As the Kurchatov task force continued its search for the fuel, and the Sredmash teams toiled to complete the Sarcophagus, the technicians of the Ministry of Energy raced to meet their own deadline: the Politburo had publicly promised that the first two of the three remaining Chernobyl reactors would be restored to life before winter set in. But now that the truth of the design faults in the RBMK had finally begun to emerge, the specialists first had to modify the reactors to make them safe to operate, improving their performance by altering the steam void coefficient and the functioning of the
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