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this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
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Was it cheaply built too?
I was under the impression there were only a few suboptimal structural/design decisions (which would be consistent with the time it was built & serve as a lesson to other designers, like all normal industries should work).
Cheaply built? No. But it did have a known design flaw that wouldn't be fixed in RBMK reactors until after the disaster. The control rods contained graphite tips to moderate reaction rates when the rods were fully removed. Because they're the first thing to enter the reactor during a scram (emergency shutdown), they temporarily increase the rate of reaction. This was discovered in 1983 but never fixed because "apparently there was a widespread view that the conditions under which the positive scram effect would be important would never occur".
Well, yeah, there are a lot of such design flaws in important systems (like commercial aviation) that are either a shortcut (profit cost-cutting or prohibitive costs) or not having enough data on the possibility of occurrence so you can't make an informed decision (and you just can't have it all otherwise nothing ever gets built).
What you described seems like the latter since they knew about it & deliberately decided it doesn't need fixing/changing, but was fixed later when they presumably determined that it made the accident worse. Idk anything about it tho.