Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/04/25

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Subject: [Leica] Chernobyl Legacy
From: abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge)
Date: Tue Apr 25 19:41:16 2006
References: <C073ED2B.FD52%bdcolen@comcast.net> <3.0.2.32.20060425174136.0295f7c8@pop.infionline.net> <444EBE64.3070606@waltjohnson.com>

Setting aside issues of a political nature, the Soviets chose to
design a reactor plant that could never EVER be licensed in the west.
The graphite core of the Soviet plant had a few very nasty
characteristics: 1) it could catch on fire and 2) (the worst) it could
have what's called a "positive alpha-T" - In nuclear engineering
jargon that means that as the temperature of the reactor increased it
would cause the nuclear reaction to increase in rate as well! That's
positive feedback so when things begin to go wrong they go very wrong
and they go very wrong very fast. Nuclear reactors are exponential
beasts. If it takes 1 second to go from .1 % power to 10% power the
next second will see power go to 1,000% and so on. Those zeros add up.
Fast.

The Soviets attempted to do testing of the most dangerous sort with
completely insufficient protection and some safety systems may have
been off-line. (It's been a while since I read the accident summary.)

That said, the accident at Three Mile Island was serious and it was
only the competent design of the plant and finally some presence of
mind, that kept things from getting even worse. The operators forgot
Rickover's dictum - repeated often in the Naval Reactor Technical
Bulletins: "Believe your indications. When things go wrong you tend to
see what you want to see rather than what is really there." That's
good advice in other areas as well. When the TMI technicians, using
core thermocouples, saw rising temperatures they chose not to believe
them - in spite of the fact that there was almost nothing that could
have made those readings inaccurate: we're talking about the most
straightforward of measuring devices.

BUT the engineers who designed the plant created a design able to
overcome not only the original accident by the almost malicious
decisions made after the accident which made things so much worse. The
Soviet design made things worse from the start with horrendous
consequences.

Someday the biologists will do something MUCH worse. I hope we survive it.

Adam Bridge

On 4/25/06, Walt Johnson <walt@waltjohnson.com> wrote:
> Marc:
>
> I'm sure nuclear disasters are very complex in  engineering terms but
> this had nothing to do with my statements.  Whether or not our system of
> checks and balances is better that  the now defunct Soviet Union is not
> an issue. I can't help but feel our system of CYA is far superior and
> Three Mile Island comes to mind.  Lack luster Russian engineering aside,
> the  reactions of our own  (edited out in my original post) Christian
> Right salivating over a "commie disaster" is hard to deny.  Holier than
> thou always strikes me as the unholiest of all.
>
> Walt
>
>
>
>
> Marc James Small wrote:
>
> >At 03:31 PM 4/25/06 -0400, Walt Johnson wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Unfortunately, I'll bet many right wingers  reacted to Chernobyl much
> >>the same way the Reagan administration did to  KAL 007. You know, God
> >>points a finger at the Evil Empire.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Walt
> >
> >It is a bit more complex than that.  The USSR opted for cutting some
> >technical edges which ought not to have been cut, and the Chernobyl
> >disaster resulted.  The only "right-wing" comment on the event was to 
> >point
> >out the danger of allowing a single entity -- the same government agency 
> >--
> >to design, build, and inspect something as dangerous as a nuclear pile.
> >(In the West, nuclear plants are designed by private industry to 
> >government
> >standards, and are inspected by an agency completely distinct from that
> >which set out the standards, to ensure inspection by a neutral entity.)
> >
> >There are some engineers on this List who probably can speak to more 
> >detail
> >about this, but I would direct your attention to the rather lengthy report
> >run in THE ECONOMIST, a publication of a mildly pinkish nature, around 
> >1986
> >or 1987, which discussed the technical gaps the Soviets attempted to jump
> >and did so though, in the end, unsuccessfully.  The other side is that
> >Chernobyl was one of seeral dozens of Soviet power plants using the same
> >technology, and the others are still in use today.  The successor
> >governments will not tell us much about safety measures taken to ensure no
> >repeat of the Chernobyl disaster.
> >
> >The good news is that Northern Hemisphere winds normally blow west to 
> >east.
> > The bad news for Sweden, a nation of appallingly arrogant insistence that
> >it had no dog in the Cold War fight, was that the winds briefly blew from
> >Chernobyl to Sweden.  Couldn't have happened to a better target.  But, in
> >the future, if such a problem should occur again, the radiation path will
> >probably spread over Russia and not over western Europe.
> >
> >Mind you, I am not in favor of nuclear disasters but a well-run nuclear
> >plant is the most effective method for the production of power.
> >
> >Marc
> >
> >msmall@aya.yale.edu
> >Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Leica Users Group.
> >See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Leica Users Group.
> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>


Replies: Reply from bdcolen at comcast.net (B. D. Colen) ([Leica] Chernobyl Legacy)
In reply to: Message from bdcolen at comcast.net (B. D. Colen) ([Leica] Chernobyl Legacy)
Message from msmall at aya.yale.edu (Marc James Small) ([Leica] Chernobyl Legacy)
Message from walt at waltjohnson.com (Walt Johnson) ([Leica] Chernobyl Legacy)