TABLE OF CONTENTS The circumstances leading to and the severe consequences of the Chernobyl accident deserve to be known and considered even outside the circle of directly interested specialists. It was, indeed, a dramatic event, rich in human, social and cultural implications.
In this connection, another sad event, which long ago entered the annals of big technological disasters, comes to mind: the sinking of the Titanic.
The RMS Titanic was a splendid British ocean liner which sank on her maiden voyage on the night of the 14 15 April 1912 after a collision with an iceberg in the northern Atlantic. Out of the 2200 passengers on board, 1500 died: many of these because there were too few lifeboats. Subsequently, more stringent safety rules and iceberg warning systems were adopted.
The Chernobyl reactor, like the Titanic, was a technological masterpiece, but both had inherent and serious flaws in their design. Another technologically advanced design that failed disastrously was the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger. Other technological disasters, such as at Bhopal and Seveso, were more related to simple carelessness in design and operation.
This appendix gives a brief description of the Chernobyl reactor and illustrates the accident and its principal causes.
The Chernobyl reactor (Figure A1-1) is of the RBMK type (an acronym of the Russian words for Channel High Power Reactor ). Five reactors of this type were built at various sites in the former USSR and the design is found nowhere else in the world.
