The Chernobyl disaster was the worst nuclear power plant accident ever and resulted from flawed reactor design and safety protocols. On April 26, 1986, a series of operator errors and inherent reactor design flaws caused two explosions that destroyed reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. This exposed the reactor core and released massive amounts of radiation. The Soviet government covered up the disaster for over a day and failed to properly evacuate nearby residents or warn firefighters, resulting in many deaths from radiation exposure. The accident highlighted serious issues with the RBMK reactor design and Soviet safety culture.
The Chernobyl disaster was the worst nuclear power plant accident ever and resulted from flawed reactor design and safety protocols. On April 26, 1986, a series of operator errors and inherent reactor design flaws caused two explosions that destroyed reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. This exposed the reactor core and released massive amounts of radiation. The Soviet government covered up the disaster for over a day and failed to properly evacuate nearby residents or warn firefighters, resulting in many deaths from radiation exposure. The accident highlighted serious issues with the RBMK reactor design and Soviet safety culture.
The Chernobyl disaster was the worst nuclear power plant accident ever and resulted from flawed reactor design and safety protocols. On April 26, 1986, a series of operator errors and inherent reactor design flaws caused two explosions that destroyed reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. This exposed the reactor core and released massive amounts of radiation. The Soviet government covered up the disaster for over a day and failed to properly evacuate nearby residents or warn firefighters, resulting in many deaths from radiation exposure. The accident highlighted serious issues with the RBMK reactor design and Soviet safety culture.
The Chernobyl disaster was the worst nuclear power plant accident ever and resulted from flawed reactor design and safety protocols. On April 26, 1986, a series of operator errors and inherent reactor design flaws caused two explosions that destroyed reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. This exposed the reactor core and released massive amounts of radiation. The Soviet government covered up the disaster for over a day and failed to properly evacuate nearby residents or warn firefighters, resulting in many deaths from radiation exposure. The accident highlighted serious issues with the RBMK reactor design and Soviet safety culture.
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CASE STUDY : CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR DISASTER
The Chernobyl disaster was the worst nuclear power plant disaster of all time and is the only event classified as level 7 (major accident) according the International Nuclear Event Scale. Many aspects of the process of developing the facility, as well as the safety protocols that were in place, were flawed. Many of these flaws and errors came about and/or were intensified by the level of secrecy demanded by the Soviet Government, combined with the haste to develop nuclear technology brought on by the arms race with the United States. Cover-ups, poor safety protocols, and a general lack of proper distribution of information were present throughout the construction and maintenance of the facility and continued to show themselves in the manner that the disaster itself was handled.
The incident took place on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Facility in Pripyat, Ukraine, then part of the former Soviet Union. During the testing of a new safety procedure, the ill-informed night shift, through a series of events detailed later, lowered reactor four’s power level to a hazardously low level. Because the reactor was designed with a positive void coefficient, the reactivity continued to increase as the workers increased the power level. This caused a massive steam explosion to occur and was followed by a chemical explosion that ripped the top from the reactor and exposed the core. The exposed superheated core then came in contact with the oxygen in the atmosphere, and set alight the 1700 tons of graphite moderator that was designed to absorb the radioactive particles. The ignition of the graphite led to a much greater increase in radioactive emissions through the smoke. This situation was greatly intensified by the fact that Soviet power plants were not designed with any sort of hard containment vessel to contain the radioactive particles in the case of an explosion
One of the major reasons that this accident happened was the design of the reactor. Initial blame fell on the operators of the test, but another report was made by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, Nuclear Safety Advisory Group (INSAG) which stated that the chief reason the accident took place was the design of the reactor was flawed. This report also stated that while the operators had been working outside the normal range of power for the reactor, it was not forbidden by regulations to do so. This refuted a previous soviet report that the chief cause of the explosion was due to human factors and did not mention the flaw in the design of the reactor. This may be due to Soviet Russia trying to place blame on the individual operators rather than take the blame of creating a reactor with flaws .
The reactor was cooled by boiling water, and as such, contained steam. The proportion of the bubbles in this steam is called the void fraction. Reactivity changes as the void fraction changes. The ratio of these changes is called the void coefficient. The coefficient can either be positive or negative. A positive coefficient means that an increase in steam will increase the reactivity. The reactor had a positive void coefficient due to the fact that it used graphite as a neutron moderator to facilitate nuclear reactions. Steam absorbs fewer neutrons than water and because of this; more steam means that there are more neutrons to split uranium atoms. This increases the power output and can cause sudden increases in energy production when the reactor is at lower power levels. This was a major design flaw in the reactor and a contributing factor to its eventual explosion .
Another design flaw was that the controls rods that were designed to absorb neutrons and decrease reactivity used in the Reaktor Bolshoy Moschnosti Kanalniy (RBMK) reactors were 1.3 meters shorter than necessary. Additionally the lower portion of the control rod was made of graphite, which facilitates reactivity, while the upper part was made of boron carbide. Underneath the rods were channels that contained water. When the rods were inserted it displaced the coolant which created an increase in fission reactions. Therefore when the control rods are first inserted the power of the reactor is actually increased briefly before it is decreased .
The crew was not aware of either of these counter-intuitive behaviors of the reactor. If they had known they might not have performed some of the unsafe procedures that they did during the safety test that caused the reactor to explode.
One of the main ethical problems with Chernobyl is that the Soviet Government kept it a Secret. Immediately following the explosion of reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, firefighters were sent to put out the fires. The firefighters were never informed of the possibility of nuclear radiation poisoning. As a result of this, the firefighters did not wear their radiation suits and within a few months most if not all of the firefighters died due to radiation poisoning. Some of the firefighters went on to the roof of reactor 4 in order to extinguish the main fire and received high doses of radiation and died within the next two weeks.
Furthermore, the government did not inform the international community of the disaster until the next day, when the Swedish nuclear power plant in Forsmark noticed irregularly high radiation levels, and determined the source to be originating from the Ukraine. After this the government told the townspeople that it would be a temporary evacuation which would only last about three days. This city now lies inside of the exclusion zone (30km) abandoned with peoples’ personal belongings where they left them.
Following the disaster, the Soviet Union created a circle-shaped exclusion zone with a radius of about 18.6 miles (30 km) centred on the nuclear power plant. The exclusion zone covered an area about 1,017 square miles (2,634 square km) around the plant. However, it was later expanded to 1,600 square miles (4,143 square km) to include heavily radiated areas outside the initial zone. Although no people actually live in the exclusion zone, scientists, scavengers, and others may file for permits that allow them to enter for limited amounts of time.
