[Situation Vacant] Reactor Chief Engineer

[Dartz]

The tone of it all really does depend on your opinion of the reactor and what caused the accident. And those who stopped it from happening. Some of those who caused it, are the same who stopped it. Which is partly why the minister above is directing that things be preserved, rather than saying how.

There is sort of a story here which will evolve over the following few posts. The next part goes back about 40 years or so

A few notes on the Frigga accident.

Spoiler

The reactor design was faulty:
-The emergency generators were not capable of running the pumps to meet the reactor full load cooling demand
-The shutdown system malfunctioned as it got older. It took longer to shutdown as the core aged.
-The reactor would run at full power for at least a minute before the shutdown took effect. It was expected that the reactor would shut down before the deficiencies in the pumps became an issue.
-Key sensors on the reactor malfunctioned in normal operation - sticking or giving spurious readings.
-A burst steam line could cause the reactor to explode - that should not happen.
-The emergency shutdown system assumed that a zero flow situation would only exist in the event of a pump malfunction - so commanded maximum RPM on the pumps.

The Test proceedure
-Relied on a key sensor that - in practive - could give 'obviously spurious' results.
-Didn't fully explain why actions had to be taken.

The operators:
-Recognised that those key sensors would malfunction, and used a more reliable - if slower data source.
-The emergency generators were slow to start - dealing with this malfunction was a distraction.
-Using an alternated datasource them to inadvertantly drove the reactor to the point where the test abort proceedure would not work by triggering a non-overridable shutdown system.
-Recognised that the emergency system had inadvertantly caused the pumps to cavitate. Fought the system to recover from this - and triggered the water-hammer which burst an overheated steam line in the reactor.