Chernobyl didn’t “blow.” They had a radioactive graphite fire. We use a totally different water moderated system. Only Ft. Saint Vrain in Colorado was similar to the Soviet system. It was a helium cooled High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor that used both uranium and thorium.
Really a pretty neat system that could use plentiful thorium and uranium (and possibly plutonium if I remember correctly). What was good about it was that there was not a lot of radioactive water after years of operation. It was also pretty easy to increase or decrease output to meet changes in load demand.
We would never need to dump boron on a fire. Additionally, the St. Vrain core was contained in a vessel, whereas the Chernobyl nuclear pile was just that - a pile of graphite and radioactive rods in the middle of a hanger-like building.
I thought it was a steam explosion.
People don't understand what's going on with nuclear power.
The Greenies think they killed off nuclear with scare movies like The China Syndrome and the closely associated Three Mile Island incident.
Most people don't realize that the Generation I reactors [Chernobyl in its hanger building] and most if not all of the Generation II reactors [Fukushima Daiichi is one, commissioned in 1971] were designed BEFORE computers were in common use for plant design.
There has apparently never been a Generation III reactor accident, and the industry is working on Generation IV, which is safer yet.
“Really a pretty neat system that could use plentiful thorium and uranium (and possibly plutonium if I remember correctly). What was good about it was that there was not a lot of radioactive water after years of operation. It was also pretty easy to increase or decrease output to meet changes in load demand.”
except they never could get it up to full power until about a year before they decommissioned it because the various fuel and control rods kept sagging and bending, resulting in dangerous hot spots ...
interestingly, Public Service Company of Colorado had an iron clad contract with General Atomics such that if the plant didn’t meet full specs, G.A. would have to provide Public Service with a free NG plant of the same capacity ... Public Service got the NG plant, and with almost no fuss from G.A. ...