Adding to this disquieting list of major design defects, the construction of the reactors also suffered from the shoddy workmanship that plagued Soviet industry. The full start-up of Leningrad’s Reactor Number One was delayed for almost a year after fuel assemblies became stuck in their channels and had to be returned to Moscow for repeated testing. The valves and flow meters in other RBMKs, used to regulate the crucial supply of water to each of the more than 1,600 uranium-filled channels, proved so unreliable that the operators in the control room often had no idea to what extent the
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