5 ms·

I think it should be kept in mind that the design of Soviet reactors was incredibly unsafe compared to their western counterparts. Fukushima had four meltdowns

• kodfodrasz 9y ago
  This is not true in this form. There were unsafe soviet designs, but also there were unsafe western designs. Soviet designs were not all categorically unsafe. The design used at Chernobyl was a problematic design, but still many layers of human error had to be involved to create the accident. Military reactor designs are generally less safe. Civilian designs were usually OK in the USSR.
  • rb1 9y ago
    It's not just the design(s), it is the implementation too. At Chernobyl the powers at be (accountants?) got involved and decided to use flammable bitumen coverings on the roof of reactor 3, one would assume to save money. Unsurprisingly, the roof of reactor 3 caught fire.
    • fusiongyro 9y ago
      This is a good example of one of the failings at Chernobyl, but it took many of them coinciding to make the disaster as bad as it was. They were required to use another material to build the roof, but they were also required to be finished with construction by a certain time. Soviet central planning led to a shortage of the proper roofing material. I'm sure the decision to use bitumen was either made in ignorance or with the assumption that it wouldn't matter for other reasons. Lots of mistakes were made with the assumption that the rest of the system was safe so it wouldn't matter.
  • slackingoff2017 9y ago
    Soviet era designs generally didn't use containment buildings. The RMBK (Chernobyl) in addition used graphite moderator with a positive void coefficient. In combination this made such reactors intrinsically unsafe compared to their western counterparts, especially the positive void coefficient which can't be found in any western reactors as far as I'm aware. Not all Soviet designs were as unsafe as RMBK but most were less safe than the average western reactor. The meltdowns at Fukushima would have been as bad as Chernobyl if the design was similar. And the Fukushima reactors used an old western design dating from roughly the Chernobyl era. The cause of the meltdowns(loss of power) was similar. The major difference was that Fukushima had containment buildings, no graphite in the core to burn, and a reactor designed to become less critical as the water boils (void coefficient less than 1.0).
• makomk 9y ago
  If we do that, we also need to bear in mind that dams can be pretty safe if designed and operated correctly too.
• sampo 9y ago
  > Fukushima had four meltdowns with only a few casualties. The tsunami killed two workers, but the nuclear incident as such didn't kill a single person.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > The tsunami killed two workers, but the nuclear incident as such didn't kill a single person. The evacuation made necessary to avoid direct casualties from the nuclear incident killed 34.
    • boomboomsubban 9y ago
      I wouldn't say they were direct. That number is based on a comparison with a 1916 tsunami and earthquake death toll, and with around one of those thirty-four being under sixty that seems hard to calculate exactly.
      • stickfigure 9y ago
        All of this needs to be put in the context of a natural disaster that killed >15,000 people and leveled hundreds of thousands of buildings. The power plant really shouldn't lead the story here.