Comments by "Stephen Villano" (@spvillano) on "That Chernobyl Guy"
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Why? A misapprehension on when xenon would be detected in the core, then deflection of blame to the lowest guy on the totem pole, big plus if he's dead and unable to defend himself?
Hell, the video itself contradicts the central assertion that xenon wasn't poisoning the core, as it's a primary fission product. It's a noble gas, so not exceptionally reactive and takes time to diffuse through the dense uranium fuel pellet, then diffuse out of the rod, into the water coolant and be detected. Obviously, one isn't cutting fuel pellets inside of an operating reactor to check xenon levels!
Add in the graphite tips on the control does, which act as a moderator and were a bit part of some western prompt criticality accidents. Add in what's readily apparent to be misunderstanding of test conditions and reasons, such as one needs a certain excess of power to actually try to spin steam turbines enough to operate the circulation and cooling systems.
And oddly unremarked upon, the rationale for removing control rods that are never removed - ever in the history of that reactor, plus withdrawing rods beyond their normal levels, allowing the xenon to burn off rapidly in the rapidly increasing neutron flux, depoisoning the core and allowing it to swiftly, beyond human ability to react, go prompt critical. Once the pile was at prompt critical, nothing could prevent the disaster, as control rods aren't bullets, they take time to insert and well, you're talking a millisecond or so of instantaneous hundreds of megawatts of anger.
I've not reviewed his other videos, but conditionally agree and disagree on the "no hydrogen explosion" bit. There was a hydrogen explosion, an utterly unconfined one, as water hammer dismantled the reactor core and the overheating rods did allow disassociation of hydrogen from the water, which duly did explosively combust in the now open reactor building. As in, a bit less of an explosion than the resultant Hindenburg fire, after the dirigible initially exploded. A bit whoosh and it was over.
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Yeah, the simple accident of dropping a ham sandwich turned into a major conspiracy theory. Or something.
You know, sneaking off to spy in an antique reactor, climbing through a few feet of stainless steel, control assemblies and fuel, to gnaw on a sammich, when the flying saucers and worse, flying cups upset a wife due to a fractured tea service.
Between the dropped sandwich and the profanity of the enraged wife, the reactor overheated, melted, then had a massive explosion.
Or one could go with what actually happened, a comedy of errors resulted in an inevitable tragedy. Oh wait, that couldn't happen, because governments are all perfect and never make mistakes.
The radar crap makes jack shit of sense either, as the US and Soviet Union had those since WWII and both operate a fence type radar to this very day to track all of the junk we've tossed carelessly into orbit. A US version shutting down in 2013 in Texas, as it was replaced by a global version with more stations over a wider area to better track the junk in orbit. Feel free to look up "Space Fence" and the Russian counterpart, who share information between them to ensure orbital safety of modest projects like the ISS.
Then, there's one not touched here. Chernobyl is a total dead zone, nothing can live there. Ignore the tourists visiting pretty much daily. Or those, ahem, Russian tourists in the tree looking clothing and armored vehicles that dug all over the place, they all obviously dissolved or something.
Reality is stranger than fiction far too frequently, so some seek to make fiction even stranger. I'd pop these idiots in the head with my cane, but it's far too much fun tripping them incessantly with it instead...
OK, I can wish. Trip them or just tie their shoelaces together, which would likely occupy them constructively for a decade untying them again.
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