Analysis of the Chernobyl Meltdown
Analysis of the Chernobyl MeltdownOn April 1986, Soviet's Union Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded
letting out a massive amount of radiation that would debate of all
Russian citizens for hundreds of years to come. At exactly 1:21 am. on
April, 1986 inChernobyl, a city near the Pripiat River the No. 4
reactor exploded and released thirty to forty times the radiation of
the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing. The exact causes of the explosion
are not known , however scientists and researchers, under thorough
investigation, have uncovered possible causes to the explosion.1 The
main reason why the explosion occurred was that, the operators of the
plant were attempting to conduct an experiment with the emergency
cooling system turned off, they made six fatal errors which sealed
everyone's fate. Soviet officials clamed that if the technicians,
would have avoided at least one of those mistakes, then the plant
could have been saved.
The technicians began the test one day before the explosion.
They started reducing the reactor's power level so they could run the
turbine experiment. However in order for the plant to run at lower
power they had to turn off the automatic control system, which powered
all emergency limitations that the plant should make in case it goes
out of control. Turning of the cooling system was an unnecessary
action and though it did not cause the explosion, it made the
consequences more fatal. Just then the operator's receive a call from
the local grid controller in Kiev, who needed the power and asked the
technicians to stop lowering it, at what they obeyed. Once that was
done the reactor was running with out the cooling system , which was a
very serious mistake. At 11:10 p.m. the grid controller said he no
longer needed the power, and the operators returned to reducing the
power. At twenty minutes past midnight the operators forgot to set the
regulator properly, it was the second fatal error. Because of the
incorrect regulator settings the reactor's power crashed to 30 MW from
1,000 MW which is too low for the test. At that point the operators
would have abandoned the experiment, but they attempted to rescue it,
for the next time they would be able to conduct would be in one year
only. The senior authorities who had ordered the test would have been
furious and would have found out the regulator problem. So the
operators decided, to pull out the stops to restore the reactor's
power.2 Their third fatal mistake, was the pulling out of control
rods. The plant's rule was to have thirty in at all times however they
left all but six. By 1:00 Am the power risen to 200 MW, which was
still to low for the experiment, however the operators continued. In a
few minutes they made their fourth fatal error, by turning on two
extra pumps to join the six that wee already cooling the core. This
procedure under such low...
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