this might be a little off-topic, but I don't know where else to ask

i saw a video simulating the real time unfolding of the chernobyl disaster and it blew my mind how much the engineers ignored every warning and security measure possible

(yt link for those interested: https://youtu.be/WMr3-ShzB08)

why would they do this? i'm not a nuclear engineer, but i'd much rather risk my job, my career and leave millions of people without electricity than push the safety thresholds even by the tiniest bit. trying to look for explanations online leads to liberal, anticommunist bullshit like "russian incompetence" or "they wouldn't dare question the generals" or whatever. i want an actual, technical (and social) explanation without any liberal bias, which is why i'm asking it here

  • Comprehensive49@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    18 days ago

    They were running tests, so some warnings were expected.

    Accidents are kinda inevitable with new technologies, especially nuclear. The US actually had its main nuclear accident, Three Mile Island, in 1979, which was quite a bit earlier than the USSR's Chernobyl in 1986. The human errors that caused both accidents were quite similar, the US just had a slightly better reactor design that prevented the same steam blowout that Chernobyl suffered.

    Because of the backdrop of the Cold War, the US didn't share anything it learned from its mistakes at Three Mile Island with the Soviet Union.

    Notice that after their respective disasters, the USA and USSR/Russia have not had similar meltdowns again. Since the end of the Cold War, no accidents have been caused again by similar issues due to the sharing of reactor info.

    The Fukushima meltdown was due to corporate incompetence and skimping on disaster preparedness by TEPCO, so isn't comparable.

    • knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      17 days ago

      Another interesting note about Fukushima: in some other prefectures the NPP sites were designated safe spaces for people evacuated from their homes in preparation for the tsunamis, including NPP sites on the pacific coast just like Fukushima.

      I also despise how Fukushima was used as the final excuse for Germany to ban nuclear power, as if Germany is at any risk for a tsunami (although they are of course at risk from corporate incompetence).

      • Comprehensive49@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        17 days ago

        Germany's coal lobby screwed them so hard. Germany's fossil fuel lobby also promised to replace nuclear with a 'hydrogen economy' that still doesn't exist, and won't exist for at least the next decade.

        Now Germany's about to run out of electricity.

          • knfrmity@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            11 days ago

            For as bad as things are with regards to energy in Germany right now, they'll have to get a whole lot worse before people are ready to accept nuclear again. Germans are absolutely terrified of nuclear power, apparently more so than losing all of their energy intensive industry.

    • Large Bullfrog@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      17 days ago

      I also want add that Japan also had that one incident with Hisashi Ouchi in 1999, the guy was said to have one of the most painful deaths of any person ever.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        16 days ago

        Hisashi Ouchi

        I never heard about him before so just read about, and holy shit, manually handling uranium by buckets is not something i would expect in 1999

        Ouchi was standing at a tank, holding a funnel, while a co-worker named Masato Shinohara poured a mixture of intermediate-enriched uranium oxide into it from a bucket.