TL: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE CHERNOBYL REACTOR TYPE TL: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THE CHERNOBYL REACTOR TYPE Chernobyl Paper No. 3 - Public Briefing SO: Greenpeace International, (GP) DT: March 19, 1996 Keywords: environment nuclear power chernobyl problems ukraine republics / At 1,30 am on 26 April 1986, reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was destroyed by what today is known as the greatest technological disaster ever. Ten years after the accident, 15 reactors of the same RBMK type are still in service: 11 in the Russian Federation, 2 in Ukraine (Chernobyl 1 and 3) and 2 in Lithuania. The Disaster And Its Causes In August 1986, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) convened a conference during which Soviet scientists presented their accounts of the cause of the accident. According to their statements, the primary causes lay in the safety regulations drawn up for the test procedures, and deliberate infringements of existing regulations by the reactor crew. In other words, the causes were 'human mistakes'. The international nuclear establisment, embodied in its promotional agency IAEA, took this misrepresentation at face value, without seeking any corroboration. "Human Error": the Primary Cause? It took severeal years for Russian and international experts to concede that, besides human error, fundamental design faults had been responsible for the accident. A. Legasov, head of the Russian delegation that had reported on the accident at the IAEA meeting of 1986, committed suicide on the symbolic date of 27 April 1988, after having recognised the true state of the Soviet nuclear industry and its supervisory bodies. A. Dyatlov, shift manager in reactor number 4 on the fatal day, pointed out that the regulations the staff had supposedly contravened did not even exist at the time of the accident. He also stated that he had not shut down the reactor because of a recognisable risk of explosion for the simple reason that none of the instruments had displayed a warning. A report submitted in 1991 by an independent commission set up in 1990 by the State Committee for the Supervision of Safety in Industry and Nuclear Power in the Soviet Union finally confirmed Dyatlov's assessment. Based on this report, the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group of the IAEA identified a fundamental lack of "safety culture" as the true cause of the disaster. An Equation with Numerous Variables As yet there has been no satisfactory explanation of the mechanisms which ultimately led to the accident. Although ten years have since passed, the defects and technical problems in the RBMK reactor have yet to be fully detailed and explained. So far it has not been possible to accurately reconstruct the sequence of events leading up to the disaster. Furthermore, there has still been no explanation of what happened to large quantities of the fuel. Some of the highly radioactive material escaped into the atmosphere, but there is still uncertainty about the fate of some 11 to 52 tons (the estimates vary dramatically). These unanswered questions demonstrate that the existing theoretical data acquisition and forecasting methods for the processes involved in serious reactor accidents are far from adequate. For this reason there can be no reliable assessments on whether accidents of this type can be controlled. As a consequence, there is no platform for devising effective counter-measures which would increase the safety of the RBMK reactors. Retrofitting: Panacea Or Placebo ? Western Demands and Immediate Actions Taken by the Soviet Authorities Shortly after the accident, the responsible Soviet bodies implemented a series of immediate modifications to the remaining RBMK reactors. Those actions in no sense prove that - as the constructors of the RBMK reactors have claimed - accidents of the type seen at Chernobyl can no longer occur. Western nuclear engineers have also argued for a large number of additional measures to improve safety levels at RBMK reactors. The IAEA has compiled a list of 59 prioritised measures and TACIS, a consortium from the European Union, identified no fewer than 300 necessary changes. Although scientists in the West and the East agree on the need for retrofitting measures, the industry experts involved evidently all consider the continued operation of RBMK sites to be justifiable. Substantial Business Interests So far, 16 donor countries and 5 international organisations have spent about 1 billion ECU on 900 projects aimed at improving safety levels in Soviet-built nuclear plants. The motives for this "aid" are far from being altruistic and unselfish. For the Western nuclear industry another accident on the scale of Chernobyl would put an end to the prospects of nuclear power on a global basis. Furthermore, Western companies in the nuclear engineering business sector are naturally hoping that the aid programmes generate concrete orders and create new markets in the East. A large number of companies have already been mentioned in this context, including the constructors of the Canadian CANDU reactor, the German corporation Siemens Kraftwerks-Union and the French electricity monopoly Electricite de France. Shutdown No Longer on the Agenda Just after the Chernobyl accidents, numerous Western states urged the Soviet union to shut down its most dangerous RBMK reactors. However, Russian and Soviet experts maintain that there are no technical grounds for doing this. By pointing to identical safety problems in Western reactors (e.g. the lack of containment at some British nuclear plants) and the miserable state of their national economy, they have so far succeeded in resisting calls for the reactors to be decommissioned. The governments of the G7 countries appear to have agreed to this, together with the international nuclear promotional agency IAEA and the World Bank. What Impact do the Western Aid Programmes Have? So far the efficiency of the expensive support programmes has not been notably impressive. Critisism can be heard in the East that Western companies seeking to sell their technology and products are, in fact, the main beneficiaries of the Western aid. There is also resentment that Russian nuclear technology is being discredited and forced off the global market. Retrofitting: Safe Enough To Live With, But Too Risky To Be Liable For It is remarkable that Western nuclear engineering and supply companies, before getting involved in backfitting operations at RBMK reactors, want to be protected against any claims in the event of a nuclear accident. They effectively lobbied the European Commission to sign an indemnification agreement with the Russian Federation. On the one hand they claim the superiority of the Western expertise and technology, but on the other hand they do not seem to have a lot of confidence in the results of their backfitting operations. If the retrofitted RBMK reactors are supposed to be safe enough for the world to live with, why then do the Western nuclear companies consider it too risky to accept any liability? The future of Russian Nuclear Power Minatom, the Russian Ministry of Nuclear Power is planning the construction of 10 new reactors by 2005. Russia is even trying to attract foreign investors for its reactor projects. Western investors should at least be concerned that Russia is evidently planning to finance a full nuclear development programme - include. fast- breeder technology - while simultaneaously claiming that it lacks the funds to solve safety problems at existing reactors. How Safe Are RBMK Reactors Today? Eastern and Western safety officials claim that the retrofitting measures implemented shortly after the 1986 disaster have ensured that such an accident could never be repeated. It should be stresses that nobody has yet completely explained the events which culminated in the destruction of reactor number 4 at Chernobyl. The EU's TACIS project reached the overall conclusion that the risk of radioactivity being released still remains, in spite of any measures taken. The operation of RBMK reactors would not be approvable by Western standards. Conclusions and Recommendations RBMK reactors, like all other nuclear reactor types, are inherently unsafe. Western aid projects designed to increase safety levels are of exceptionally dubious value. Nobody can provide absolute guarantees of safety, so that another Chernobyl remains only a matter of time. Therefore, the Greenpeace demands for Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the former Soviet Union, are: * The immediate closure of the most dangerous nuclear reactors. RBMK's generate only about 5% of the electricity in Ukraine and 7% in Russia. Therefore, they can easily be made superfluous on the short term by implementing very cheap and directly effective energy efficiency measures. Western aid programmes should focus on energy efficiency and relief projects for the millions of people affected by the Chernobyl disaster, instead of on backfitting decrepit reactors which can never be made sufficiently safe. * The reform of the energy system. The economies in CEE and CIS are in transition and consequently new technologies can and should be introduced. The region has an enormous potential for the implementation of energy efficient technologies and renewable energy sources. Financial and technological assistance from the West should focus on the implementation of this 'new energy deal', instead of on the construction of new nuclear power stations. * * * This Briefing Paper is based on the report "RBMK Report 1996 - A Critical Assessment of the Chernobyl Reactor Type", written by the Physikerburo Kollert & Donderer, Bremen, and commissioned by Greenpeace Germany. The full report is published as Chernobyl Paper no.3 by Greenpeace International in April 1996. 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