How Does an RBMK Reactor Explode

[Black Aeronaut]

It really is a shame.  If not for this one rather esoteric safety flaw, the RBMK Reactor seems like the platonic ideal of fission reactors. 

Esoteric?

Yes.  Esoteric by the layman's standards.  Which is kind of the problem these days.  People simply look at Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima and go NOPE when the topic of nuclear energy comes up.

At any rate, Dartz said it better than I did.  They thought they had the positive void coefficient handled.  And when Chernobyl happened?  They made modifications to fix that.  The reactors that are operating right now are still very much RBMK reactors.  They're just a lot safer now at the cost of having to enrich the fuel a tiny bit.

That said, I would love to see how well the new MKER reactors perform.