Thanks for bringing this topic up. I will certainly watch this sometime. 5 episodes on this subject sounds perfect.
I usually spend most of my time reading. And the subject that I am most often reading the last week in April every year? You guessed it.
Quoted from CrazyLevi:Not a bad primer for people who parrot the nonsense "we don't need regulations" line without actually thinking about it. It's not a coincidence that this hasn't happened in the U.S. The government's main job is to keep the people safe.
Those regulators do have a purpose and they do provide some accountability and sensible standards to the operators of plants. They help manage the day-to-day minutiae, minor threats. They do report every single time an inner door and an outer door are opened simultaneously. That's great and it should be done. But that's not why Chernobyl #4 exploded.
Nor did reactor 4 blow up because there was some corrosion on the switch gear in the switch yard. The reason a plant in the US has not blown up is because we don't have graphite moderated reactors, without hardened containment, and positive feedback to steam formation and control rods tipped with additional graphite, that don't have an operational plan to deal with a loss of power, all operated by folks with very limited knowledge. Simply put, the USSR didn't have the budget to build and run nuclear reactors. That's why reactor 4 blew up.
They didn't have the budget in the design phase. They didn't' have the budget in the build and commission phase. That's why they were running loss-of-power test on reactor 4 that day. The three other identical reactors on site (and two more that under construction) had never even had such tests run. That's why the test was delayed that day too, because they didn't have enough electrical generation for the grid to deal with the loss of a fossil fuel plant.
Reactor 4 blew up simply because the USSR did not have the resources reasonably run nuclear power generation. Just like they didn't have the budget to build and run successful space program. Just like they didn't have the resources to build enough fossil fuel generation plants. Just like they didn't have the budget to feed their people. They were a shoestring operation... winging it... in all aspects. And they desperately wanted the world to believe they could do all those things.