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Chernobyl at 40 years: Looking back at Nuclear News
Sunday, April 26, at 1:23 a.m. local time will mark 40 years since the most severe nuclear accident in history: the meltdown of Unit 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union.
In the ensuing four decades, countless books, documentaries, articles, and conference sessions have examined Chernobyl’s history and impact from various angles. There is a similar abundance of outlooks in the archives of Nuclear News, where hundreds of scientists, advocates, critics, and politicians have shared their thoughts on Chernobyl over the years. Today, we will take a look at some highlights from the pages of NN to see how the story of Chernobyl evolved over the decades.
Inesh Kenzhina, Mussa Kabiyev, Artem Kozlovskiy, Meiram Begentayev, Aktolkyn Tolenova, Petr Blynskiy
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 82 | Number 1 | January-February 2026 | Pages 461-470
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2025.2478774
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The main aim of this study is to determine the role of irradiation temperature on the mechanisms of softening of the surface layers of Nd2Zr2O7 ceramics, as well as to identify the effect of stabilizing additives on enhancement of the resistance to high-temperature destabilization of the damaged layer. Analysis of the effect of variations in irradiation temperature on the change in the strength properties of Nd2Zr2O7 ceramics and identification of the effect of addition of stabilizing MgO and Y2O3 additives on inhibition of the mechanisms of diffusion expansion of the damaged layer depth revealed that in the case of high-temperature irradiation, the effect of diffusion softening is more pronounced for unstabilized ceramics, while the formation of impurity inclusions in the composition inhibits the mechanisms of diffusion of point and vacancy defects. One of the key parameters for using the addition of stabilizing additives to ceramics is to contain the mechanisms of structural disorder associated with thermodynamic phase transitions of the “pyrochlore → highly defective fluorite” type, the formation of which leads to softening and degradation of the damaged layer. During the studies conducted, it was established that the addition of stabilizing additives to the composition of Nd2Zr2O7 ceramics leads to an increase in resistance to high-temperature degradation of strength properties, consisting in an increase in the threshold for reducing hardness depending on the irradiation temperature for stabilized ceramics in comparison with nonstabilized Nd2Zr2O7 ceramics.
