Chernobyl
Introduction
The Chernobyl accident is a RBMK 100 nuclear reactor accident that happened in Chernobyl, Ukraine on April 26, 1986.The reactor was operated by the Soviet Union but neglected in safety protocols in result to the Cold War. The reactor was engineered and built with design flaws which directly resulted in the death of 30 operators and safety workers and indirectly resulted in the diagnosis of 6500 thyroid cancers and 28 deaths from Acute radiation syndrome. This explosion has raised eyebrows on not only the engineering repercussions of poor design but also ling term health impacts from radiation exposure. Hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens located at least 19 miles away were affected.
Engineering Perspective
While a safety maintenance check up was scheduled, disaster took over instead. There was a flaw in the engineering design of the reactor. This flaw being the reactor becoming extremely unstable when ran under very low power. The power level was argued by the workers and the Soviet Union nuclear engineer, Anatoly Dyatlov, in charge. The Soviets were experiencing power outages often so Anatoly Dyatlov planned a test to reduce the nuclear reactors power levels as an experiment of a power outage happening and the backup generators taking over. The guidelines were saying that the power should be between 700 to 1000 megawatts but Dyatlov decided to preserve the cooling water and drop the power to 200 megawatts. This is where the disaster originated from. This is why the limits exceeded. The limits being the power being generated by the reactors due to the boron control rods being raised and losing control of the reactor. Steam pressure that the boron rods are experiencing cannot be attained and reactors the reactor causing the reactor to explode.
Lessons Learned
At an engineering standpoint, a lesson to learn would be expecting these circumstances to happen and to prepare the reactor to deal with it. NASA sends trained professional astronauts to space but still engineer the spaceship to deal with any circumstances that may come their way even if its by the astronauts themselves. Making mistakes is part of human nature and it should be expected that during a maintenance report, there would be some kind of human error. Also having a safety factor in the amount of combined chemicals can be with the reactor. It is predicted that the second reactor exploded due to excess in hydrogen level or complete power loss in the reactor.
A lesson learned that seems like it should’ve been obvious from the start. When dealing with highly explosive material/substances, NEVER GO AGAINST SAFETY REGULATIONS. If you are working or even looking at something as powerful and demonic as a nuclear power plant, you take every precaution in the book serious. You don’t even think twice about following protocol at a power plant.
From a business standpoint, a mistake would be hiring lazy or uneducated workers to perform maintenance checks on the most dangerous substance in human existence. Even if these were trained professionals who did the maintenance check, there should be security cameras or supervisors constantly checking to see if they are doing the task correctly and following all the protocols
References
https://www.livescience.com/39961-chernobyl.html
https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident.aspx#:~:text=The%20Chernobyl%20accident%20in%201986,in%20many%20parts%20of%20Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITEXGdht3y8