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Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Chernobyl - A Canadian Perspective

Auteur	AECL
Datum	augustus 1991
Classificatie	2.34.8.10/15 (TSJERNOBYL - ONGELUK & OMGEVING - ALGEMEEN)
Voorkant

What This Brochure Is All About

Before April, 1986, if the name 'Chernobyl' had been mentioned to a Western 
scientist, chances are that he or she would have no idea what it was. It was 
nonetheless one of the largest and most successful nuclear power stations in the
Soviet Union, producing about 4000 million watts of electrical power, about the 
same size as the combined Picketing A and B CANDU stations near Toronto, and 
enough to fill the electrical needs of millions of Soviets. The Soviets said that 
Chernobyl (pronounced Cher-NO-bill) was considered a model plant, recently-built 
and trouble-free. On April 26, 1986, it was also the location of the largest accident 
in the history of peaceful nuclear power. When it was over, one reactor had been 
destroyed, 31 people had died, the surrounding area had been badly contaminated 
by radioactive particles, and studies had begun to predict what might happen to 
people in the long-term.
Four months later, on August 25, 1986, hundreds of nuclear scientists and engineers 
converged on the offices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in 
Vienna, Austria. For the first time since the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident, 
we were to find out from the Soviets themselves what had really happened, The 
answers went beyond what most of us had ever guessed (Reference (1)). Yet 
tantalizing holes in the story still remained. Now, thanks to intensive work in Canada, 
the U.S. and other Western countries, as well as in the Soviet Union, many of these 
holes have been filled in, and we believe we know in detail what went wrong. The 
Canadian work in discovering the most likely root cause of the accident has been 
accepted by most of the Western world and acknowledged by the Soviet Union.
First, however, we will go back into the nature of the Soviet nuclear program, look 
critically and fairly at the design of the Chernobyl plant, and describe the sequence 
of events that night of April 25-26. Like all accidents, it resulted from a combination 
of human error and design weakness; like all accidents, it could have been stopped at 
a number of places and would never have been heard of.
This brochure then looks at the Canadian CANDU (CANada Deuterium Uranium) 
reactor to see how it stacks up in its ability to tolerate the sorts of mistakes that 
were made at Chernobyl. One of the reasons the CANDU is more tolerant of error 
is that in Canada we had a severe accident in a research reactor in 1952. Although 
the accident caused much less damage (since the reactor was very much smaller), 
some hard lessons were learned and applied in the Canadian power reactors later 
on.Finally we'll look at the lessons that are being learned from Chernobyl by both 
the Soviets and ourselves.

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