On 26/02/2021 16:29, newshound wrote:
On 26/02/2021 14:25, Pancho wrote:
On 26/02/2021 14:00, newshound wrote:

The design was known to a) increase power output as the control rods
were inserted, b) take too long to insert the rods and


It wasn't widely know, it was "noticed", in a "how strange" sort of way.

These points only apply IF you drive it outside the envelope


One of the impressions you get from Chernobyl is that the operators
behaved the way they did because they felt they had a sure fire fail
safe, scram, to shut down the reactor.

No, this was considered a very important test to establish a different
aspect of safety. They were so focussed on this that they turned off
their brains.


It is slightly concerning to see the same over confidence in safety
systems reflected in this thread.

For the last couple of decades virtually all the focus for new designs
has been on passive safety.


The western systems are probably safer and better run, but to quote
Schiller:Â* "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."


I can't think of a significant engineering failure in the past 50 years
where no-one said "With hindsight, we knew that could happen".

You have probably got to go back to the Comet 1 failures in the 50's,
with fatigue initiated by fretting at rivets, and stress concentration
factors at window corners.

Fatigue was known about before the Comet. Neville Shute based one of his
books on it "No Highway", published in 1948.

The Liberty ship failures in WW2 led to the
science of fracture mechanics.

I didn't know about those failures - I did know that they were a British
design and that the later Americanised design use of oil firing meant
problems dealing with ice on the Artic convoys, because they no longer
had hot ashes to spread to help give a solid footing and clear some of
the ice.