3 ms·
> The first explosion from the steam inside the reactor was enough to send the 4-million-pound lid of the reactor assembly through the roof of the building. 4
by darawk 10y ago
> The first explosion from the steam inside the reactor was enough to send the 4-million-pound lid of the reactor assembly through the roof of the building.
4 million pounds? Is that right? Just for comparison, the maximum takeoff weight of a 747 is 735,000 pounds. Less than a quarter of the weight of this lid?
- zdkl 10y agoOne's supposed to fly, and the other... Well the opposite I guess?
- netrus 10y agoWhile I do not know if that number is correct, a Boing if engineered to be as light as possible, while the lid should be as heavy as possible. The density of a plane is way lower than that of water, as Tom Hanks recently proved ;)
- avian 10y agoLet's see. 4 million pounds is around 1800 metric tons. Density of concrete is around 2 tons/m³, so 1800 tons is the mass of about 900 m³ of concrete. This is a volume of a disc about 1 m thick and 35 m in diameter. Seems plausible. Also, from Wikipedia: Explosive steam pressure [...] destroyed the reactor casing, tearing off and blasting the 2000-ton upper plate, to which the entire reactor assembly is fastened, through the roof of the reactor building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Experiment_and_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Experiment_...
- CmdrSprinkles 10y agoSimilarly, one is about flying in a controlled manner that is comfortable for passengers. The other was basically a giant pipe bomb.