The Vast Majority Of People
know too little about radiation, nuclear physics, and engineering to speak intelligibly about nuclear power. As a result, they are easily swayed by propaganda, distortions, appeals to emotions rather than reason, and outright lies.
Take Chernobyl as the first example. Chernobyl was a very real disaster. The prevailing view is that Chernobyl happened because nuclear power technology "is an accident waiting to happen." The reality is very different.
The chernobyl disaster resulted from a Soviet culture that abrogated safety in the name of the communist revolution. Because of that unsafe culture, four factors came together to cause the Chernobyl disaster:
- The Soviet RBMK reactor design allowed positive reactivity from steam voids during reactor operation;
- The operators were inadequately trained;
- The operational safeguards - including emergency cooling - were disabled for the test;
- The reactor test plan was not properly coordinated between the safety and reactor personnel.
The accident began with the operators violating their test procedure by exceeding their minimum operational reactivity margin with too many control rods extracted too far. Because of the design flaw, steam voids formed inside the reactor during an excessive power transient when the operators started the test run. A positive feedback loop resulted with the reactor producing more heat that created more steam, increasing pressure inside of the reactor vessel.
The operators attempted to SCRAM the reactor, but the catastrophe unfolded in mere seconds and the control rods never reached full depth before becoming jammed. Steam pressure inside of the reactor vessel exceeded design limits and cracked the reactor vessel. Rapid steam release followed and water disassociated into hydrogen and oxygen from steam and zirconium reactions. A hydrogen explosion resulted that removed the top of the containment vessel, exposing the fuel cells. Moderator, fuel, and cladding materials were ejected as the core erupted into a high-temperature metal alloy fire.
Such an accident did not happen at Three Mile Island Unit 2 in spite of the operator doing his worst to damage the reactor core. As a result of the operator's mistakes in repeatedly shutting down emergency cooling, the portion of the core that melted simply pooled in the bottom of the reactor vessel and was contained, exactly as the reactor vessel was designed to do. That was because the TMI-2 pressurized water design is very different from the unsafe Soviet early RBMK design.
