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Incompetence in production, that is, in the plant workshops, makes itself felt on construction sites in poor-quality parts and poor work. Take something as simple as calculating corners. Crooked openings for doors and windows, crookedly nailed finishing elements, wrong angles in the installation of plumbing.”
As much as 70 percent of the hardware supplied by one of the vendors had serious defects. Of the metal structures for the reservoir that would store used nuclear fuel, 356 metric tonnes (392 US tons) had major defects as well. Concrete panels supplied by another vendor were of the wrong size and had to be adjusted on the construction site. But the main problem was that even if some parts were up to specifications, others had not yet arrived—altogether, 2,435 metric tonnes (2,684 US tons) of metal structures were still missing.
The RBMK reactors had an output of 1,000 megawatts of electrical energy, twice that of the VVERs. And they were not only more powerful but also cheaper to build and operate.
Last but not least, the RBMK reactors could be constructed on the spot from prefabricated components produced by machine-building plants that did not specialize in the production of high-precision equipment for the nuclear industry.
The designers argued that the RBMKs were so safe that costs could be reduced even more by building them without the concrete structure that could contain radiation in the event of a reactor failure. Thus Chernobyl got the reactors but not the containment.
no one had ever explained to them how to deal with radiation, even though their fire station was near the power plant.
“Well, they didn’t kill you, so you’re alive,”
Belokon started to recall what he had learned about radiation in medical school—not much.
Briukhanov realized immediately that life as he knew it—a successful career, participation in the party congress, government awards—was over.
That was the old, proven manner of dealing with subordinates; it had been adopted by Stalin’s managers in the industrialization and forced collectivization drives of the 1930s. The protocol was to bully subordinates into submission and then demand the fulfillment of unrealistic production quotas.
