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A comment on Chernobyl's legacy 30 years on. Parent comment

Re:Chernobyl's legacy 30 years on by sickbeard on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @01:29PM (#11573849)
OP is right the automatic system controlling the rods only had control over 12 rods. The others had been switched to manual. It jammed after the massive power spike causing the rods to fracture.

There were a long series of fuckups before they even got to this point.

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Re:Chernobyl's legacy 30 years on by jcranmer on Tuesday April 26, 2016 @01:38PM (#11573932)
The summary on Wikipedia says: "The SCRAM was started when the EPS-5 button (also known as the AZ-5 button) of the reactor emergency protection system was pressed: this engaged the drive mechanism on all control rods to fully insert them, including the manual control rods that had been incautiously withdrawn earlier."

I don't know if that's true or not, but it seems like it ought to be true from a fail-safe perspective.

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