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I only give it 6.5/10 because everyone speaks with a British accent. Its annoying as hell. They couldn't find any Russian/Ukraine actors? View Quote For those interested, here's the podcast. The producer goes into what they changed and why in the story, vs what they tried to get right. I found it interesting. The Chernobyl Podcast | Part One | HBO |
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In the preview they show what looks like a beam of Cherenkov radiation coming like a beacon from the hole in the roof. Was that accurate? View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
In the preview they show what looks like a beam of Cherenkov radiation coming like a beacon from the hole in the roof. Was that accurate? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/26/nuclear.russia It was an apocalyptic sight: flames shot into the sky; sparks showered from the severed 6,000-volt cables hanging from the smashed circulation pumps; burst water and nitrogen tanks dangled in the air above the red-hot wreckage of the reactor hall; and from the centre of the building, an unearthly, delicate, blue-white light shot upwards into the night - a shaft of ionising radiation from the exposed core. 'I remember thinking how beautiful it was,' Yuvchenko says. |
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Playing fast and loose with the term nuclear explosion? With all the factors involved, there were essentially hot spots of high neutron flux in the reactor that the operators couldn't see. When they started to notice the instability in power output they knew something was wrong and they SCRAMed. The control rods were graphite tipped...I assume for some reliability reasons. The graphite tips increased the moderation in the reactor, this allowed more neutrons to slow down enough to react with uranium fuel and cause fissions. So basically they setup a scenario where the reactor or at least parts of it went prompt critical. Conceptually similar to the demon core just 10000x bigger. While not a nuclear detonation like a bomb..it is a rapid release of energy. I think it took a few seconds to flash the cooling water to steam, I think the steam did most of the damage but it's pretty well documented that various amounts of damage occurred over the last several minutes of the reactors life. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted: That would have been a multiple kiloton event that would have removed far more than the roof. With all the factors involved, there were essentially hot spots of high neutron flux in the reactor that the operators couldn't see. When they started to notice the instability in power output they knew something was wrong and they SCRAMed. The control rods were graphite tipped...I assume for some reliability reasons. The graphite tips increased the moderation in the reactor, this allowed more neutrons to slow down enough to react with uranium fuel and cause fissions. So basically they setup a scenario where the reactor or at least parts of it went prompt critical. Conceptually similar to the demon core just 10000x bigger. While not a nuclear detonation like a bomb..it is a rapid release of energy. I think it took a few seconds to flash the cooling water to steam, I think the steam did most of the damage but it's pretty well documented that various amounts of damage occurred over the last several minutes of the reactors life. |
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Can you explain void coefficients? I want to sound smart around the water cooler tomorrow. View Quote The meaning of the term "void coefficient" is in relation to the proportion of steam bubbles vs liquid water... more heat makes more steam leading to what result. Negative void coefficient means that as reaction power increases, extra heat leading to more steam bubbles slow the reaction - self-regulating in a way. Positive void coefficient means that as reaction power increases, extra steam bubbles further increases reactivity, leading to instability and runaway behavior if accidentally put into the wrong state. The RBMK reactors had an automated safety system to try to counteract those tendencies but those systems were disabled for the experiment they were trying to run. The RBMK reactors also had a bizzare design feature - they put moderator rods on the bottom of the control rods. The effect of that is that as control rods were inserted into the reactor, that they would INCREASE reactivity for a time before the reduction in reactivity would come into play. There was also supposedly some kind of unexpected behavior of Xenon poisoning. This reactor design was just never intended to operate at that low of a power level and was not safe or stable. |
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_coefficient The meaning of the term "void coefficient" is in relation to the proportion of steam bubbles vs liquid water... more heat makes more steam leading to what result. Negative void coefficient means that as reaction power increases, extra heat leading to more steam bubbles slow the reaction - self-regulating in a way. Positive void coefficient means that as reaction power increases, extra steam bubbles further increases reactivity, leading to instability and runaway behavior if accidentally put into the wrong state. The RBMK reactors had an automated safety system to try to counteract those tendencies but those systems were disabled for the experiment they were trying to run. The RBMK reactors also had a bizzare design feature - they put moderator rods on the bottom of the control rods. The effect of that is that as control rods were inserted into the reactor, that they would INCREASE reactivity for a time before the reduction in reactivity would come into play. There was also supposedly some kind of unexpected behavior of Xenon poisoning. This reactor design was just never intended to operate at that low of a power level and was not safe or stable. View Quote The nifty thing is that low enriched fuel (less than 10% ish)in western designs won't react in a commercial power reactor without a moderator. So.. if it all goes sideways and the coolant leaks out...the reactor shuts off. Also, changes to the water like lower density or steam bubbles make it a less effective moderator. So as heat goes up the reactor has a tendency to want to slow down. It's a natural built in safety. Yea physics! Graphite moderated reactors don't run bathed in water, they have cooling channels with water in them but it's basically a huge graphite block with holes in it. As voids or areas of lower density occur in RBMK reactors they have the opposite effect, they tend to cause more fissions..or an increase in reactivity. The hotter they get..the hotter they try to get. Xenon is a natural by product of uranium fission, happens in all reactors. The problem with xenon is that it is the most powerful neutron absorbing element known to man. Reactors are meant to run..but just barely..so we can control them. They make just enough neutrons bouncing around to accelerate the reaction and not run away completely. Then we ever so slightly change the balnce by moving control rods in and out, they are the throttle for the reactor. Control rods are made of neutron absorbing materials..like boron. Xenon screws that whole balance up. Due to the request of the power grid controller in Kiev the trip test was delayed and Chernobyl ran at a low power setting for a long time. This allowed xenon to build up. Suddenly the control rod setting that held the reactor at 60% wouldn't hold it there anymore, the xenon was slowing things down. So they pulled out more control rods to keep it running. And more and more as xenon built up. Eventually they had to pull out rods that should never be moved, the rules said they should never be moved...but they wanted to keep the reactor running so they could run the turbine trip test. So they pulled them. The reactor got hotspots, but its huge so the operators couldn't see on the instruments that it had hotspots. As it started to accelerate, it started using up all that xenon, as the xenon went away it started accelerating faster and faster. The hotspots were so hot that they started creating voids which made it accelerate even faster and making more heat and using up more xenon...so it was a feedback loop. Every bad thing made other bad things happen even faster. Heat started damaging the channels in the graphite. By then the operators knew something was wrong so they SCRAMed the reactor. That should have inserted all the control rods and shut it down...but..the rods were graphite tipped...to keep them from jamming I think. So when they entered the graphite entered first and graphite is the moderator...so it made the situation worse before it made it better. Also there is a theory that the control channels were already distorted by the hotspots and the rods physically couldn't insert all the way. Only a few seconds after the rods entered Chernobyl hit 100x its rated thermal power and exploded. It's a chain of events that had to be just so in order to make a disaster. |
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The nifty thing is that low enriched fuel (less than 10% ish)in western designs won't react in a commercial power reactor without a moderator. So.. if it all goes sideways and the coolant leaks out...the reactor shuts off. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
Quoted: The RBMK reactor was designed for non-enriched (natural) uranium, so had a large fuel volume. Water cooling through the fuel tubes with graphite moderation. Sound familiar? Yes, just like the US plutonium production reactors at Hanford, and the Soviet's initial plutonium production reactor which was based on stolen design of the US reactors. The Soviets were using the RBMK power reactors as distributed plutonium production. But the reactor design was not suitable for the operating demands of power production as the operating envelope just wasn't flexible enough. |
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This is my take... The RBMK reactor was designed for non-enriched (natural) uranium, so had a large fuel volume. Water cooling through the fuel tubes with graphite moderation. Sound familiar? Yes, just like the US plutonium production reactors at Hanford, and the Soviet's initial plutonium production reactor which was based on stolen design of the US reactors. The Soviets were using the RBMK power reactors as distributed plutonium production. But the reactor design was not suitable for the operating demands of power production as the operating envelope just wasn't flexible enough. View Quote My take on it is that they shut off all the safeties and flew it into a mountain...metaphorically speaking. They didn't melt it down...they blew it the fuck up. It's tough to call it an accident, everything they did, they chose to do despite it being against the operating rules. Negligence? At least. I've seen it called "a lack of safety culture"...I was a safety engineer...lack of safety culture doesn't cover it. It was criminal negligence bordering on a crime against humanity. Western reactors don't have the dangerous characteristics of the RBMK so I'm not sure you could blow up a Westinghouse BWR the same way...but put the backup gensets in the basement in a earthquake and tsunami zone and watch what happens. They survived the one of the largest earthquakes and tsunamis in history only to melt down because the power went out and couldn't be restored fast enough. |
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Next weeks episode with have the "Bio-Robots" who wore home made lead armor and shoveled radioactive debris.
I'm no tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist but I have never believed the reported death toll of 28 directly and 15 indirectly. |
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Question regarding the Soviet System.
If the engineer who was ordered to climb the building and look down into the reactor had refused, what would have happened? Would he have been shot on site? We see they sent an armed soldier with him, if he didn't climb would it have been a bullet in the back of the head? Or, would they have arrested him and held a make believe trial and then execute him? How about on a normal day without any disaster. If someone working there at the power plant decided they didn't like the work, could they just simply quit and look for another job? I know there were no individual rights or liberties, but how much flexibility was there in deciding your own career path? |
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Question regarding the Soviet System. If the engineer who was ordered to climb the building and look down into the reactor had refused, what would have happened? Would he have been shot on site? We see they sent an armed soldier with him, if he didn't climb would it have been a bullet in the back of the head? Or, would they have arrested him and held a make believe trial and then execute him? How about on a normal day without any disaster. If someone working there at the power plant decided they didn't like the work, could they just simply quit and look for another job? I know there were no individual rights or liberties, but how much flexibility was there in deciding your own career path? View Quote |
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I was reading one account where the military was ordered to shoot all the family pets that were left behind after the evacuations. Most were sick and dying and they found a lot of them by their whimpering/howling.
That's the kind of minor stuff that drives home the horror of such a incident. |
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let me put it to you like this: try and find someone to ask that refused. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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Question regarding the Soviet System. If the engineer who was ordered to climb the building and look down into the reactor had refused, what would have happened? Would he have been shot on site? We see they sent an armed soldier with him, if he didn't climb would it have been a bullet in the back of the head? Or, would they have arrested him and held a make believe trial and then execute him? How about on a normal day without any disaster. If someone working there at the power plant decided they didn't like the work, could they just simply quit and look for another job? I know there were no individual rights or liberties, but how much flexibility was there in deciding your own career path? Then the engineer and his wife get sent to the gulag. Using them as slave labor is more efficient than just shooting them. Punishing the whole family is more incentive for people to obey in the first place. |
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Not sure if this has been posted yet, but someone compiled a very large album of pictures and diagrams, and did a write up. Very cool.
https://imgur.com/a/TwY6q I watched Episode 1 today after I got off work. I liked it, looking forward to next week (and to finally have something interesting to watch on a Monday.) |
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The soldier doesn't shoot the engineer, he just reports back. Then the engineer and his wife get sent to the gulag. Using them as slave labor is more efficient than just shooting them. Punishing the whole family is more incentive for people to obey in the first place. View Quote Sort of the Soviet version of a police "dental plan".....They would have to think long and hard to give that up by disobeying orders. While Pripyat was not a "closed city" as far as I know standard living conditions were "better" than where they would end-up. |
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Pripyat was supposedly a pretty awesome city by 80s Soviet standards. Stuff was new, everybody was young the city was nice, nice parks, theaters.
It was certainly a "company" town, everybody worked at the plant. As was pointed out in the first episode it was V.I. Lenin power station so pripyat probably got a high priority from the system. |
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Next weeks episode with have the "Bio-Robots" who wore home made lead armor and shoveled radioactive debris. I'm no tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist but I have never believed the reported death toll of 28 directly and 15 indirectly. View Quote |
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Not sure if this has been posted yet, but someone compiled a very large album of pictures and diagrams, and did a write up. Very cool. https://imgur.com/a/TwY6q I watched Episode 1 today after I got off work. I liked it, looking forward to next week (and to finally have something interesting to watch on a Monday.) View Quote The actors & styling of them in the show bear a remarkable resemblance to the real-life people they portray. Take a look at this photo: https://i.imgur.com/DRjOxG5.jpg and you will have no trouble identifying them as portrayed in the show. |
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I was reading one account where the military was ordered to shoot all the family pets that were left behind after the evacuations. Most were sick and dying and they found a lot of them by their whimpering/howling. That's the kind of minor stuff that drives home the horror of such a incident. View Quote |
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watching 3 mile island documentary on youtube, that indecent was very close to a complete meltdown, explosion. Sure the reactors are better designed but fuckups can and do happen. Its truly unbelievable that there was no way for them to tell how much coolant was in the reactor and only one phone line into the control room. Its astounding.
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Just watched the first episode, it was enjoyable.
I wonder if we will ever find out the real death and serious injury toll? I doubt it. I would think the cancer rates, of the people in town and their children born well after 1987 is very high. |
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Oh yeah that's a pretty commonly accepted thought. The RBMK could be fuel cycled easier...maybe even while running?....not sure on that one... so it could be used for a breeder. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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This is my take... The RBMK reactor was designed for non-enriched (natural) uranium, so had a large fuel volume. Water cooling through the fuel tubes with graphite moderation. Sound familiar? Yes, just like the US plutonium production reactors at Hanford, and the Soviet's initial plutonium production reactor which was based on stolen design of the US reactors. The Soviets were using the RBMK power reactors as distributed plutonium production. But the reactor design was not suitable for the operating demands of power production as the operating envelope just wasn't flexible enough. |
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just watched it, couldn't believe that communism was actually portrayed in a negative light View Quote I read the headline and killed myself due to disbelief, this is a post from beyond the grave. |
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I liked it a lot.
Unfortunately, as a proponent of Nuclear Power, I doubt this miniseries is going to help gin up a desire for more nuclear plants in the US. |
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My take after watching:
- radiation is still terrifying as all fuck - I feel for the firefighters and folks who were in scene. Looking straight into the fucking core? Holy shit. - the Old Soviet dude talking about the State reminded me of Bernie Sanders - surprised it painted communism and the “State” in such a rightfully poor light. HBO and all that.....seems like some red pills were taken And finally....government aka The State will always fuck you over. Why do people here want that type of commie governess? Fucking maddening. Edit: also, there’s some smart fuckers in this thread. |
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30,000 R/hr is about as horrible as it gets. Apparently the radiation level was estimated to be that high in places.
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It's tough to call it an accident, everything they did, they chose to do despite it being against the operating rules. Negligence? At least. I've seen it called "a lack of safety culture"...I was a safety engineer...lack of safety culture doesn't cover it. It was criminal negligence bordering on a crime against humanity. The only meter available to the peons only reads to 3.7 R/hr. There is a meter that will read higher, but it's locked in a safe and only available upon permission of a political official. |
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My take after watching: - radiation is still terrifying as all fuck - I feel for the firefighters and folks who were in scene. Looking straight into the fucking core? Holy shit. - the Old Soviet dude talking about the State reminded me of Bernie Sanders - surprised it painted communism and the “State” in such a rightfully poor light. HBO and all that.....seems like some red pills were taken And finally....government aka The State will always fuck you over. Why do people here want that type of commie governess? Fucking maddening. Edit: also, there’s some smart fuckers in this thread. View Quote |
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I liked it a lot. Unfortunately, as a proponent of Nuclear Power, I doubt this miniseries is going to help gin up a desire for more nuclear plants in the US. View Quote I see this series in a very different light. I see it as a good reminder of what one's signature means. |
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I can't complain about the first episode......Damn what those guys walked into and the Soviets trying to cover it up within the first hour of the disaster defies description. View Quote And the guy who opened the door and walked in overlooking the reactor |
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watching 3 mile island documentary on youtube, that indecent was very close to a complete meltdown, explosion. Sure the reactors are better designed but fuckups can and do happen. Its truly unbelievable that there was no way for them to tell how much coolant was in the reactor and only one phone line into the control room. Its astounding. View Quote I think there were 2 phone lines going into the control room, but that's based on past conversations I've had with colleagues who were either on one of those lines, or sitting next to someone who was. Also good to keep in mind that it's my recollection, on top of their recollection., and memory being what it is, well... |
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- the Old Soviet dude talking about the State reminded me of Bernie Sanders View Quote The other takeaway is that there will always be those who will seek to find someone to take the blame during the crisis rather than working the problem because they are in total denial as to the seriousness of the problem. |
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The upper third of the fuel assemblies completely collapsed in a combination of cladding failure and ceramic fuel melt. Not sure how much more melty you are looking for, but that's certainly a meltdown in my book. And there was a hydrogen explosion inside the containment building - plastic stuff inside of containment, such as phones and the like, showed signs of scorching/melting. I think there were 2 phone lines going into the control room, but that's based on past conversations I've had with colleagues who were either on one of those lines, or sitting next to someone who was. Also good to keep in mind that it's my recollection, on top of their recollection., and memory being what it is, well... View Quote The father of a friend growing up was a retired navy nuke engineer and was living in Hershey Pa at the time and was actually called to TMI in the hours after the emergency was declared. He was legitimately the smartest person I have ever met. Scary smart. Worked for westinghouse at one point...designing..stuff.. I wish he was still around now that I am older and wiser.....and full of questions. |
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I can't complain about the first episode......Damn what those guys walked into and the Soviets trying to cover it up within the first hour of the disaster defies description. View Quote That site was blasting high intensity radiation into the atmosphere as soon as it blew and they denied it to themselves, as well as everyone else until it was too late. The series does a good job of showing the fear of decision-making or problem-solving woven into the Soviet mindset, as well as the layers of bureaucracy that hamper any kind of progress, while insulating itself from consequences and fixing blame to whatever hapless person was within proximity to do so, especially if they were viewed as having suspicious allegiance to the party. Keep in mind the Ukraine and Russia have never recovered from this culture, but have had parts of it supplanted with kleptocracy. |
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Quoted: Yep. Whatever happened to Stalker 2? Got cancelled? View Quote
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I'm just reading up on it on World Nuclear Association's site right now, covering the sequence of events.
Sequence of events video with graphical explanation showing basic representation of the reactor power output, the test, and what went wrong. Watch this before watching the HBO series, especially from 9:00 forward if you want a sequential explanation of what went wrong with their test and the steam-driven positive power coefficient: Compilation of Rare 1986 Videos of Chernobyl Disaster. (English) |
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My wife worked at the main Kiev hospital at that time and helped work on the injured as they were brought in. Yeah, she's got thyroid issues today. She said that there was 1 - 2.5 cm of gray powder over everything outside for a week; not knowing what it was. Imagine standing in an inch of fallout while waiting for the bus to show up. Curious if they showed the scene of the 2 engineers that dove into the blue glowing pool of water, knowing it was going to kill them in days, to close the valves to keep the water from causing a larger steam explosion. The book I read about this disaster said that those two men saved western Europe from being covered in the 'Dead Zone' levels of radiations. View Quote Three men waded knee deep into the water to find the valves. Most of the after had been pumped out by fire engines. All three lived for a long time. Two are still alive. One had a heart attack around 2004 . I don’t know if it prevented anything as I don’t know if the molten fuel got into that room. They were still brave and still received radion. But the story in not true. |
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When they told the guy to go to the roof with the guard in tow watching him and he turns around with his face turning colors And the guy who opened the door and walked in overlooking the reactor View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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I can't complain about the first episode......Damn what those guys walked into and the Soviets trying to cover it up within the first hour of the disaster defies description. And the guy who opened the door and walked in overlooking the reactor |
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Has the dome covering for the plant ever been completed and sealed?
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Has the dome covering for the plant ever been completed and sealed? View Quote FWIW, $5/month donation gets you access to all of the PBS documentary archives streaming (NOVA/Frontline/Nature series etc). There are some really good ones in there, particularly from before they got all political. ETA: Here is the documentary Building Chernobyl's Megatomb |
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Do you think there is any truth to the notion that a contributing factor to the TMI accident was the fact that many of the operators and engineers were former Navy nukes and they had a bias toward not letting the pressurizer go "solid". I've read this theory in someones book or paper on the subject. I understand why the navy would have issue with that given the applications. The father of a friend growing up was a retired navy nuke engineer and was living in Hershey Pa at the time and was actually called to TMI in the hours after the emergency was declared. He was legitimately the smartest person I have ever met. Scary smart. Worked for westinghouse at one point...designing..stuff.. I wish he was still around now that I am older and wiser.....and full of questions. View Quote View All Quotes View All Quotes Quoted:
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The upper third of the fuel assemblies completely collapsed in a combination of cladding failure and ceramic fuel melt. Not sure how much more melty you are looking for, but that's certainly a meltdown in my book. And there was a hydrogen explosion inside the containment building - plastic stuff inside of containment, such as phones and the like, showed signs of scorching/melting. I think there were 2 phone lines going into the control room, but that's based on past conversations I've had with colleagues who were either on one of those lines, or sitting next to someone who was. Also good to keep in mind that it's my recollection, on top of their recollection., and memory being what it is, well... The father of a friend growing up was a retired navy nuke engineer and was living in Hershey Pa at the time and was actually called to TMI in the hours after the emergency was declared. He was legitimately the smartest person I have ever met. Scary smart. Worked for westinghouse at one point...designing..stuff.. I wish he was still around now that I am older and wiser.....and full of questions. But, context is important, and just like most accidents, there's no singular cause. And look, unless you are really thinking carefully about the steam tables, it would have been easy to look at the conditions in the pressurizer, and think you know the statepoint, when in fact, it was at a different part of the curve. Everything looks so clear after the fact, when you can look at everything as a function of time in one encompassing snapshot, but dealing with this stuff in the moment, at just one of those timestamps, it's quite different - whether it's nuclear, aerospace, whatever, my experience is that it is very difficult to project out into the future from real time statepoints. Regardless of how the got into the accident conditions, though, some of their response decisions were inexcusable, even in context. |
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I'm just reading up on it on World Nuclear Association's site right now, covering the sequence of events. Sequence of events video with graphical explanation showing basic representation of the reactor power output, the test, and what went wrong. Watch this before watching the HBO series, especially from 9:00 forward if you want a sequential explanation of what went wrong with their test and the steam-driven positive power coefficient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc-vvhWXL9Q View Quote I’m still trying to wrap my head around the entire thing but that video helped a lot, I suggest everyone that isn’t a nuclear physicist watch it. |
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