WI: Chernobyl Suffers Multiple Reactor Failures

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Banned
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant had four nuclear reactors completed in April 1986. At the time of the incident, Units 1 and 2 were shutdown, but Units 3 and 4 were operating. When Unit 4 suffered its steam explosion (followed shortly afterwards by a hydrogen-zirconium explosion) it spewed extremely hot uranium fuel and graphite moderator throughout the complex and onto the bitumen covered roofs, sparking multiple fires. In addition to fires on the roof of the turbine hall shared by all units, one fire even ignited directly on the roof of Unit 3. While the chief of the night staff wanted to shut Unit 3 down immediately, the chief engineer ordered everyone to take potassium iodide, don respirators, and keep the reactor operating. Five hours after Unit 4 exploded and the fires began, the chief of the night staff unilaterally shut down Unit 3 and ordered the evacuation of all non-essential staff.

Could the Chernobyl Incident have gone to become even worse than it already was, with multiple reactors failing? Did the chief of staff help save the day, or did the chief engineer potentially avert a larger crisis such as a cascading grid failure that would have left Unit 3 without cooling power later on? Might all four units have been lost if they had been operating and dropped off the grid at the same time due to an incident?
 

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Here are some images showing the shared turbine hall and how close the reactors were to each other.

Image of the turbine hall from here:

77_big.jpg


Image of the reactors from here:

ox281264633058352701.jpg
 
Nothing good. The toxic cloud would have been much bigger and the zone of alienation would also be much wider. There might be a few more initial deaths but an awful lot more cancer cases as that cap settles over eastern Ukraine.

Probably it will be a bit harder to cover up as the radiation will be even more obvious while Internal anger will be even greater than it was OTL.

In the end it will be pretty much OTL turned up to 11 as things get even nastier.
 
The No. 4 reactor went up because it was running on a skeleton crew, said crew wasn't communicating and they were running a dangerous experiment best left to a full crew, and even then, they had to override all of the safeties. unless you were doing the same test on the other reactors no you can't get them to go off too.
 
The No. 4 reactor went up because it was running on a skeleton crew, said crew wasn't communicating and they were running a dangerous experiment best left to a full crew, and even then, they had to override all of the safeties. unless you were doing the same test on the other reactors no you can't get them to go off too.

And the test was meant to be carried out by the day shift while Reactor 4 was scheduled to be offline, but because of a failure at another plant they needed it online to meet the evening peak demand. The test was rescheduled for the evening even though the night shift weren't fully trained. That's a big PoD there!
 

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And the test was meant to be carried out by the day shift while Reactor 4 was scheduled to be offline, but because of a failure at another plant they needed it online to meet the evening peak demand. The test was rescheduled for the evening even though the night shift weren't fully trained. That's a big PoD there!

The Soviets actually had to call on outside electrical engineers and system experts to help with the long term impacts of losing Chernobyl and having to reroute power. If the incident occurs during a time of higher demand and results in the whole plant going off the grid (either Unit 3 and Unit 4 or all units in an alternate crisis) it could collapse the Soviet energy grid. The West might notice the lights going out across the Soviet Union well before the radiation, and that could have a major impact on the response and perception of the crisis too.
 
The Soviets actually had to call on outside electrical engineers and system experts to help with the long term impacts of losing Chernobyl and having to reroute power. If the incident occurs during a time of higher demand and results in the whole plant going off the grid (either Unit 3 and Unit 4 or all units in an alternate crisis) it could collapse the Soviet energy grid. The West might notice the lights going out across the Soviet Union well before the radiation, and that could have a major impact on the response and perception of the crisis too.

Which would probably be more serious than the extra explosions themselves. Radiation would be somewhat more widespread but less than you might think. It wouldn't be double the area but higher radiation at the center. It falls at the square of the distance in a vacuum but somewhat faster on Earth because the air and dust will absorb some of it. If it is 2X at the center it is about 1.44X at twice the distance about 1.26X at 3 times the distance and about 1.2X at four times. So instead of very roughly one 1/2 the original radiation at twice the distance from the center it is about 36%, at 3 times the distance it is about 14% instead of 22% and 7.7% instead of 12.5% at four This would be in a vacuum so it would drop somewhat faster than that.
 
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Assuming Alternate History + Soviet arrogance + bureaucratic intransigence = All 4 reactors blowing up as did #4 OTL?

"Keeping it a secret" was NEVER in the cards. By the time the radioactive cloud hit Sweden, every safety alarm at every nuclear power plant in the country was going berserk. The first thought had been that the Swedes were suffering a nationwide terrorist attack, either at their plants or with the releasing of dirty bombs. Then someone noticed the suspicious timing of the alarms going off, with the first being closest and the last being furthest from the USSR...:mad:

OTL, once the French released spy satellite photographs (hell, commercial weather satellites could have done the job with something that big:rolleyes:) showing reactor #4 with no roof (1), the game was up. (2) And this happening within less than a week of the explosion meant that there could be no cover ups. (3) All four reactors exploding just make the problem that much worse, perhaps exponentially.

1) Published on the tops of every major newspaper in the world within hours

2) Gorbachev's national address on Chernobyl, denouncing Western lies and distortions about Chernobyl rather than giving any details of the emergency itself, pretty much finished the trust that he had just established for himself with the Soviet people.

3) Their attempts at cover ups were laughable. First releasing to the Western press films purporting to show a nice, healthy, undamaged Chernobyl (4), then announcing a national call up for emergency firemen to serve at Chernobyl at 500 rubles a day!:) But only for two days...:eek: The Soviet people had no problem reading between the lines on THAT offer.:(

4) Turned out to be aerial filming of the Italian city of Trieste at the northernmost tip of the Adriatic Sea. A fact to be revealed the next day by a furious Peter Jennings (RIP) at ABC News. Never saw any Canadian (5) get so mad in my life.

5) Except Wolverine:D

With all four reactors blown, Gorbachev goes faster and harder. I refuse to believe he'll wise up and Do. The. Right. Thing. from the get go.
 
[...] it could collapse the Soviet energy grid. The West might notice the lights going out across the Soviet Union well before the radiation, and that could have a major impact on the response and perception of the crisis too.

Let's hope their Dead Hand system doesn't misinterpret the concurrent grid collapse and radiation plume....
 
And the test was meant to be carried out by the day shift while Reactor 4 was scheduled to be offline, but because of a failure at another plant they needed it online to meet the evening peak demand. The test was rescheduled for the evening even though the night shift weren't fully trained. That's a big PoD there!
Which is kind of the issue, if it's tested during the day, reactor 4 doesn't go up anyway since the crew is more numerous, better trained, and better organised.
 
Assuming Alternate History + Soviet arrogance + bureaucratic intransigence = All 4 reactors blowing up as did #4 OTL?

"Keeping it a secret" was NEVER in the cards. By the time the radioactive cloud hit Sweden, every safety alarm at every nuclear power plant in the country was going berserk. The first thought had been that the Swedes were suffering a nationwide terrorist attack, either at their plants or with the releasing of dirty bombs. Then someone noticed the suspicious timing of the alarms going off, with the first being closest and the last being furthest from the USSR...:mad:

Every plant? IIRC it was only the Forsmark plant that had alarms going off. Considering the winds in this scenario most of Sweden north of Dalaälven would be a danger zone as it was close to beeing that OTL
 

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How is this for a Soviet electricity grid collapse scenario?

Chernobyl Unit 4 is operating at low power output and about to begin or is just finishing its test sequence. It is sometime in the peak morning or peak evening demand period.

The power station near Kiev fails. Chernobyl Unit 4 is ordered to increase power output to compensate, but with safety systems either disabled or not yet reset the reactor suffers a prompt supercritical and explodes.

The operators of Unit 3 decide to shutdown the reactor due to the explosion at Unit 4 and the fires throughout the facility. A total of 2,000 megawatts has been removed from the Soviet grid from Chernobyl, in addition to the power output of the plant that suffered the forced outage which preceded the crisis (likely around 600 megawatts if it is a standard sized coal plant).

To put into context how large this would be, the simultaneous forced outage or loss of two of the three units at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station is considered to be one of the worst scenarios for grid stability in the Western United States. Two units at Palo Verde generate slightly less than 2,000 megawatts.

They do N-1 studies on power grids to ensure a loss is manageable. This slightly alternate history Chernobyl scenario is an N-3 involving two of the largest units on the grid and a medium sized unit. An all up incident would be N-4 or N-5, depending on if it is preceded by the forced outage of the other facility near Kiev.
 

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For a shorter version of the above, it would appear that a grid collapse is definitely possible, if not for Kiev then possibly for a large portion of the Western Soviet Union, perhaps extending into Eastern Europe depending on the level of integration.

How do the Soviets respond to that? Unlike radiation, you can easily notice the lights, heating, factories, and mass transportation systems (which the Soviets greatly relied on) failing.
 

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Which would probably be more serious than the extra explosions themselves. Radiation would be somewhat more widespread but less than you might think. It wouldn't be double the area but higher radiation at the center. It falls at the square of the distance in a vacuum but somewhat faster on Earth because the air and dust will absorb some of it. If it is 2X at the center it is about 1.44X at twice the distance about 1.26X at 3 times the distance and about 1.2X at four times. So instead of very roughly one 1/2 the original radiation at twice the distance from the center it is about 36%, at 3 times the distance it is about 14% instead of 22% and 7.7% instead of 12.5% at four This would be in a vacuum so it would drop somewhat faster than that.

I think that's how it would work out. One of the reasons that safety standards weren't where they should have been early on for the larger power reactors of the 1960s and 1970s (at least in the West) is because smaller reactors were less likely to suffer major incidents (they have more surface area to volume for their reactors, making them easier to cool) and if they did there was less material volume involved. The radiation intensity should be higher with more material involved, it doesn't go further.
 
For a shorter version of the above, it would appear that a grid collapse is definitely possible, if not for Kiev then possibly for a large portion of the Western Soviet Union, perhaps extending into Eastern Europe depending on the level of integration.

How do the Soviets respond to that? Unlike radiation, you can easily notice the lights, heating, factories, and mass transportation systems (which the Soviets greatly relied on) failing.

And if this were to happen in the middle of a severe winter and were to last for several days then a lot of people are at risk from lack of heating. To throw another element into the mix, if it were to happen during a political crisis, like that following the August Coup then could that lead to a more messy and potentially more violent collapse of the state?
 

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And if this were to happen in the middle of a severe winter and were to last for several days then a lot of people are at risk from lack of heating. To throw another element into the mix, if it were to happen during a political crisis, like that following the August Coup then could that lead to a more messy and potentially more violent collapse of the state?

The historical incident took place at a time of warmer than average temperatures in Ukraine. If it had occurred a few weeks earlier, or a few weeks later, it would have taken place during colder than average temperatures. If it took place even earlier, during February 1986, then it would have taken place during a month of colder than average temperatures. I doubt the test would have been conducted during a peak demand time though. Temperate information from here.
 

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Banned
According to sahaidak, it was likely the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant which suffered the forced outage that preceded Chernobyl.

Here (and in a few other equally unofficial online accounts of the disaster) they say it was the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant that suffered an outage on that day. The plant had two 1,000 MW units in 1986 (and has three such units now).

From what I could find online, the official investigation (and then the trial court) was content to hear that the Chernobyl plant got a formal order to stop the shutdown from the Kiev grid controller, and did not ask any further questions about it. (I did not find records of the investigation and the trial on the web, just interviews with people who were investigated and then tried; they told the press after the trial that nobody questioned them further about this matter).

It was probably a single unit at the plant. Thus, it's possible for the Soviet power grid to lose up to 3,000 megawatts of capacity in a fairly compressed period of time if the unit at South Ukraine doesn't trip offline until later in the day, Chernobyl Unit 4 explodes while trying to ramp up to meet demand, and Chernobyl Unit 3 goes offline shortly afterwards. The Kiev systems authority would certainly have difficulties stabilizing the supply and parameters of the electricity delivered.

Based on the information in this book, which gives a Soviet generating capacity of around 332,000 to 325,000 megawatts for the Soviet Union in 1985, the entire Soviet grid will be down almost a full percentage point in a short period of time, with all of that loss around the major load sink around Kiev.
 
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