Jaczko Resigns!

[PamW]

10. If memory serves..

If memory serves, and it's been a long time; I recall something about Scanton having the operators stop the dumping of the contents of some low-level waste tanks. The operators were actually attempting to clear some space in the tanks to hold higher activity material. The idea was to dump some really low-level waste to the environment, and the space cleared could be used to hold higher level waste.

By stopping the dumping, when the higher level waste had to be dealt with, there was no room in the tanks; so the higher level stuff is what got dumped to the environment instead of the lower level stuff. It was short-sighted. It would have been better to take a smaller hit up front in order to avoid a bigger hit later. By attempting not to dump anything at all; it made the matter worse.

I don't recall the specifics of what political interference exacerbated the Chernobyl accident. However, in the Soviet system even the smallest deviation from plans was looked upon as sabotage. With the delay due to the Kiev load dispatcher, and the build-up of Xenon due to the Xenon transient; the latter made worse by the former; it would have taken a courageous reactor operator to call off the test due to circumstances. Such was the nature of the Soviet system.

PamW