Throughout the world there are several different designs of nuclear reactor to power turbines to generate electricity for a national grid. The reactors at Chernobyl, of which there were four by April 1986, with two more planned for the future, are known as RBMK-1000 and are only to be found in the ex-Soviyet Union. Building work began in 1971, and first reactor went critical in August 1977. By December 1983 all four were on steam.
On the night of 25-26 April 1986, there were on the power plant site 176 duty operational staff and workers from various departments and maintenance services. In addition to this number, there were also 268 builders and assemblers working on the night shift of the constructions of units Nos.5 and 6.
The fatal accident sequence was initiated by a decision of the plant’s management and specialists to make an overnight experiment to test the ability of the turbine generator to power certain of the cooling pumps while the generator was freewheeling to a standstill after its steam supply had been cut off. The purpose of the experiment was to see if the power requirement of unit No.4 could be sustained for a short time during a power failure.
f conducting the experiment knowingly departed from the experimental programme which was already of poor quality. This created the conditions for the emergency situation which no one believed could ever happen.
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