In what amounted to a tacit admission of the designers’ culpability in the accident, each RBMK was now fueled with more highly enriched uranium; modified with scores of extra control rods, which reduced the positive void coefficient; and featured a faster and more effective emergency shutdown system. The authorities revised instruction programs for reactor operators and made money available to build computer simulators to prepare them for accident scenarios. Yet little had really changed: more than a year after the disaster, the Politburo received a report showing that Soviet atomic power
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