After watching too many Chernobyl documentaries I'm quite against it.
Plus it costs almost half a billion to make 1 station then there is maintenance costs, would it pay for its self over time? I doubt it.
From what I understand of Chernobyl basically it was the Soviets playing funny buggers and seeing what their systems could and could not do. BUt rather than dry test the system they tested it when it was live hence the meltdown. Ironically enough the accidnet happened whilst they were trying to test an emergency safety system.
Basically they were worried that in the case of a power failure in the normal energy grid, if during the same time Chernobyl was offline,then any Decay Heat could casue potential problems because the diesel back up generators at the power plant would not have time to kick in and keep the water coolant running to keep the core at the correct temperature. I think the window was only about a one minute window of error in which temperatures
might get too high. They decided to test if the steam turbines in the plant would have enough power in them to keep the coolant system running ewaiting for the backup generators to kick in. Quite clearly they did not have enough power and the Soviets found this out the hard way. They had tested the system about 5 times over 3-4 years every time it had failed but they kept on trying it. Eventually it went completely bottoms up. Its quite political situation with a lot of people not telling others what was going on, such as the fact that from day one the reactor had been running without adequate safety systems but no one had stopped it being opened or operating.
I dont understand it all though, so please if someone knows a little more please correct me
Even better was the fact that the Soviets refused to admit that the accident was anything more than a fire at the plant. In their desire to cover up the incident they refused to even evacuate neighboring towns, Propyat (spl?) I think it was called, thus pretty much damning all the fire fighters, townspeople and others in the region for thier lies. I think they only admitted that there was a serious problem when a Swedish power station picked up the radiation readings.
Ultimately something like that would never happen unless it was a deliberate attempt to tamper with a reactor.
