New Scientist News: Nuclear reactions at Chernobyl are spiking in an inaccessible chamber.
- Thread starter wemay
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I don't remember what percentage of nuclear accidents have been caused by operators taking shortcuts or ignoring protocol, but it's greater than 75%.
Problem is that the (greater than 75% of errors being operators) isn't the blame of the operators, far less than 10% are true operator error.
We've had a big programme at work on Error reduction, and most of the time, we MAKE people make mistakes....When you apply a culpability model (google James Reason, culpability model), the majority of time, we (collectively) set operators up to make "mistakes"....
just saying...
But of course, we need the media to engage in fear, to boost sales...
Is it like a chaos monkey approach?
In James McHaffey's book, "Atomic Accidents" he points out that the RBMK reactor design is unstable at low power settings and the operator's manual says that when the power is brought to a low level, that the power must not be increased for a certain amount of time. It is very likely that the operators knew the book, but because the technical reasons of the design that cause the instability was a State secret and was NOT taught to operators that they didn't know how incredibly serious it was to pull the control rods without a stabilizing period. The International Atomic Energy Agency DID understand the technical reasons the RBMK design is unstable at low power and went as far as asking the Soviets not to build the RBMK design.
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Part of the reason for this was the size of the core. The RBMK was so massive that it operated like several small reactors, thus, it was managed in "quadrants". The lack of secondary containment compounded the issue.
A telling picture:
Well...
I have read where other operators in that circumstance at Chernobyl.... Had tremendous reservations about pulling be that many control rods out of that reactor. ... For good reason.
You lose control to a large extent. I believe the head operator/engineer had knowledge of that too.
He made a very critical error in judgement in the circumstance.
Also I believe the head operator engineer had an earlier experience with a RBMK powered unit and he made mistakes in that circumstance too.
Exactly right.... Secondary containment was a total joke in that construction of those units in Chernobyl. Absolutely terrible... And in a way of description... Criminal.
I agree that they had severe reservations about pulling the control rods on the core in a low power state without a stabilization period. Their reservations were because the book said in no uncertain terms not to do it. They were never taught the details about why pulling the control rods early on the RBMK design is a terrible idea (xenon poisoning, positive void coefficient, graphite tipped and slow moving control rods, xenon burn-off, etc.) The operators didn't understand these things. They understood what the book said about operating the reactor. The book only said don't do it. The man in change of the test was the authority and he screamed at them to just do it now! They did was was being screamed at them. Had they understood the nuclear engineering of the RBMK, they would have told the guy in charge of the test to go fly a kite.
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