31 million Americans skip breakfast every single day. And that saying you've heard your entire life about breakfast being the most important meal of the day? It's 100 percent true. If you're serious about success, eat a healthy breakfast every single morning.

This single habit doesn't take much effort. Some planning is certainly required, and if you're rushing out the door every morning with barely any time to spare, you might want to consider waking up earlier to ensure that you wield this habit in your own life.
Related: What Successful Entrepreneurs Eat For Breakfast
Drink water with lemon.

One habit that has monumental health benefits is to drink a large glass of water with lemon every single day. Lemons are a natural source of Vitamin C, but also possess other health benefits -- such as helping with your digestion, boosting your immune system, along with cleansing and rehydrating your body.

The water itself is also an important way to flush any toxins from your system early on in the morning when you first arise. Ultimately, over time, this will also aid with things like weight loss, a reduction in any inflammations and an overall boost in energy.
Related: Only This Technology Can Save Us From the Coming Water Crisis
Exercise every day.

One of the absolute best habits to have in life is to exercise every single day without fail. This isn't about heavy weightlifting or running a marathon. This is about doing lightly strenuous activity to oxygenate your blood and boost the endorphins in your body.

Not only will you feel physically better when you start this habit, but you'll also feel more motivated, have more mental clairty and be more emotionally sound. Exercise releases dopaminine, oxytocin and serotonin into the system, giving an almost euphoric effect without the usage of any drugs whatsoever.
Related: Richard Branson: To Be Successful, Take the Stairs
Walk those 10,000 steps every day.

Most people have heard about the benefits of walking at least 10,000 steps in a day. Yet, as a society, we tend to fall far short of that goal. One study, which provided shocking results of just how many steps we do take, compared that number to countries from around the world by studying participants from the U.S., Switzerland, Australia and Japan.

Americans, on average, take 5,117 steps a day. Compared to Australians, who take 9,695 steps per day, and residents of Switzerland, who take 9,650 steps per day, and those of Japan, who take 7,168 steps per day -- we fall way short. Event still, this single habit is a great way to resolve our sedentary ways. Park further from the office or take the stairs when you can to help boost your daily steps.
Related: 5 Reasons You Need to Get a Walking Desk Right Now
Supplement with needed vitamins and minerals.

As a culture, we lack the necessary vitamins and minerals through our food intake. Processed and refined sugars, carbohydrates and other foods that are a staple of the American diet help to exacerbate this problem. We simply don't get the proper nutrients our bodies need on a daily basis.

Find a good set of vitamins and minerals that you can take every day. It's easy to ignore this healthy habit, but the feeling after weeks and months of doing this on a regular basis, is tremendous. That impact can help us to improve other areas of our lives by providing mental, emotional and physical clarity.
Related: Nutritional Supplements That Can Improve Your Peak Performance, Sleep and Recovery
Manage your time at least as well as you manage your money.

An essential habit for succeeding at anything in life is effective time management. How well you manage the precious little time you have says a lot about what you can achieve. And considering that we all have the same amount of time in this world, how you leverage this resource will dictate your potential for success.

Find a good system for managing your time and implement it. This isn't complex to do, but does require conscious and consistent effort. However, once this habit has been solidified into your daily routine, virtually anything is possible, and no goal will be too big to attain.
Related: 15 Time Management Tips for Achieving Your Goals
Daily goals, every day.

Most people have goals. Whether it's something to achieve in business or in life, we're all moving in one intended direction or another. However, while long-term goals do give us direction, it's the daily goals that we set that allow us to create short-term milestones that are integral to our success.

Long-term goals can seem overwhelming even in the best of times. But by implementing a daily goal-setting strategy, you can overcome some of the enormity associated with achieving big things in life by focusing on the one-day-at-time, short-term scenarios.
Related: 16 Actions to Take to Achieve Any Goal
Seek inspiration.

It's often difficult to stay motivated for any considerable amount of time. We get discouraged and dissuaded from our goals when things arise in life that send us on tangents and veer us off track. But one of the absolute best ways you can stay motivated in life is to inspire yourself daily.

Read, watch inspirational videos and get inspired by stories of others who have achieved their dreams. Anthony Robbins calls this your "hour of power," but you can spend as much or as little time on this as you need. Inspiration is the pathway to achievement because what the mind can conceive, it can achieve.
Related: Inspiring Quotes to Help You Get Through Your Work Day
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Save steadily, invest prudently.

No good habit list is complete without one that calls for saving and investing. We often overlook the necessity to save for the future because we're so busy living in the present moment. The truth is that most Americans have less than $1,000 saved up at any given moment.

But it's not just about saving. You have to invest the money that you save, and do so wisely. The more attention you pay to this now, the more your life will be replete with financial success in the future. You should also be sure to have at least six months worth of savings in your account to stave off any potential financial calamity in the future.
Related: Why Entrepreneurs Need to Save and Invest Money
Budget and track expenses

Benjamin Franklin once said, "Beware of little expenses, a small leak will sink a great ship." It's easy to lose sight of little expenses, but they add up, especially when we fail to budget. Be sure to manage all of your expenses, and sweat the small stuff, so to speak.

When it comes to sound financial habits, this is an important one to have, and one that will lend itself to your future financial success. The money saved on frivilous or extraneous expenses can be saved and invested for your future. Don't ignore the future for sake of revelling in the present moment.
Related: Here's Why It Pays to Track Every Tiny Business Expense
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Never stop learning.

Educate yourself, and learn something new every single day. Committ to learning and improving your life, whether it's by acquiring new skills or enhancing the existing skills you already have. From foreign languages to software programs and apps, you should carve out a small amount of time every single day to dedicate to this habit.

Whether you decide to learn something new through an online course, an audiobook, a blog post, a video tutorial on YouTube, or even through TED Talks or other means, the importance of implementing this habit is paramount. Find something that's worthwhile learning and do just a little bit of it every single day.
Related: This Is How to Boost Employee Retention With Lifelong Learning
Tidy everything.

Physical clutter results in a loss of focus. When our lives are disorganized and in a state of disarray, it's hard to stay focused on our goals. Take the time to organize your home and office, and do just a little each day to enforce this habit. Take a single drawer and organize it, or organize a solitary corner of your home or even a cabinet in your office.

The importance of this habit is highlighted by a study in the Journal of Neuroscience titled, " Interactions of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in human visual cortex," which says "Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout visual cortex." In plain English -- clutter lends itself to a major loss of focus.
Related: Your Office Isn't Big Enough for Clutter and Productivity
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Early to be, early to rise.

The early morning hours are a time for peaceful reflection and ample productivity, where the world is still and asleep, allowing you to focus wholeheartedly on your long-term goals. Anyone who is serious about success in any measure knows that it's important to wake up early.

Even if you're not a morning person, use incremental changes in your daily routine to start waking up earlier and earlier. Begin by setting your alarm clock back by 15 minutes the first week, 15 minutes the next week and so on. Do this until you can wake up at least two hours earlier than you're waking up now.
Related: Science Says You Don't Have to Wake Up at 5 A.M. to Get Ahead
Be generous with your time and money.

In our quest to achieve and succeed, we often forget about others. We fail to contribute something of value to our fellow man, woman or child. This isn't about donating money; this is about contributing your time, which is far more valuable than money. It also helps to shift your focus from a state of lack to a state of abundance.

We tend to spend too much of our time steeped in worry and anxiety. But, when you enlist the habit of contributing to others, you can easily alleviate your personal concerns, and even your problems, by realizing the necessity of helping others. In fact, it's the people in this world that contribute the most value to others that end up achieving the greatest success.
Related: The Selfish Reason You Should Be Extremely Generous
Network by looking for who you can help.

Clearly, it's not just about what you know in this world. In order to succeed, we need to reach out to others -- who you know is extremely important. But networking isn't just about dropping names; it's about finding ways that you can help and add value to the lives of others.

The best networkers in the world are also some of the most successful individuals. But they didn't focus entirely on themselves at the outset. They always looked for ways that they could help others without thinking about receiving something in return. That's how the world's best networkers are born.
Related: Even Introverts Can Excel at Networking by Following These Steps
Confront your fears.

We spend a lot of time immersed in fear. Those doomsday what-if scenarios play out in our minds throughout the course of any given day. We're so worried and nervous about the future that we forget to enjoy the present moment. It's so ingrained in our minds to fear things that it stifles our progress.

Breaking through your fears is quite possibly one of the most important habits that you could develop. Get used to doing one thing that makes you feel uncomfortable each and every single day. Talk to a stranger, give someone a compliment, or tell someone the truth about something that makes you feel uncomfortable.
Related: To Be Successful, Stop Making Excuses and Face Your Fears
Take action sooner rather than later.

Take action. It's a cliche that we've all heard repeatedly, yet it's something that many of us fail to do. In fact, we do just the opposite -- we procrastinate. We fail to take action for whatever number of reasons, hindering our progress and ability to achieve any of the monumental goals we set for ourselves.

The best way to overcome procrastination is to use the 15-minute rule. Take whatever it is that you've been putting off for the longest, set a timer on your phone for 15 minutes, and only commit to doing it for that long. Why only 15 minutes? First, it breaks the cycle of inaction. Second, after 15 minutes, you've built some momentum, so you might just keep on going.
Related: Stop Planning and Take Action
Make a plan and stick to it.

Having a plan is integral to every successful entrepreneur -- and person -- throughout history. Whatever it is that you want out of life, not only do you need long-term goals and daily goals to help conceive, but you need to follow an intricate and detailed plan that you create along the way.

Without a plan, we often fail to realize our goals. Without understanding how we'll get from point A to point B, it's hard to see the cliched forest through the trees. But when you stick to a plan and track your progress, making changes along the way, you can eventually reach your goals as long as you don't give up.
Related: Your Odds of Succeeding Improve When You Create a Success Plan
Positive thinking.

Like attracts like. When we think negatively, harboring negative thoughts, we attract negative things into our lives. When we think positive, we attract positive things. It's hard to stay positive all the time, and it's often our natural tendency to think negatively about things.

However, positive thinking is one of the surest pathways to the achievement of your goals. Ignore the naysayers and the people who doubt your abilities, and pursue the things that you love, staying positive all the while. It's purely a matter of momentum. Think positively for long enough, and good things begin happening.
Related: Why Positive Thinking Can Lead to Life-Long Positive Money Habits
Make time for yourself.

One of the habits that most of us fail to implement in our lives is to enjoy some down time -- or "me" time. Do one small thing that you love doing every single day. It's not always about achievement and success. By doing one small thing that you love, you're actually instilling peace of mind and re-focusing your center.

Whether you listen to your favorite music pumping through headphones, take a walk through the park, go for a drive along your favorite road, watch a movie, or anything else for that matter, be sure that you always carve out some time for yourself in the day.
Related: Why Entrepreneurs Need More 'Me' Time
Read

Whether you read the newspaper, financial news, a novel, a non-fiction book, or anything else, find time to read something. Reading is an important habit to develop in life, and you shouldn't rely on audiobooks or movies all the time. Good old-fashioned reading, the traditional non-screen way, does the trick.

Reading can help you uncover new worlds, ideas or ways of doing things that you might not have known about before. It's also a great way to educate yourself or entertain yourself at any given moment.
Related: Reading One Book a Week Won't Make You Successful
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Value sleep.

Although it's important to wake up early every day, it's also imperative to get ample rest. Finding that delicate balance might be difficult, especially if you have kids, two jobs and other obligations. However, if you care enough about your physical well-being, along with your future success, you'll focus on a minimum of six to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep every night.

If you have trouble falling asleep, be wary not to drink coffee or alcohol too close to your bedtime. Also, if you smoke, eat too much sugar, or ingest any other type of toxins throughout the day, you'll find it difficult getting to bed at a decent hour. Cut those out of your routine so you can get some ample rest at night.
Related: 7 Ways Science Proves Early to Bed and Early to Rise Really Works
Keep a journal.

Journaling your thoughts is a great way to reflect on who you are and what you've been doing in life. Time can go by so quickly that we often forget the details of what we did even a few short months ago. Those details are often novel to recall as it adds clarity and purpose to our lives, reminding us of life's lessons and joys.

Get in the habit of writing out your thoughts and journaling your experiences on a daily basis. Intertwine it with your goals, hopes and dreams for the future, writing out what you envision your life will look like down the road, then come back to read it later on to get a window into your mind at any point in your life. This is a powerful method for self-reflection, and also a great way to motivate and inspire yourself going forward into the future.

Getting started.

How many of the habits above have you already worked into your life? Are there bad habits that seem to continue holding you back from achieving any semblance of success and happiness? Bad habits can get in the way of our progress and quitting them is not easy by any means. However, it's all a matter of momentum. It all boils down to small incremental steps that you can take day in and day out to help you build up the right repertoire of habits to help you achieve whatever your heart desires. The habits above are some of the best habits to have in life. How many of them will you agree and commit to taking on today?

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25 Best Habits to Have in Life | Entrepreneur

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Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. We are creatures of habit. Everything we think, say and do is a result of deep-seated habits etched into our minds through years and years of repitious behavior. Those very same habits either help to propel us forward or to hinder our progress in life.

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Most HAUNTED Shipwrecks & Ghostships Ever Discovered!

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a vessel with no living crew aboard; it may be a fictional ghostly vessel, such as the Flying Dutchman, or a physical derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste.[1][2] The term is sometimes used for ships that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, as well as drifting boats that have been found after breaking loose of their ropes and becoming carried away by the wind or the waves.

Folklore, legends, and mythology

Undated - Chasse-galerie is a haunted canoe doomed to paddle the skies of Quebec.

Undated - The Caleuche is a mythical ghost ship that, according to local folklore and Chilote mythology, sails the seas around Chiloé Island, Chile at night.

Undated - The Fireship of Baie des Chaleurs is a form of ghost light, an unusual visual phenomenon that appears at Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada. The phenomenon has been the source of many a tall tale, and has been said to appear as a flaming three-mast galley much like the style of ship featured on New Brunswick's provincial flag.

1748 onwards - The Lady Lovibond is said to have been deliberately wrecked on 13 February 1748 off Goodwin Sands, Kent, England, and to reappear off the Kent coast every fifty years.

18th century onwards - The Ghost Ship of Northumberland Strait is the apparition of a burning ship that is regularly reported between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, Canada.[3]

1795 onwards - The Flying Dutchman is said to be a ship commanded by a captain condemned to eternally sail the seas. It has long been the principal ghost ship legend among mariners and has inspired several works.

19th century onwards - The Princess Augusta, misremembered in local folklore as the Palatine, was wrecked near Block Island, Rhode Island, U.S., in 1738. Since then, an apparition known as the Palatine Light has been reported.[4][5]

1813 onwards - After the American schooner Young Teazer was sunk in an explosion in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada during the War of 1812, a burning apparition known as the "Teazer Light" has been reported.

1858 onwards - The Eliza Battle was a paddle steamer that burned in 1858 on the Tombigbee River, Alabama, U.S. She is reported to reappear, fully aflame, on cold and windy winter nights to foretell of impending disaster.

1872 or 1882 - A legend states that the Iron Mountain mysteriously disappeared in 1872 and left barges it was towing floating down the river. In reality, the ship ran aground and sank north of Vicksburg, Mississippi, United States in 1882 and its destruction was never mysterious.

1878 onwards - An apparition of HMS Eurydice has been reported where the ship sank in 1878 off the Isle of Wight, English Channel. Witnesses include a Royal Navy submarine in the 1930s and Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, in 1998.[6]

1886 - The Phantom Canoe of Lake Rotomahana was a waka wairua (spirit canoe) in Lake Rotomahana, New Zealand seen eleven days before the deadly eruption of the nearby Mount Tarawera, which devastated the lake and the surrounding area.

1895 - A spectral Galleon was allegedly seen in Chapel Cove, Newfoundland. According to folklore, pirates supposedly buried riches in Chapel Cove, and it is said that those who have gone in search of the treasure have either observed the appearance of the phantom ship, or have encountered apparitions on land.[7]

1902 - The SS Bannockburn vanished on Lake Superior on November 21, 1902, and subsequently gained a reputation as "the Flying Dutchman of the Great Lakes."[8][9][10]

1906 - Following the wreck of the SS Valencia in 1906 off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, there were reports of a lifeboat with eight skeletons in a nearby sea cave, lifeboats being rowed by skeletons of the Valencia's victims, the shape of Valencia within the black exhaust emanating from the rescue ship City of Topeka's funnel and a phantom ship resembling the Valencia with waves washing over her as human figures held on to the ship's rigging; sailors also reported seeing the ship itself in the area in the years following the sinking, often as an apparition that followed down the coast.[11][12] One of the lifeboats from Valencia was found adrift in 1933.[13]

22 November 1912 - The Rouse Simmons, heavily laden with over 3,000 Christmas trees in its cargo hold and piled high on deck, set sail from Thompson, Michigan for Chicago. The following day it disappeared without trace. For years afterwards, Lake Michigan mariners claimed to have spotted the 'Christmas Tree Ship' appearing out of nowhere with its sails in tatters.[14]

1928 - The København was last heard from on December 28, 1928. For two years following its disappearance sightings of a mysterious five-masted ship fitting its description were reported in the Pacific Ocean.[15]

Unsubstantiated

1775 - The Octavius, an English trading ship returning from China, was supposedly found drifting off the coast of Greenland. The captain's log showed that the ship had attempted the Northwest Passage, which at the time had never been successfully traversed. The ship and the bodies of her frozen crew apparently completed the passage after drifting amongst the pack ice for 13 years.

1811-1813 - Napoléon Gallois reported that a French frigate had found the French privateer Duc de Dantzig drifting, covered in blood, with the decaying corpses of the crew hacked and crucified to her masts and in the battery. Bloody papers identified Duc de Dantzig and her master, François Aregnaudeau. More soberly, the ships register of the maritime archives states "Duc de Dantzig, unheard of as of 1813, presumed lost with all hands".[16]

1840 - The schooner Jenny was supposedly discovered after spending 17 years frozen in an ice-barrier of the Drake Passage. Found by Captain Brighton of the whaler Hope, it had been locked in the ice since 1823, the last port of call having been Lima, Peru. The bodies of the seven people aboard, including one woman and a dog, preserved by the Antarctic cold, were buried at sea by the crew of the Hope, and Brighton passed the account on to the Admiralty in London. The Jenny is commemorated by the Jenny Buttress, a feature on King George Island near Melville Peak, named by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee in 1960.

27 October 1913 - The Singapore newspaper The Straits Times published a story according to which the Marlborough had been discovered near Cape Horn with the skeletons of her crew on board.[17] The Straits Times attributed the story to one published in the London paper the Evening Standard of 3 October 1913. The Evening Standard mentioned that the story was based on an "account cabled from New Zealand" which was yet to be confirmed. The ship that sighted the Marlborough in 1913 was said to be the sailing ship Johnson.[18]

1947 - The Ourang Medan is said to have been found adrift off Indonesia with all of its crew dead. The boarding party found the entire crew "frozen, teeth baring, gaping at the sun." Before the ship could be towed to a home port, it exploded and sank. There is no record that a ship of this name ever existed though, and it is believed to be an urban legend.

2014 - At least 243 refugees disappeared without a trace in the summer of 2014. A human trafficker who arranged a journey to Europe for the refugees claimed that the people were scheduled to depart from Khums, Libya, but the ship that they would have departed on was never named and no sign of a ship or the refugees has even been found. This incident is known as the ghost boat investigation.

Historically attested

1750 or 1760 - The SV Sea Bird: This merchant brig, under the command of John Huxham (or Husham or Durham), grounded herself at Easton's Beach, Rhode Island. Her longboat was missing. She had been returning from a voyage to Honduras and was expected in Newport that day. The ship was apparently abandoned in sight of land (coffee was boiling on the galley stove) and drifted off course. The only living things found on the ship were a dog and a cat. A fictional account of how she became derelict appeared in the Wilmington, Delaware newspaper Sunday Morning Star for 11 October 1885.[19][20]

15 May 1854 - The HMS Resolute a barque-rigged ship of the British Royal Navy was abandoned after being beset by ice in Viscount Melville Sound, Canada. She had been one of four vessels from Edward Belcher's search expedition for John Franklin. The ship drifted some 1,200 miles (1,900 km) before it was found on 10 September 1855 off the coast of Baffin Island, Canada, freed from the ice. The Resolute desk, which was constructed from the timbers of the ship, resides today in the Oval Office of the White House

25 November 1872 - The SV Mary Celeste, after passing Santa Maria Island in the Azores on 25 November 1872 (the last entry on the ship's slate), the SV Mary Celeste, a merchant brigantine, became derelict in unknown circumstances. No boats were found on board.[21] She was found on 4 December 1872 between mainland Portugal and the Azores archipelago. The ship was devoid of all crew, but largely intact and under sail, heading toward the Strait of Gibraltar. Arthur Conan Doyle's story "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement" is based on this incident. Doyle alters certain aspects of the original story, including the name of the ship from Mary to Marie Celeste.

29 August 1884 - The SV Resolven: This merchant brig was found abandoned between Baccalieu Island and Catalina, Newfoundland and Labrador. Her boats were missing.[22] Her logbook was posted to within six hours of being sighted.[23] Other than a broken yard, she had suffered minimal damage. The galley fire was alight and the lamps were burning.[23] A large iceberg was sighted nearby. It has been claimed that none of the seven crew members or four passengers were accustomed to northern waters and it was suggested that they panicked when the ship was damaged by ice, launched the lifeboat, and swamped, though no bodies were found. Three years later, Resolven was wrecked while returning to Newfoundland from Nova Scotia with a load of lumber.[24]

1885 - The SV The Twenty One Friends: This three-masted (tern) schooner was built in 1872. She was financed by a group of 21 Philadelphia Quakers and consequently named the Twenty One Friends. In 1885, returning to Philadelphia with a full load of lumber from Brunswick, Georgia, the ship was rammed by the John D. May off the coast of Cape Hatteras. Capt. Jeffries removed his crew and abandoned the vessel. The ship and cargo were left to the mercy of the sea. Capt. Jeffries' concern for the safety of his crew was appropriate; however, the Gaskill-made ship proved herself to be more seaworthy than expected. After the collision, the ship was sighted on both sides of the Atlantic over the next two years. She finally came ashore in Ireland, where her cargo was salvaged and she was employed as a fishing vessel.[25][26][27]

1897 - The abandoned whaler Young Phoenix was reported to have been drifting in the Arctic.[28]

22 January 1906 - The SS Valencia's lifeboat no. 5: The lifeboat went adrift when the ship sank off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. The lifeboat was found floating in Barkley Sound, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada in remarkably good condition 27 years after the sinking.[13][12]

October 1917 - The SV Zebrina: This sailing barge departed Falmouth, Cornwall, England with a cargo of Swansea coal bound for Saint-Brieuc, France. Two days later she was discovered aground on Rozel Point, south of Cherbourg, France, without damage except for some disarrangement of her rigging, but with her crew missing.[29]

January 1921 - The SV Carroll A. Deering: After passing Cape Lookout Lightship, North Carolina, on 28 January 1921, the Carroll A. Deering, a five-masted cargo schooner, became derelict in unknown circumstances. The ship's lifeboats and logbook were missing when she was found on 31 January 1921 at the Diamond Shoals, off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The final voyage of the ship has been the subject of much debate and controversy, and was investigated by six departments of the US government, largely because it was one of dozens of ships that sank or went missing within a relatively short period of time. While paranormal explanations have been advanced, the theories of mutiny or piracy are considered more likely.

3 October 1923 - The SV Governor Parr: This four masted schooner was abandoned by her crew after she lost her mizzen and spanker in a storm while sailing from Ingramport, Nova Scotia, Canada to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The damage incurred by Governor Parr was significant to the masts and deck of the ship; however, she did not sink. Several attempts were made to either destroy or tow this derelict to shore, but all failed. Governor Parr was sighted for many years after her abandonment as she covered large spans of the Atlantic Ocean. She remained a derelict and "menace to navigation", drifting as far as the Canary Islands. It is unknown what happened to her in the end.[30][31][32]

24 November 1931 - The SS Baychimo: This cargo steamer was abandoned after being trapped in pack ice near Barrow, Alaska, U.S. and being thought doomed to sink. However, she remained afloat and was sighted at various times between 1931 and 1969 in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern Alaskan coast without ever being salvaged. ´She was sighted numerous times, still unmanned and adrift, for nearly forty years. People managed to board her several times, but each time they were either unequipped to salvage her or were driven away by bad weather. This would make her one of the longest sailing ghost ships in the world.

3 October 1955 - The MV Joyita: After leaving Apia, Samoa, the refrigerated trading and fishing charter boat Joyita became derelict in unknown circumstances. The ship's dinghy and three Carley-liferafts were missing,[33] and her logbook was also missing, when she was found[34] on 10 November 1955, north of Vanua Levu, Fiji. A subsequent inquiry found the vessel was in a poor state of repair, but determined the fate of passengers and crew to be "inexplicable on the evidence submitted at the inquiry".

1959 - The Royal Navy submarine HMS Virulent, lent to the Hellenic Navy in 1946, was found empty in the Bay of Biscay off northern Spain. It subsequently became clear that she had been under tow by another vessel and that the chain had snapped, some three weeks earlier.[35][36]

1 July 1969 - The SV Teignmouth Electron: After the last entry in her log was made on 1 July 1969, the trimaran yacht became derelict in unknown circumstances. The vessel was found on 10 July 1969 in the North Atlantic, latitude 33 degrees 11 minutes North and longitude 40 degrees 26 minutes West. Investigation led to the conclusion that its sole crewmember, Donald Crowhurst, had suffered a mental breakdown while competing in a solo around-the-world race and committed suicide by jumping overboard.[37]

1975 - The SV Ocean Wave: Bas Jan Ader was lost at sea while attempting a single-handed west-east crossing of the Atlantic in a 13-foot-long (4.0 m) pocket cruiser, a modified Guppy 13 named Ocean Wave. The passage was part of an art performance titled "In Search of the Miraculous". Radio contact broke off 3 weeks into the voyage, and Ader was presumed lost at sea. The boat was found after 10 months, floating partially submerged 150 miles (240 km) west-southwest of the coast of Ireland. His body was never found. The boat, after being recovered by the Spanish fishing vessel that found it, was taken to Coruña. The boat was later stolen.[38] Ader's mother wrote the poem From the deep waters of sleep after having what she described as a premonition of his death.

December 2002 - The MV High Aim 6, after the owner last spoke to the captain by radio when the ship was near the Marshall Islands, halfway between Papua New Guinea and Hawaii, on 13 December 2002, the MV High Aim 6, a longline fishing boat, became derelict in unknown circumstances. The Taiwanese police deemed a mutiny probable. The ship was found drifting with its crew missing on 3 January 2003 approximately 80 nautical miles (150 km; 92 mi) east of Rowley Shoals, Broome, Australia. The derelict was subsequently scuttled.[39][40]

24 March 2006 - The MT Jian Seng was found drifting 180 kilometres (110 mi) southwest of Weipa, Queensland, Australia. The ship's origin or owner could not be determined, and its engines had been inoperable for some time.[40][41]

24 August 2006 - The SV Bel Amica, a classic schooner, was found derelict near Punta Volpe, Sardinia, Italy. The owner later claimed to have gone home on 14 August 2006 to address an emergency. The Italian press suggested that he may have been avoiding taxation of luxury vessels. The Coast Guard crew that discovered the ship found half eaten Egyptian meals, French maps of North African seas, and a flag of Luxembourg on board.[42]

18 April 2007 - The SV Kaz II, a 12-metre-long (39 ft) catamaran set sail on 15 April 2007. She was filmed passing George Point, Hinchinbrook Island, Queensland later that day and on that same day, late in the afternoon, the GPS data showed her to be adrift.[43] She was found adrift on 18 April 2007 near the Great Barrier Reef, 88 nautical miles (163 km) off Townsville, Queensland, Australia. When boarded on 20 April, the engine was running, a laptop was running, the radio and GPS were working and a meal was set to eat, but the three-man crew were not on board. All the sails were up but one was badly shredded, while three life jackets and survival equipment, including an emergency beacon, were found on board. A search for the crew was abandoned on 22 April as it was considered unlikely that anyone could have survived for that period of time. The coroner believed that the men may have fallen overboard.

28 October 2008 - The MV Tai Ching 21 (Chinese: 大慶21號): The last radio transmission from the Tai Ching 21, a fishing vessel, was made on 28 October 2008.[44] The boat was found empty on 9 November 2008 near Kiribati. Its lifeboat and three life rafts were missing. The abandoned 50 ton Taiwanese vessel had been gutted by fire several days previously. No mayday call was received. A search of 21,000 square miles (54,000 km²) of the Pacific Ocean north of Fiji by a US Air Force C-130 Hercules and a New Zealand Air Force P-3 Orion found no trace of the Taiwanese captain (顏金港 Yán Jīn-gǎng) or crew (18 Chinese, 6 Indonesians, and 4 Filipinos).[45][46]

January 2009 - The SV Lunatic: In December 2007 at age 70, Jure Šterk started a journey to sail around the world on his boat Lunatic. He used his amateur radio to communicate, and was last heard from on 1 January 2009. His sail boat Lunatic was spotted on 26 January, approximately 1,000 nmi (1,900 km) off the coast of Australia. The boat appeared damaged and there was no sign of Jure Šterk on deck.[47] Three months later, on 30 April 2009 the sail boat was found adrift by the crew of the science vessel RV Roger Revelle, 500 miles (800 km) south-east at 32° 18.0' S 091° 07.0' E. The sails were torn and there was no one on board. After boarding they found that the last log entry had been made on 2 January 2009.[48][49]

20 March 2012 - The MV Ryou-Un Maru, a fishing vessel, was washed away from its mooring in Aomori Prefecture, Japan during the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. It was assumed sunk with no crew aboard, but a year later, it was found drifting about 150 nautical miles (280 km; 170 mi) off the coast of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, Canada. The United States Coast Guard sank it with 25 mm cannon fire on 5 April 2012.[50][51]

19-20 June 2012 - The T.T. Zion, a private yacht, was grounded on Fort Lauderdale Beach around 1:15 a.m. on 20 June, with its navigation lights on and engines still running. The vessel appeared sea worthy but a broken tie-bar could have caused steering problems.[52] Items belonging to owner Guma Aguiar were found on board, but no sign of him or any other passenger was found.[53]

February 2013 - The MV Lyubov Orlova, a former Soviet cruise ship, was being towed to a scrapyard in the Caribbean when a cable snapped, setting her adrift in international waters, one day after leaving St John's, Newfoundland, Canada. On 4 February 2013 she was found approximately 250 nautical miles (460 km; 290 mi) east of St John's (approximately 50 nautical miles (93 km; 58 mi) outside Canada's territorial waters) and drifting in a northeasterly direction. The crew did not pursue the vessel due to safety concerns. Some news reports claimed it was adrift and populated with "cannibal rats".[54]

2011-ongoing - Every year the remains of dozens of ghost ships reach Japanese waters;[55] the ships are typically ill-equipped small wooden boats believed to be fishing for North Korea.[56][57][58] Some boats were found empty but at least 25 people have been found in advanced states of decomposition,[59][56][57] probably dead from starvation or exposure.[60] At least some of the crude fishing vessels are believed to been owned and operated by the Korean People's Army.

31 January 2016 - The Sayo: Manfred Fritz Bajorat of Germany was found dead in his private yacht, which was adrift in the Philippine Sea. His mummified body was found slumped on a desk by crew from the racing yacht LMAX Exchange.[61] The yacht was re-discovered on 25 February 2016.[62][63] An autopsy found Bajorat had died of a heart attack approximately one week before being found, and sea conditions preserved the body.[64]

February 2020 - The MV Alta ran aground near Ballycotton, County Cork on the coast of Ireland during Storm Dennis. It had previously been encountered adrift and unmanned in the mid-Atlantic by HMS Protector, having been adrift since 2018 after it became disabled, and an operation by the US Coast Guard rescued its crew.[65]

January 2021 - The Yong Yu Sing No. 18 was discovered adrift near Midway Island with all crew and a lifeboat missing, and with damage from what appeared to be a collision.[66]

Citations

1. ^ Zuckerman, Elizabeth (December 20, 2004). "Legend of 18th-century ship still haunts Block Island". Boston Globe. Associated Press. Archived from the original on January 6, 2013.

2. ^ Jarvis, Dale (2004). Haunted Shores: True Ghost Stories of Newfoundland and Labrador. Flanker Press. pp. 124-125. ISBN 1-894463-54-4.

3. ^

4. ^ Boyer, Dwight (1968). Ghost Ships of the Great Lakes (1st ed.). Cleveland, Ohio: Freshwater. ISBN 978-0912514475.

5. Paterson, T. W. (1967). British Columbia Shipwrecks. Langley, BC: Stagecoach Publishing. pp. 72-76.

6. ^ Neuschel, Frederick (2007). Lives and Legends of the Christmas Tree Ships. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. doi:10.3998/mpub.304249. ISBN 978-0-472-11623-2. Archived from the original on 2022-06-24.

7. ^ La Nicollière-Teijeiro, p.422

8. ^ The cruise of the skeletons, Robert Le Roy Ripley, Believe it or not!, Simon and Schuster, 1929, page 159

9. ^ Dix, John Ross (1852). A Hand-Book of Newport, and Rhode Island. Newport, Rhode Island: C. E. Hammett, Jr. pp. 75-77. Sea Bird Huxham.

10. ^ Federal Writers' Project (1937). "Rhode Island: The General Background". Rhode Island, a Guide to the Smallest State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 108-109. ISBN 978-1623760380. Sea Bird Huxham.

11. ^ The Encyclopedia of Newfoundland and Labrador, CD Version; article Resolven

12. ^ Ashton, Charles (21 May 1982). "NRHP Nomination Form". Library of the Atlantic Heritage Center.

13. ^ Gordinier, Glenn S. "Maritime Enterprise in New Jersey: Great Egg Harbor During the Nineteenth Century". New Jersey History. xcvii (2): 104-117.

14. Parker, John P. (1960). ^ Sails of the Maritimes: the story of the three-and four-masted cargo schooners of Atlantic Canada, p 147. Great Britain: Hazel Watson & Viney LTD.

15. ^ Maritime Museum of the Atlantic Niels Jannasch Library, file 24400-60: Governor Parr, New York Maritime Registers.

16. ^ Wright, David (2002). Joyita: Solving the Mystery. Auckland University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-1869402709.

17. ^ "Hope lost for round-the-world sailor". Stuff.co.nz. NZPA. 4 February 2009. Archived from the original on 24 October 2012.

18. ^

19. ^

20. Yamaguchi, Mari (2 December 2015). "Ghost boats washing up in Japan may be result of North Korean fishing drive for food, cash". The Japan Times. Seoul. Archived from the original on 17 June 2016.

References

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Toggle the table of contents From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a vessel with no living crew aboard; it may be a fictional ghostly vessel, such as the Flying Dutchman , or a physical derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste .[1] [2] The term is sometimes used for ships that have been decommissioned but not yet scrapped, as well as drifting boats that have been found after breaking loose of their ropes and becoming carried away by the wind or the waves.

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The 15 Creepiest Ghost Ships Ever Found On The High Seas

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While many ghost ships are legends and tales, there do exist many occurrences where real ghost ships have emerged from the sea.

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WWII ‘ghost ships’ rise from Pacific after volcanic eruption

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Experts predict that the island of Iwo Jima could be on the verge of eruption.

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The Mary Celeste

On November 7, 1872, a captain, his wife, and two-year-old daughter, and seven crewmen set out from New York to Italy aboard the Mary Celeste. A month later, they should have arrived, but the British ship Dei Gratia caught sight of the boat drifting in the Atlantic. The crew went onto the Mary Celeste to help anyone onboard but found it completely empty.

Six months' worth of food and the crew's belongings were still there, but its lifeboat was gone. The ship's floor was covered in three feet of water, but that was far from flooded or beyond repair. It's become one of the world's most famous ghost ships-thanks largely to the fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the boat as inspiration for his short story, "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement"-with theories from pirates to mutiny to murder.

The most likely explanation is that the captain didn't know the extent of the damage and ordered the crew to abandon ship at the first sight of land, but the world will never know for sure.

The Carroll A. Deering

The Carroll A. Deering cargo ship and its ten-man crew successfully made it to Rio de Janeiro in 1920, despite needing to change captains when its original one fell ill, but something strange happened on its way back to Virginia. A lightship keeper in North Carolina said a crewman who didn't seem very officer-like reported the ship had lost its anchors while the rest of the crew was " milling about " suspiciously.

Another ship spotted the Carroll A. Deering near Outer Banks the next day in an area that would have been a strange course for a ship on its way to Norfolk, Virginia. The following day, a shipwreck was spotted, but dangerous conditions kept investigators away for four days. When they went aboard, they found food laid out as if they were getting ready for a meal, but the crew's personal belongings and the lifeboats were gone.

The federal government followed leads on pirates, mutinies, and more, but they all came up fruitless. Check out these 10 ancient mysteries researchers still can't explain.

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10 Ghost Ship Mysteries That Can't Be Explained

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On November 7, 1872, a captain, his wife, and two-year-old daughter, and seven crewmen set out from New York to Italy aboard the Mary Celeste . A month later, they should have arrived, but the British ship Dei Gratia caught sight of the boat drifting in the Atlantic.

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If someone were to bring up the topic of ghost ships, the first thought that might come to many people's minds would probably be something along the lines of a creepy ghost-infested vessel lost at sea or a ship that is a ghost itself. While there are plenty of legends and nightmare-fuel-style stories about these types of ghost ships, another slightly more tangible ghost ship exists even in modern times.

What's eerie but in some ways obvious is that ships will still remain afloat and move around on the water if left empty, carried along by the winds and currents of the sea to nowhere in particular. Today's ghost ships are vessels found adrift on the ocean, pushing ahead with the help of the elements.

The first recorded ghost ship in history was the SV Sea Brig in the 1700s, according to Crime Reads. When the ship ran ashore in Rhode Island, it appeared to have been abandoned by the captain and crew within sight of land. Oftentimes modern ghost ships are much less mysterious than the SV Sea Brig and have somewhat more logical reasons for their undirected sailing.

Technical Issues Can Cause A Ship To Be Too Much Of A Hassle To Repair

Much less scary than other possible ghostly marine legends is that some ships simply wind up free sailing due to mechanical or technical difficulties. This is what happened to a 250-foot-long cargo carrier, the MV Alta. The massive, 2,400-ton ship lost power while sailing from Greece to Haiti in 2018. According to Surfline, the vessel lost power around 1,300 miles from the destination, and while the repair efforts went on for weeks, they were unsuccessful.

Eventually, the crew's efforts were forced to come to a complete halt when a hurricane posed a threat to their safety. They were evacuated, and the MV Alta left behind for good. A British Royal Navy ice patrol boat saw the MV Alta once more in 2019 in the mid-north Atlantic before the ship was spotted by a jogger five months later at its final resting place, when it ran ashore on Ireland's southern coast.

Fortunately, the MV Alta's fate seems to be a rare case when it comes to technical difficulties. But power troubles aren't the only reason so many ships sail the seas with little to no crew left aboard.

Sometimes Nature Is A Ship's Worst Enemy

While out at sea, it's hard for ships to avoid succumbing entirely to the forces of nature, and some aren't successful. In August of 1854, the HMS Resolute became trapped in Arctic ice while searching for a lost expedition that had been searching for the Northwest Passage. Then, in September 1855, the Resolute was seen by the crew of the George Henry, an American ship, floating more than 1,200 miles from where it was stuck, according to Crime Reads. The Americans returned the ship to England, and when the ship was decommissioned, wood was taken from the ship that was used to build the Resolute Desk in the oval office of White House, per The President's Desk -- a gift from Queen Victoria to the United States (per White House History). Another ship trapped in ice is the Baychimo, which was last seen in 1969 after sailing without a crew for 38 years.

Ice isn't the only force of nature to birth ghost ships, however, as the 9.0 magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami that devastated Japan on March 11, 2011, carried the ship Ryou-Un Maru out to sea from a scrap yard. Initially, salvage crews believed the vessel had sunk, but in March 2012, it was seen once more by a Royal Canadian Air Force plane in Canadian waters, and a tracking buoy was placed on it. According to Surfline, the ship was later declared an environmental hazard and was destroyed once it entered U.S. waters.

Salvaging These Vessels Is Encouraged

When an unmanned or inoperable vessel sails into international waters, the ability to salvage or restore it becomes limited. In 1976, the Lyubov Orlova cruise ship was commissioned by the USSR to transport 110 men through the Arctic and Atlantic, according to Surfline. The vessel was seized and kept in Newfoundland, where it became infested with rats until its attempted transport to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped. The transport failed, and the ship sailed into international waters, where it was abandoned for good. The vessel was last seen in 2014, still sailing.

These vessels are often left afloat with supplies on them, and according to an article published by Bluestein Law Firm P.A., maritime salvage is often encouraged and rewarded. The ships left to float the seas, even if they don't possess much in the realm of cargo, could possibly pose a danger to the environment or any other watercraft that may encounter them. Individuals and companies willing to partake in salvage activities are not only rescuing supplies but possibly lives as well.

The COVID 19 Pandemic Has Greatly Influenced The Number Of Abandoned Ships

In more recent times, another reason for ships being left at sea has been on the rise: money. According to Statistica, in 2020, the number of ships abandoned grew by 80% compared to the year before. This is largely attributed to the COVID 19 pandemic, only this time, it's not just the ship being abandoned, but the crew as well, with over 70 ships and 1,000 crew members being abandoned in 2020 alone. While organizations like mariners unions have tried to put protections in place for seafarers' rights, places like the UAE have not signed any agreements to protect the rights of the crew, making it a hot spot for abandoned ships.

When the shipowners don't pay their crew for months or don't cover the cost of getting them back home, the ship is considered abandoned, per The Wall Street Journal. So when companies find themselves in a tough spot financially, they may leave the boat and its crew adrift. Countries like China, Indonesia, and the Philippines established a seafarers' mutual emergency fund to aid these abandoned crews with things like food and supplies, but some of the staff left behind surprisingly will refuse to leave the ship.

Some Of The Abandoned Crew Refuse To Leave The Vessels Behind

While some governments force the crew to remain aboard the vessel until the shipowners have paid what they owe, other employees have different reasons for staying. When a shipowner abandons their vessel due to an inability to pay their debts, that generally means the employees on board are abandoned as well. According to The Wall Street Journal, many of these left-behind workers refuse to leave, as they're often owed thousands of dollars, and leaving the ship means there's a high chance they won't get paid.

So maybe the modern-day ghost ship doesn't seem quite as eerie as the legends of such ships as The Flying Dutchman or other ghostly seafaring entities, but one might argue that a crew being abandoned or trapped on a ship without power or left behind due to financial strains would be just as frightening for those involved. Either way, plenty of ships on the sea endlessly sail along, waiting to run aground or sink to their watery grave, never to be seen again.

Read this next: The Most Dangerous Beaches In The World

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What We Know About The Real Life Ghost Ships That Are Sailing The World Without Crews

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If someone were to bring up the topic of ghost ships, the first thought that might come to many people's minds would probably be something along the lines of a creepy ghost-infested vessel lost at sea or a ship that is a ghost itself.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If someone were to bring up the topic of ghost ships, the first thought that might come to many people's minds would probably be something along the lines of a creepy ghost-infested vessel lost at sea or a ship that is a ghost itself. While there are plenty of legends and nightmare-fuel-style stories about these types of ghost ships, another slightly more tangible ghost ship exists even in modern times.

What's eerie but in some ways obvious is that ships will still remain afloat and move around on the water if left empty, carried along by the winds and currents of the sea to nowhere in particular. Today's ghost ships are vessels found adrift on the ocean, pushing ahead with the help of the elements.

The first recorded ghost ship in history was the SV Sea Brig in the 1700s, according to Crime Reads. When the ship ran ashore in Rhode Island, it appeared to have been abandoned by the captain and crew within sight of land. Oftentimes modern ghost ships are much less mysterious than the SV Sea Brig and have somewhat more logical reasons for their undirected sailing.

Technical Issues Can Cause A Ship To Be Too Much Of A Hassle To Repair

Much less scary than other possible ghostly marine legends is that some ships simply wind up free sailing due to mechanical or technical difficulties. This is what happened to a 250-foot-long cargo carrier, the MV Alta. The massive, 2,400-ton ship lost power while sailing from Greece to Haiti in 2018. According to Surfline, the vessel lost power around 1,300 miles from the destination, and while the repair efforts went on for weeks, they were unsuccessful.

Eventually, the crew's efforts were forced to come to a complete halt when a hurricane posed a threat to their safety. They were evacuated, and the MV Alta left behind for good. A British Royal Navy ice patrol boat saw the MV Alta once more in 2019 in the mid-north Atlantic before the ship was spotted by a jogger five months later at its final resting place, when it ran ashore on Ireland's southern coast.

Fortunately, the MV Alta's fate seems to be a rare case when it comes to technical difficulties. But power troubles aren't the only reason so many ships sail the seas with little to no crew left aboard.

Sometimes Nature Is A Ship's Worst Enemy

While out at sea, it's hard for ships to avoid succumbing entirely to the forces of nature, and some aren't successful. In August of 1854, the HMS Resolute became trapped in Arctic ice while searching for a lost expedition that had been searching for the Northwest Passage. Then, in September 1855, the Resolute was seen by the crew of the George Henry, an American ship, floating more than 1,200 miles from where it was stuck, according to Crime Reads. The Americans returned the ship to England, and when the ship was decommissioned, wood was taken from the ship that was used to build the Resolute Desk in the oval office of White House, per The President's Desk -- a gift from Queen Victoria to the United States (per White House History). Another ship trapped in ice is the Baychimo, which was last seen in 1969 after sailing without a crew for 38 years.

Ice isn't the only force of nature to birth ghost ships, however, as the 9.0 magnitude earthquake followed by a tsunami that devastated Japan on March 11, 2011, carried the ship Ryou-Un Maru out to sea from a scrap yard. Initially, salvage crews believed the vessel had sunk, but in March 2012, it was seen once more by a Royal Canadian Air Force plane in Canadian waters, and a tracking buoy was placed on it. According to Surfline, the ship was later declared an environmental hazard and was destroyed once it entered U.S. waters.

Salvaging These Vessels Is Encouraged

When an unmanned or inoperable vessel sails into international waters, the ability to salvage or restore it becomes limited. In 1976, the Lyubov Orlova cruise ship was commissioned by the USSR to transport 110 men through the Arctic and Atlantic, according to Surfline. The vessel was seized and kept in Newfoundland, where it became infested with rats until its attempted transport to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped. The transport failed, and the ship sailed into international waters, where it was abandoned for good. The vessel was last seen in 2014, still sailing.

These vessels are often left afloat with supplies on them, and according to an article published by Bluestein Law Firm P.A., maritime salvage is often encouraged and rewarded. The ships left to float the seas, even if they don't possess much in the realm of cargo, could possibly pose a danger to the environment or any other watercraft that may encounter them. Individuals and companies willing to partake in salvage activities are not only rescuing supplies but possibly lives as well.

The COVID 19 Pandemic Has Greatly Influenced The Number Of Abandoned Ships

In more recent times, another reason for ships being left at sea has been on the rise: money. According to Statistica, in 2020, the number of ships abandoned grew by 80% compared to the year before. This is largely attributed to the COVID 19 pandemic, only this time, it's not just the ship being abandoned, but the crew as well, with over 70 ships and 1,000 crew members being abandoned in 2020 alone. While organizations like mariners unions have tried to put protections in place for seafarers' rights, places like the UAE have not signed any agreements to protect the rights of the crew, making it a hot spot for abandoned ships.

When the shipowners don't pay their crew for months or don't cover the cost of getting them back home, the ship is considered abandoned, per The Wall Street Journal. So when companies find themselves in a tough spot financially, they may leave the boat and its crew adrift. Countries like China, Indonesia, and the Philippines established a seafarers' mutual emergency fund to aid these abandoned crews with things like food and supplies, but some of the staff left behind surprisingly will refuse to leave the ship.

Some Of The Abandoned Crew Refuse To Leave The Vessels Behind

While some governments force the crew to remain aboard the vessel until the shipowners have paid what they owe, other employees have different reasons for staying. When a shipowner abandons their vessel due to an inability to pay their debts, that generally means the employees on board are abandoned as well. According to The Wall Street Journal, many of these left-behind workers refuse to leave, as they're often owed thousands of dollars, and leaving the ship means there's a high chance they won't get paid.

So maybe the modern-day ghost ship doesn't seem quite as eerie as the legends of such ships as The Flying Dutchman or other ghostly seafaring entities, but one might argue that a crew being abandoned or trapped on a ship without power or left behind due to financial strains would be just as frightening for those involved. Either way, plenty of ships on the sea endlessly sail along, waiting to run aground or sink to their watery grave, never to be seen again.

Read this next: The Most Dangerous Beaches In The World

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What We Know About The Real Life Ghost Ships That Are Sailing The World Without Crews

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If someone were to bring up the topic of ghost ships, the first thought that might come to many people's minds would probably be something along the lines of a creepy ghost-infested vessel lost at sea or a ship that is a ghost itself.

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The dead just kept coming in 2017.

For years, Japan's north coast had been thesiteof a macabre phenomena: fishing boats washing up on shore carrying the bodies of dead North Koreans, more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from their homeland.

But the numbers in 2017 were unprecedented: More than 100 boats landed on the Japanese coast with 35 bodies on board. Only 66 boats had washed up the year prior.

No one was able to explain why so many of these so-called "ghost ships" endedup in Japan that year. One Japanese Coast Guard said it could be as simple as the weather. Others speculated that North Korea's aging fishing fleet was to blame.

More of these rickety boats have washed up on shore en masse since, though with fewer bodies. The mystery has puzzled authorities for years, but a study published Wednesday by international nonprofit Global Fishing Watch offers a new, compelling theory. It blames Chinese "dark fishing fleets."

The report's authors used various satellite technologies to analyze marine traffic in northeast Asia in 2017 and 2018 and found that hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels were sailing in waters off North Korea. The Chinese ships appeared to be fishing there illegally, pushing North Korea's own fleet, which is poorly equipped to travel long distances, further away from the North Korean coast and into Russian and Japanese waters.

Fishing in North Korean waters, or buying and selling North Korean fish internationally, is a violation of international law. Pyongyang's fish trade, which was worth an estimated $300 million a year, was sanctioned in 2017 by the United Nations Security Council as part of its effort to punish the Kim Jong Un regime for its repeated ballistic missile tests that year.

But that does not appear to have deterred some 900 Chinese ships in 2017 and 700 the following year, according to Global Fishing Watch's report.

The nonprofit said these Chinese ships likely caught more than 160,000 metric tons of Pacific flying squid, one of the region's most valuable seafood products, in 2017 and 2018 - more than South Korea and Japan combined during the same period. The estimated catch was worth more than $440 million.

While it's not clear if North Korea could have made that much money from fishing its own waters, it now appears that Pyongyang was able to recoup some of its lost catch by selling fishing rights to foreign operators, likely Chinese ones. A United Nations report published in March claimed that North Korea earned an estimated $120 million in 2018 by selling or transferring fishing rights in violation of UN sanctions.

Jaeyoon Park, a senior data scientist at Global Fishing Watch and co-lead author of the study, said that the vessels spotted comprised "about one-third the size of China's entire distant water fishing fleet."

"It is the largest known case of illegal fishing perpetrated by vessels originating from one country operating in another nation's waters," he said.

With so many ships near the North Korean coast, the country's own fishing fleet was then pushed out, forced to sail further away from shore to find their catch, and the consequences were deadly, according to Jungsam Lee, another one of the study's co-authors.

"It is too dangerous for them to work in the same waters as the Chinese trawlers," Lee said. "That's why they're pushed to work in Russian and Japanese waters and that explains why some of North Korea's damaged vessels showed up on the beaches of Japan."

Park and the other experts said they were able to track these vessels using new satellite and radar technologies that weren't available in previous years. Open-source intelligence NGOs and nonprofits are increasingly using these resources to analyze marine traffic in the hopes of finding or better understanding tactics used to evade sanctions.

Global Fishing Watch said in a statement that the vessels illegally fishing in North Korean waters were believed to be owned and operated by "Chinese interests" because that's where they were based. However, ships involved in illicit activity in these waters - whether moving goods at sea to avoid the prying eyes of customs officials or dredging sand - often lack proper paperwork, making them harder to track.

CNN has reached out to China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment.

A sustainability issue

Northeast Asia's waters are some of the most opaque and contested seas and fisheries anywhere in the world. China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas are all engaged in some sort of territorial dispute with one another.

Fish stocks there have been declining dramatically in recent years, another major problem that the parties have failed to work out. Pacific flying squid stocks have dropped by 80% in South Korean waters and 82% Japanese waters since 2003, according to Global Fishing Watch.

"While fishers and their families have watched their incomes plummet, academics are left puzzled over the most likely cause of this decline in catch. Many point to overfishing as the biggest culprit, while some suggest that climate change may be playing a part, with changes in water temperature affecting spawning and migration patterns. It seems to make depressing but all too familiar sense," Park wrote in a blog post accompanying the study.

Fisheries sustainability is a major issue worldwide. It has sapped money and jobs from coastal communities that rely on the trade and driven an increase in piracy in places where the fishing industry cannot rely on a functioning coast guard, like Somalia.

Experts like Park believe that though Japan and South Korea have worked independently worked to make squid fishing more sustainable, "the absence of multilateral cooperation and information-sharing between all the countries involved in this transboundary fishery means it is impossible to get sound science and a regional management plan in place for the stock."

South Korea's Ministry of Oceans and fisheries said it was reviewing the findings, while Masanori Miyahara, the president of the Japan Fisheries Research and Education Agency, said in a statement accompanying the Global Fishing Watch study that the lack of shared data is "is a major challenge considering the critical importance of squid in the region."

"Illegal fishing in these waters is a very serious matter in Japan," Miyahara said.

Park said his team's research has highlighted a "fundamental failure in properly and transparently managing a shared resource" and that there is an "urgent need for cooperation between the countries involved in this fishery."

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international relations and national security

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North Korea 'ghost ships' washed up in Japan because of China's 'dark' fishing fleet, NGO says | CNN

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The dead just kept coming in 2017. For years, Japan's north coast had been thesiteof a macabre phenomena: fishing boats washing up on shore carrying the bodies of dead North Koreans, more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from their homeland.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I'm like a crow with shiny objects. Only instead of bits of aluminum foil, dimes, and gum wrappers, I collect weird little obsessions. For example: The Titanic, abandoned amusement parks, bog mummies, and ghost ships.

Ghost ships, not to be confused with phantom ships like the infamous Flying Dutchman, are actual physical vessels, found adrift or sometimes even sailing themselves...with no one on board and often no easy explanation for what happened.

Imagine this:

You and a co-worker are both heading to a conference located several hours out of town. But you are driving separately-he's bringing his wife and child to make a weekend out of it; you have a few other obligations to attend to before leaving.

Hours after his departure, with your obligations satisfied, you are on your way, safely ensconced in your own vehicle, playlist blaring and road trip snacks at the ready. You fully expect to meet up with your coworker at the conference hotel, where he and his family are already settled in by now.

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So, consider your surprise when you see his vehicle on the side of the road. You pull over to check things out, make sure your co-worker and his family are okay.

It's strange-the car is in park, with the engine still running. The radio is playing, the luggage is still in the back, with the remains of a Happy Meal spilled in the child's safety seat. One of the tires is, perhaps, a little low, but nothing that would keep him from driving on it until the next service station, which is only a few miles down the road at the next exit.

But there's no sign of your co-worker, his wife, or child. They're just...gone. And they're never heard from again.

The above is a modern take on the mystery of the Mary Celeste, perhaps the most famous of ghost ships. The Mary Celeste left New York on November 5, 1872 with a crew of seven, along with the captain's wife and their young daughter. Their cargo was denatured alcohol (a solvent, not a beverage).

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The Dei Gratia, a Canadian vessel following the same route, found the Mary Celeste adrift on December 4, 1872. No one was on board. The ship had taken on some water but not enough for sinking to be a concern. The cargo was mostly untouched. The last ship's log entry was from nine days before on November 25 and made no mention of any difficulty. The remains of a recently prepared meal for a child were also found.

However, the small lifeboat was missing, as was some of the navigational equipment and paperwork. Theories about the fate of the Mary Celeste's captain, his family, and crew abounded. In the controversial salvage hearings that followed, court officials proposed possibilities including a drunken mutiny by the crew (even though the alcohol in the cargo wasn't drinkable), murder and piracy by the captain of the Dei Gratia (the man who found the Mary Celeste), murder/suicide by the captain of the Mary Celeste himself, and even an insurance scam cooked up by the two captains who were known-or suspected-to be friends.

The Smithsonian Channel has an excellent documentary about the mystery surrounding the Mary Celeste: The True Story of the Mary Celeste. It offers a solid theory as to what may have happened. But to this day, no one knows for certain what happened to the Mary Celeste 's captain, his family, and crew.

The first historically confirmed ghost ship was the SV Sea Brig in the mid 1700s. It beached itself in Rhode Island. Strangely, it seemed that the captain and crew had abandoned ship within sight of land, leaving coffee boiling in the galley, even.

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Another ghost ship with a storied history is the HMS Resolute, which was sent in search of John Franklin and his lost expedition to find the Northwest Passage. The Resolute became trapped in the Arctic ice in August of 1854. Then, in September of 1855, an American ship, the George Henry, found the Resolute floating on her own over 1200 miles from where she'd been stuck. When the men from the George Henry boarded the Resolute, they found the captain's teapot, liquor and glasses, and chair still in place, as if awaiting his imminent return.
Our fascination with ghost ships has been around pretty much as long as there have been ghost ships.
In this case, what happened isn't a mystery. The Resolute's captain and crew were ordered to abandon the ship when it became stuck. If you recognize the ship's name but you're not sure why, it's likely because you're familiar with the Resolute desk. The famous desk in the White House is made from wood taken from the (eventually) recovered ship. (The desk also plays a prominent part in National Treasure: Book of Secrets.)

(Side note: There's a NOVA episode- Arctic Ghost Ship, available on Amazon Prime-where they go in search of the wrecks of Franklin's vessels from the ill-fated expedition. They also find the graves of crew members who died and were buried in the ice. What's super creepy is that when they excavate the graves, you get a good look at a deceased person from the 1800s who is still very much preserved. Skin, hair, eyeballs, clothing, you name it.)

One of my favorite ghost ships is the Baychimo. In 1931, the vessel became trapped in the ice-a common theme-and the crew temporarily abandoned it, seeking shelter in a nearby settlement. Eventually, it freed itself and the crew returned, but then it became stuck once more. Then a blizzard struck, and the ship vanished. The crew assumed it had sunk. However, they later learned it was adrift. After boarding the Baychimo, they retrieved their valuable cargo and left the ship behind, assuming it was no longer seaworthy.

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But the Baychimo sailed on...for thirty-eight years. The last sighting was in 1969, when the Baychimo was frozen again in the pack ice. However, she hasn't been seen since. And her wreck has never been found.

And finally, a more recent example, which also happens to be one of my favorites simply for the creep-factor. The Russian cruise ship, the Lyubov Orlova ran aground in Antarctica in 2006. Eventually, it was decommissioned in 2013 and due to be broken up for parts. However, various attempts to tow the vessel failed, and it ended up floating freely for two months. (Or longer-her wreck has never been found.)

I suspect that the ship had already been stripped of all her facets and fittings, but can you imagine if she hadn't? A quiet stage, waiting on a performer that would never arrive, tattered curtains blowing in the breeze through broken-out windows? Silent dining rooms and cabins, with tables and chairs, beds and pillows, for passengers who would never visit again?

Our fascination with ghost ships has been around pretty much as long as there have been ghost ships. Arthur Conan Doyle-yep, that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle-wrote a short story in 1884, when he was just twenty-five years old, called "J. Habakuk Jephson's Statement." It involved a ghost ship called the Marie Celeste and used some of the details from the events surrounding the Mary Celeste. Over time, people have conflated the two, but one is real, and one is not.

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Of course, in more recent years, we have movies like Triangle, Ghost Ship, Event Horizon, and books like Salvation Day by Kali Wallace and Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear, just to name a few.

Ghost ships capture the imagination because of the mystery, of course. But I think it's more than that. Our fascination is also partly due to the desire understand the inexplicable, to control the uncontrollable. Though we like to think of ourselves as an advanced civilization, one who has conquered the seas-and is working on doing the same in outer space-the truth is, we are still very small in the grand scheme of things, whether we're on the ocean or out among the stars. And any reminder of that is both chilling and entrancing.

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I'm like a crow with shiny objects. Only instead of bits of aluminum foil, dimes, and gum wrappers, I collect weird little obsessions. For example: The Titanic, abandoned amusement parks, bog mummies, and ghost ships.

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Taco Bell, fast-food restaurant chain headquartered in Irvine, California, U.S., that offers Mexican-inspired foods. Founded in 1962 by American entrepreneur Glen Bell, the chain has more than 7,000 locations and over 350 franchisees worldwide. Its commitment to branding and its changing product lineup have made it one of the most accessible and unique fast-food restaurant chains.

Before the first Taco Bell opened in Downey, California, in 1962, Glen Bell owned and operated several other restaurants, including Bell's Drive-In and Bell's Hamburgers and Hot Dogs in San Bernardino. His life of serving quick-service Mexican-inspired fare began in 1951 at Bell's Hamburgers and Hot Dogs, where he decided to sell hard-shell tacos to distinguish himself from his rivals (notably McDonald's, which also took root in San Bernardino). Later, Bell was a member of partnerships that owned Taco Tia (1954-56) and El Taco (1958-62), both of which had multiple southern California locations. After selling his stake in El Taco, he became the sole proprietor of Taco Bell and opened the first location at 7112 Firestone Boulevard in Downey, in a modest 20-by-20-foot stucco building.

Taco Bell expanded quickly, gaining its first franchisee, retired Los Angeles policeman Kermit Becky, in 1964 and its 100th restaurant-located at 400 South Brookhurst, Anaheim-in 1967. Three years later, Bell took the company public; by then it had a total of 325 restaurants located across the West region of the United States. In 1978 PepsiCo Inc. purchased 868 Taco Bell restaurants for about $125 million. It was this sale that began Taco Bell's shift from a regional hit to a national sensation.

In the 1980s and '90s, the company began introducing new menu items and restaurant concepts while also expanding marketing and branding efforts. Some of the company's biggest moves during this period included promotions tied to Tim Burton's movie Batman (1989), the launch of a "value menu" in 1990, the introduction of Taco Bell Express (a small-scale Taco Bell with mostly quick, cheap options) in 1991, and the sponsorship of the first ESPN X Games in 1995. Also in 1995, Taco Bell began a branding partnership with KFC, and in 1997 both became subsidiaries of Tricon Global Restaurants (later Yum! Brands) when it split from PepsiCo.

Since 2000, Taco Bell has continued to find distinctive ways to brand and partner in order to attract customers. In 2001, for instance, the company promised a free taco to everyone in the United States if Mir, a Soviet space station, hit a target placed by the company in the Pacific Ocean. In 2004 the company partnered with Mountain Dew soda and released Mountain Dew Baja Blast, which, for some time, could only be purchased at Taco Bell. A similar promotion began in 2012 in a partnership with Frito Lay; the result, Doritos Locos Tacos, saw considerable success. In 2007 the company began a promotion with Major League Baseball that promised one free taco to everyone in the United States for every stolen base in the World Series. The promotion, "Steal a Base, Steal a Taco," continued into subsequent World Series and also carried over into the NBA, where it was renamed "Steal a Game, Steal a Taco," rewarding a win for the visiting team during the NBA finals. In 2009 Taco Bell became the official fast-food partner of the NBA, replacing McDonald's.

Taco Bell took on competitors in other ways as well. It began offering breakfast nationwide in 2014; among its unique offerings were a waffle taco and a breakfast burrito, along with more traditional pastries, orange juice, and coffee. The same year, Taco Bell introduced its mobile ordering and payment app-the first of its kind in the fast-food industry. Then, in 2015 Taco Bell released its vegan and vegetarian menu, introduced a limited delivery service in the United States, and opened its first location that sold alcohol (in Chicago).

These aggressive promotional efforts, while unsuccessful in gaining the chain the majority share of the U.S. and global fast-food market, have made Taco Bell an accessible and publicly popular company, especially in the United States, where more than 40 million customers are served every week. Such volume has earned Taco Bell the lion's share in the Mexican fast-food market in the United States, and, with over 300 locations in more than 25 non-American countries, the company has become a successful global brand. Altogether, annual revenue for the company was more than $10 billion.

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Taco Bell | Founding, Annual Revenue, & History

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Taco Bell, fast-food restaurant chain headquartered in Irvine, California, U.S., that offers Mexican-inspired foods. Founded in 1962 by American entrepreneur Glen Bell, the chain has more than 7,000 locations and over 350 franchisees worldwide. Its commitment to branding and its changing product lineup have made it one of the most accessible and unique fast-food restaurant chains.

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Taco Bell delivery arrives to select markets across the country. The new Tacobell.com is born-including desktop ordering and The Feed.

To save it from demolition, Taco Bell moved its original restaurant, Numero Uno, from Downey, CA to the Irvine headquarters.

In February, Taco Bell launched the Quesalupa - a shell stuffed with melted pepper jack cheese.

The Taco Bell Foundation launched the Live Más Scholarship, a program aimed at empowering the nation's next generation of dreamers, innovators and creators.

Wedding Bells are ringing as Taco Bell begins hosting weddings at the Las Vegas Cantina.

Taco Bell released its first-ever retail collaboration, Forever 21 x Taco Bell. The men's collection completely sold out online within the first day.

Taco Bell launched Nacho Fries, the most successful product launch in the company's history.

Taco Bell 2032 - In honor of the return of Nacho Fries and the 25th Anniversary of Demolition Man, Taco Bell brought Taco Bell 2032 to life in a futuristic pop up dining experience at Comic Con San Diego.

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From Bell's Drive-In and Taco Tia in 1954, read about Taco Bell's history through the years

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nucellar disaster left this city abandoned 

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nucellar disaster left this city abandoned 

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The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union. Called the world's worst-ever civil nuclear incident, it is one of only two nuclear energy accidents rated at seven-the maximum severity-on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. The initial emergency response, together with later decontamination of the environment, involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion roubles -roughly US$68 billion in 2019, adjusted for inflation.

The meltdown and explosions ruptured the reactor core and destroyed the reactor building. This was immediately followed by an open-air reactor core fire which lasted until 4 May 1986, during which airborne radioactive contaminants were released and deposited onto other parts of the USSR and Europe. Approximately 70% landed in Byelorussia (now Belarus), 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) away. The fire released about the same amount of radioactive material as the initial explosion. In response to the initial accident, a 10-kilometre (6.2 mi) radius exclusion zone was created 36 hours after the accident, from which approximately 49,000 people were evacuated, primarily from Pripyat. The exclusion zone was later increased to a radius of 30 kilometres (19 mi), from which an additional ~68,000 people were evacuated.

Following the reactor explosion, which killed two engineers and severely burned two more, a secret emergency operation to put out the fire, stabilize the reactor, and clean up the ejected radioactive material began. During the immediate emergency response, 237 workers were hospitalized, of which 134 exhibited symptoms of acute radiation syndrome (ARS). Among those hospitalized, 28 died within the following three months, all of whom were hospitalized for ARS. In the following 10 years, 14 more workers (9 who had been hospitalized with ARS) died of various causes mostly unrelated to radiation exposure.

The Soviet government engaged in a major cover-up of the disaster in 1986. When they finally acknowledged it, although without any details, the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) then discussed the Three Mile Island accident and other American nuclear accidents, which Serge Schmemann of The New York Times wrote was an example of the common Soviet tactic of whataboutism. The mention of a commission also indicated to observers the seriousness of the incident, and subsequent state radio broadcasts were replaced with classical music, which was a common method of preparing the public for an announcement of a tragedy in the USSR.

Chernobyl's health effects to the general population are uncertain. An excess of 15 childhood thyroid cancer deaths were documented as of 2011. A United Nations committee found that to date fewer than 100 deaths have resulted from the fallout. Determining the total eventual number of exposure related deaths is uncertain based on the linear no-threshold model, a contested statistical model. Model predictions of the eventual total death toll in the coming decades vary. The most widely cited studies by the World Health Organization predict an eventual 9,000 cancer related fatalities in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.

Background

Reactor cooling after shutdown

In power-generating operation, most of the heat generated in a nuclear reactor by its fuel rods is derived from nuclear fission, but a significant fraction (over 6%) is derived from the radioactive decay of the accumulated fission products; a process known as decay heat. This decay heat continues for some time after the fission chain reaction has been stopped, such as following a reactor shutdown, either emergency or planned, and continued pumped circulation of coolant is essential to prevent core overheating, or in the worst case, core meltdown. RBMK reactors, like those at Chernobyl, use water as a coolant, circulated by electrically-driven pumps. The coolant flow rate is considerable - Reactor No. 4 had 1661 individual fuel channels, each requiring a coolant flow of 28 m ³/h (990 cu ft/h) at full reactor power, for a total of over 45 million litres per hour (12 million gallons per hour) for the entire reactor.

In case of a total power loss at the station, each of Chernobyl's reactors had three backup diesel generators, but they took 60-75 seconds to attain full load and generate the 5.5‑ megawatt output required to run one main pump. In the interim, special counterweights on each pump would enable them to provide coolant via inertia, thereby bridging the gap to generator startup. However, a potential safety risk existed in the event that a station blackout occurred simultaneously with the rupture of a 600-millimetre (24 in) coolant pipe (the so-called Design Basis Accident). In this scenario the emergency core cooling system (ECCS) needed to pump additional water into the core, replacing coolant lost to evaporation. It had been theorized that the rotational momentum of the reactor's steam turbine could be used to generate the required electrical power to operate the ECCS via the feedwater pumps. The turbine's speed would run down as energy was taken from it, but analysis indicated that there might be sufficient energy to provide electrical power to run the coolant pumps for 45 seconds. This would not quite bridge the gap between an external power failure and the full availability of the emergency generators, but would alleviate the situation.

Safety test

The turbine run-down energy capability still needed to be confirmed experimentally, and previous tests had ended unsuccessfully. An initial test carried out in 1982 indicated that the excitation voltage of the turbine-generator was insufficient; it did not maintain the desired magnetic field after the turbine trip. The electrical system was modified, and the test was repeated in 1984 but again proved unsuccessful. In 1985, the test was conducted a third time but also yielded no results due to a problem with the recording equipment. The test procedure was to be run again in 1986 and was scheduled to take place during a controlled power-down of reactor No. 4, which was preparatory to a planned maintenance outage.

A test procedure had been written, but the authors were not aware of the unusual RBMK-1000 reactor behaviour under the planned operating conditions. It was regarded as purely an electrical test of the generator, not a complex unit test, even though it involved critical unit systems. According to the regulations in place at the time, such a test did not require approval by either the chief design authority for the reactor (NIKIET) or the Soviet nuclear safety regulator. The test program called for disabling the emergency core cooling system, a passive/active system of core cooling intended to provide water to the core in a loss-of-coolant accident, and approval from the Chernobyl site chief engineer had been obtained according to regulations.

The test procedure was intended to run as follows:

Test Preparation

1. The test would take place prior to a scheduled reactor shutdown

2. The reactor thermal power was to be reduced to between 700 MW and 1000 MW (to allow for adequate cooling, as the turbine would be spun at operating speed whilst disconnected from the power grid)

3. The steam-turbine generator was to be run at normal operating speed

4. Four out of eight main circulating pumps were to be supplied with off-site power, while the other four would be powered by the turbine

Electrical Test

1. When the correct conditions were achieved, the steam supply to the turbine generator would be closed off, and the reactor would be shut down

2. The voltage provided by the coasting turbine would be measured, along with the voltage and RPMs of the four main circulating pumps being powered by the turbine

3. When the emergency generators supplied full electrical power, the turbine generator would be allowed to continue free-wheeling down

Test delay and shift change

The test was to be conducted during the day-shift of 25 April 1986 as part of a scheduled reactor shut down. The day shift crew had been instructed in advance on the reactor operating conditions to run the test and in addition, a special team of electrical engineers was present to conduct the one-minute test of the new voltage regulating system once the correct conditions had been reached. As planned, a gradual reduction in the output of the power unit began at 01:06 on 25 April, and the power level had reached 50% of its nominal 3,200 MW thermal level by the beginning of the day shift.

The day shift performed many unrelated maintenance tasks, and was scheduled to perform the test at 14:15. Preparations for the test were carried out, including the disabling of the emergency core cooling system. Meanwhile, another regional power station unexpectedly went offline. At 14:00, the Kiev electrical grid controller requested that the further reduction of Chernobyl's output be postponed, as power was needed to satisfy the peak evening demand, so the test was postponed.

Soon, the day shift was replaced by the evening shift. Despite the delay, the emergency core cooling system was left disabled. This system had to be disconnected via a manual isolating slide valve which in practice meant that two or three people spent the whole shift manually turning sailboat-helm sized valve wheels. The system would have no influence on the events that unfolded next, but allowing the reactor to run for 11 hours outside of the test without emergency protection was indicative of a general lack of safety culture.

The night shift had very limited time to prepare for and carry out the experiment. Anatoly Dyatlov, deputy chief-engineer of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, was present to supervise and direct the test. He was one of the test's chief authors and he was the highest-ranking individual present. Unit Shift Supervisor Aleksandr Akimov was in charge of the Unit 4 night shift, and Leonid Toptunov was the Senior Reactor Control Engineer responsible for the reactor's operational regimen, including the movement of the control rods. 25 year old Toptunov had worked independently as a senior engineer for approximately three months.

Unexpected drop of the reactor power

The test plan called for a gradual decrease in reactor power to a thermal level of 700-1000 MW, and an output of 720 MW was reached at 00:05 on 26 April. However, due to the reactor's production of a fission byproduct, xenon-135, which is a reaction-inhibiting neutron absorber, power continued to decrease in the absence of further operator action, a process known as reactor poisoning. In steady-state operation, this is avoided because xenon-135 is "burned off" as quickly as it is created from decaying iodine-135 by the absorption of neutrons from the ongoing chain reaction, becoming highly stable xenon-136. With the reactor power reduced, high quantities of previously produced iodine-135 were decaying into the neutron-absorbing xenon-135 faster than the reduced neutron flux could "burn it off". Xenon poisoning in this context made reactor control more difficult, but was a predictable and well-understood phenomenon during such a power reduction.

When the reactor power had decreased to approximately 500 MW, the reactor power control was switched from LAR (Local Automatic Regulator) to the Automatic Regulators, in order to manually maintain the required power level. AR-1 then activated, removing all four of AR-1's Control Rods automatically, but AR-2 failed to activate due to an imbalance in its ionization chambers. In response, Toptunov reduced power to stabilize the Automatic Regulators' ionization sensors. The result was a sudden power drop to an unintended near- shutdown state, with a power output of 30 MW thermal or less. The exact circumstances that caused the power drop are unknown. Most reports attribute the power drop to Toptunov's error, but Dyatlov reported that it was due to a fault in the AR-2 system.

The reactor was now producing only 5% of the minimum initial power level prescribed for the test. This low reactivity inhibited the burn-off of xenon-135 within the reactor core and hindered the rise of reactor power. To increase power, control-room personnel removed numerous control rods from the reactor. Several minutes elapsed before the reactor was restored to 160 MW at 0:39, at which point most control rods were at their upper limits, but the rod configuration was still within its normal operating limit, with Operational Reactivity Margin (ORM) equivalent to having more than 15 rods inserted. Over the next twenty minutes, reactor power would be increased further to 200 MW.

The operation of the reactor at the low power level (and high poisoning level) was accompanied by unstable core temperatures and coolant flow, and, possibly, by instability of neutron flux. The control room received repeated emergency signals regarding the low levels in one half of the steam/water separator drums, with accompanying drum separator pressure warnings. In response, personnel triggered several rapid influxes of feedwater. Relief valves opened to relieve excess steam into a turbine condenser.

Reactor conditions priming the accident

The combined effect of these various actions was an extremely unstable reactor configuration. Nearly all of the 211 control rods had been extracted manually, and excessively high coolant flow rates through the core meant that the coolant was entering the reactor very close to the boiling point. Unlike other light-water reactor designs, the RBMK design at that time had a positive void coefficient of reactivity at low power levels. This meant that the formation of steam bubbles (voids) from boiling cooling water intensified the nuclear chain reaction owing to voids having lower neutron absorption than water. Unbeknownst to the operators, the void coefficient was not counterbalanced by other reactivity effects in the given operating regime, meaning that any increase in boiling would produce more steam voids which further intensified the chain reaction, leading to a positive feedback loop. Given this characteristic, reactor No. 4 was now at risk of a runaway increase in its core power with nothing to restrain it. The reactor was now very sensitive to the regenerative effect of steam voids on reactor power.

Test execution

At 01:23:04, the test began. Four of the eight main circulating pumps (MCP) were to be powered by voltage from the coasting turbine, while the remaining four pumps received electrical power from the grid as normal. The steam to the turbines was shut off, beginning a run-down of the turbine generator. The diesel generators started and sequentially picked up loads; the generators were to have completely picked up the MCPs' power needs by 01:23:43. As the momentum of the turbine generator decreased, so did the power it produced for the pumps. The water flow rate decreased, leading to increased formation of steam voids in the coolant flowing up through the fuel pressure tubes.

Reactor shutdown and power excursion

At 01:23:40, as recorded by the SKALA centralized control system, a scram (emergency shutdown) of the reactor was initiated as the experiment was wrapping up. The scram was started when the AZ-5 button (also known as the EPS-5 button) of the reactor emergency protection system was pressed: this engaged the drive mechanism on all control rods to fully insert them, including the manual control rods that had been withdrawn earlier.

The personnel had already intended to shut down using the AZ-5 button in preparation for scheduled maintenance and the scram likely preceded the sharp increase in power. However, the precise reason why the button was pressed when it was is not certain, as only the deceased Akimov and Toptunov partook in that decision, though the atmosphere in the control room was calm at that moment. Meanwhile, the RBMK designers claim that the button had to have been pressed only after the reactor already began to self-destruct.

Consequently, injecting a control rod downward into the reactor in a scram initially displaced neutron-absorbing water in the lower portion of the reactor with neutron-moderating graphite. Thus, an emergency scram could initially increase the reaction rate in the lower part of the core. This behaviour was discovered when the initial insertion of control rods in another RBMK reactor at Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in 1983 induced a power spike. Procedural countermeasures were not implemented in response to Ignalina. The IAEA investigative report INSAG-7 later stated, "Apparently, there was a widespread view that the conditions under which the positive scram effect would be important would never occur. However, they did appear in almost every detail in the course of the actions leading to the Chernobyl accident."

A few seconds into the scram, a power spike did occur, and the core overheated, causing some of the fuel rods to fracture. Some have speculated that this also blocked the control rod columns, jamming them at one-third insertion. Within three seconds the reactor output rose above 530 MW.

Instruments did not register the subsequent course of events; they were reconstructed through mathematical simulation. Per the simulation, the power spike would have caused an increase in fuel temperature and steam buildup, leading to a rapid increase in steam pressure. This caused the fuel cladding to fail, releasing the fuel elements into the coolant and rupturing the channels in which these elements were located.

Steam explosions

As the scram continued, the reactor output jumped to around 30,000 MW thermal, 10 times its normal operational output, the indicated last reading on the power meter on the control panel. Some estimate the power spike may have gone 10 times higher than that. It was not possible to reconstruct the precise sequence of the processes that led to the destruction of the reactor and the power unit building, but a steam explosion, like the explosion of a steam boiler from excess vapour pressure, appears to have been the next event. There is a general understanding that it was explosive steam pressure from the damaged fuel channels escaping into the reactor's exterior cooling structure that caused the explosion that destroyed the reactor casing, tearing off and blasting the upper plate called the upper biological shield, to which the entire reactor assembly is fastened, through the roof of the reactor building. This is believed to be the first explosion that many heard.

This explosion ruptured further fuel channels, as well as severing most of the coolant lines feeding the reactor chamber, and as a result, the remaining coolant flashed to steam and escaped the reactor core. The total water loss combined with a high positive void coefficient further increased the reactor's thermal power.

A second, more powerful explosion occurred about two or three seconds after the first; this explosion dispersed the damaged core and effectively terminated the nuclear chain reaction. This explosion also compromised more of the reactor containment vessel and ejected hot lumps of graphite moderator. The ejected graphite and the demolished channels still in the remains of the reactor vessel caught fire on exposure to air, significantly contributing to the spread of radioactive fallout and the contamination of outlying areas.

After the larger explosion, several employees at the power station went outside to get a clearer view of the extent of the damage. One such survivor, Alexander Yuvchenko, recounts that once he stepped out and looked up towards the reactor hall, he saw a "very beautiful" laser-like beam of blue light caused by the ionized-air glow that appeared to be "flooding up into infinity".

There were initially several hypotheses about the nature of the second explosion. One view was that the second explosion was caused by the combustion of hydrogen, which had been produced either by the overheated steam- zirconium reaction or by the reaction of red-hot graphite with steam that produced hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Another hypothesis, by Konstantin Checherov, published in 1998, was that the second explosion was a thermal explosion of the reactor due to the uncontrollable escape of fast neutrons caused by the complete water loss in the reactor core. A third hypothesis was that the second explosion was another steam explosion. According to this version, the first explosion was a more minor steam explosion in the circulating loop, causing a loss of coolant flow and pressure that in turn caused the water still in the core to flash to steam; this second explosion then caused the majority of the damage to the reactor and containment building. These ideas are discussed in further detail further down.

Crisis management

Fire containment

Contrary to safety regulations, bitumen, a combustible material, had been used in the construction of the roof of the reactor building and the turbine hall. Ejected material ignited at least five fires on the roof of the adjacent reactor No. 3, which was still operating. It was imperative to put those fires out and protect the cooling systems of reactor No. 3. Inside reactor No. 3, the chief of the night shift, Yuri Bagdasarov, wanted to shut down the reactor immediately, but chief engineer Nikolai Fomin would not allow this. The operators were given respirators and potassium iodide tablets and told to continue working. At 05:00, Bagdasarov made his own decision to shut down the reactor, which was confirmed in writing by Dyatlov and Station Shift Supervisor Rogozhkin.

Shortly after the accident, firefighters arrived to try to extinguish the fires. First on the scene was a Chernobyl Power Station firefighter brigade under the command of Lieutenant Volodymyr Pravyk, who died on 11 May 1986 of acute radiation sickness. They were not told how dangerously radioactive the smoke and the debris were, and may not even have known that the accident was anything more than a regular electrical fire: "We didn't know it was the reactor. No one had told us." Grigorii Khmel, the driver of one of the fire engines, later described what happened:

We arrived there at 10 or 15 minutes to two in the morning ... We saw graphite scattered about. Misha asked: "Is that graphite?" I kicked it away. But one of the fighters on the other truck picked it up. "It's hot," he said. The pieces of graphite were of different sizes, some big, some small enough to pick them up [...] We didn't know much about radiation. Even those who worked there had no idea. There was no water left in the trucks. Misha filled a cistern and we aimed the water at the top. Then those boys who died went up to the roof-Vashchik, Kolya and others, and Volodya Pravik ... They went up the ladder ... and I never saw them again.

Anatoli Zakharov, a fireman stationed in Chernobyl since 1980, offered a different description in 2008: "I remember joking to the others, 'There must be an incredible amount of radiation here. We'll be lucky if we're all still alive in the morning.'" He also stated, "Of course we knew! If we'd followed regulations, we would never have gone near the reactor. But it was a moral obligation-our duty. We were like kamikaze."

It was thought by some that the core fire was extinguished by a combined effort of helicopters dropping more than 5,000 tonnes (11 million pounds) of sand, lead, clay, and neutron-absorbing boron onto the burning reactor. It is now known that virtually none of these materials reached the core. Historians estimate that about 600 Soviet pilots risked dangerous levels of radiation to fly the thousands of flights needed to cover reactor No. 4 in this attempt to seal off radiation.

From eyewitness accounts of the firefighters involved before they died (as reported on the CBC television series ), one described his experience of the radiation as "tasting like metal", and feeling a sensation similar to that of pins and needles all over his face. This is consistent with the description given by Louis Slotin, a Manhattan Project physicist who died days after a fatal radiation overdose from a criticality accident.

The explosion and fire threw hot particles of the nuclear fuel and also far more dangerous fission products (radioactive isotopes such as caesium-137, iodine-131, strontium-90, and other radionuclides) into the air. The residents of the surrounding area observed the radioactive cloud on the night of the explosion.

Radiation levels

The ionizing radiation levels in the worst-hit areas of the reactor building have been estimated to be 5.6 roentgens per second (R/s), equivalent to more than 20,000 roentgens per hour. A lethal dose is around 500 roentgens (~5 Gray (Gy) in modern radiation units) over five hours, so in some areas, unprotected workers received fatal doses in less than a minute. However, a dosimeter capable of measuring up to 1,000 R/s was buried in the rubble of a collapsed part of the building, and another one failed when turned on. Most remaining dosimeters had limits of 0.001 R/s and therefore read "off scale". Thus, the reactor crew could ascertain only that the radiation levels were somewhere above 0.001 R/s (3.6 R/h), while the true levels were much higher in some areas.

Because of the inaccurate low readings, the reactor crew chief Aleksandr Akimov assumed that the reactor was intact. The evidence of pieces of graphite and reactor fuel lying around the building was ignored, and the readings of another dosimeter brought in by 04:30 were dismissed under the assumption that the new dosimeter must have been defective. Akimov stayed with his crew in the reactor building until morning, sending members of his crew to try to pump water into the reactor. None of them wore any protective gear. Most, including Akimov, died from radiation exposure within three weeks.

Evacuation

The nearby city of Pripyat was not immediately evacuated. The townspeople, in the early hours of the morning, at 01:23 local time, went about their usual business, completely oblivious to what had just happened. However, within a few hours of the explosion, dozens of people fell ill. Later, they reported severe headaches and metallic tastes in their mouths, along with uncontrollable fits of coughing and vomiting. As the plant was run by authorities in Moscow, the government of Ukraine did not receive prompt information on the accident.

Shevchenko then spoke over the phone to Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, general secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine and de facto head of state, who said he anticipated a delegation of the state commission headed by Boris Shcherbina, the deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR.

A commission was established later in the day to investigate the accident. It was headed by Valery Legasov, First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy, and included leading nuclear specialist Evgeny Velikhov, hydro-meteorologist Yuri Izrael, radiologist Leonid Ilyin, and others. They flew to Boryspil International Airport and arrived at the power plant in the evening of 26 April. By that time two people had already died and 52 were hospitalized. The delegation soon had ample evidence that the reactor was destroyed and extremely high levels of radiation had caused a number of cases of radiation exposure. In the early daylight hours of 27 April, approximately 36 hours after the initial blast, they ordered the evacuation of Pripyat. Initially it was decided to evacuate the population for three days; later this was made permanent.

By 11:00 on 27 April, buses had arrived in Pripyat to start the evacuation. The evacuation began at 14:00. A translated excerpt of the evacuation announcement follows:

For the attention of the residents of Pripyat! The City Council informs you that due to the accident at Chernobyl Power Station in the city of Pripyat the radioactive conditions in the vicinity are deteriorating. The Communist Party, its officials and the armed forces are taking necessary steps to combat this. Nevertheless, with the view to keep people as safe and healthy as possible, the children being top priority, we need to temporarily evacuate the citizens in the nearest towns of Kiev region. For these reasons, starting from 27 April 1986, 14:00 each apartment block will be able to have a bus at its disposal, supervised by the police and the city officials. It is highly advisable to take your documents, some vital personal belongings and a certain amount of food, just in case, with you. The senior executives of public and industrial facilities of the city has decided on the list of employees needed to stay in Pripyat to maintain these facilities in a good working order. All the houses will be guarded by the police during the evacuation period. Comrades, leaving your residences temporarily please make sure you have turned off the lights, electrical equipment and water and shut the windows. Please keep calm and orderly in the process of this short-term evacuation.

To expedite the evacuation, residents were told to bring only what was necessary, and that they would remain evacuated for approximately three days. As a result, most personal belongings were left behind, and remain there today. By 15:00, 53,000 people were evacuated to various villages of the Kiev region. The next day, talks began for evacuating people from the 10-kilometre (6.2 mi) zone. Ten days after the accident, the evacuation area was expanded to 30 kilometres (19 mi).: 115, 120-121  The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone has remained ever since, although its shape has changed and its size has been expanded.

Official announcement

Evacuation began one and a half days before the accident was publicly acknowledged by the Soviet Union. In the morning of 28 April, radiation levels set off alarms at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden, over 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) from the Chernobyl Plant. Workers at Forsmark reported the case to the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, which determined that the radiation had originated elsewhere. That day, the Swedish government contacted the Soviet government to inquire about whether there had been a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union. The Soviets initially denied it, and it was only after the Swedish government suggested they were about to file an official alert with the International Atomic Energy Agency, that the Soviet government admitted that an accident had taken place at Chernobyl.

At first, the Soviets only conceded that a minor accident had occurred, but once they began evacuating more than 100,000 people, the full scale of the situation was realized by the global community. At 21:02 the evening of 28 April, a 20-second announcement was read in the TV news programme : "There has been an accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. One of the nuclear reactors was damaged. The effects of the accident are being remedied. Assistance has been provided for any affected people. An investigative commission has been set up."

This was the entire announcement, and the first time the Soviet Union officially announced a nuclear accident. The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) then discussed the Three Mile Island accident and other American nuclear accidents, which Serge Schmemann of The New York Times wrote was an example of the common Soviet tactic of whataboutism. The mention of a commission also indicated to observers the seriousness of the incident, and subsequent state radio broadcasts were replaced with classical music, which was a common method of preparing the public for an announcement of a tragedy in the USSR.

Around the same time, ABC News released its report about the disaster. Shevchenko was the first of the Ukrainian state top officials to arrive at the disaster site early on 28 April. There she spoke with members of medical staff and people, who were calm and hopeful that they could soon return to their homes. Shevchenko returned home near midnight, stopping at a radiological checkpoint in Vilcha, one of the first that were set up soon after the accident.

There was a notification from Moscow that there was no reason to postpone the 1 May International Workers' Day celebrations in Kiev (including the annual parade), but on 30 April a meeting of the Political bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU took place to discuss the plan for the upcoming celebration. Scientists were reporting that the radiological background level in Kiev was normal. At the meeting, which was finished at 18:00, it was decided to shorten celebrations from the regular three and a half to four hours to under two hours.

Several buildings in Pripyat were officially kept open after the disaster to be used by workers still involved with the plant. These included the Jupiter factory (which closed in 1996) and the Azure Swimming Pool, used by the Chernobyl liquidators for recreation during the clean-up (which closed in 1998).

Core meltdown risk mitigation

Bubbler pools

Two floors of bubbler pools beneath the reactor served as a large water reservoir for the emergency cooling pumps and as a pressure suppression system capable of condensing steam in case of a small broken steam pipe; the third floor above them, below the reactor, served as a steam tunnel. The steam released by a broken pipe was supposed to enter the steam tunnel and be led into the pools to bubble through a layer of water. After the disaster, the pools and the basement were flooded because of ruptured cooling water pipes and accumulated firefighting water.

The smoldering graphite, fuel and other material above, at more than 1,200 °C (2,190 °F), started to burn through the reactor floor and mixed with molten concrete from the reactor lining, creating corium, a radioactive semi-liquid material comparable to lava. It was feared that if this mixture melted through the floor into the pool of water, the resulting steam production would further contaminate the area or even cause a steam explosion, ejecting more radioactive material from the reactor. It became necessary to drain the pool. These fears ultimately proved unfounded, since corium began dripping harmlessly into the flooded bubbler pools before the water could be removed. The molten fuel hit the water and cooled into a light-brown ceramic pumice, whose low density allowed the substance to float on the water's surface.

Unaware of this fact, the government commission directed that the bubbler pools be drained by opening its sluice gates. The valves controlling it, however, were located in a flooded corridor in a subterranean annex adjacent to the reactor building. Volunteers in diving suits and respirators (for protection against radioactive aerosols), and equipped with dosimeters, entered the knee-deep radioactive water and managed to open the valves. These were the engineers Alexei Ananenko and Valeri Bezpalov (who knew where the valves were), accompanied by the shift supervisor Boris Baranov. All three men were awarded the Order For Courage by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in May 2018.

Foundation protection measures

The government commission was concerned that the molten core would burn into the earth and contaminate groundwater below the reactor. To reduce the likelihood of this, it was decided to freeze the earth beneath the reactor, which would also stabilize the foundations. Using oil well drilling equipment, the injection of liquid nitrogen began on 4 May. It was estimated that 25 tonnes (55 thousand pounds) of liquid nitrogen per day would be required to keep the soil frozen at −100 °C (−148 °F). This idea was quickly scrapped.

Bolshov's graphite cooling plate, alongside the prior nitrogen injection proposal, were not used following the drop in aerial temperatures and indicative reports that the fuel melt had stopped. It was later determined that the fuel had flowed three floors, with a few cubic meters coming to rest at ground level. The precautionary underground channel with its active cooling was therefore deemed redundant, as the fuel was self-cooling. The excavation was then simply filled with concrete to strengthen the foundation below the reactor.

Immediate site and area remediation

Debris removal

In the months after the explosion, attention turned to removing the radioactive debris from the roof. While the worst of the radioactive debris had remained inside what was left of the reactor, it was estimated that there was approximately 100 tons of debris on that roof which had to be removed to enable the safe construction of the 'sarcophagus'-a concrete structure that would entomb the reactor and reduce radioactive dust being released into the atmosphere. The initial plan was to use robots to clear the debris off the roof. The Soviets used approximately 60 remote-controlled robots, most of them built in the Soviet Union itself. Many failed due to the difficult terrain, combined with the effect of high radiation fields on their batteries and electronic controls; in 1987, Valery Legasov, first deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy in Moscow, said: "We learned that robots are not the great remedy for everything. Where there was very high radiation, the robot ceased to be a robot-the electronics quit working." Consequently, the most highly radioactive materials were shoveled by Chernobyl liquidators from the military wearing heavy protective gear (dubbed "bio-robots"); these soldiers could only spend a maximum of 40-90 seconds working on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings because of the extremely high doses of radiation given off by the blocks of graphite and other debris. Though the soldiers were only supposed to perform the role of the "bio-robot" a maximum of once, some soldiers reported having done this task five or six times. Only 10% of the debris cleared from the roof was performed by robots; the other 90% was removed by approximately 5,000 men who absorbed, on average, an estimated dose of 25 rem (250 mSv) of radiation each.

Construction of the sarcophagus

With the extinguishing of the open air reactor fire, the next step was to prevent the spread of contamination. This could be due to wind action which could carry away loose contamination, and by birds which could land within the wreckage and then carry contamination elsewhere. In addition, rainwater could wash contamination away from the reactor area and into the sub-surface water table, where it could migrate outside the site area. Rainwater falling on the wreckage could also weaken the remaining reactor structure by accelerating corrosion of steelwork. A further challenge was to reduce the large amount of emitted gamma radiation, which was a hazard to the workforce operating the adjacent reactor No. 3.

The solution chosen was to enclose the wrecked reactor by the construction of a huge composite steel and concrete shelter, which became known as the "Sarcophagus". It had to be erected quickly and within the constraints of high levels of ambient gamma radiation. The design started on 20 May 1986, 24 days after the disaster, and construction was from June to late November. This major construction project was carried out under the very difficult circumstances of high levels of radiation both from the core remnants and the deposited radioactive contamination around it. The construction workers had to be protected from radiation, and techniques such as crane drivers working from lead-lined control cabins were employed. The construction work included erecting walls around the perimeter, clearing and surface concreting the surrounding ground to remove sources of radiation and to allow access for large construction machinery, constructing a thick radiation shielding wall to protect the workers in reactor No. 3, fabricating a high-rise buttress to strengthen weak parts of the old structure, constructing an overall roof, and provisioning a ventilation extract system to capture any airborne contamination arising within the shelter.

Investigations of the reactor condition

During the construction of the sarcophagus, a scientific team, as part of an investigation dubbed "Complex Expedition", re-entered the reactor to locate and contain nuclear fuel to prevent another explosion. These scientists manually collected cold fuel rods, but great heat was still emanating from the core. Rates of radiation in different parts of the building were monitored by drilling holes into the reactor and inserting long metal detector tubes. The scientists were exposed to high levels of radiation and radioactive dust. In December 1986, after six months of investigation, the team discovered with the help of a remote camera that an intensely radioactive mass more than 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) wide had formed in the basement of Unit Four. The mass was called " the elephant's foot" for its wrinkled appearance. It was composed of melted sand, concrete, and a large amount of nuclear fuel that had escaped from the reactor. The concrete beneath the reactor was steaming hot, and was breached by now-solidified lava and spectacular unknown crystalline forms termed chernobylite. It was concluded that there was no further risk of explosion.

Area cleanup

The official contaminated zones saw a massive clean-up effort lasting seven months. The official reason for such early (and dangerous) decontamination efforts, rather than allowing time for natural decay, was that the land must be repopulated and brought back into cultivation. Within fifteen months 75% of the land was under cultivation, even though only a third of the evacuated villages were resettled. Defence forces must have done much of the work. Yet this land was of marginal agricultural value. According to historian David Marples, the administration had a psychological purpose for the clean-up: they wished to forestall panic regarding nuclear energy, and even to restart the Chernobyl power station.: 78-79, 87, 192-193  Although a number of radioactive emergency vehicles were buried in trenches, many of the vehicles used by the liquidators, including the helicopters, still remained, as of 2018, parked in a field in the Chernobyl area. Scavengers have since removed many functioning, but highly radioactive, parts. Liquidators worked under deplorable conditions, poorly informed and with poor protection. Many, if not most of them, exceeded radiation safety limits.

The urban decontamination liquidators first washed buildings and roads with "Barda", a sticky polymerizing fluid, designed to entrap radioactive dust.[dubious ]

A unique "clean up" medal was given to the clean-up workers, known as "liquidators".

Investigations and the evolution of identified causes

To investigate the causes of the accident the IAEA used the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group (INSAG), which had been created by the IAEA in 1985. It produced two significant reports on Chernobyl; INSAG-1 in 1986, and a revised report, INSAG-7 in 1992. In summary, according to INSAG-1, the main cause of the accident was the operators' actions, but according to INSAG-7, the main cause was the reactor's design. Both IAEA reports identified an inadequate "safety culture" (INSAG-1 coined the term) at all managerial and operational levels as a major underlying factor of different aspects of the accident. This was stated to be inherent not only in operations but also during design, engineering, construction, manufacture and regulation.

The INSAG-7 conclusion of major factors contributory to the accident was:

"The Accident is now seen to have been the result of concurrence of the following major factors: specific physical characteristics of the reactor; specific design features of the reactor control elements; and the fact that the reactor was brought to a state not specified by procedures or investigated by an independent safety body. Most importantly, the physical characteristics of the reactor made possible its unstable behaviour."

INSAG-1 report (1986)

The first official Soviet explanation of the accident was given by Soviet scientists and engineers to representatives of IAEA member states and other international organisations at the first Post-Accident Review Meeting, held at the IAEA in Vienna 25-29 August 1986. This explanation effectively placed the blame on the power plant operators. The IAEA INSAG-1 report followed shortly afterwards in September 1986, and on the whole also supported this view, based also on the information provided in discussions with the Soviet experts at the Vienna review meeting. In this view, the catastrophic accident was caused by gross violations of operating rules and regulations. For instance; "During preparation and testing of the turbine generator under run-down conditions using the auxiliary load, personnel disconnected a series of technical protection systems and breached the most important operational safety provisions for conducting a technical exercise."

It was stated that at the time of the accident the reactor was being operated with many key safety systems turned off, most notably the emergency core cooling system (ECCS), LAR (Local Automatic control system), and AZ (emergency power reduction system). Personnel had an insufficient understanding of technical procedures involved with the nuclear reactor, and knowingly ignored regulations to expedite the electrical test completion. Several procedural irregularities also helped to make the accident possible, one of which was insufficient communication between the safety officers and the operators in charge of the test.

Soviet criminal trial (1987)

The trial took place from 7 to 30 July 1987 in a temporary courtroom set up in the House of Culture in the city of Chernobyl, Ukraine. Five plant employees ( Anatoly S. Dyatlov, the former deputy chief engineer; Viktor P. Bryukhanov, the former plant director; Nikolai M. Fomin, the former chief engineer; Boris V. Rogozhin, the shift director of Reactor 4; and Aleksandr P. Kovalenko, the chief of Reactor 4); and Yuri A. Laushkin (Gosatomenergonadzor [USSR State Committee on Supervision of Safe Conduct of Work in Atomic Energy] inspector) were sentenced to ten, ten, ten, five, three, and two years respectively in labor camps. The families of Aleksandr Akimov, Leonid Toptunov and Valery Perevozchenko had received official letters, but prosecution against the employees had been terminated at their deaths.

Anatoly Dyatlov was found guilty "of criminal mismanagement of potentially explosive enterprises" and sentenced to ten years imprisonment-of which he would serve three-for the role that his oversight of the experiment played in the ensuing accident.

INSAG-7 report (1992)

In the INSAG-7 report, most of the earlier accusations against staff for breach of regulations were acknowledged to be either erroneous, being based on incorrect information obtained in August 1986, or were judged less relevant. The INSAG-7 report also reflected the view of the 1991 USSR State Commission account which held that the operators' actions in turning off the emergency core cooling system, interfering with the settings on the protection equipment, and blocking the level and pressure in the separator drum did not contribute to the original cause of the accident and its magnitude, although they may have been a breach of regulations. In fact, turning off the emergency system designed to prevent the two turbine generators from stopping was not a violation of regulations. Soviet authorities had identified a multitude of operator actions as regulation violations in the original 1986 report while no such regulations were in fact in place.

The primary design cause of the accident, as determined by INSAG-7, was a major deficiency in safety features, in particular the "positive scram" effect due to the control rods' graphite tips that actually initially increased reactivity when control rods entered the core to reduce reactivity. There was also an overly positive void coefficient of the reactor, whereby steam-generated voids in the fuel cooling channels would increase reactivity because neutron absorption was reduced, resulting in more steam generation, and thereby more voids; a regenerative process. To avoid such conditions, it was necessary for the operators to track the value of the reactor operational reactivity margin (ORM) but this value was not readily available to the operators and they were not aware of the safety significance of ORM on void and power coefficients. However, regulations did forbid operating the reactor with a small margin of reactivity. Yet "post-accident studies have shown that the way in which the real role of the ORM is reflected in the Operating Procedures and design documentation for the RBMK-1000 is extremely contradictory", and furthermore, "ORM was not treated as an operational safety limit, violation of which could lead to an accident".

Even in this revised analysis, the human factor remained identified as a major factor in causing the accident; particularly the operating crew's deviation from the test programme. "Most reprehensibly, unapproved changes in the test procedure were deliberately made on the spot, although the plant was known to be in a very different condition from that intended for the test." This included operating the reactor at a lower power level than the prescribed 700 MW before starting the electrical test. The 1986 assertions of Soviet experts notwithstanding, regulations did not prohibit operating the reactor at this low power level.

Positive void coefficient

Control rod design

There was a significant flaw in the design of the control rods. The reactor core was 7 metres (23 feet) high. The upper half of the rod 7 metres (23 feet) was boron carbide, which absorbs neutrons and thereby slows the reaction. The bottom section of each control rod was a 4.5 meter graphite displacer, which prevented the channels from filling with water when rods were withdrawn. The flaw lay in the 1.25 metres (4.1 feet) gap between the bottom of the graphite displacer and the bottom of the reactor, meaning that the lowest portion of control rod channel was filled with water and not graphite. See page 123. Fig 11-10. With this design, when the rods were inserted from the fully retracted position to stop the reaction on the AZ-5 signal, the graphite displaced neutron-absorbing water, causing fewer neutrons to be absorbed and increasing reactivity. For the first 11 to 14 seconds of rod deployment until the boron was in position, reactor power across the floor of the reactor could increase, rather than decrease. This feature of control rod operation was counter-intuitive and not known to the reactor operators.

Management and operational deficiencies

Other deficiencies were noted in the RBMK-1000 reactor design, as were its non-compliance with accepted standards and with the requirements of nuclear reactor safety. While INSAG-1 and INSAG-7 reports both identified operator error as an issue of concern, the INSAG-7 identified that there were numerous other issues that were contributing factors that led to the incident. These contributing factors include:

1. The plant was not designed to safety standards in effect and incorporated unsafe features

2. "Inadequate safety analysis" was performed

3. There was "insufficient attention to independent safety review"

4. "Operating procedures not founded satisfactorily in safety analysis"

5. Safety information not adequately and effectively communicated between operators, and between operators and designers

6. The operators did not adequately understand safety aspects of the plant

7. Operators did not sufficiently respect formal requirements of operational and test procedures

8. The regulatory regime was insufficient to effectively counter pressures for production

9. There was a "general lack of safety culture in nuclear matters at the national level as well as locally"

Fizzled nuclear explosion hypothesis

The force of the second explosion and the ratio of xenon radioisotopes released after the accident led Yuri V. Dubasov in 2009 to theorise that the second explosion could have been an extremely fast nuclear power transient resulting from core material melting in the absence of its water coolant and moderator. Dubasov argued that there was no delayed supercritical increase in power but a runaway prompt criticality which would have developed much faster. He felt the physics of this would be more similar to the explosion of a fizzled nuclear weapon, and it produced the second explosion. His evidence came from Cherepovets, a city 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) northeast of Chernobyl, where physicists from the V.G. Khlopin Radium Institute measured anomalous high levels of xenon-135 -a short half-life isotope-four days after the explosion. This meant that a nuclear event in the reactor may have ejected xenon to higher altitudes in the atmosphere than the later fire did, allowing widespread movement of xenon to remote locations. This was an alternative to the more accepted explanation of a positive-feedback power excursion where the reactor disassembled itself by steam explosion.

The more energetic second explosion, which produced the majority of the damage, was estimated by Dubasov in 2009 as equivalent to 40 billion joules of energy, the equivalent of about 10 tons of TNT. Both his 2009 and 2017 analyses argue that the nuclear fizzle event, whether producing the second or first explosion, consisted of a prompt chain reaction that was limited to a small portion of the reactor core, since self-disassembly occurs rapidly in fizzle events.

De Geer commented:

"We believe that thermal neutron mediated nuclear explosions at the bottom of a number of fuel channels in the reactor caused a jet of debris to shoot upwards through the refuelling tubes. This jet then rammed the tubes' 350kg plugs, continued through the roof and travelled into the atmosphere to altitudes of 2.5-3km where the weather conditions provided a route to Cherepovets. The steam explosion which ruptured the reactor vessel occurred some 2.7 seconds later."

Release and spread of radioactive materials

Although it is difficult to compare releases between the Chernobyl accident and a deliberate air burst nuclear detonation, it has still been estimated that about four hundred times more radioactive material was released from Chernobyl than by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together. However, the Chernobyl accident only released about one hundredth to one thousandth of the total amount of radioactivity released during nuclear weapons testing at the height of the Cold War; the wide estimate being due to the different abundances of isotopes released. At Chernobyl approximately 100,000 square kilometres (39,000 sq mi) of land was significantly contaminated with fallout, with the worst hit regions being in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Lower levels of contamination were detected over all of Europe except for the Iberian Peninsula. Most of the fallout with radioactive dust particles was released during the first ten days after the accident. By around May 2, a radioactive cloud had reached the Netherlands and Belgium.

It was Sweden's search for the source of radioactivity, after they had determined there was no leak at the Swedish plant, that at noon on 28 April, led to the first hint of a serious nuclear problem in the western Soviet Union. Hence the evacuation of Pripyat on 27 April 36 hours after the initial explosions was silently completed before the disaster became known outside the Soviet Union. The rise in radiation levels had by the subsequent days also been measured in Finland, but a civil service strike delayed the response and publication.

Contamination from the Chernobyl accident was scattered irregularly depending on weather conditions, much of it deposited on mountainous regions such as the Alps, the Welsh mountains and the Scottish Highlands, where adiabatic cooling caused radioactive rainfall. The resulting patches of contamination were often highly localized, and localised water-flows contributed to large variations in radioactivity over small areas. Sweden and Norway also received heavy fallout when the contaminated air collided with a cold front, bringing rain. There was also groundwater contamination.

Rain was deliberately seeded over 10,000 square kilometres (3,900 sq mi) Belarus by the Soviet Air Force to remove radioactive particles from clouds heading toward highly populated areas. Heavy, black-coloured rain fell on the city of Gomel. Reports from Soviet and Western scientists indicate that the Belarusian SSR received about 60% of the contamination that fell on the former Soviet Union. However, the 2006 TORCH report stated that up to half of the volatile particles had actually landed outside the former USSR area currently making up of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. An unconnected large area in Russian SFSR south of Bryansk was also contaminated, as were parts of northwestern Ukrainian SSR. Studies in surrounding countries indicate that more than one million people could have been affected by radiation.

2016 data from a long-term monitoring program (The Korma Report II) shows a decrease in internal radiation exposure of the inhabitants of a region in Belarus close to Gomel. Resettlement may even be possible in prohibited areas provided that people comply with appropriate dietary rules.

In Western Europe, precautionary measures taken in response to the radiation included banning the importation of certain foods. A 2006 study by the French society for nuclear energy found that contamination was "relatively limited, diminishing from west to east", such that a hunter consuming 40 kilograms of contaminated wild boar in 1997 would be exposed to about one millisievert.

Relative isotopic abundances

At different times after the accident, different isotopes were responsible for the majority of the external dose. The remaining quantity of any radioisotope, and therefore the activity of that isotope, after 7 decay half-lives have passed, is less than 1% of its initial magnitude, and it continues to reduce beyond 0.78% after 7 half-lives to 0.10% remaining after 10 half-lives have passed and so on. Some radionuclides have decay products that are likewise radioactive, which is not accounted for here. The release of radioisotopes from the nuclear fuel was largely controlled by their boiling points, and the majority of the radioactivity present in the core was retained in the reactor.

All of the noble gases, including krypton and xenon, contained within the reactor were released immediately into the atmosphere by the first steam explosion. The atmospheric release of xenon-133, with a half-life of 5 days, is estimated at 5200 PBq.

50 to 60% of all core 1760×10radioiodine in the reactor, about 1760 PBq (¹⁵ becquerels), or about 0.4 kilograms (0.88 lb), was released, as a mixture of sublimed vapour, solid particles, and organic iodine compounds. Iodine-131 has a half-life of 8 days.

20 to 40% of all core caesium-137 was released, 85 PBq in all. Caesium was released in aerosol form; caesium-137, along with isotopes of strontium, are the two primary elements preventing the Chernobyl exclusion zone being re-inhabited. equals 24 kilograms of caesium-137. Cs-137 has a half-life of 30 years.

Tellurium-132, half-life 78 hours, an estimated 1150 PBq was released.

An early estimate for total nuclear fuel material released to the environment was %; this was later revised to %. This corresponds to the atmospheric emission of 6 tonnes (5.9 long tons; 6.6 short tons) of fragmented fuel.

Two sizes of particles were released: small particles of 0.3 to 1.5 micrometres, each an individually unrecognizable small dust or smog sized particulate matter and larger settling dust sized particles that therefore were quicker to fall-out of the air, of 10 micrometres in diameter. These larger particles contained about 80% to 90% of the released high boiling point or non-volatile radioisotopes; zirconium-95, niobium-95, lanthanum-140, cerium-144 and the transuranic elements, including neptunium, plutonium and the minor actinides, embedded in a uranium oxide matrix.

Environmental impact

Water bodies

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is located next to the Pripyat River, which feeds into the Dnieper reservoir system, one of the largest surface water systems in Europe, which at the time supplied water to Kiev's 2.4 million residents, and was still in spring flood when the accident occurred. The radioactive contamination of aquatic systems therefore became a major problem in the immediate aftermath of the accident.

In the most affected areas of Ukraine, levels of radioactivity (particularly from radionuclides ¹³¹I, ¹³⁷Cs and ⁹⁰Sr) in drinking water caused concern during the weeks and months after the accident. Guidelines for levels of radioiodine in drinking water were temporarily raised to 3,700 Bq/L, allowing most water to be reported as safe. Officially it was stated that all contaminants had settled to the bottom "in an insoluble phase" and would not dissolve for 800-1000 years. A year after the accident it was announced that even the water of the Chernobyl plant's cooling pond was within acceptable norms. Despite this, two months after the disaster the Kiev water supply was switched from the Dnieper to the Desna River. Meanwhile, massive silt traps were constructed, along with an enormous 30-metre (98 ft) deep underground barrier to prevent groundwater from the destroyed reactor entering the Pripyat River.

Groundwater was not badly affected by the Chernobyl accident since radionuclides with short half-lives decayed away long before they could affect groundwater supplies, and longer-lived radionuclides such as radiocaesium and radiostrontium were adsorbed to surface soils before they could transfer to groundwater. However, significant transfers of radionuclides to groundwater have occurred from waste disposal sites in the 30 km (19 mi) exclusion zone around Chernobyl. Although there is a potential for transfer of radionuclides from these disposal sites off-site (i.e. out of the 30 km (19 mi) exclusion zone), the IAEA Chernobyl Report argues that this is not significant in comparison to current levels of washout of surface-deposited radioactivity.

Bio-accumulation of radioactivity in fish resulted in concentrations (both in western Europe and in the former Soviet Union) that in many cases were significantly above guideline maximum levels for consumption. Guideline maximum levels for radiocaesium in fish vary from country to country but are approximately 1000 Bq/kg in the European Union. In the Kiev Reservoir in Ukraine, concentrations in fish were in the range of 3000 Bq/kg during the first few years after the accident.

In small "closed" lakes in Belarus and the Bryansk region of Russia, concentrations in a number of fish species varied from 100 to 60,000 Bq/kg during the period 1990-92. The contamination of fish caused short-term concern in parts of the UK and Germany and in the long term (years rather than months) in the affected areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia as well as in parts of Scandinavia.

Chernobyl's radiocaesium deposits were used to calibrate sedimentation samples from Lake Qattinah, Arabic: بحيرة قطينة in Syria. The provides a sharp, maximal, data point in radioactivity of the core sample at the 1986 depth, and acts as a date check on the depth of the in the core sample.

Flora and fauna

After the disaster, four square kilometres (1.5 sq mi) of pine forest directly downwind of the reactor turned reddish-brown and died, earning the name of the " Red Forest". Some animals in the worst-hit areas also died or stopped reproducing. Most domestic animals were removed from the exclusion zone, but horses left on an island in the Pripyat River 6 km (4 mi) from the power plant died when their thyroid glands were destroyed by radiation doses of 150-200 Sv. Some cattle on the same island died and those that survived were stunted because of thyroid damage. The next generation appeared to be normal. The mutation rates for plants and animals have increased by a factor of 20 because of the release of radionuclides from Chernobyl. There is evidence for elevated mortality rates and increased rates of reproductive failure in contaminated areas, consistent with the expected frequency of deaths due to mutations.

On farms in Narodychi Raion of Ukraine it is claimed that from 1986 to 1990 nearly 350 animals were born with gross deformities such as missing or extra limbs, missing eyes, heads or ribs, or deformed skulls; in comparison, only three abnormal births had been registered in the five years prior.

Subsequent research on microorganisms, while limited, suggests that in the aftermath of the disaster, bacterial and viral specimens exposed to the radiation (including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, herpesvirus, cytomegalovirus, hepatitis-causing viruses, and tobacco mosaic virus) underwent rapid changes. Activations of soil micromycetes have been reported. It is currently unclear how these changes in species with rapid reproductive turnover (which were not destroyed by the radiation but instead survived) will manifest in terms of virulence, drug resistance, immune evasion, and so on; a paper in 1998 reported the discovery of an Escherichia coli mutant that was hyper-resistant to a variety of DNA-damaging elements, including x-ray radiation, UV-C, and 4-nitroquinoline 1-oxide (4NQO). Cladosporium sphaerospermum, a species of fungus that has thrived in the Chernobyl contaminated area, has been investigated for the purpose of using the fungus' particular melanin to protect against high-radiation environments, such as space travel.

Human food chain

With radiocaesium binding less with humic acid, peaty soils than the known binding "fixation" that occurs on kaolinite rich clay soils, many marshy areas of Ukraine had the highest soil to dairy-milk transfer coefficients, of soil activity in ~ 200 kBq/m ² to dairy milk activity in Bq/L, that had ever been reported, with the transfer, from initial land activity into milk activity, ranging from 0.3 −2 to 20 −2 times that which was on the soil, a variance depending on the natural acidity-conditioning of the pasture.

In 1987, Soviet medical teams conducted some 16,000 whole-body count examinations on inhabitants in otherwise comparatively lightly contaminated regions with good prospects for recovery. This was to determine the effect of banning local food and using only food imports on the internal body burden of radionuclides in inhabitants. Concurrent agricultural countermeasures were used when cultivation did occur, to further reduce the soil to human transfer as much as possible. The expected highest body activity was in the first few years, where the unabated ingestion of local food, primarily milk consumption, resulted in the transfer of activity from soil to body; after the dissolution of the USSR, the now-reduced scale initiative to monitor the human body activity in these regions of Ukraine, recorded a small and gradual half-decadal-long rise, in internal committed dose, before returning to the previous trend of observing ever lower body counts each year.

This momentary rise is hypothesized to be due to the cessation of the Soviet food imports together with many villagers returning to older dairy food cultivation practices and large increases in wild berry and mushroom foraging, the latter of which have similar peaty soil to fruiting body, radiocaesium transfer coefficients.

Of the 440,350 wild boar killed in the 2010 hunting season in Germany, approximately one thousand were contaminated with levels of radiation above the permitted limit of 600 becquerels of caesium per kilogram, of dry weight, due to residual radioactivity from Chernobyl. While all animal meat contains a natural level of potassium-40 at a similar level of activity, with both wild and farm animals in Italy containing "415 ± 56 becquerels kg−1 dw" of that naturally occurring gamma emitter.

The caesium contamination issue has historically reached some uniquely isolated and high levels approaching 20,000 Becquerels of caesium per kilogram in some specific tests; however, it has not been observed in the wild boar population of Fukushima after the 2011 accident. Evidence exists to suggest that the wild German and Ukrainian boar population are in a unique location were they have subsisted on a diet high in plant or fungi sources that biomagnifies or concentrates radiocaesium, with the most well known food source the consumption of the outer shell or wall of the "deer-truffle" elaphomyces which, along with magnifying radiocaesium, also magnifies or concentrates natural soil concentrations of arsenic.

In 2015, long-term empirical data showed no evidence of a negative influence of radiation on mammal abundance.

Precipitation on distant high ground

On high ground, such as mountain ranges, there is increased precipitation due to adiabatic cooling. This resulted in localized concentrations of contaminants on distant areas; higher in Bq/m ² values to many lowland areas much closer to the source of the plume. This effect occurred on high ground in Norway and the UK.

The Norwegian Agricultural Authority reported that in 2009 a total of 18,000 livestock in Norway required uncontaminated feed for a period before slaughter, to ensure that their meat had an activity below the government permitted value of caesium per kilogram deemed suitable for human consumption. This contamination was due to residual radioactivity from Chernobyl in the mountain plants they graze on in the wild during the summer. 1,914 sheep required uncontaminated feed for a time before slaughter during 2012, with these sheep located in only 18 of Norway's municipalities, a decrease from the 35 municipalities in 2011 and the 117 municipalities affected during 1986. The after-effects of Chernobyl on the mountain lamb industry in Norway were expected to be seen for a further 100 years, although the severity of the effects would decline over that period. Scientists report this is due to radioactive caesium-137 isotopes being taken up by fungi such as Cortinarius caperatus which is in turn eaten by sheep while grazing.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom restricted the movement of sheep from upland areas when radioactive caesium-137 fell across parts of Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and northern England. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster in 1986, the movement of a total of 4,225,000 sheep was restricted across a total of 9,700 farms, to prevent contaminated meat entering the human food chain. The number of sheep and the number of farms affected has decreased since 1986. Northern Ireland was released from all restrictions in 2000, and by 2009, 369 farms containing around 190,000 sheep remained under the restrictions in Wales, Cumbria, and northern Scotland. The restrictions applying in Scotland were lifted in 2010, while those applying to Wales and Cumbria were lifted during 2012, meaning no farms in the UK remain restricted because of Chernobyl fallout.

The legislation used to control sheep movement and compensate farmers (farmers were latterly compensated per animal to cover additional costs in holding animals prior to radiation monitoring) was revoked during October and November 2012, by the relevant authorities in the UK. Had restrictions in the UK not occurred, a heavy consumer of lamb meat would likely have received a dose of 4.1 mSv over a lifetime.

Human impact

Acute radiation effects and immediate aftermath

The only known, causal deaths from the accident involved workers in the plant and firefighters. The reactor explosion killed two engineers and severely burned two others who were among the 237 workers hospitalized in the immediate aftermath. Of the hospitalized workers, 134 exhibited symptoms of acute radiation syndrome (including one disputed case). 28 of the hospitalized workers died within the following three months, all of whom were hospitalized for ARS and 26 were among the 56 patients hospitalized for burns. Among the fatalities in the acute phase (approximately three months), all but one patient (with grade 2 ARS) were hospitalized for grade 3 or 4 ARS. Seven out of 22 patients with grade 3 ARS survived. Only one patient out of 21 with grade 4 ARS survived.

There were a number of fishermen on the reservoir a half-kilometer from the reactor to the east. Of these, two shore fishermen, Protosov and Pustavoit, are said to have sustained doses estimated at 400 roentgens and vomited, but survived. The vast majority of Pripyat residents slept through the distant sound of the explosion, including station engineer Breus, who only became aware at 6am, the beginning of his next work shift. He would later be taken to hospital and, while there, made the acquaintance of one teen who had ventured out alone by bicycle to watch the roof fires during the night, stopping for a time and viewing the scene at the "Bridge of Death" , however contrary to this sensationalist label, the youthful night biker was treated and released from hospital, remaining in touch with Breus as of 2019.

Most serious cases of ARS were treated with the assistance of American specialist Dr. Robert Peter Gale, who documented a first of its kind treatment and supervised a number of bone marrow transplant procedures which were not successful. In 2019, Gale would write a letter to correct the popularised, though egregious, portrayal of his patients as dangerous to visitors. All those who died were station operators and firefighters, over half of which from the continued wearing of dusty soaked uniforms, causing beta burns to cover large areas of skin. In the first few minutes to days, (largely due to Np-239, a 2.4-day half-life) the beta-to-gamma energy ratio is some 30:1. Owing to the large area of burned skin and sensitivity of the GI tract, bacterial infection was and remains the overarching concern to those affected with ARS, as a leading cause of death, quarantine from the outside environment is a part of the normal treatment protocol. Many of the surviving firefighters, continue to have skin that is atrophied, spider veined with underlying fibrosis due to experiencing extensive beta burns.

Long-term impact

In the 10 years following the accident, 14 more people who had been initially hospitalized (9 who had been hospitalized with ARS) died of various causes mostly unrelated to radiation exposure. Only two of these deaths were the result of myelodysplastic syndrome. Scientific consensus, in the form of the Chernobyl Forum, suggests that, although unexpected, there has no statistically significant increase in the incidence rate of solid cancers among rescue workers. Follow-up studies have also found this to be the case, with apparent increases in thyroid cancer simply attributed to more meticulous cancer screening for rescue workers. Childhood thyroid cancer, however, is an exception, with approximately 4000 new incidents in the general population by 2002 within contaminated regions of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, most of which are attributed to high environmental levels of radioactive iodine shortly after the accident. The recovery rate is ~99%, with only 15 terminal cases (9 deaths) at the time of the report. There has also been no increase in mutation rate among the children of the liquidators or general population living in the contaminated areas.

From this same report is also a commonly cited estimate for potential future cancer fatalities in the form of an increase in cancer mortality (i.e. lethality) which speculated that, at worst, ~4000 additional cancer-related fatalities were to be expected. Although it is reasonable and forward-thinking to assume that an increase in mortality has occurred among the affected population, studies have yet to confirm such an increase with meaningful statistical certainty.

Psychosomatic illness and post-traumatic stress, resulting from widespread fear of radiological disease, is a much greater issue impacting many more people with lethal health effects, especially as it receives relatively little attention from the general public. People who believe they or others have been impacted by radiological illness, erroneous or otherwise, exhibit greater issues with feelings of no control or fatalistic/pessimistic outlooks, leading to harmful behaviors, such as a lack of initiative to treat diseases. Such fears are further strengthened by poor public understanding of the effects of radiation. Whether the area was publicly announced as a contaminated area is a better predictor of general health than the contamination itself. "Resettlement status" is an even stronger predictor: the residents of contaminated regions who were evacuated and resettled into uncontaminated regions can be compared with the residents who remained in the contaminated regions. Resettled citizens erroneously believed they had an illness related to radiation exposure more often than citizens who remained in the contaminated regions; this brings into question the effectiveness of resettlement. Such psychological distresses can also significantly increase cancer mortality rates (possibly as much as 97%, nearly double), resulting in as many as ~100,000 additional cancer mortalities among the liquidators. From this accident, the fear of radiological illness has been more of a detriment (and potentially more lethal) on the lives of affected people than the illnesses themselves and, unlike radioactive contaminants, shows no signs of diminishing in the near future.

By 2000, the number of Ukrainians claiming to be radiation 'sufferers' ( poterpili) and receiving state benefits had jumped to 3.5 million, or 5% of the population. Many of these are populations resettled from contaminated zones or former or current Chernobyl plant workers. There was and remains a motivated 'push' to achieve 'sufferer' status as it gives access to state benefits and medical services that would otherwise not be made available. The apparent increases of ill health in this large group result partly from increased medical vigilance following the accident; many benign cases that would previously have gone unnoticed and untreated (especially of cancer) are now being registered.

In September 1987, the I.A.E.A. held an Advisory Group Meeting at the Curie Institute in Paris on the medical handling of the skin lesions relating to the acute deaths.

Effects of main harmful radionuclides

The four most harmful radionuclides spread from Chernobyl were iodine-131, caesium-134, caesium-137 and strontium-90, with half-lives of 8.02 days, 2.07 years, 30.2 years and 28.8 years respectively. The iodine was initially viewed with less alarm than the other isotopes, because of its short half-life, but it is highly volatile and now appears to have travelled furthest and caused the most severe health problems. Strontium, on the other hand, is the least volatile of the four and is of main concern in the areas near Chernobyl itself. Iodine tends to become concentrated in thyroid and milk glands, leading, among other things, to increased incidence of thyroid cancers. The total ingested dose was largely from iodine and, unlike the other fission products, rapidly found its way from dairy farms to human ingestion. Similarly in dose reconstruction, for those evacuated at different times and from various towns, the inhalation dose was dominated by iodine (40%), along with airborne tellurium (20%) and oxides of rubidium (20%) both as equally secondary, appreciable contributors.

Long term hazards such as caesium tends to accumulate in vital organs such as the heart, while strontium accumulates in bones and may thus be a risk to bone-marrow and lymphocytes. Radiation is most damaging to cells that are actively dividing. In adult mammals cell division is slow, except in hair follicles, skin, bone marrow and the gastrointestinal tract, which is why vomiting and hair loss are common symptoms of acute radiation sickness.

Disputed investigation

The two primary individuals involved with the attempt to suggest that the mutation rate among animals was, and continues to be, higher in the Chernobyl zone, are the Anders Moller and Timothy Mousseau group. Apart from continuing to publish experimentally unrepeatable and discredited papers, Mousseau routinely gives talks at the Helen Caldicott organized symposiums for " Physicians for Social Responsibility", an anti-nuclear advocacy group devoted to bring about a "nuclear free planet". Moreover, in years past, Moller was previously caught and reprimanded for publishing papers that crossed the scientific "misconduct"/"fraud" line. The duo have more recently attempted to publish meta-analyses, in which the primary references they weigh-up, analyze and draw their conclusions from is their own prior papers along with the discredited book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment.

Withdrawn investigation

In 1996, geneticist colleagues Ronald Chesser and Robert Baker published a paper on the thriving vole population within the exclusion zone, in which the central conclusion of their work was essentially that "The mutation rate in these animals is hundreds and probably thousands of times greater than normal". This claim occurred after they had done a comparison of the mitochondrial DNA of the "Chernobyl voles" with that of a control group of voles from outside the region. The paper appeared on the front cover of the journal Nature. However, not long after publication, the authors discovered they had incorrectly classified the species of vole and therefore were genetically comparing two entirely different vole species. They issued a retraction in 1997.

Following the accident, journalists mistrusted many medical professionals (such as the spokesman from the UK National Radiological Protection Board), and in turn encouraged the public to mistrust them. Throughout the European continent, due to this media-driven framing of the contamination, many requests for induced abortions of otherwise normal pregnancies were obtained out of fears of radiation from Chernobyl.

Worldwide, an estimated excess of about 150,000 elective abortions may have been performed on otherwise healthy pregnancies out of fears of radiation from Chernobyl, according to Robert Baker and ultimately a 1987 article published by Linda E. Ketchum in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine which mentions but does not reference an IAEA source on the matter.

The available statistical data excludes the Soviet-Ukraine-Belarus abortion rates, as they are presently unavailable. From the available data, an increase in the number of abortions in what were healthy developing human offspring in Denmark occurred in the months following the accident, at a rate of about 400 cases. In Italy, a "slightly" above the expected number of induced abortions occurred, approximately 100. In Greece, following the accident, many obstetricians were unable to resist requests from worried pregnant mothers over fears of radiation. Although it was determined that the effective dose to Greeks would not exceed one mSv (100 mrem), a dose much lower than that which it was determined would induce embryonic abnormalities or other non- stochastic effects, there was an observed 2,500 increase of otherwise wanted pregnancies being terminated.

No evidence of changes in the prevalence of human deformities/birth congenital anomalies that might be associated with the accident are apparent in Belarus or Ukraine, the two republics that had the highest exposure to fallout. In Sweden and in Finland where no increase in abortion rates occurred, it was likewise determined that "no association between the temporal and spatial variations in radioactivity and variable incidence of congenital malformations [was found]." A similar null increase in the abortion rate and a healthy baseline situation of no increase in birth defects was determined by assessing the Hungarian Congenital Abnormality Registry. Findings were also mirrored in Austria. Larger "mainly western European" data sets, approaching a million births in the EUROCAT database, divided into "exposed" and control groups were assessed in 1999. As no Chernobyl impacts were detected, the researchers conclude "in retrospect, the widespread fear in the population about the possible effects of exposure on the unborn fetus was not justified". Despite studies from Germany and Turkey, the only robust evidence of negative pregnancy outcomes that transpired after the accident were these elective abortion indirect effects, in Greece, Denmark, Italy etc., due to the anxieties that were created.

In very high doses, it was known at the time that radiation could cause a physiological increase in the rate of pregnancy anomalies, but unlike the dominant linear no-threshold model of radiation and cancer rate increases, it was known, by researchers familiar with both the prior human exposure data and animal testing, that the "Malformation of organs appears to be a deterministic effect with a threshold dose" below which, no rate increase is observed. This teratology (birth defects) issue was discussed by Frank Castronovo of the Harvard Medical School in 1999, publishing a detailed review of dose reconstructions and the available pregnancy data following the Chernobyl accident, inclusive of data from Kiev's two largest obstetrics hospitals. Castronovo concludes that "the lay press with newspaper reporters playing up anecdotal stories of children with birth defects" is, together with dubious studies that show selection bias, the two primary factors causing the persistent belief that Chernobyl increased the background rate of birth defects. When the vast amount of pregnancy data does not support this perception as no women took part in the most radioactive liquidator operations, no in-utero individuals would have been expected to have received a threshold dose.

The Chernobyl liquidators, essentially an all-male civil defense emergency workforce, would go on to father normal children, without an increase in developmental anomalies or a statistically significant increase in the frequencies of germline mutations in their progeny. This normality is similarly seen in the children of the survivors of the Goiânia accident.

A 2021 study based on whole-genome sequencing of children of parents employed as liquidators indicated no trans-generational genetic effects of exposure of parents to ionizing radiation.

Cancer assessments

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency examines the environmental consequences of the accident. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation has estimated a global collective dose of radiation exposure from the accident "equivalent on average to 21 additional days of world exposure to natural background radiation"; individual doses were far higher than the global mean among those most exposed, including 530,000 primarily male recovery workers (the Chernobyl liquidators) who averaged an effective dose equivalent to an extra 50 years of typical natural background radiation exposure each.

Estimates of the number of deaths that will eventually result from the accident vary enormously; disparities reflect both the lack of solid scientific data and the different methodologies used to quantify mortality-whether the discussion is confined to specific geographical areas or extends worldwide, and whether the deaths are immediate, short term, or long term. In 1994, thirty-one deaths were directly attributed to the accident, all among the reactor staff and emergency workers.

In a peer-reviewed paper in the International Journal of Cancer in 2006, the authors expanded the discussion on those exposed to all of Europe (but following a different conclusion methodology to the Chernobyl Forum study, which arrived at the total predicted death toll of 4,000 after cancer survival rates were factored in) they stated, without entering into a discussion on deaths, that in terms of total excess cancers attributed to the accident:

The risk projections suggest that by now [2006] Chernobyl may have caused about 1000 cases of thyroid cancer and 4000 cases of other cancers in Europe, representing about 0.01% of all incident cancers since the accident. Models predict that by 2065 about 16,000 cases of thyroid cancer and 25,000 cases of other cancers may be expected due to radiation from the accident, whereas several hundred million cancer cases are expected from other causes.

Two anti-nuclear advocacy groups have publicized non-peer-reviewed estimates that include mortality estimates for those who were exposed to even smaller amounts of radiation. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) calculated that, among the hundreds of millions of people exposed worldwide, there will be an eventual 50,000 excess cancer cases, resulting in 25,000 excess cancer deaths, excluding thyroid cancer. However, these calculations are based on a simple linear no-threshold model multiplication and the misapplication of the collective dose, which the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) states "should not be done" as using the collective dose is "inappropriate to use in risk projections".

Yet the death rate from thyroid cancer has remained the same as prior to the technology. For these and other reasons, it is suggested that no reliable increase has been detected in the environs of Chernobyl, that cannot otherwise be explained as an artifact of the globally well documented Screening effect. In 2004, the UN collaborative, Chernobyl Forum, revealed thyroid cancer among children to be one of the main health impacts from the Chernobyl accident. This is due to the ingestion of contaminated dairy products, along with the inhalation of the short-lived, highly radioactive isotope, Iodine-131. In that publication, more than 4,000 cases of childhood thyroid cancer were reported. It is important to note that there was no evidence of an increase in solid cancers or leukemia. It said that there was an increase in psychological problems among the affected population. The WHO's Radiation Program reported that the 4,000 cases of thyroid cancer resulted in nine deaths.

According to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, up to the year 2005, an excess of more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer had been reported. That is, over the estimated pre-accident baseline thyroid cancer rate, more than 6,000 casual cases of thyroid cancer have been reported in children and adolescents exposed at the time of the accident, a number that is expected to increase. They concluded that there is no other evidence of major health impacts from the radiation exposure.

Well-differentiated thyroid cancers are generally treatable, and when treated the five-year survival rate of thyroid cancer is 96%, and 92% after 30 years. the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation had reported 15 deaths from thyroid cancer in 2011. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also states that there has been no increase in the rate of birth defects or abnormalities, or solid cancers-such as lung cancer-corroborating the assessments by the UN committee. UNSCEAR raised the possibility of long term genetic defects, pointing to a doubling of radiation-induced minisatellite mutations among children born in 1994. However, the risk of thyroid cancer associated with the Chernobyl accident is still high according to published studies.

The German affiliate of the anti-nuclear energy organization, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War suggest that 10,000 people are affected by thyroid cancer as of 2006, and that 50,000 cases are expected in the future.

Other disorders

The report went into depth about the risks to mental health of exaggerated fears about the effects of radiation. According to the IAEA the "designation of the affected population as "victims" rather than "survivors" has led them to perceive themselves as helpless, weak and lacking control over their future". The IAEA says that this may have led to behaviour that has caused further health effects.

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), part of the Chernobyl Forum, have produced their own assessments of the radiation effects. UNSCEAR was set up as a collaboration between various United Nation bodies, including the World Health Organization, after the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to assess the long-term effects of radiation on human health.

Long-term radiation deaths

The number of potential deaths arising from the Chernobyl disaster is heavily debated. The World Health Organization's prediction of 4,000 future cancer deaths in surrounding countries is based on the Linear no-threshold model (LNT), which assumes that the damage inflicted by radiation at low doses is directly proportional to the dose. Radiation epidemiologist Roy Shore contends that estimating health effects in a population from the LNT model "is not wise because of the uncertainties".

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists the number of excess cancer deaths worldwide (including all contaminated areas) is approximately 27,000 based on the same LNT.

Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment is a 2007 Russian publication that concludes that there were 985,000 premature deaths as a consequence of the radioactivity released. The results were criticized by M. I. Balonov from the Institute of Radiation Hygiene in St. Petersburg, who described them as biased, drawing from sources that were difficult to independently verify and lacking a proper scientific base. Balanov expressed his opinion that "the authors unfortunately did not appropriately analyze the content of the Russian-language publications, for example, to separate them into those that contain scientific evidence and those based on hasty impressions and ignorant conclusions".

According to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member and Professor of Health Physics Kenneth Mossman, the "LNT philosophy is overly conservative, and low-level radiation may be less dangerous than commonly believed." Yoshihisa Matsumoto, a radiation biologist at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, cites laboratory experiments on animals to suggest there must be a threshold dose below which DNA repair mechanisms can completely repair any radiation damage. Mossman suggests that the proponents of the current model believe that being conservative is justified due to the uncertainties surrounding low level doses and it is better to have a "prudent public health policy".

Another significant issue is establishing consistent data on which to base the analysis of the impact of the Chernobyl accident. Since 1991, large social and political changes have occurred within the affected regions and these changes have had significant impact on the administration of health care, on socio-economic stability, and the manner in which statistical data is collected. Ronald Chesser, a radiation biologist at Texas Tech University, says that "the subsequent Soviet collapse, scarce funding, imprecise dosimetry, and difficulties tracking people over the years have limited the number of studies and their reliability".

Socio-economic impact

It is difficult to establish the total economic cost of the disaster. According to Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union spent 18 billion Rbls (the equivalent of US$2.5 billion at that time, or $5.32 billion in today's dollars) on containment and decontamination, virtually bankrupting itself. In 2005, the total cost over 30 years for Belarus which includes the monthly payments to liquidators, was estimated at US$235 billion; about $318 billion in today's dollars given inflation rates. Gorbachev in April 2006 wrote "The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl 20 years ago this month, even more than my launch of perestroika, was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union."

Ongoing costs are well known; in their 2003-2005 report, The Chernobyl Forum stated that between five and seven percent of government spending in Ukraine is still related to Chernobyl, while in Belarus more than $13 billion is thought to have been spent between 1991 and 2003, with 22% of national budget having been Chernobyl-related in 1991, falling to six percent by 2002. In 2018, Ukraine spent five to seven percent of its national budget on recovery activities related to the Chernobyl disaster. Overall economic loss is estimated at $235 billion in Belarus. Much of the current cost relates to the payment of Chernobyl-related social benefits to some seven million people across the three countries.

A significant economic impact at the time was the removal of 784,320 ha (1,938,100 acres) of agricultural land and 694,200 ha (1,715,000 acres) of forest from production. While much of this has been returned to use, agricultural production costs have risen due to the need for special cultivation techniques, fertilizers and additives. Politically, the accident gave great significance to the new Soviet policy of glasnost, and helped forge closer Soviet-US relations at the end of the Cold War, through bioscientific cooperation. The disaster also became a key factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and a major influence in shaping the new Eastern Europe.

Ukrainians viewed the Chernobyl disaster as another attempt by Russians to destroy them, comparable to the Holodomor. Meanwhile, commentators have argued that the events of the Chernobyl disaster were uniquely inclined to occur in a communist country versus a capitalist country. It has been argued that Soviet power plant administrators were not empowered to make crucial decisions when time was of the essence.

Long term site remediation

Following the accident, questions arose about the future of the plant and its eventual fate. All work on the unfinished reactors No. 5 and No. 6 was halted three years later. However, the trouble at the Chernobyl plant did not end with the disaster in reactor No. 4. The damaged reactor was sealed off and 200 cubic meters (260 cu yd) of concrete was placed between the disaster site and the operational buildings. The work was managed by Grigoriy Mihaylovich Naginskiy, the deputy chief engineer of Installation and Construction Directorate - 90. The Ukrainian government allowed the three remaining reactors to continue operating because of an energy shortage in the country.

Decommissioning of other reactors

In October 1991, a fire broke out in the turbine building of reactor No. 2; the authorities subsequently declared the reactor damaged beyond repair, and it was taken offline. Reactor No. 1 was decommissioned in November 1996 as part of a deal between the Ukrainian government and international organizations such as the IAEA to end operations at the plant. On 15 December 2000, then-President Leonid Kuchma personally turned off reactor No. 3 in an official ceremony, shutting down the entire site.

No. 4 reactor confinement

Soon after the accident, the reactor building was quickly encased by a mammoth concrete sarcophagus in a notable feat of construction under severe conditions. Crane operators worked blindly from inside lead-lined cabins taking instructions from distant radio observers, while gargantuan-sized pieces of concrete were moved to the site on custom-made vehicles. The purpose of the sarcophagus was to stop any further release of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, isolate the exposed core from the weather and provide safety for the continued operations of adjacent reactors one through three.

The concrete sarcophagus was never intended to last very long, with a lifespan of only 30 years. On 12 February 2013, a 600 m ² (6,500 sq ft) section of the roof of the turbine-building collapsed, adjacent to the sarcophagus, causing a new release of radioactivity and temporary evacuation of the area. At first it was assumed that the roof collapsed because of the weight of snow, however the amount of snow was not exceptional, and the report of a Ukrainian fact-finding panel concluded that the collapse was the result of sloppy repair work and aging of the structure. Experts warned the sarcophagus itself was on the verge of collapse.

In 1997, the international Chernobyl Shelter Fund was founded to design and build a more permanent cover for the unstable and short-lived sarcophagus. It received €864 million from international donors in 2011 and was managed by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The new shelter was named the New Safe Confinement and construction began in 2010. It is a metal arch 105 metres (344 ft) high and spanning 257 metres (843 ft) built on rails adjacent to the reactor No. 4 building so that it could be slid over the top of the existing sarcophagus. The New Safe Confinement was completed in 2016 and slid into place over top the sarcophagus on 29 November. The huge steel arch was moved into place over several weeks. Unlike the original sarcophagus, the New Safe Confinement is designed to allow the reactor to be safely dismantled using remotely operated equipment.

Waste management

Used fuel from units 1-3 was stored in the units' cooling ponds, and in an interim spent fuel storage facility pond, ISF-1, which now holds most of the spent fuel from units 1-3, allowing those reactors to be decommissioned under less restrictive conditions. Approximately 50 of the fuel assemblies from units 1 and 2 were damaged and required special handling. Moving fuel to ISF-1 was thus carried out in three stages: fuel from unit 3 was moved first, then all undamaged fuel from units 1 and 2, and finally the damaged fuel from units 1 and 2. Fuel transfers to ISF-1 were completed in June 2016.

A need for larger, longer-term radioactive waste management at the Chernobyl site is to be fulfilled by a new facility designated ISF-2. This facility is to serve as dry storage for used fuel assemblies from units 1-3 and other operational wastes, as well as material from decommissioning units 1-3 (which will be the first RBMK units decommissioned anywhere).

Fuel-containing materials

According to official estimates, about 95% of the fuel in reactor No. 4 at the time of the accident (about 180 tonnes (180 long tons; 200 short tons)) remains inside the shelter, with a total radioactivity of nearly 18 million curies (670 PBq). The radioactive material consists of core fragments, dust, and lava-like "fuel containing materials" (FCM)-also called " corium"-that flowed through the wrecked reactor building before hardening into a ceramic form.

It has been reported that the degradation of the lava is likely to be a slow, gradual process, rather than sudden and rapid. The same paper states that the loss of uranium from the wrecked reactor is only 10 kg (22 lb) per year; this low rate of uranium leaching suggests that the lava is resisting its environment. The paper also states that when the shelter is improved, the leaching rate of the lava will decrease. As of 2021, some fuel had already degraded significantly. The famous elephant's foot, which originally was so hard that it required the use of an armor piercing AK-47 round to remove a chunk, had softened to a texture similar to sand.

Exclusion zone

Some sources have estimated when the site could be considered habitable again:

In the years following the disaster, residents known as illegally returned to their abandoned homes to regain their lives. Most people are retired and survive mainly from farming and packages delivered by visitors. As of 2016, 187 locals had returned to the zone and were living permanently there.

In 2011, Ukraine opened up the sealed zone around the Chernobyl reactor to tourists wishing to learn more about the 1986 tragedy. Sergii Mirnyi, a radiation reconnaissance officer at the time of the accident, and now an academic at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, has written about the psychological and physical effects on survivors and visitors, and worked as an advisor to Chernobyl tourism groups.

Forest fire concerns

During the dry season, forest fires are a perennial concern in areas contaminated by radioactive material. Dry conditions and build-up of debris make the forests a ripe breeding ground for wildfires. Depending on prevailing atmospheric conditions, smoke from wildfires could potentially spread more radioactive material outside the exclusion zone. In Belarus, the Bellesrad organization is tasked with overseeing food cultivation and forestry management in the area.

Recovery projects

The Chernobyl Trust Fund was created in 1991 by the United Nations to help victims of the Chernobyl accident. It is administered by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which also manages strategy formulation, resource mobilization, and advocacy efforts. Beginning in 2002, under the United Nations Development Programme, the fund shifted its focus from emergency assistance to long-term development.

The Chernobyl Shelter Fund was established in 1997 at the G8 summit in Denver to finance the Shelter Implementation Plan (SIP). The plan called for transforming the site into an ecologically safe condition through stabilization of the sarcophagus and construction of a New Safe Confinement (NSC) structure. While the original cost estimate for the SIP was US$768 million, the 2006 estimate was $1.2 billion. The SIP is being managed by a consortium of Bechtel, Battelle, and , and conceptual design for the NSC consisted of a movable arch, constructed away from the shelter to avoid high radiation, then slid over the sarcophagus. The NSC was moved into position in November 2016 and was expected to be completed by late 2017.

In 2003, the United Nations Development Programme launched the Chernobyl Recovery and Development Programme (CRDP) for the recovery of affected areas. The programme was initiated in February 2002 based on the recommendations in the report on Human Consequences of the Chernobyl Nuclear Accident. The main goal of the CRDP was supporting the Government of Ukraine in mitigating long-term social, economic, and ecological consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe. CRDP works in the four most affected Ukrainian areas: Kyivska, Zhytomyrska, Chernihivska and Rivnenska.

The International Project on the Health Effects of the Chernobyl Accident was created and received US$20 million, mainly from Japan, in hopes of discovering the main cause of health problems due to iodine-131 radiation. These funds were divided among Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, the three main affected countries, for further investigation of health effects. As there was significant corruption in former Soviet countries, most of the foreign aid was given to Russia, and no results from the funding were demonstrated.

In 2019, it became known that the Ukrainian government in power at the time aimed to make Chernobyl a tourist attraction.

Nuclear debate

The Chernobyl accident attracted a great deal of interest. Because of the distrust that many people had in the Soviet authorities, which engaged in a major cover-up of the disaster, a great deal of debate about the situation at the site occurred in the First World during the early days of the event. Because of defective intelligence based on satellite imagery, it was thought that unit number three had also had a dire accident. Journalists mistrusted many professionals, and they in turn encouraged the public to mistrust them. The accident raised already heightened concerns about fission reactors worldwide, and while most concern was focused on those of the same unusual design, hundreds of disparate nuclear reactor proposals, including those under construction at Chernobyl, reactors numbers 5 and 6, were eventually cancelled. With ballooning costs as a result of new nuclear reactor safety system standards and the legal and political costs in dealing with the increasingly hostile/anxious public opinion, there was a precipitous drop in the rate of new reactor construction after 1986.

The accident also raised concerns about the cavalier safety culture in the Soviet nuclear power industry, slowing industry growth and forcing the Soviet government to become less secretive about its operating procedures. The government coverup of the Chernobyl disaster was a catalyst for glasnost, which "paved the way for reforms leading to the Soviet collapse." Numerous structural and construction quality issues, as well as deviations from the original plant design, had been known to KGB since at least 1973 and passed on to the Central Committee, which took no action and classified the information.

In Italy, the Chernobyl accident was reflected in the outcome of the 1987 referendum. As a result of that referendum, Italy began phasing out its nuclear power plants in 1988, a decision that was effectively reversed in 2008. A 2011 referendum reiterated Italians' strong objections to nuclear power, thus abrogating the government's 2008 decision.

In Germany, the Chernobyl accident led to the creation of a federal environment ministry, after several states had already created such a post. The post has been held, among others, by Angela Merkel who would later become leader of the opposition and then chancellor. The German environmental minister was given the authority over reactor safety as well, a responsibility the current minister still holds today. The Chernobyl disaster is also credited with strengthening the anti-nuclear movement in Germany, which culminated in the decision to end the use of nuclear power made by the 1998-2005 Schröder government. A temporary reversal of this policy was in turn reverted after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

In direct response to the Chernobyl disaster, a conference to create a Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident was called in 1986 by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The resulting treaty has bound signatory member states to provide notification of any nuclear and radiation accidents that occur within its jurisdiction that could affect other states, along with the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency.

The Chernobyl disaster, along with the space shuttle Challenger disaster, the Three Mile Island accident, and the Bhopal disaster have been used together as case studies, both by the US government and by third parties, in research concerning the root causes of such disasters, such as sleep deprivation and mismanagement.

Cultural impact

The Chernobyl tragedy has inspired many artists across the world to create works of art, animation, video games, theatre and cinema about the disaster. The HBO series and the book by the Ukrainian writer Svetlana Alexievich Voices from Chernobyl, are two well-known works that talk about the catastrophe that destroyed millions of lives. The Ukrainian artist Roman Gumanyuk created a series of artworks called "Pripyat Lights, or Chernobyl shadows" that includes 30 oil paintings about the Chernobyl accident. The series of artwork was exhibited at the National Fine Art Museum of Kyrgyzstan in Bishkek, the Kasteev State Museum of Arts of Kazakhstan in Almaty, the Vashchenko Art Gallery of Gomel in Belarus, and at the Museum of Chernobyl in Kharkiv in Ukraine in the years 2012-2013. The video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl released by THQ in 2007, is a first-person shooter set in the Exclusion Zone. A prequel called S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky was released in 2008 following with a sequel S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat released in 2010. Finally, the horror film Chernobyl Diaries released in 2012 is about six tourists that hire a tour guide to take them to the abandoned city of Pripyat where they discover they are not alone.

Filmmakers have created documentaries that examine the aftermath of the disaster over the years. Documentaries like the Oscar-winning Chernobyl Heart released in 2003, explore how radiation affected people living in the area and information about the long-term side effects of radiation exposure over the years that include mental disabilities, physical disabilities, and genetic mutations after the disaster. The Babushkas of Chernobyl released in 2015, is a documentary that explores the story of the three women who decided to return to the exclusion zone after the disaster. In the documentary, the Babushkas show the polluted water, their food from radioactive gardens, and explain how they manage to survive in this exclusion zone despite the radioactive levels of it. Lastly, the documentary The Battle of Chernobyl, released in 2006, shows a rare original footage a day before the disaster in the city of Pripyat, then through different methods the documentary goes in depth on the chronological events that led to the explosion of the reactor No. 4 and the disaster response in which 50,000 men from Soviet Union engaged to liquidate the radioactivity of the damaged reactor.

In July 2019, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that the Chernobyl site would become an official tourist attraction. Zelenskyy said, "We must give this territory of Ukraine a new life," after Chernobyl saw an increase in visitors since the HBO mini-series. Dr. T. Steen, a microbiology and immunology teacher at Georgetown's School of Medicine, recommends tourists to wear clothes and shoes they are comfortable with throwing away. Most importantly, Steen suggests to avoid plant life, especially the depths of the forest due to the high levels of radiation. Because the areas were not cleaned in the aftermath of the disaster, they remain highly contaminated. Research showed that fungus, moss, and mushrooms are radioactive. Drinking or eating from there could be dangerous. Generally speaking, Chernobyl can be a safe place, Dr. Steen said "but it depends on how people behave."

References

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The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the No. 4 reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of the Ukrainian SSR in the Soviet Union.

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27. Who knows what secrets the Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane holds

Location: Willard, New York

Building/Facility Type: Abandoned asylum

Last recorded use: Circa 1995

Abandoned place description: The Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane, as the name suggests, is also another of the world's creepiest abandoned places. A listed building on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, it first opened its doors in about 1869.

"After Geraldo Rivera's 1972 expose of the deplorable conditions at Willowbrook Asylum, numbers in large institutions declined sharply. Willard Asylum discharged its final patient in 1995 and shuttered its doors for good." - Atlas Obscura.

Today, some facilities buildings are still used for training and dormitories by the Department of Correctional Facilities. They also maintain most of the former asylum grounds, but many have been left to rot.

28. The Mirny Diamond Mine is rumored to suck in helicopters

Location: Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, now Eastern Siberia

Building/Facility Type: Abandoned opencast mine

Last recorded use: Circa 2001

Abandoned place description: The massive opencast diamond mine in Mirny, Russia is another mysterious and abandoned place. One of the largest man-made excavated holes in the world. This former-kimberlite diamond mine was one of the richest deposits in the world.

It is over 525 meters deep (making it the 4th deepest in the world) and has a diameter of around 1,200 meters. Mining operations began in about 1957 and ceased in 2001.

Since 2009, the underground extraction of the diamond deposits has recommenced. Some believe helicopters can be sucked into it, but there is no evidence for this myth.

And that is your lot for today.

Exploring abandoned and creepy locations worldwide can be a hauntingly memorable experience. As we've seen, the world is full of places shrouded in mystery, intrigue, and even fear. Whether you're a brave adventurer seeking out thrills or just enjoying learning about the darker side of history, there's no denying the allure of these eerie destinations.

So, next time you're looking for a spooky adventure, consider adding one of these creepy locations to your travel bucket list.

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28 of the most creepy abandoned places and their stories

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Location: Willard, New York Building/Facility Type: Abandoned asylum Last recorded use: Circa 1995 Abandoned place description: The Willard Asylum for the Chronic Insane, as the name suggests, is also another of the world's creepiest abandoned places. A listed building on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, it first opened its doors in about 1869.