Term Papers on Chernobyl: Placing The Blame

Term Paper Title	Chernobyl: Placing The Blame
# of Words	4084
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	16.34

Chernobyl: Placing the Blame

     March 28, 1986, a message appears in New York over the wire service from Moscow:  "An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as one of the reactors was damaged.  Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident.  Aid is being given to those affected.  A Government commission has been set up."1
     The Russian government's official statement was that the operators on the scene on March 26, 1986 were to blame for the accident.  Chernobyl was not a single accident, but the result of multiple errors in the handling of nuclear power in Russia; the Russian Government should have taken responsibility for the accident and the aftereffects of the fallout.
     The controversy starts in 1972 with the construction beginning on the first of the supposed twelve plutonium and graphite reactors to be built on the cite in Prypat, in the Ukraine.  The official name of the reactor design chosen was the RBMK-1000, which was a Soviet designed plutonium based reactor.  It was based on the technology available in the west in the 1950's and at this time was obsolete elsewhere.  In this reactor the nuclear fission of Uranium-238 and 235 is slowed by large graphite columns in the core, the graphite slows down the neutrons since slow neutrons are more efficient in sustaining a chain reaction.  To show the magnitude of the core there were approximately 2,488 graphite columns in the core with a total weight of approximately 1,700 tons.  The intensity of the reaction was also regulated by neutron-absorbing rods made up of elements like boron carbide which absorb neutrons and prevent the development of new neutrons.  Thus the speed of the chain reaction could be sped up or slowed down by the placement of the control rods in the graphite core.  It took 20 seconds to move the rods from their stored position to their lowest point  This was extremely slow when compared to the one second it takes western reactors.2  With this type of control rod the reactor was considered unstable at low powers.3
     The reactor used the heat produced by the nuclear fission to boil water, then the steam was used to rotate turbo generators which produce the electricity.  An important thing on this reactor was that the steam is produced by water that is in direct contact with the active uranium.  Most reactors use the radioactive steam to heat a second tank where the water is then used to turn the turbogenerators.  This means that the RBMK consisted of thousands of pipes and welded joints that contained radioactive steam.  It also means that each reactor was vulnerable to innumerable small leaks and faults.4
     The last major flaw in this reactor in comparison with western reactors was that it did not have a hermetic containment structure surrounding the core.5  This type of containment structure worked successfully in both Japan and the United States in controlling the introduction of radioactive particles into the environment by acting as a giant "force field" around the radioactive accidents.
     These design flaws caused Russian scientists to question the government on their choice of reactor, especially when it was going to be located in a part of Russia that was considered a major agricultural area and only 80 miles from Kiev.  In fact, Grigory Medvedev, a nuclear power expert, stated "that a VVER pressurized water reactor of the Novo-Voronezh type would  have been much more suitable than a uranium-graphite reactor.  A two-circuit plant is cleaner, with less extensive pipeline communications, and discharges are less radioactive.  In other words, it is safer."6  This did not waver the officials minds and construction began.  This was an easy decision for the officials such as the chairman of the State Committee on the Use of Nuclear Power, A. M. Petrosyants, who spoke in the justification of Chernobyl in 1986 when he said, "Science requires victims."7  This attitude along with the fact that the VVER costs more to build and produces approximately one-half of the power the RBMK model does.
     Russian constru...

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