Chernobyl Control Systems

At some point in the past, I’d picked up the bit of trivia that the Chernobyl nuclear reactor had to be much more actively controlled than I realized leading up to the accident, with the human operators actively in the loop.

I recently became curious, and tracked down the source of that claim to an article, “How it was: an operator’s perspective”, from Nuclear Engineering International.

To control the reactor using a system based on side ionization chambers the operator has to perform up to 1000 manipulations per hour and monitor about 4000 parameters simultaneously. In these circumstances it is somewhat cynical to accuse him of overlooking something.

That quote is from Anatoly Dyatlov, now immortalized in internet meme culture with the quote “3.5 rotengen. Not great, not terrible.” after his villainous appearance in the 2019 miniseries.

Dyatlov obviously has a reason to emphasize the difficulty of the task, and perhaps we shouldn’t take him at his word. Regardless, this gives a visceral feel for what it means for a system to be an unstable regime. I’m reminded of childhood games balancing a ball on a stick, twitching back and forth in a desperate attempt to keep things together. Inevitably, the ball would eventually come crashing down, and in time, so did Chernobyl.