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On 26 April 1986, at 01:23 (UTC+3), reactor four suffered a catastrophic power increase, leading to explosions in its core. This dispersed large quantities of radioactive fuel and core materials into the atmosphere and ignited the combustible graphite moderator. The burning graphite moderator increased the emission of radioactive particles, carried by the smoke, as the reactor had not been encased by any kind of hard containment vessel. The accident occurred during an experiment scheduled to test a potential safety emergency core cooling feature, which took place during a normal shutdown procedure.
Friday, 03-Jan-14 15:19:05 UTC from web-
@ceruleanspark basically wjat there trying to say is they wanted to see how it would do if they shut down all the safety measures and let it run hot. Chernobyl my hero.
Friday, 03-Jan-14 15:28:16 UTC from web-
@mylittlesistercantbethisincestual Actually, what they were /trying/ to do was test whether or not the residual momentum from the still spinning plant turbines would be sufficient to generate enough power to cover a the 45 second spin-up time the backup diesel generators required to keep the reactor coolant pumps running.
Friday, 03-Jan-14 15:31:57 UTC from web-
@ceruleanspark with the fail safes off though?
Friday, 03-Jan-14 15:33:57 UTC from web-
@mylittlesistercantbethisincestual They disabled the ECCS system, but by the time the human operators had finished dicking around with the reactor core manually, it wouldn't have especially helped. The primary safety system was actually operating as designed throughout the experiment, but because the human operators had opted for manual withdrawal of all but 12 of the reactor control rods, the computer wasn't able to keep control of the reaction temperature once the last one was in there.
Friday, 03-Jan-14 15:41:40 UTC from web
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