A Short History of the Chernobyl Accident

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | project wormwood | 2 Comments

On October April 26, 1986, the operators of the Chernobyl nuclear power reactor #4 started a test. They wanted to find out if, in the event of a external power failure, power from the reactor turbine could be used to keep the cooling water flow until the emergency generators were powered on. Because if the cooling water couldn’t be exchanged, the reactor would overheat, triggering a nuclear meltdown.

The test was high on their priority list, because it concerned a primary safety feature of the reactor. It had been signed off without being properly tested in order to keep deadlines for launching unit operations in 1984. Not keeping this deadline would have meant cut bonuses and extras for thousands of workers and engineers, and records were falsified to hide the missing test. In other words: The crew wanted to test something that was supposed to have been tested two years before. › Continue reading

Tags: accident, Chernobyl, history, nuclear, Prypiat