Chernobyl- The Best Place To Happen

butch4343

I am currently reading book about the chernobyl accident and there is a bit that talks about the dangers of rmbk reasons and how widespread they were in the soviet nuclear industry.

That got me wondering, was chernobyl the worst place for the accident to happen? And if so which plant would have caused less economic, social and ecological damage if it had happened there instead of chernobyl?

For example is there a plant in the far east that the prevailing winds would have carried fallout over the largely empty steppes?

And I suppose a second question is , is there somewhere else that would have made the effects of the accident even worse? Ie a plant just outside Moscow ect?

Am interested to hear any thoughts you might have.

Regards

Butch
 

naraic

Leningrad rmbk reactor would probably be the worst place for damage.

I would need a lot of study about winds to figure out if one of them would be best.
 

A Piece of History

butch4343 said:
That got me wondering, was chernobyl the worst place for the accident to happen? And if so which plant would have caused less economic, social and ecological damage if it had happened there instead of chernobyl?
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From Wikipedia.

At Leningrad it was discovered that the RBMK, due to its positive void coefficient, became harder to control as the uranium fuel was consumed or burned up, becoming unpredictable by the time it was shut down after three years for maintenance. This made controlling the RBMK a very laborious, mentally and physically demanding task requiring the timely adjustment of dozens of parameters every minute, around the clock, constantly wearing out switches such as those used for the control rods and causing operators to sweat. The enrichment percentage was thus increased to 2.0% to alleviate these issues. The RBMK was considered by some in the Soviet Union to be already obsolete shortly after the commisioning of Chernobyl unit 1. Aleksandrov and Dollezhal did not investigate further or even deeply understood the problems in the RBMK, and the void coefficient was not analyzed in the manuals for the reactor. Engineers at Chernobyl unit 1 had to create solutions to many of the RBMK's flaws such as a lack of protection against a lack of feedwater supply. Leningrad and Chernobyl unit 1 both had partial meltdowns that were treated (alongside other nuclear accidents at power plants) as state secrets and so were unknown even by other workers at those same plants.
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It sounds perverse, but I do think Chernobyl was the best case scenario for the RBMK reactor blowing up. Could you imagine a Chernobyl-like event happening in Leningrad of all places? It would've been the equivalent of Three Mile Island blowing up all of Londonderry, Pennsylvania.

A nuclear disaster in Leningrad would affect the credibility of the Soviet government far more than the disaster in Chernobyl, since it would've happened in the cradle of the October Revolution. The only difference between Leningrad and Chernobyl would've been that it would be almost impossible to cover up a nuclear disaster in one of the largest cities of the Soviet Union.
 

RamscoopRaider

Donor
The RBMK design was used at Chernobyl, Igalina Lithuania, Kursk, Leningrad and Smolensk, with reactors at Kostroma cancelled before being built. Of those built Leningrad is obviously the worst case, the others are debatable, Chernobyl is the closest to a major city, but Kiev is due south while the largest plume went Northeast. Given that I would rate Smolensk and Kursk as possibly more dangerous, Igalina is far enough the wind patters would be different and I can't say

Kostroma, depending on where in the Oblast the plant was to actually built may have been the safest, or almost as dangerous as Leningrad
 

lionhead

Maybe if other reactor types had similar flaws, like VVER reactors. One of them is located at Kalinin, 200 kilometers from Moscow.
 

Father Maryland

Did they build any similar reactors in the East? Something going wrong in Siberia would probably effect less people. But it would also mean it would take more time for help to arrive.
 

lionhead

Father Maryland said:
Did they build any similar reactors in the East? Something going wrong in Siberia would probably effect less people. But it would also mean it would take more time for help to arrive.
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reactors are built were energy is needed. Nobody lives in Siberia. Not compared to the west of Russia in any case. I suppose a lot can be done with hydro power and simple coal or gas plants.

and like yo say, not smart to built one in the middle of nowhere without good help closeby.
 

Father Maryland

lionhead said:
reactors are built were energy is needed. Nobody lives in Siberia. Not compared to the west of Russia in any case. I suppose a lot can be done with hydro power and simple coal or gas plants.

and like yo say, not smart to built one in the middle of nowhere without good help closeby.
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From what I understand a pretty massive chunk of Soviet Industry was just east of the Urals.
 
TheMann

TheMann

lionhead said:
Maybe if other reactor types had similar flaws, like VVER reactors. One of them is located at Kalinin, 200 kilometers from Moscow.
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The VVER is a pressurized water reactor though, a very different design than the RBMK. Not flawless by any means, but it was never going to able to self-destruct as what happened at Chernobyl Reactor 4. Worst case scenario there is pretty similar to what happened at Fukushima, complete core meltdowns with resulting hydrogen gas explosions, destroying the facility but causing nearly the devastation that happened at Chernobyl.
 

RamscoopRaider

Donor
Father Maryland said:
Did they build any similar reactors in the East? Something going wrong in Siberia would probably effect less people. But it would also mean it would take more time for help to arrive.
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As I said earlier no, all of them were built west of Moscow, the reactors at Kostroma were never built and that would be east of Moscow, but not that far east, Kostroma is part of the "Golden Loop" of Russian cities that include Moscow and is less than 300km away

The sites for RBMK reactors
Chernobyl, Ukraine, 4 built 2 cancelled, #4 is the famous one
Igalina, Lithuania, 2 built, 2 cancelled
Kostroma, NE of Moscow, 2 planned but cancelled
Kursk, near Ukrainian Border, 4 built, 2 cancelled, all four still running
Leningrad, Russia, 4 built, 2 still running
Smolensk, near Belarussian border, 3 built, 1 cancelled, all 3 still running
 
Vladyslav

Vladyslav

Nathan Bernacki said:
Chernobyl was the best case scenario for the RBMK reactor blowing up
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I as Ukrainian prefer Ignalina. They had similar incident with control pods in 1983 and EU would give more money for Lithuania than for Ukraine

Father Maryland said:
From what I understand a pretty massive chunk of Soviet Industry was just east of the Urals.
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Siberia has surplus of electricity with their hydro PP and exports it in European Russia with Unified Energy System
 
TheMann

TheMann

lionhead said:
industry doesn't require as much power as residency does.
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I'd be careful saying that, as heavy industry is often a huge power suck, particularly energy-intensive industries like large-scale vehicle manufacturing or aluminum or steel mills, all things the USSR was very fond of.
 

mattep74

Igalina and Leningrad would mean disaster for Sweden and Finland. Off course, considering the proximity between Helsinki and Leningrad Moscow would know about the situation faster since Finland would scream bloody murder and have TV-cameras on the border.
 
Vladyslav

Vladyslav

mattep74 said:
How is the wind different around ignalina than Chernobyl?
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They are almost the same. Here is a map of the main fallouts in the OTL Chernobyl and ITTL Ignalina, if the winds are identical
JdDLCGg.png


For some reason I thought that Ignalina was a little further south, so Latvia will definitely get radiation. Daugavpils situated on the border of ITTL 30-km zone
 

lionhead

Vladislav said:
They are almost the same. Here is a map of the main fallouts in the OTL Chernobyl and ITTL Ignalina, if the winds are identical
JdDLCGg.png


For some reason I thought that Ignalina was a little further south, so Latvia will definitely get radiation. Daugavpils situated on the border of ITTL 30-km zone
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i think the argument is about the smoke plumes reaching further across scandinavia than OTL.
 
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