3 ms·
The same approach was originally used at Hanford in the US.[1] I've been on a couple of tours at Hanford, and the guides told us that the Soviet weapons progra
by blincoln 9y ago
The same approach was originally used at Hanford in the US.[1]
I've been on a couple of tours at Hanford, and the guides told us that the Soviet weapons programme was a carbon-copy of the one in the US - just scaled up, with many more plutonium-production reactors - so it's not surprising that they made the same mistake about the cooling.
[1] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/buttinger1/docs/LA9217MS.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/buttinger1/docs... - pages 9-10
- mikeash 9y agoMy favorite (for certain values of “favorite”) was the British Windscale reactor, which was air cooled and just vented out a big smoke stack. Predictably, it caught fire and turned into a major disaster. One guy’s insistence on installing filters in the chimney, over the objections of many others that it was pointless, prevented it from being a Chernobyl-scale event.