Comments by "Arthur Mosel" (@arthurmosel808) on "Scott Manley" channel.

  1. Lets talk about several things. First is that carbon graphite reactors were used to produce plutonium for weapons used. The light water reactors, pressurized or boiling water, are not major producers of plutonium. Second is that the Chernobyl reactor had no containment, only a building to provide a shield for weather. The light water reactors in the West had containment buildings designed to keep radiation products inside, even under accident conditions. Why no containment, so fuel rods can be removed to obtain plutonium. Makes sense only if you want the plutonium, so I will leave you to decide why the Soviets did that. Third is that according to the official reason for the reactor not being run in the proper condition for the test was that a problem occurred elsewhere. The supervisory authorities demanded the power be provided not reduced. The separate authorities, who wanted the test demanded the test, Two competing authorities that they had to please. Fourth is the fact that the graphite began started on fire which caused the water to boil. Similarly, Britain suffered a similar issue with a graphite reactor. Windscale. The reason is called a Wigner Reaction (pardon my spelling). Graphite absorbs energy when the reactor is running, to bring it back to normal state, it is heated. If this release isn't controlled the graphite will burn, and that temperature is extreme. In the West adfitional thermalcouples were added to avoid this after Windscale. The Soviets may not have had full readouts for the graphite. From their yes a hydrogen and steam reaction blew the weathershield apart. Fifth the amount of radiation into the environment was caused by the fire the Soviets claimed only 15% of the core was damaged. Compare that to the Three Mile Island accident where up to 60% of the core was damaged, but almost all the radioactive products were trapped in the containment. In fact the sensors indicated that if you sat at the site border during the event you would have been exposed to only what is allowed to a plant worker in a year. I used to train on Emergency plans and response for a company that ran multip,multiple, reactors and saw the International Atomic Energy Reports oh Chernobyl, and while this explanation was better than most, it skipped the damning info on how the Soviets ran their reactors, their competing bureaucracies, and their ignoring of information from previous events elsewhere.
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