Throughout history there have been a select few catastrophes involving nuclear energy. These unfortunate accidents involved nuclear-powered reactors, in power plants or even in nuclear submarines. On April 26, Chernobyl’s reactor melted down, causing nuclear waste to be released into the atmosphere (Seaman’s Power Journal, Dec. 99). This accident was unavoidable due to the “Bad Science” involved. Unfortunately the engineering theories behind this accident are typically unknown, if not misunderstood. The Soviets used poor engineering in designing their plant; it was unstable, unsafe, and ill-managed.

The nuclear reactor used for Chernobyl’s power plant was the RBMK reactor design (refer to figure 1). This configuration was designed by the Soviets, who used very controversial engineering in building the reactor. To better understand the layout of the reactor, the key features of the RBMK reactor are as follows. Firstly, the fuel is set of eighteen rods filled with pellets of uranium oxide and each of the every two rods occup

Graphite should never have been used in the RBMK reactor design. Graphite is highly flammable and radioactive, thus adding the major instability issues at Chernobyl. After the explosion the graphite burned for nine days and was the main contributor to radiation being released into the atmosphere (World Nuclear Association 2). The water used in cooling the reactor at Chernobyl was pressurized boiling water, as opposed to cool water, which absorbs more heat; thus, the water used increased the amount of pressure in the reactor. This added to the instability as well. The concrete containment block was not enough to contain an explosion or any radiation thereafter. There was only one block; thus no redundancy was engineered for containment. In fact, the explosion blew the “1,000-ton concrete slab” onto the other side of the plant in a split second (Pincus 1).

Chernobyl displays the worst case scenario that can come from “Bad Science”, in this case “Bad Science” being the unstable designs, unsafe implementations, and ill-managed operations at a nuclear power plant. Fortunately, the World has learned from this egregious mistake. In fact, since 1989 over 1,000 nuclear engineers from the former Soviet Union have visited Western nuclear power plants to be trained in the “Good Science” involving nuclear power plants (World Nuclear Association 3).

ies a pressure tube. The pressure t

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