On 18/02/2021 13:06, jon wrote:
On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 12:39:22 +0000, Steve Walker wrote:

On 18/02/2021 12:21, Tim Streater wrote:
On 18 Feb 2021 at 12:03:48 GMT, Steve Walker
wrote:

On 17/02/2021 17:03, michael adams wrote:

In pointing out the "mistakes" that they made Tim Streater is
merely reinforcing the point - of how easy it is, without the
benefit of hindsight for people who aren't particularly stupid to
make "mistakes".

Chernobyl was not a mistake, it was known bad design, there was
reliance on operators to avoid a particular operating regime due to
that design constraint, there was no safety system to prevent such
operation and someone chose to carry out an unauthorised test, within
that regime, outside even the test's pre-determined parameters.


I don't like the term "bad design". I'm not sure it is possible to
design and build anything useful that does not have some limitations.
The operators got confused and took it outside its clearly defined
permissible envelope. Rather like putting a 747 into a vertical dive,
and then trying to pull out at 600 knots. When our experts looked at the
RBMK in the 1970's they decided it would not have been licensable in the
UK presumably because of the lack of interlocks to prevent it being
taken beyond the safe envelope. But as we have seen recently with the
Max 8, safety system design can be cocked up too.

Also, it wasn't an unauthorised test; but it had not been reviewed as
carefully as it would have been in the UK.