WI: A German Cernobyl in Lubmin

What would happen if 7 December 1975 turned Lubmin into the German Cernobyl?

See the Wikipedia article on the Lubmin Nuclear Power Station.

It also states:
7 December 1975 - An electrician wanted to show his apprentice how to bridge electrical circuits. He decided to short-circuit the primary winding on one of the Unit 1 pumps by developing an arc following the edge of a wiring loom. The fire in the main trough destroyed the current supply and the control lines of five of the unit's six main coolant pumps. The fire was quickly brought under control by the fire-brigade and the pumps were temporarily repaired. After this near-disaster, fire protection within the power station was substantially strengthened and separate electrical lines for each pump were introduced. The incident was only made public in 1989. A few hours after the incident the IAEA was informed by Soviet authorities, which classified the accident under INES 4, later revised to INES 3.[3][4]

Could this galvanise the anti-nuclear movement, with a Cernobyl 11 years early? Would nuclear power be less or more popular?
 
By the way, for anyone being able to speak German, this is what the German Wikipedia has to say about the incident. Sounds a bit more threatening even, I find... From this excerpt, I read that only or at least mostly the competent crew avoided a German Cernobyl - and the fact that the sixth main coolant pump was, by chance, connected to the electricity of the neighbouring bloc and not to bloc 1.

Am 7. Dezember 1975 wollte ein Elektriker seinem Lehrling zeigen, wie man elektrische Schaltkreise überbrückt. Dabei kam es zu einem Kurzschluss auf der Unterspannungsseite des Reservetrafos 1 von Block 1. Durch den Kurzschlussstrom brach ein Kabelbrand aus. Das Feuer im Hauptkabelkanal zerstörte die Stromversorgung und die Steuerleitungen von fünf der sechs Hauptkühlmittelpumpen. Die sechste war zufällig am Stromkreislauf des Nachbarreaktors angeschlossen und sicherte eine notdürftige Kühlung des Reaktorkerns. Das Feuer konnte durch die Betriebsfeuerwehr schnell unter Kontrolle gebracht und die Stromversorgung der Pumpen provisorisch wieder hergestellt werden, da sofort nach Auftreten des Brandes Gegenmaßnahmen ergriffen wurden und die Betriebsmannschaft zu jeder Zeit des Unfalls die richtigen Entscheidungen traf. Nach dieser Beinahe-Katastrophe wurden Maßnahmen zur Verbesserung des Brandschutzes innerhalb des Kraftwerks vorgeschlagen und die „räumliche Trennung“ bei sicherheitsrelevanten Einrichtungen eingeführt, was mehrere Wochen in Anspruch nahm; dabei erhielt jede Hauptkühlmittelpumpe ihre separate Stromversorgung. Die Maßnahmen zum Brandschutz wurden erst elf Jahre nach dem Vorfall von 1975 realisiert und in der Zwischenzeit gab es mindestens einen weiteren Brand (1977 in einer Wasseraufbereitungsanlage). Der Störfall von 1975 wurde erst nach der Wende 1989 im Fernsehen und dem Spiegel (u. a. Ausgabe 1. Februar 1990) publik gemacht. Durch sowjetische Stellen wurde bereits wenige Stunden nach dem Zwischenfall die IAEO informiert. Der Unfall wurde zuerst in INES 4 eingestuft, später in INES 3 (Vorläufer zu einem Unfall, hier einem „Station-Blackout“-Schmelzszenario) korrigiert.[22] Der 10-Prozent-Grenzwert der zulässigen Aktivitätsabgabe wurde nicht überschritten. Spätere Auswertungen der Vorgänge durch eine Regierungskommission und die Bestätigung der von der Kommission gezogenen Schlüsse durch die IAEO zeigen, dass eine erfahrene Betriebsmannschaft anlagenbedingte Schwachstellen ausgleichen kann. Dieser Störfall ist daher auch als Standard-Unfall-Szenario für WWER-440 in die Simulator-Schulung in Greifswald nach 1990 eingeflossen.
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
Czernobyl was extremly expensive, in men and materals, some call it the last battle of the Soviet Union

Prevailing Winds in Europe are from the West, but you would have to check the exact weather patterns in Dezember 1975 to be sure

Compared to 1986 the anti-atomic movement in Western Germany in 1975 was smaller but I think already existing,
don't know if it is big ebnough for a critical mass ( pun) to make real change
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
"Die sechste war zufällig am Stromkreislauf des Nachbarreaktors angeschlossen..."

sounds to me like a mistake in construction prevented the disaster
 

Perkeo

Banned
There are two sides of the tale: The likelihood of severe accidents was drastically underestimated, but the consequences were drastically exagerated:
The prognosis by the anti-atom-movement was that anyone within dozends of kilometers range would immediately die and a lot more people would suffer acute radiation poisoning. The reality was that of the 600 workers present at the time of the accident, only 30 died from short-term effects and the large numbers of projected victims from long-term effects is kind of diminished when comparing it to the number of victims e.g. by cigarette smoking.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying nuclear accidents are harmless, but they aren't the end of the world either. And if the accident happens at a less remote area and at a time where ideologizing the subject isn't that much advanced, the second revelation might get more attention than IOTL.
 
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Prevailing Winds in Europe are from the West, but you would have to check the exact weather patterns in Dezember 1975 to be sure

The German Wikipedia - under "Capella-Orkan" - says that there was a "stürmische Westwindlage" meaning that winds up to gale force came from the West. So Lubmin fallout would go east into the People's Republic of Poland and maybe Kaliningrad... However, this was over the western part of West Germany, so I don't know how far this is applicable.

"Die sechste war zufällig am Stromkreislauf des Nachbarreaktors angeschlossen..."

sounds to me like a mistake in construction prevented the disaster

I don't know if they mean a "mistake" or just some - in this case - lucky break.

Compared to 1986 the anti-atomic movement in Western Germany in 1975 was smaller but I think already existing,
don't know if it is big ebnough for a critical mass ( pun) to make real change

The anti-atomic movement had begun to exist, yes. And I think with East Germany and former German Territories - which were only disavowed three years earlier by Brandt, but certainly still "German" in the view of many older Germans (Vertriebene) and the German right wing - being contaminated, it might reach critical mass pretty quickly..
 

Perkeo

Banned
"Die sechste war zufällig am Stromkreislauf des Nachbarreaktors angeschlossen..."

sounds to me like a mistake in construction prevented the disaster

Redundancy is not a mistake in construction. The failure to implement spatial separation of critical systems is. It's like building a car without brakes and calling it a mistake in construction when the driver manages to stop it by reverse gear.
 
There are two sides of the tale: The likelihood of severe accidents was drastically underestimated, but the consequences were drastically exagerated:
The prognosis by the anti-atom-movement was that anyone within dozends of kilometers range would immediately die and a lot more people would suffer acute radiation poisoning. The reality was that of the 600 workers present at the time of the accident, only 30 died from short-term effects and the large numbers of projected victims from long-term effects is kind of diminished when comparing it to the number of victims e.g. by cigarette smoking.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying nuclear accidents are harmless, but they aren't the end of the world either. And if the accident happens at a more remote area and at a time where ideologizing the subject isn't that much advanced, the second revelation might get more attention than IOTL.

I do get what you mean, but... do you think that an earlier Cernobyl-type accident might actually help the cause of nuclear power? I don't think that Lubmin can be considered a "remote area" either, at least not more remote than Cernobyl.
 

Perkeo

Banned
I do get what you mean, but... do you think that an earlier Cernobyl-type accident might actually help the cause of nuclear power?
To help the cause of nuclear power, we better have no Cernobyl-type accident. But an earlier one might make it more difficult to tell those two lies told by OTL anti-nuclear activists:
1) The damage to life and property will be so enormeous that nothing compares to it. The country will be certainly ruined.
2) There is no point in discussing safety measures, all reactors are more or less equally dangerous.

I don't think that Lubmin can be considered a "remote area" either, at least not more remote than Cernobyl.
Sorry I meant less remote than Chernobyl, not more. In Lubmin it would be a lot more difficult to uphold the claim that anyone drops dead as soon as he or she enters the evacuation zone.
 
It turns political very fast when participants in the discussion have zero idea about the nuclear reactor technology.
The Lubmin reactors were WWER 400 pressurised water reactor type, not a graphite moderated RBMKs like in Tschernobyl. This means that - without previous destruction of the entire infrastructure around the reactor as happened in Fukushima Daiichi - you are looking at a Three Mile Island type of incident as a worst case: a complete write off of a massive investment and a heavy contamination of the insides of the building, but... That's It. No reaction running out of control, no graphite fires spreading isotopes far and wide. A PWR has a negative (corrected) void coefficient, meaning that an overheating (or a loss of pressure vessel integrity) stops the nuclear reaction by itself, without any interference from engineering. A graphite moderated RBMK has a narrow range of parameters with positive (corrected) void coefficient, meaning if you are in this point and try to get the reaction to stop and are within this range, THE REACTION RATE GOES UP. It is a fucking insane design - and this is why it has never been built again.
There is that idea among the anti-nuclear crowd that a nuclear reactor can explode like a bomb if only pushed to the right point. It cannot. Not even if you try to make it to. There is less in common between what happens inside a nuclear reactor and inside a nuclear bomb going off than between what happens inside your muscles and in a fuel-air explosion.
 
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Anderman

Donor
@ altamiro you mixed up the void coefficents the PWR has a negative one if the temperature goes up reaction rate goes down. A RBMK has positive one temperature goes up so does the reaction rate .
 
@ altamiro you mixed up the void coefficents the PWR has a negative one if the temperature goes up reaction rate goes down. A RBMK has positive one temperature goes up so does the reaction rate .
Shit, I guess typing and talking at the same time is not a good idea. Good catch. Thanks
 
No need to back out that quickly.

Also, the comments by @altamiro on reactor types put Lubmin in a new perspective. It can turn a severe accident, but it can't turn into a German Cernobyl...
Precisely. By the way there were several partial meltdowns in American and European as well as Soviet PWRs due to loss of coolant or breakdown of active cooling, between 1960 and 1990 - in some cases they resulted in a write-off of the reactor itself, in some cases the reactor could be even repaired and put back into service. In none of these cases significant amounts of radioisotopes were released into the environment. However all of these had a reactor containment system which the first generation of Soviet PWR lacked - so that contamination of the reactor building and possible abandonment of the other reactor blocks seems possible.
On the other hand even TMI incident could only reach the level it did because for some reasons the temperature readings from the reactor were ignored for several hours after coolant system failed (IIRC it was during a night shift and they had really green crew on that shift). A reasonably quick reaction (like turning on a reserve pump within an hour or two of first warning) would have kept the reactor damaged but repairable.
In any case, to produce any large area contamination on a seriously dangerous level, you have to have a serious fire right in the exposed reactor material after removing all containment - which happened in Chernobyl because of graphite moderator burning fiercely, but cannot happen in a water cooled reactor simply due to lack of flammable material in most water-moderated reactor designs...
 
Precisely. By the way there were several partial meltdowns in American and European as well as Soviet PWRs due to loss of coolant or breakdown of active cooling, between 1960 and 1990 - in some cases they resulted in a write-off of the reactor itself, in some cases the reactor could be even repaired and put back into service. In none of these cases significant amounts of radioisotopes were released into the environment. However all of these had a reactor containment system which the first generation of Soviet PWR lacked - so that contamination of the reactor building and possible abandonment of the other reactor blocks seems possible.
On the other hand even TMI incident could only reach the level it did because for some reasons the temperature readings from the reactor were ignored for several hours after coolant system failed (IIRC it was during a night shift and they had really green crew on that shift). A reasonably quick reaction (like turning on a reserve pump within an hour or two of first warning) would have kept the reactor damaged but repairable.
In any case, to produce any large area contamination on a seriously dangerous level, you have to have a serious fire right in the exposed reactor material after removing all containment - which happened in Chernobyl because of graphite moderator burning fiercely, but cannot happen in a water cooled reactor simply due to lack of flammable material in most water-moderated reactor designs...

Well... is it known which reactors, if any others, were of the Cernobyl (RBMK) type? Or of another type that can cause a Cernobyl-type disaster?
 
Well... to get a Chernobyl-type disaster you need a reactor that can very easily get out of control (large positive void coefficient) and containing large amount of flammable materials such as graphite or sodium coolant. Both the West and the Soviets have built such reactors in the 1950s but in the West most of them were decommissioned in the 1960s, the Soviets ran theirs into the 90s. There were a few other RBMKs and similar constructions in the USSR such as the block 1 of the Leningrad AES and a few others.
 
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