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.

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.

I hope they make a series on Fukushima also. There's a whole lot of brave souls who endangered themselves, for the benefits of others in that disaster too. I hope their story is told widely also.

Our understanding of the power of nature (and frequency) is the clear failure in that one. That was more a failure of geologists and seismologists than nuclear engineers. Certainly in 20/20 retrospect, designs could have been made that would have prevented the worst of what happened from happening. But all the design flaws were overlooked because we completely failed to recognize the power (and frequency) of nature. The built it to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis, just not that big. I remember the second that I heard Japan had just had an 8.9 earthquake (later revised to 9.0). I'm tearing up just thinking about hearing that on the car radio. Two minutes later I was glued to my computer, and remained so for a long time.