Chernobyl disaster

Résumé du document

In what is now a cold barren wasteland, lays the abandoned city of Pripyat and the lifeless Red Forest. Its silence is a deafening reminder of the tragic events of April 26, 1986. Lives were shattered and perceptions were changed forever. What was scheduled as a safety test ended up spiralling out of control, resulting in the destruction of one of the plants reactors, the death of 56 persons, the decimation of thousands of miles of land, and radiation effects on hundreds of thousands of people; effects that would carry on for generations. Public opinion, which may have been sceptic towards Nuclear Power before this event, then rallied against it in the aftermath of Chernobyl. Soviet authorities did their best to keep the situation quiet, but when this was no longer sustainable, the accident was blamed wholly on human error during the tests. However, as time passed and the era of Soviet rule came to an end, further information has been made available. The evidence now shows that the tragedy was caused by a combination of factors, all which ominously aligned on that fateful day of 26th April.

Extraits

[...] However, to generate these benefits, the design itself meant compromises in reactor's stability, which in turn meant a series of additional fail-safe measures and regulations. Chernobyl: How things really happened. Geographical location The V.I. Lenin nuclear power station, widely known as the Chernobyl power station; is located about 130km from Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and only 20km from the boarder with Belarus. There is an artificial lake about 22 km2 in size, which is located beside the river Pripyat. This artificial lake was designed and constructed to provide cooling water for the plant (NEA, 2003). [...]

[...] Chernobyl disaster Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Background 1. Technical Context 2. Human Context 3. Events Timeline 4. Analysis 5. Conclusions 6. Appendix Introduction "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." - J. Robert Oppenheimer “Father of the Atom quoting the Bhagavad Gita. [...]

[...] The Hypothesis is that a better organizational design could have prevented the Chernobyl disaster. Nevertheless, the Chernobyl case is more in favour of the NAT and provides an example of the incalculable risk of the interplay of technology and human behaviour. Why and how far will be shown in the following chapters. Field level analysis In the post WWII era, the world ran on a bilateral fight for world hegemony. Opposed to the U.S./Western political, economic, social and technologic super power based on a capitalist model and a market economy, the Communist model strived to rise up its philosophy and extend its scope of influence to the world. [...]

[...] We can see that all the elements for the disaster were there, waiting. All it took was that first drop that would set the chain reaction, on a human and on a nuclear level. This supports the Normal Accident Theory that was mentioned in the introduction of part II of the analysis. This implies that the probability for the disaster could not have been reduced to a risk-free level through changes in the organizational and operational design. However, there would have been certainly much room for improvement. [...]

[...] Neutrons are shot at Uranium to achieve the fission process and therefore the required heat. However, natural Uranium is made up of Uranium-238 ( 99.3 and Uranium-235 ( 0.7 isotopes. In addition, Uranium- 238 is not fissionable. In fact, it ends up absorbing most of the Neutrons or scatters them away. Therefore, several methods of solving this issue have been developed. One way is by enriching the Uranium, so that it consists mainly of Uranium-235, while it may yield a more controlled fission process, it is a complex method; as well as expensive. [...]