The Physics of the Chernobyl Accident

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The Chernobyl accident remains of great interest with new books being published and the excellent Sky TV series. These tend to concentrate on the human story. There have also been a number of very detailed and technically demanding discussions about the design, build and operational short falls that contributed to the accident. There has been very little in between the two types of publication. This book is an attempt to find a middle ground; to explain the physics of the Chernobyl accident to those who are interested but are not nuclear reactor experts.To that end this book describes the reactor and the accident and then goes back to explain the physics in more detail before revisiting the accident and trying to explain why the control rods were so far out and why the reactor cooling circuit was full of water at just below the boiling point and how the two anomalies came together to cause the accident.