There have been a number of reports about Chernobyl. This one was rather sparse on details and seemed to have as its take-home point "The USSRians were morons, this could never happen in the US because we are better and people who do tests on reactors go to jail." Now, this is not very useful. What happened in Chernobyl was a combination of technical failure, failure to follow regulations, bad design and an error cascade. This combination was significantly more likely in the conditions in the USSR at the time, but accidents on a smaller scale have happened, even in the US. http://www.csirc.net/library/la_13638.shtml is an interesting read, especially the first document linked. It contains data and detailed accident reports for a number of radiation criticalities in various situations. Failsafes are good, but they are not enough, and someone stupid, uninformed, or willful enough can always find ways of circumventing them.
The USSRians made some decisions which, in retrospect, seem pretty evil. For example, I hear they were cloud seeding to force the fallout to be rained. This hit Belarus very badly. BUT if they hadn't done this, then the clouds would have continued towards Moscow and many many many more people could have been affected. The one thing I do criticize them on, though, is not evacuating people earlier. I also hear they never told anyone the extent of the accident until many days later, when they were already poisoned by radiation.
As for the actual accident - there were many factors at play here, including miscommunication between the day and night shift people, untrained staff, bad reactor design etc etc.
I just hope people learned from the accident and we can prevent this from happening again.
Soviets only tell the people of this catastrophe, when independent scientists from Finland reported that radiation levels are unusually high, if they could, they would get away with this, no matter peoples' health.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 16.5 ms ] threadAs for the actual accident - there were many factors at play here, including miscommunication between the day and night shift people, untrained staff, bad reactor design etc etc.
I just hope people learned from the accident and we can prevent this from happening again.