A decade later, it was still highly dangerous to be around, making Artur Korneyev's Elephant Foot selfie one of the world's most incredible.
At a (relatively) safe distance, the workers (who were usually called “liquidators”) built a crude camera on wheels and pushed it over to the Elephant's Foot. The images revealed that the mass wasn't entirely made of nuclear fuel, but instead only a small percentage.
Artur Korneyev is a dark-humored Kazakhstani nuclear inspector who has been working to educate people about—and protect people from—the Elephant's Foot since it was first created by the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in 1986.
After just 30 seconds of exposure, dizziness and fatigue will find you a week later. Two minutes of exposure and your cells will soon begin to hemorrhage; four minutes: vomiting, diarrhea, and fever. 300 seconds and you have two days to live.
It's made up of nuclear fuel, melted concrete and metal, and was formed during the initial accident. The foot is still active. In '86 the foot would have been fatal after 30 seconds of exposure; even today, the radiation is fatal after 300 seconds.
It is still an extremely radioactive object, though the danger has decreased over time due to the decay of its radioactive components.
Now in his late 60s, Korneyev no longer visits the Elephant's Foot, having been banned after years of irradiation. But the photograph of him standing beside the Corium spewing from the pipe remains one of the most interesting images of the Chernobyl disaster.
Is Chernobyl reactor 4 still burning? Chernobyl reactor 4 is no longer burning. The reactor was originally covered after the disaster, but it resulted in a leak of nuclear waste and needed to be replaced.
Why or how is there a man in the photograph standing right next to the Elephant's Foot? The guy photographed with the radioactive slop is Artur Korneyev (sometimes translated as Korneev), a Kazakhstani nuclear inspector with a dark sense of humor who first came to Chernobyl shortly after the accident.
Radium - The MOST RADIOACTIVE Metal ON EARTH!
Very hard solidified corium, like that of the Elephant's Foot, would have to be broken up to remove it from damaged reactors.
The flow hardened and cooled over time into what is now a sand-like solid. It is no longer 'melting', but parts of it are still apparently hot enough for the uranium atoms to fission more than expected, spewing out neutrons that break more uranium atoms apart.
How long can you stay in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone? There are two exclusion zones in Chernobyl; a 10km inner and 30km outer Exclusion Zone. It is safe to stay in the outer Exclusion Zone overnight.
The three men would live longer than a few weeks and none would succumb to ARS, as modern myth would have you believe. As of 2015, it was reported that two of the men were still alive and still working within the industry. The third man, Boris Baranov, passed away in 2005 of a heart attack.
Although some of the radioactive isotopes released into the atmosphere still linger (such as Strontium-90 and Caesium-137), they are at tolerable exposure levels for limited periods of time.
Eventually, it cooled down and solidified to form the Elephant's Foot. It is estimated to have reached a temperature of over 4,712 degrees Fahrenheit (2,600 Celsius) during the disaster. The Elephant's Foot is a large mass of highly radioactive and molten material known as corium.
Albert Stevens (1887–1966), also known as patient CAL-1 and most radioactive human ever, was a house painter from Ohio who was subjected to an involuntary human radiation experiment and survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human.
How Long Will It Take For Ground Radiation To Break Down? On average, the response to when Chernobyl and, by extension, Pripyat, will be habitable again is about 20,000 years.
Living among radiation-resistant fauna are thousands of feral dogs, many of whom are descendants of pets left behind in the speedy evacuation of the area so many years ago.
Although the lowest leaves can be quite large, the name “elephant's foot” apparently came from tropical members in the same genus, which do have bottom leaves large enough to suggest the feet of elephants.
The sole of the elephant foot is covered by a thick keratinized squamous epithelium, the epidermis, which lies on a massive layer of dense connective tissue forming the dermis.
The Elephant's Foot is so deadly that spending only 30 seconds near it will result in dizziness and fatigue. Two minutes near it and your cells will begin to hemorrhage. By the time you hit the five-minute mark, you're a goner. Even after 30 years, the foot is still melting through the concrete base of the power plant.
"It wouldn't be right to say that it's lethal, but if you lived there, you would get a pretty significant radiation dose that could lead to cancer in later life," said Smith, who predicts it will take around 300 years for radiation levels to return to normal in the Red Forest.