Chernobyl

A detailed Summary of Chernobyl


The organisations responsible for the Chernobyl Nuclear Power plant lacked a 'safety culture' resulting in an inability to remedy design weaknesses despite being known about before the accident.

The RBMK reactor (RBMK, a Russian acronym translated roughly means "reactor cooled by water and moderated by graphite", is one of the two types of reactors the Soviets have built for the production of nuclear power. The RBMK was developed by the Soviets from earlier models that had been used to generate nuclear weapons, as well as produce heat for district heating.) type used at Chernobyl suffers from instability at low power and thus may experience a rapid , uncontrollable power increase. Although other reactor types have this problem they incorporate design features to stop instability from occurring. The cause of this instability is: Water is a better coolant than steam. The water acts as a moderator and neutron absorber (slowing down the reaction) whilst steam does not. Excess steam pockets in the RBMK design lead to increased power generation this is known as a positive void coefficient. This excess power causes additional heating thus producing mor


Sequence of events leading up to the accident.

B. Following the accident 116,000 people had to be evacuated and between 1990 and 1995 an additional 210,000 people were resettled. This created a need to build a new town named Slavutich for the personnel of the Chernobyl power plant.

Shortly afterwards an increase in coolant flow and a drop in steam pressure occurred requiring the operators to withdraw nearly all the rods. The reactor then became very unstable and the operators had to make adjustments every few seconds to maintain a constant power.

As the reactor shutdown proceeded, the reactor operated at approximately half power when the electric load dispatcher refused to allow further shutdown. As part of the test the emergency core cooling system was switched off and the reactor carried on at half power. At about 11 PM on 25th April the grid controller agreed to a further reduction in power.

The test was carried out without a proper exchange of information between the team in charge of the test and personnel responsible for the operation of the nuclear reactor.

E. The effected areas suffered major disruption to normal life and economic activity in particular with regard to agriculture and forestry production.

At t

Some common words found in the essay are:
Communications Breakdown, Consequences Control, RBMK Russian, Violation Procedures, Nuclear Power, Chernobyl Lack, positive void coefficient, positive void, Reactor RBMK, void coefficient, Soviet Economy, void coefficient operators, steam pressure, reactor shutdown, test reactor, cooling system, rbmk reactor rbmk, rbmk reactor, core cooling, coefficient operators, control rods,

Approximate Word count = 833
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History

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