| ▲ | petre 2 days ago | |
Not only designed decades ago (which the PWR also was) but the designers also cut corners, ignored its faults and pushed it through politically because it was cheap and the Soviet governments could meet their 5 year targets easier. Early incidents were treated with cover-ups. "The RBMK was considered by some in the Soviet Union to be already obsolete shortly after the commissioning of Chernobyl unit 1. Aleksandrov and Dollezhal did not investigate further or even deeply understand the problems in the RBMK, and the void coefficient was not analyzed in the manuals for the reactor. Engineers at Chernobyl unit 1 had to create solutions to many of the RBMK's flaws such as a lack of protection against no feedwater supply. Leningrad and Chernobyl units 1 both had partial meltdowns that were treated, alongside other nuclear accidents at power plants, as state secrets and so were unknown even to other workers at those same plants." | ||