Would have been a quite a bit much more nuclear power generation and development globally should this have not happened, they used a flawed reactor design which led to this, most people don't understand that and now it's synonymous with nuclear technology in general.
There's lots of great designs out there that just work like Canada's CANDU reactors.
I wonder how many gas power plants would have been closed, how much better the environment would be right now, how much sooner we would have moved to battery/electric cars etc should this have not happened :(
35
idiom_exon_0s1 day ago
+5
Not just the reactor itself, but the plant control and alarm annunciation system. Anyone who works in industrial plant automation has heard the many learned lessons from Chernobyl; from fail safe alarming and control, to minimizing alarm fatigue, and adding redundancy to safety instrument systems.
5
_Sgt-Pepper_2 days ago
-35
Nuclear fission is dirty , expensive, and most countries do not have a big amount of uranium. And it has a terrible co2 footprint.
It solves not a single problem...
-35
Bad_Day_Moose2 days ago
+8
It solves carbon/chemicals in the air problem, it's not that dirty only on the initial building if it mostly...
Let just continue to build and burn gas to produce electricity then.
Nuclear is a stopgap between what we have now and renewables and not a permanent solution to power generation and only until we figure out grid scale energy storage, there's lots of ideas and working theories but the reality is that it will take another 60 or so years to implement them to go fully renewable, so in the meantime in the next 10 years we could replace all gas and coal plants without having to change current power grids and work on replacing everything with renewables and a new grid that makes sense for a more electrified future eg: heat/power/more amps for things like while home batteries and electric cars etc
8
AP_in_Indy2 days ago
+3
Maybe if we went back in time. The reality of that many nuclear plants going online even if we wanted them to within 10 years is probably infeasible.
20 - 30 years, maybe, but by then solar and wind will be so much further.
I agree with your overall sentiment though. Screw the “green” party/movement for instilling irrational FUD.
3
Neolyum2 days ago
+3
Building so many nuclear reactors in 10 years is absolutely impossible. Currently the reactors need more like 20-30 years and proper billions in money. Renewables are here, super c**** and ready to be built, we just need to do it.
And battery storage is coming in the next few years, they already got c**** in comparison to some years ago.
The thing is, that even the old plants in EU are producing energy in a more expensive way (~17ct/kWh) than renewables with around 8ct/kWh, so building nuclear doesn't really make sense anymore
3
Dulse_eater2 days ago
+13
How does an RBMK reactor explode? Lies
13
BigPickleKAM2 days ago
+4
“When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.”
4
leisurechef2 days ago
+10
Wasn’t the inherent problem a flawed reactor design?
10
BigPickleKAM2 days ago
+10
It is quite the impressive f*** up on a global scale and there are so many layers to the onion of this failure but the flawed design was a massive part of it yes.
The also were operating the reactor well outside of where it should have been.
The flaw was known about but suppressed and not explained to the operators.
There are many reports about how due to management pressure the safety test they were doing had to be done that night.
It is one of those things that gets worse and worse the closer you look at it.
But as someone who does accident investigations in my work place the failure there is like horribly beautiful confluence of every conceivable management, engineering, and safety culture failure you could think up.
10
Fox_Kurama1 day ago
+2
To add to that second sentence, they had to disable the safety systems in order to operate it that way without an automated emergency shutdown being triggered. They were basically using a commercial reactor for an experiment in the middle of the night that you only MIGHT want to try with a research reactor designed specifically for that experiment.
2
mrm00r32 days ago
+6
Yep. Graphite tipped rods meant to make the spicy rocks less spicy actually briefly made them very much more spicy, which evaporates water, and thus causing a bit of a tenuous situation.
6
Shas_Erra2 days ago
+5
> tenuous situation.
That’s like saying that Hiroshima was an unseasonably warm day
5
sciencephilic-guy1 day ago
+2
I remember that day, it was unpleasantly hot, like 40(thousand) degrees Celsius. -_-
2
MetalBawx2 days ago
+3
Flawed design, much of the staff wern't properlly trained to run a a nuclear power plant and even then it took them running an experiment on it that "intentionally" disabled safety equipment and ran the reactor in a manner they knew was unsafe...
3
Rustic_gan1232 days ago
+1
Not just the reactor. The computer could not control the reactor to prevent gross violations by personnel. Instead, it only provided data and calculations.
1
staybehind232 days ago
+4
Soviet Russia being unable to do something safely 40 years ago doesn't mean it's not safe.
4
sciencephilic-guy1 day ago
+1
It's kinda sad how Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi will eternally stunt nuclear power :((( It's actually one of the safest
1
MetalBawx2 days ago
+1
They knew it was unsafe but the RBMK was easier to build and had a high power output for a reactor design of it's generation.
The biggest problem is the people running them wern't told how unsafe it was.
1
Fox_Kurama1 day ago
+2
In this case, the people running it were also doing an experiment that REQUIRED turning off various safety systems to run the reactor in a way it shouldn't be run, and which the reactor would normally automatically trigger an emergency shutdown for before being able to start the experiment.
2
NecessarySudden2 days ago
Yes, that is why not so Soviet Russia sized and filled up with soldiers and weapons another even bigger NPP in Ukraine
0
Blue_Owl_4202 days ago
-4
This was Ukraine
-4
cgsawtell1 day ago
+4
Technically it was the Soviet Union at the time so your both right and wrong 🤷
4
Blue_Owl_4201 day ago
+1
Yes but saying Soviet Russia isn’t totally correct
1
tubulerz114 hr ago
+1
It doesn’t seem like such a big deal now.
1
shouldbepracticing8512 hr ago
+1
How did I not know this happened in my lifetime? I would have been about 5 months old.
I didn’t realize it happened so close to the Challenger Shuttle explosion either.
1
KindledWanderer2 days ago
+1
Even including Chernobyl, Fukushima and all other issues, nuclear is still safer per kwh than wind.
Something to think about.
1
vacuum902 days ago
-1
Might have doomed the world, not directly but indirectly by turning the world away from nuclear before renewables could take over
28 Comments