I've started Part III for this on The Liquidation a couple of times - if only to fill out the ATT page (No, I haven't forgotten it). There is more to come.
The RBMK reactor was flawed from the beginning, but that's fine. The problem with all of these advanced nuclear technolgies is that the effort to eliminate each and every risk gets extraordinary expensive and convoluted to the point where the cost inflates massively.
One may argue that the consequences of an accident justify such a thing, but the real cause of the Chernobyl disaster wasn't that the reactor exploded - but that the explosion wasn't contained. Legasov remarks on this in his memoirs - that the one thing that must be done for any potentially dangerous technology, is to put it into a box it can't get out of, no matter how safe you think you've made it. Because an accident that can happen, will happen.
That said, RBMK is a perfectly valid thing to build if you want the benefits of nuclear power - or think that the potential environment cost is less compared to the realised environmental costs of the alternative. Just build with your eyes open and make sure everyone involved knows the dangers the technology poses. It's one thing to tell people to be mindful of a limit - and quite another to explain to them why the limit exists.
Then again, the modifications to eliminate the positive SCRAM are reasonably basic - at its most basic an operating proceedure change to the control rod schedule to prevent the tip-effect. Once it's known about a skilled operator can work around it. Eliminating the positive void coefficient requires higher enrichment and more absorbers in the core which removes one of the key advantages of the design. But the void coefficient only appears if you've chewed through the majority of your fuel - running a core with fresher fuel and reprocessing on a short cycle will solve that. Fresher fuel also mitigates the tip-effect.
Also A translation of Legasov's tapes
The RBMK reactor was flawed from the beginning, but that's fine. The problem with all of these advanced nuclear technolgies is that the effort to eliminate each and every risk gets extraordinary expensive and convoluted to the point where the cost inflates massively.
One may argue that the consequences of an accident justify such a thing, but the real cause of the Chernobyl disaster wasn't that the reactor exploded - but that the explosion wasn't contained. Legasov remarks on this in his memoirs - that the one thing that must be done for any potentially dangerous technology, is to put it into a box it can't get out of, no matter how safe you think you've made it. Because an accident that can happen, will happen.
That said, RBMK is a perfectly valid thing to build if you want the benefits of nuclear power - or think that the potential environment cost is less compared to the realised environmental costs of the alternative. Just build with your eyes open and make sure everyone involved knows the dangers the technology poses. It's one thing to tell people to be mindful of a limit - and quite another to explain to them why the limit exists.
Then again, the modifications to eliminate the positive SCRAM are reasonably basic - at its most basic an operating proceedure change to the control rod schedule to prevent the tip-effect. Once it's known about a skilled operator can work around it. Eliminating the positive void coefficient requires higher enrichment and more absorbers in the core which removes one of the key advantages of the design. But the void coefficient only appears if you've chewed through the majority of your fuel - running a core with fresher fuel and reprocessing on a short cycle will solve that. Fresher fuel also mitigates the tip-effect.
Also A translation of Legasov's tapes
I love the smell of rotaries in the morning. You know one time, I got to work early, before the rush hour. I walked through the empty carpark, I didn't see one bloody Prius or Golf. And that smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole carpark, smelled like.... ....speed.
One day they're going to ban them.