Tour of the depths of the Chernobyl reactor and sarcophagus

In some of the most disturbing images of the Chernobyl disaster ever captured, this video shows what the current state of the burned out former core looks like. Visible in this video at -3:00 is the infamous "elephant's foot", an immensely radioactive solidified glassy blob of formerly molten fuel rods and structural metal. The radiation level is so incredibly high here that if you look close, you can see fleeting white specks in the video, these are beta particles and gamma rays DIRECTLY exciting the CCD of the digital camera. Visible at -:45 are the actual blocks of graphite moderator and twisted/destroyed fuel rod bundles. The end of the video shows the water sprinklers that periodically turn on inside the sarcophagus in effort to keep radioactve dust levels down, a largely futile effort, as gaping holes in the containment structure allow birds and other small animals to enter and exit freely.

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