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RE: U.S. Still Stuck
By JasonMick (blog) on 4/20/2009 4:40:49 PM , Rating: 1
True, the main thing I was speaking to was that Chernobyl was an outdated design, and very poorly managed. Its true the design itself was far more dangerous than Western designs (it was designed without a hard containment vessel -- idiotic).

Regardless comparisons between the RMFK (Chernobyl) Gen II reactors and a Gen III+ highly automated reactor are specious at best.

RE: U.S. Still Stuck
By blppt on 4/20/2009 11:21:53 PM , Rating: 3
There are debates on whether or not a PWR type containment would have withstood the massive steam explosion and subsequent 'toss' of the pile cap if RBMKs were even equipped with such shells. Most people think the containment would have still been penetrated anyways.

However, this is all of course, irrelevent as this specific accident could not have happened here (no U.S. reactors are graphite moderated/light water cooled and a Positive Void Coefficient).

Still, we DID have Three Mile Island (a PWR), which some people think was mere minutes from being an absolute disaster...there was a piece of molten core that broke free from the collapsed melted mass and fell into the bottom of the pressure vessel, into a pool of cool water. It was apparently just chance that saved us all from a massive steam explosion that would have certainly destroyed the containment vessel and likely the containment as well.

Heres some frightening links to read:

Scary stuff.

RE: U.S. Still Stuck
By rex251 on 4/21/2009 3:47:06 PM , Rating: 2
I doubt that Chernobyl plant was inadequately maintained, or been run by uneducated personnel. Thing is as I remember that Soviets were conducting some sort of experiment back then, and they manually bypassed most important security systems, which led to process they couldn`t control. The reasons to do so are still part of many debates.

RE: U.S. Still Stuck
By blppt on 4/21/2009 7:27:13 PM , Rating: 2
Actually, it has been said quite a few times that the heads of the Chernobyl plant, and those in charge at the time of the accident had very little training in nuclear physics... I think that article I linked mentioned that the head of the plant had run a coal plant before hand, and had no additional training after taking over Chernobyl.

And even the people who DID know a decent amount about reactors (the powerless underlings) did not know about the power spike the control rods created when they very first entered the core, which ultimately caused the final power surge and subsequent steam explosion.

The test was done very reluctantly by those who knew about reactors, simply because their bosses (who knew little, apparently) wanted the test done. The test *had* to be run during a scheduled reactor shutdown, and the next time this would happen would not be for a year. When the reactor accidentally fell to extreme low power, and fell into the "iodine poisoning well", the safe thing to do would have been to shut down the core, and thus stop the test. The knowledgeable underlings knew how dangerous trying to pull an RBMK out of this iodine well was, but they were overruled by the higher ups, who really had no in depth knowledge of nuclear reactors.

You can imagine how the Soviet bureaucracy would feel about "groundless concerns of lowly engineers" scrubbing a prestigious test for a year. So, the underlings very reluctantly went ahead with the test, and the rest is history.

