They're about to cover the Chernobyl nuclear plant with a giant radiation shield

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why wait 30 years?

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But what happens when the dome collapses?

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I believe the concern is that the concrete shell they hastily covered the plant with is eroding and will one day collapse in on itself. When that occurs, it'll send highly dangerous radioactive isotopes into the air to be spread across Europe. It would be a HUGE catastrophe.

I believe the "dome" is to cover the entire plant so that when it collapses nothing dangerous escapes the dome.

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Surprised there weren't more movies made about this place

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What is the elephant foot? I see it looks like one but what was it?

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By the fall of 1986, the emergency crews fighting to contain the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl made it into a steam corridor beneath failed reactor Number 4. Inside this chamber they found black lava that had oozed straight from the core. The most famous formation was a solid flow that their radiation sensors firmly told them not to approach. With cameras pushed in from around a corner, the workers dubbed the dimly lit mass “the Elephant’s Foot.” According to readings taken at the time, the still hot portion of molten core put out enough radiation to give a lethal dose in 300 seconds.

The Elephant’s Foot could be the most dangerous piece of waste in the world.

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The more radiation released from a mass of atoms, the more dangerous it is. Reports from Chernobyl estimated that the Elephant’s Foot was practically off the charts, putting out nearly 10,000 roentgens per hour. It takes about 1/10th of that to kill a person. In one hour, the Elephant’s Foot would expose you to the radiation of over four and a half million chest x-rays. That dose is almost 1,000 times stronger than exposures that have been clearly linked to increased cancer risk. Because of the way radiation damages human cells—by knocking atoms and molecules out of place—death by radiation is a relatively slow one. Up to a point, treatment helps. But high doses, like the kind delivered by close contact with the Elephant’s Foot, can’t be tolerated.

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