this might be a little off-topic, but I don’t know where else to ask
i saw a video simulating the real time unfolding of the chernobyl disaster and it blew my mind how much the engineers ignored every warning and security measure possible
(yt link for those interested: https://youtu.be/WMr3-ShzB08)
why would they do this? i’m not a nuclear engineer, but i’d much rather risk my job, my career and leave millions of people without electricity than push the safety thresholds even by the tiniest bit. trying to look for explanations online leads to liberal, anticommunist bullshit like “russian incompetence” or “they wouldn’t dare question the generals” or whatever. i want an actual, technical (and social) explanation without any liberal bias, which is why i’m asking it here
It’s rly complicated and mired in so much politics, I’m not rly sure either :(
The western experts or people who watched that anti-communist HBO show and consider themselves experts now lol tend toward overfocusing on the “design flaw” (the control rod tips inducing a positive void coefficient in the reactor was actually intentional but their characteristics in possible dangerous situations were not properly communicated to operators) when the primary reason the disaster happened was incompetence and negligence of the night shift of reactor 4 trying to rush the turbine test through. It maybe wouldn’t have happened without the design flaw but it also could have been averted by just not doing one of the many negligent things that the operators did to the reactor
There was a criminal trial of the operators and an official report was commissioned in the USSR, I found a translation of the report (unsure of accuracy) and it’s VERY detailed, you might get something out of it: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1536/ML15365A567.pdf
There are also the INSAG reports from the IAEA you could check out: https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub913e_web.pdf (I can’t find the first one for some reason)