OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Originally Posted by dailydriver
Addicted to this series!
There was so much cover-up (by the Soviets/KGB) shrouding what actually happened when it was a current event that it is enlightening (but VERY dark despairing) to finally get some truth on the whole disaster.
"Black eye" to the whole industry, or not, the warnings the facts of this incident bring to light, had BETTER BE heeded going forward (YES even with our 'superior' and now much updated technology, and much more conscientious and fastidious plant workers.)!
If you read the report I linked (and I highly suggest doing so for a more analytical account of the events that haven't been sensationalized for your "viewing pleasure"), the design itself was not failure-tolerant. Basically, the safety of the plant hinged on operation and avoiding failure, there was very little in terms of provisions or protection if things DID go wrong. And of course they did. Plants in the rest of the world had containment and other disaster mitigation measures for the unlikely event of things going wrong. The events that transpired at Chernobyl were essentially impossible at the units operated elsewhere, because they were not of that style. The Soviets were aware of the risks of the design, and its lack of containment, which is why it was being phased out.
Now obviously lack of cooling incidents can still cause a meltdown in other reactor types like the LWR (Fukushima, Three-Mile Island) but the resulting incident is not on the same scale. Other reactor types like the CANDU are essentially immune, which is also covered in that paper.
Addicted to this series!
There was so much cover-up (by the Soviets/KGB) shrouding what actually happened when it was a current event that it is enlightening (but VERY dark despairing) to finally get some truth on the whole disaster.
"Black eye" to the whole industry, or not, the warnings the facts of this incident bring to light, had BETTER BE heeded going forward (YES even with our 'superior' and now much updated technology, and much more conscientious and fastidious plant workers.)!
If you read the report I linked (and I highly suggest doing so for a more analytical account of the events that haven't been sensationalized for your "viewing pleasure"), the design itself was not failure-tolerant. Basically, the safety of the plant hinged on operation and avoiding failure, there was very little in terms of provisions or protection if things DID go wrong. And of course they did. Plants in the rest of the world had containment and other disaster mitigation measures for the unlikely event of things going wrong. The events that transpired at Chernobyl were essentially impossible at the units operated elsewhere, because they were not of that style. The Soviets were aware of the risks of the design, and its lack of containment, which is why it was being phased out.
Now obviously lack of cooling incidents can still cause a meltdown in other reactor types like the LWR (Fukushima, Three-Mile Island) but the resulting incident is not on the same scale. Other reactor types like the CANDU are essentially immune, which is also covered in that paper.