A closer look
Deep in the bowels of the ruined Chernobyl reactor sits the Elephant’s Foot, a massive, wrinkled mass of 'corium' that looks like fossilized lava. It formed when the nuclear fuel got so insanely hot it melted the concrete floor, sand, and steel into a highly toxic, radioactive soup that flowed into the basement. In 1986, spending 300 seconds in its presence was a guaranteed death sentence. Workers literally had to shoot it with an AK-47 just to break a piece off for study, because poking it with a stick wasn't going to cut it.
