It Can Not Happen Here

The Chernobyl nuclear power station is situated in a region which at the time was relatively sparsely
populated. There were some 135,000 people within a 30 km radius. Of these 49,000 lived in Pripyat to
the west of the plant’s 3 km safety zone and 12,500 in Chernobyl 15 km to the south-east of the plant.
In Chernobyl the reactor was designed to deliver a constant power out of 100Mwe.The heat generated
in the reactor is cooled by boiling hot water and moderated by graphite. The reactor contained 192te
of uranium enriched to 2%. The reactor was housed in a containment built to withstand a pressure of
0.45 MPa.
The nuclear power plant always associated with risk of radiation and waste management. The
successful operation of any nuclear power plant relay on the management, standard operating protocol
and workers skill in handling the overall process. Some of the lessons of Chernobyl apply specifically
to the nuclear industry.

 Management of, and safety culture in, major hazard installations: The management of the
organization at the Chernobyl plant were clearly inadequate for the operation of a major
hazard installation.
 Adherence to safety-related instructions: Closely linked to this is the lesson which most
commentators have highlighted as the principal one, the need to adhere to safety-related
instructions. At Chernobyl a number of such instructions were violated by the operators.
These violations included disconnecting the ECCS and disabling two sets of trip systems.
 Inherently safer design of plants: The Chernobyl reactor had a low degree of inherent safety,
due particularly to the positive temperature coefficient. The reactor did have some features,
however, which might be claimed to be inherently safer. Thus by avoiding the use of a single
large pressure vessel the design eliminated the hazard of catastrophic rupture of such a vessel
and by subdividing the fuel into individually cooled channels it reduced the risk of total core
meltdown.
 Sensitivity and operability of plants: Closely related to inherently safer design is the
sensitivity and operability of plants. The nuclear reactor at Chernobyl had a regime, that of
low excess reactivity, at which it was close to instability and difficult to control. This is an
undesirable characteristic in any plant.
 Disarming of protective systems: The disarming of protective systems is a permissible
practice in certain cases, but these need to be well defined and there must be proper
procedures for doing so. At Chernobyl, protective systems were disarmed which should not
have been.
 Planning and conduct of experimental work on plants: When work is to be done on a plant,
whether engineering work or experimental testing, it is necessary, particularly if the work
involves modification to safety-related features such as the disarming of trips, to review the
potential hazards and to have specific authorized arrangements for the safe operation of the
plant. Once the test is under way, unauthorized modifications should not be made to the
equipment or to the test procedure itself which have potential safety implications.
 Accidents involving human error and their assessment: The Chernobyl disaster was caused
by a series of actions by the operators of the plant. It appears to be a case of human error
which is virtually impossible to foresee and prevent. No doubt the probability of any one of
the events would have been assessed as low and that of their combination is virtually
incredible. But there was a common factor, namely the determination to carry out the test.
Considering the above points, it is always hazardous to have nuclear power plant like Chernobyl at
our vicinity.