Talk:Criticality accident

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Blue flash section needs a rewrite[edit]

While it's accurate enough at the moment - explaining both processes - it's obvious that some of it's left over from an overzealous attempt to explain how Cherenkov radiation "couldn't" be responsible, and it should therefore be reworded. If someone wants to take a shot at it, feel free; else I'll have a go myself. Magic9mushroom (talk) 14:39, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Confusion[edit]

Tōkai incident: 'not designed to dissolve this type of solution' reads oddly to me. Isn't it solids that are dissolved not solutions? 109.158.118.221 (talk) 13:27, 26 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

scale[edit]

For a bomb, with the neutron mean-free-path about the size of the fissioning sphere, it might be that one number is about right. But in the case of reactors, reactivity can, and does, vary throughout the reactor. This is one of the design complications of the RBMK. Operators had to work hard to keep reactivity close to 1 throughout the reactor. But then the article says: "accumulates in a small volume". The size of such volume depends on the mean free path of neutrons, so the volume can't be too small. Gah4 (talk) 03:45, 4 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Contradicting number of deaths[edit]

There are contradicting numbers of deaths in article: 14 fatalities in the lead, 21 in known incidents summary and 23 listed total in the incident table fatalities column. MKFI (talk) 19:44, 21 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've had a go at fixing this, although I'm really not an expert in the field. Most of the numbers seem to come from the McLaughlin et al report published in 1999, but the table also includes a nuclear submarine incident (Vladivostok 1985) not included in that report. 21 is the number synthesised from two different parts of the report, whereas the 23 fatalities in the table represent a subset of the report plus the submarine, so I think the "true" number is over 30. I can't figure out where 14 might have come from. And I'm sceptical of the implication that there have been no criticality incidents in the 21st century, but I'll let someone with more expertise address that one. Jowa fan (talk) 23:29, 17 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Chernobyl is also not included, because that was promt criticality. I suppose people just do not play with U anymore to get this. Valery Zapolodov (talk) 01:29, 14 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]