'It's like the embers in a barbecue pit.' Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl | Science
Share Since 2016, the canopylike New Safe Confinement has sealed off and protected the ruined Chernobyl reactor. Pyotr Sivkov/TASS/Getty Images ‘It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit.’ Nuclear reactions are smoldering again at Chernobyl May. 5, 2021 , 11:20 AM Thirty-five years after the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine exploded in the world’s worst nuclear accident, fission reactions are smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside a mangled reactor hall. “It’s like the embers in a barbecue pit,” says Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the...