quote:
Originally posted by foaly
well Chernobyl was kind off a disaster...
I may be wrong, but I dont think that Chernobyl was actually a nuclear explosion (mushroom cloud, levelled town, and what not). I believe it was just a standard explosion which resulted in massive amounts of radioactive fallout.
quote:
Originally posted by Wikipedia
By 1:23:47 the reactor jumped to around 30 GW thermal, ten times the normal operational output. The fuel rods began to melt and the steam pressure rapidly increased, causing a large steam explosion. Generated steam traveled vertically along the rod channels in the reactor, displacing and destroying the reactor lid, rupturing the coolant tubes and then blowing the lid off the reactor.[9] After part of the roof blew off, the inrush of oxygen, combined with the extremely high temperature of the reactor fuel and graphite moderator, started a graphite fire. This fire greatly contributed to the spread of radioactive material and the contamination of outlying areas.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Fatal_experiment
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