Disaster Case Study: The Chernobyl Disaster

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KXEX 2165 MORAL & ETHICS
SESSION 2015/2016, SEMESTER 1
FAILURE CASE STUDY

Title: The Chernobyl Incident

NAME: CHAI GAU HONG
MATRIC NUMBER: KET140003

Keywords
- Chernobyl incident
- Disaster
- Nuclear power plant
- Human health
- Environment

Nomenclature
- Steam explosion
- Thyroid cancers
- Vapor pressure
- Nuclear fission

Introduction
The Chernobyl nuclear facility had four working reactors at the time when accident happened. It is located in Ukraine about 20 km south of the border with Belarus.
A test on electric controlling system was ran in the morning of 26April1986. The accident happened because of a series of basic engineering blemish in the reactor and inappropriate actions of the operators. The reactor was being operated under very dangerous situation in which the safety systems had been switched off. This is a situation which will cause an uncontrollable power surge to occur. The nuclear fuel to overheat and led to a series of steam explosions that severely damaged the reactor building and completely destroyed the unit 4 reactor due to the power surge.
Numerous fires on the roofs of the reactor building as the explosion started and the machine hall were extinguished by firefighters after a few hours. Approximately 20 hours after the explosions, a large fire started as the material in the reactor set fire to combustible
It has in a total of four nuclear reactors of the RBMK-1000 design, with units 1 and 2 being constructed between 1970 and 1977, while othe same design units 3 and 4 were completed in 1983. At the time of the accident, two more RBMK (High Power Channel-type Reactor) reactors were under construction at the site. An artificial lake of some 22 square kilometres, the southeast of the plant, situated beside the river Pripyat, a tributary of the Dniepr, was constructed to provide cooling water for the

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