Posted: September 13th, 2017

Assignment Essays: Engineering disasters

Assignment Essays: Engineering disasters

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In most nuclear reactors, where water is used as a coolant and to moderate the reactivity of the nuclear core, as the core heats up and produces more steam, the increase in steam bubbles or “voids” in the water reduces the reactivity in the nuclear core. This is an important engineer safety feature found is most reactors built in the United States and other Western Nations. But not in the RBMK-1000, which was engineered to used graphite to moderate the core’s reactivity and to keep a continuous nuclear reaction occurring in the core. As the nuclear core heated and produced more steam bubbles, the core became more reactive, not less, creating positive-feedback loop that engineers refer to as a “positive-void coefficient”.

Discuss this engineering design flaw that resulted in what many believe is the worst engineering disaster in history.

Explain the series of events and how an engineering design flaw contributed to this disaster at the hands of three engineers early in the morning of April 26, 1986.

Discuss how the Professional Engineers Ontario Code of Ethics, Section 77 of the O. Reg 941-77 would apply.

How could an engineer design and continue to operate a facility known to be dangerous knowing that “ A practitioner shall, regard the practitioner’s duty to public welfare as paramount.”

Is it possible that the design engineers and those who operated the facility were “ not current in the art”?

Despite the contamination of the site — and the inherent risks in operating a reactor with serious design flaws — the Chernobyl RBMK nuclear plant continued operation serviced by professional engineers for many years, until its last reactor was shut down in Dec, 2000. Was this ethical? The RBMK is an early Generation II reactor and the oldest commercial reactor design still in wide operation.

Why is the world community exposed to such risk?