Chernobyl

I can't speak to the capacity of the soviet water pumps but remember the miner's joke; "What's as big as a house..." It's likely their pumps had no more throughput that yours.

Downhammer said:

I can't speak to the capacity of the soviet water pumps but remember the miner's joke; "What's as big as a house..." It's likely their pumps had no more throughput that yours.

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Nah. Russian technology and domestic machinery might be inferior to the west in some regards, but a feedwater pump is a pretty simple and straight forward piece of equipment.

Look at the first pump, this is pretty much what I operate, horizontal centrifugal feedwater pump. Loud as fuck but usually reliable. The second one is like the one used at Chernobyl and used at most modern nuclear plants. (Runs at 5,000 rpm and is MUCH louder). That pump is most likely rated at 600,000 gallons of water per hour. The smaller pump is rated for about 40,000.





Another thing most people dont know is the water used in a nuclear power plant is much different than water used in a traditional plant. It cost millions of dollars to soften and de-mineralize the feedwater, as far as chemical and mechanical treatment. The conductivity of reactor water must have a conductivity of less than ONE.

I run an average of 3,000 conductivity in my boilers. Water with less than one conductivity is SO pure its poisonous for a human to drink.

Jozu said:

Water with less than one conductivity is SO pure its poisonous for a human to drink.

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Ahh, the true cause of deaths at Chernobyl. There were in the feedwater too long. They should have been taken to the infirmary.

What a fantastic mini series. Liked the ending credits scene as well.

The story is always more complex than people think though. Another thing that wasnt touched on too heavily is Teptunov making a mistake during Dyatlovs abusive tirade.

When switching out of global control to bypass safety measures in order to run the test, he over compensated or didnt control the rods correctly after the switch and caused further power loss and more reactor poisoning.

The subsequent attempt to gain power and stoppage of feedpumps resulted in a hotspot at the bottom of the reactor, which eventually lead to some sections of the fuel rod casings to crack causing the rods to get stuck.

The fucking computer for the reactor spit out a recorded command recommendation to shut down the reactor once they fell below 200 megawatts.

Like Legasov said, Dyatlov should have been executed for his actions that night.

Hateyou said:

One of my good friends has a nuclear engineering degree, I got him to watch it over the weekend, he liked it. We were discussing the show from his point of view and he told me a cool story about the origin of the SCRAM / AZ-5 button. It’s probably on Wikipedia but whatever.

SCRAM stood for Super Critical Reactor Axe Man. The USA had a reactor in Idaho or somewhere called SL1, and the control rods were manually controlled with ropes. The guys would raise the rods and tie them off. If something went wrong, a guy with an axe could chop the main rope and all the rods would drop.

That reactor exploded because one of the rods got stuck. So a guy was jerking on it and when it finally came loose he was pulling so hard it came all the way out and the reactor blew up. That man was impaled to the ceiling by a garbage can sized control rod.

End of story.

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Urban myth apparently

I'd PIIHB.

Hateyou said:

What was?

SL-1 - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

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The SCRAM origin is an urban legend. It didn't come from SL-1. The myth originated during the Manhattan Project.

That's what I was asking about before, but wondered what would happen to a live person who camped a radiation deposit.

Would they just disintegrate?