Yecherno Disaster

The Yecherno Disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred in a powerplant outside the town of Yecherno, controlled by the Gilgamesh Free State, in July . The powerplant complex had been built off of multiple auxiliary starship reactors in . The complex's purpose was not only supplying power to the Free State, but also for the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons that would be used to deter any possible UNSC attempt to reclaim the planet. 
With the end of the in , the UNSC returned its attention to the many colonies that had broken off, including . However, owing to the relatively large size of the Free State's military and the possibility of them having nuclear weapons to use against any invading force, the UNSC first decided to render the GFS weak and in chaos in order to allow an invasion. To do this, they focused their efforts on causing a serious accident at Yecherno Nuclear Power Station. Utilizing a worm that was fed into the power station's system through the datalink of Reactor Number 2 with the Mulkey Ander Research Institute, on July 16th, the sabotage was carried out. The worm extracted the control rods from the reactor, and turned off the coolant pumps within the reactor, causing a massive steam explosion that blew the lid off of the reactor, breached its immediate containment, and set fire to the generator complex for that reactor.
In the immediate aftermath, the local fire brigade began immediately working to attempt to extinguish the blaze within Reactor Number Two. Meanwhile, the local town was informed that UNSC partisans had attempted to sabotage the power station but had failed in their attack and that no radiation had been released. Due to the containment building, little radiation had actually been released into the environment, but the extreme radiation levels inside the reactor cost the lives of a number of civil and military firefighters who entered the containment building in an attempt to extinguish the blaze in the generator complex. Due to the analog nature of the remaining reactors, the worm was unable to do any further damage and the Yecherno Power Station continued to operate until it was discontinued by the new UEG colonial authorities in .
==Disaster==
==Response==
At 0150 Hours, ten minutes after the explosion, two AT-65 aircraft from the 8th Attack Escadrille, deployed nearby at Yecherno Field for protection of the plant from any partisan attacks, arrived overhead and began taking images of the plant. Five minutes afterward, the first firefighters, Air Force personnel also from the 8th Attack Escadrille, arrived on scene. Although informed by both plant workers and the pilots who had flown near the reactor of the extreme danger of going into the containment building to put out the generator fires and release the hydrogen from the tanks, they chose to go inside anyway. They and their officers had been informed by Anthony Kilon, the head engineer on duty, that if the generator fire was allowed to continue it would eventually detonate the hydrogen, which would breach the overall containment building and releasing immense amounts of radioactive material.
In the following hours, firefighters from other military units, Yecherno itself, and the surrounding towns, arrived to aid in putting out the blaze and getting to the tanks. Despite attempts to limit radiation exposure by having firefighters take shifts in fighting the blaze, a large number had to be evacuated to the New Belgrade Medical Institute, where a further number died of acute radiation poisoning in the following month. However, all of those who went to release the hydrogen from the system tanks and were exposed to extreme doses of radiation, died in the weeks afterward.
Even with the fire extinguished and the risk of a meltdown averted thanks to the reactor building's construction, the risk of radiation getting out into the environment was still existent. As the disaster and response had been ongoing, Free State officials had informed the locals that the risk of radiation poisoning was minimal, which was partially true. While the containment building was keeping the majority of the nuclear material from being released into the environment, the damage done to the reactor containment was releasing such immense amounts of radiation that something had to be done about it or else it would cause issues for the population in the long term. On July 25th, what would later be dubbed Operation: GRANITE began, with soldiers from the Gilgamesh Free Army pumping concrete into the containment building to seal off any openings and to create a massive wall of instacrete between the outside and the reactor. 
As they were not required to enter the building itself, few died, and those few from accidents, not from acute radiation sickness. The immense amount of instacrete placed a great strain on the Free State, with so much being requisitioned for military use that not only did construction on buildings cease for over a month, but it even affected building outside the borders, as the Auxiliaries began being used to acquire concrete from the lawless regions. Despite these material issues, within a month, the operation was complete, and Yecherno remained safe to inhabit.
Category:Safe Havens