Who shot the elephant’s foot with an Kalashnikov rifle? 😂
So I saw this meme and thought no way that’s true 😂 why tf would anyone do that. And I knew Wikipedia isn’t the most reliable source of information since everyone can change something in the articles.
So I looked it up and apparently they needed samples of it for investigation, but getting close to it to chip off pieces would expose the operator to a dangerous amount of radiation. By shooting it, they could chip chunks off and collect them safely from a distance.
At the time of its discovery, radioactivity near the Elephant’s Foot was approximately 8,000 roentgens, or 80 grays per hour, delivering a 50/50 lethal dose of radiation (4.5 grays) in less than five minutes.
The samples had to be collected because they had to find out what had happened to the missing fuel from the core. Lots of it was expelled into the air with the steam explosion, but most of it was still missing.
Pictures above are chunks of corium (not from the elephant’s foot)
Btw the Elephant's Foot is a solid mass made of melted nuclear fuel mixed with lots and lots of concrete, sand, and core sealing material that the fuel had melted through. It is located in a basement area under the original location of the core.
