Chernobyl operators: criminals or victims?
The blame for the 1986 Chernobyl disaster has been variously attributed to the operating personnel, the plant management, the design of the reactor, and the lack of adequate safety information in the Soviet nuclear industry. This paper considers a number of design faults, operational shortcomings and human errors that combined in the accident. It examines the sequence of events leading up to the accident, design problems in the reactor and cooling rods, and the course of the accident itself. It considers the ergonomics aspects, and expresses the view that the main cause of the accident was inadequate human-machine interaction. Finally, it stresses the continuing inadequacies of the Soviet nuclear system, and emphasizes that unless the ergonomics lessons are fully learned, a similar disaster could still occur.
Munipov
V M
VM
The All-Union Research Institute of Industrial Design, Moscow, Russia.