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 The Chernobyl reactors were RBMK, natural Uranium fueled,water cooled, graphite moderators. A design that American physicist and Nobel laureate Hans Bethe has called "fundamentally faulty, having built-in instability" (Rhodes 1). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/chernobyl.html This instability of the reactor caused it to lose coolant, increase in activity, and continue to run faster and hotter rather than shut down. As reactor number 4 literally began meltdown their was no heavy concrete cover to contain the radiation and so the picture above tells all. Even though Bethe saw the Chernobyl reactors as "fundamentally faulty" what actually caused the reactor to go into meltdown? On April 25, 1986 the crew at Chernobyl reactor 4 was preparing for a test to determine how long turbines would spin and supply power following a loss of main electrical power supply. Also, let it be known these tests, which involved a low power setting, had been conducted on other Chernobyl reactors and the reactors were found to be very unstable. A series of operator actions such as the disabling of automatic shutdown mechanisms, preceded the attempted test early on 26 April. As flow of coolant water diminished, power output increased. When the operator moved to shut down the reactor from its unstable condition arising from previous errors, the unique design of the reactor caused a dramatic power surge. The fuel elements exploded and the resultant explosive force of steam lifted off the cover plate of the reactor, releasing fission products to the atmosphere. A second explosion threw out fragments of burning fuel and graphite from the core and allowed air to rush in, causing the graphite moderator to burst into flames. The 1200 tons of graphite burned for the next nine days and was the cause of most of the radiation that was released into the atmosphere. A total of about 14 EBq (1018 Bq) of radioactivity was released, half of it being biologically-inert noble gases.

Some 5000 tonnes of boron, dolomite, sand, clay and lead were dropped on to the burning core by helicopter in an effort to extinguish the blaze and limit the release of radioactive particles.


 