chernobylite
noun · first attested 1990s
A substance named after a place that was made by an accident at that place, in a single night in April 1986.
A technogenic zirconium silicate containing up to ten percent uranium, formed in the lava-like corium of Chernobyl reactor 4.
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 1990s
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Chernobyl
- In English
chernobylite
Crystals of this phase were first identified in 1989 in samples taken from room 217/2 of the destroyed Unit 4, the chamber that holds the Elephant's Foot. It formed when zirconium from fuel cladding reacted with uranium oxide and molten silicate building materials. The crystals are microscopic, and the yellow uranyl powders that later grew on the corium surface are a different set of minerals entirely.