Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, Ukraine

Introduction

Being an engineering student, we should prepare ourselves to understand the challenges and restrictions caused by the environment pressure groups. Base on the case study given, we are explored ourselves more about how progress occurs as a result of the through investigation at tragedies.

Practically, there are no operation or machine that are indifferent to failure, but in some operations or machine it is vital and theoretically that the services and products do not fail. For example, the electricity supplies to hospital, airplanes in flight, nuclear plant and etc.

Unfortunately, there are still some failures occur in this particular flied. On 26 April 1986, one of the four nuclear reactors at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the north central Ukraine exploded and caused the world's worst known nuclear disaster. An improperly supervised experiment caused a steam explosion which blew off the reactor's protective covering and which released approximately 100 million curies of radionuclides into the atmosphere. More than 100,000 people were evacuated from nearby areas. Serious nuclear fall-out affected areas of Belarus, Poland and Eastern Europe, while some of the radiation spread across northern Europe and into Great Britain.

There are many reasons that probably contributed to this disaster. In this case study, we are interest to explore the root causes that contributed to this ultimate failure and discuss on the failure planning that may help to prevent this disaster.

In the failure planning, it covered a lot of issues and techniques. We are going to discuss deeply and clearly on it. The failure planning is extremely important for the activities that have the possible to cause a disaster. The continuous improvements on the failure planning will be the prime concern for it.

This case study enables us to have a deeper understanding on the failure planning, failure measure, failure and potential failure detection and analysis and etc. This will give us an advantage in the future.

Discussion 1

Based on the case study given, we can concluded that the Chernobyl power plant was doomed to disaster were caused by the poorly designed, poorly constructed, and poorly managed by poorly trained engineers. These are the root causes that contributed to the ultimate failure. We are going to discuss, analysis and categorize on it.

1.1) System failure

Failure in a system can be cause by many different reasons. As we know, there are no systems that are indifferent to failure. So, there is always a chance that the system might go wrong or breakdown. It is accepting that the failure will not probably cause a disaster. But the failure always makes a lot of inconvenience, so we should try to minimize the failure and try for attempt zero failure. The continuous improvement in the failure planning is needed and extremely important.

Generally, the system failure can be divided into three main groups:

i) Mechanisms Failure

ii) Design Failure

iii) Human Error

Before we categorize the failure, we should analysis why the system fails. The failure may be cause by the system overall design faulty, the system facilities unstable, the human error and etc. Therefore, we should gather the information before we categorize it.

Below is a Chronology of the Chernobyl failure. This diagram shows the sequences of the failure.

1.1.1 Mechanisms Failure

The nuclear plant is run on electricity tapped off the national power grid. If the plant failed to receive the electric power, it has to be shut down immediately. It needed this electricity to power everything from the light bulbs to the motors that raised and lowered the control rods.

Therefore, it is important that the plant~{!/~}s mechanisms are maintained in the good condition. If the auxiliary turbine generators failed to start up and supply enough power to the plant, electric water pumps would not be able to circulate the water needed to cool the core. The core would quickly heat to its own melting point. It may cause a serious problem.

Theoretically the turbine generators could continue to generate electric power under their own inertia as they gradually slowed. But the turbine generator was tripped to initiate the test, which caused the switching off of four of the eight-recirculation pumps. (This would have scrammed to the reactor if the automatic scram circuit had not been disconnected.)

These circumstances are causing the loss of coolant in the reactor cooling system followed by a failure of the emergency core cooling systems (ECCS) to operate. The reactor protection system also fail to shutdown the reactor when plant undergoing a major fault.

Traditionally, majority of the engineers are treating the mechanisms failure as a minor problem if compare to the other problems, likes the design failure. But the mechanism failure will influence the whole operations. Thus, we should paying attention on it.

1.1.2 Design Failure

The design of a system is one of the critical criteria that influence that system performance and stability. In a design stage, the system might be look perfectly, but once it installed, there might be a lot of failure. It might be not compatible with the system facilities or the characteristic of demand was overlooked or miscalculated and etc. Therefore, it is important that to make sure the system~{!/~}s design is perfectly when it cope with the real circumstances. These can be achieved by having the test run before the system is officially release for the operation.

Since the system design had been tested, the system~{!/~}s constructions also need to be compatible with the design. These also included as one of the process in the design. In the Chernobyl case, it was encounter such of these experiences.

The poor construction of the Chernobyl nuclear plant was not a secret at the time of the accident. The plant was properly designed, but the construction works was not follow the stated standard.

Just a month earlier before the disaster, a lengthy newspaper article published in Pripyat, a city nearby Chernobyl that built for the Chernobyl plant workers, cited