The disaster at Chernobyl was like a cannon shot heard across the world. On April 26th, 1986, the people living near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant were about to experience something no one had ever experienced before. One of the units at the power plant, unit four specifically, failed spectacularly. An uncontrolled reaction within the reactor ended up blowing the top off of the reactor and caused it to spew out great amount of nuclear material. The meltdown was then led by a fire. In total, twenty-eight people ended up dying from either radiation burns or exposure to high amounts of radiation. This number of deaths directly related is still up for debate though as there is no clear source. Other sources even report that thousands more may
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One decision that was made by the workers at the plant was to run all four reactors at low power. This may not have been an issue for most plants, but these reactors were specifically designed to be ran at a high power setting. At a low power the reactors would be highly unstable. This instability was due to what is known in nuclear engineering as a void coefficient of reactivity. Essentially it is a way to measure the overall power output in a nuclear reactor. When the void coefficient is positive, the overall power of the system tends to increase and when it is negative it tends to decrease. The increase in the void coefficient caused more energy to be outputted by the reactor which in turn increased the void coefficient even more. This chain reaction caused an increase in the heat of the system and ended up rupturing several tubes that were carrying the material. The material reacted with the steam and the steam ended up blowing the top off of the reactor. It also ended up blowing open all the other tubes containing the material as well as exposing the nuclear material to the environment. Much of this could have been avoided if not only had the reactors had been going at a high power state, but it could have also been prevented if there were more control rods within the reactor. These rods are used to help control the rate of fission within the nuclear reactor and they are …show more content…
A maxim is sort of like a rule that one can live by. From the point of view of the engineers of the RBMK reactors we can establish that one of their maxims was likely something around the line of “When I design a nuclear reactor, I will not make sure that there are safety systems in place”. After we have established a personal maxim then we transform it into a general maxim, or a maxim that everyone can live by. The general maxim for this would be: “ When one designs a nuclear reactor, one will not make sure that there are safety systems in place. The goal of a general maxim is for it to be able to become a universal law. If a maxim is able to be a universal law then it is a maxim that should be held and accepted hy
One decision that was made by the workers at the plant was to run all four reactors at low power. This may not have been an issue for most plants, but these reactors were specifically designed to be ran at a high power setting. At a low power the reactors would be highly unstable. This instability was due to what is known in nuclear engineering as a void coefficient of reactivity. Essentially it is a way to measure the overall power output in a nuclear reactor. When the void coefficient is positive, the overall power of the system tends to increase and when it is negative it tends to decrease. The increase in the void coefficient caused more energy to be outputted by the reactor which in turn increased the void coefficient even more. This chain reaction caused an increase in the heat of the system and ended up rupturing several tubes that were carrying the material. The material reacted with the steam and the steam ended up blowing the top off of the reactor. It also ended up blowing open all the other tubes containing the material as well as exposing the nuclear material to the environment. Much of this could have been avoided if not only had the reactors had been going at a high power state, but it could have also been prevented if there were more control rods within the reactor. These rods are used to help control the rate of fission within the nuclear reactor and they are …show more content…
A maxim is sort of like a rule that one can live by. From the point of view of the engineers of the RBMK reactors we can establish that one of their maxims was likely something around the line of “When I design a nuclear reactor, I will not make sure that there are safety systems in place”. After we have established a personal maxim then we transform it into a general maxim, or a maxim that everyone can live by. The general maxim for this would be: “ When one designs a nuclear reactor, one will not make sure that there are safety systems in place. The goal of a general maxim is for it to be able to become a universal law. If a maxim is able to be a universal law then it is a maxim that should be held and accepted hy