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Comment by purple_ducks | Hacker News Reader

They don't have to answer to their citizens if things go awry.

Plenty of opportunity for cost cutting.

Yeah, it's worth remembering that Russia still operates RBMK nuclear reactors and plans to do so for as long as they can keep them working. The safety levels of their nuclear power program do not exactly match Western standards to put it lightly.

Context: The RBMK reactor had a serious flaw which resulted in Chernobyl. Source: the recent TV show of the same name.

"The RBMK reactor had a serious flaw" The serious flaw was multiple consecutive human errors which could today be prevented by software checklist enforcement.

> "The RBMK reactor had a serious flaw" The serious flaw was multiple consecutive human errors which could today be prevented by software checklist enforcement.

This is incorrect.

The serious design flaw was that the 'stop the reactor reacting' button rapidly accelerated the reaction briefly, but long enough to cause a massive spike.

There were also human errors on the operations side.

There were indeed design flaws (some of which are mitigated now that they changed the enrichment level of the fuel used in the reactor). But Chernobyl cannot be described as «a design problem and also human errors».

Anatoli Diatlov gave INSANE orders that led to the catastrophe. With such a culture were an all powerful chief can send his technicians to gulag if they dare disobeying an accident like this could have happened even with the safest PWR.

This is kind of crazy to say, but after the obvious flaws were fixed, RBMKs are pretty solid, efficient machines.

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