On a scale of one to ten
The complexity of juggling two balls
Is three.
Juggling three balls
Is seven
And five
Is seventeen.
Juggling twelve balls
While standing on one leg
And spinning a plate on a stick
Scores three hundred and twelve.
So does designing a nuclear reactor.
And operating it
Is a virtuoso performance
Requiring absolute concentration
Eighty six thousand four hundred seconds a day
Three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days every year.
So how can we possibly trust it to a mere human
Like Homer Simpson?
Author notes
For my daughter - and all our descendants.
A contest entry
- Chernobyl anniversary - poems needed for live show. by Vera Rich.
1500 points, ended May 5, 4 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 5 of 5
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This is a wonderful poem. I believe the workers at Chernobyl were trying to make the reactor produce faster. I think I even heard they were trying for cold fusion. Fission? Sorry, I am really fuzzy on these details.
And there's Homer with his donuts. And the boss, the mean guy whose name escapes me at the moment, just out to make money!
The imagery at the beginning, re the complexity of juggling balls, and your comparison to designing a nuclear reactor, was really
effective.
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No, they were NOT trying for cold fusion at Chernobyl... It was - ironically - an experiment aimed at reactor safety.
The official purpose of the Chernobyl station was to produce electicity. (The fact that its RBMK reactors also produced plutonium - for weapons - was an interesting sidelight that was NOT publicised by the Soviets... though it was no secret to nuclear engineers worldwide!!!!). But a nuclear power plant also needs electricity to run peripheral equipment, including the vital pumps for the water cooling the reactor.
In the case of a sudden shut-down of the reactor in an emergency, auxiliary generators were supposed to start operating - but there would be a few seconds delay. So someone - and - and I think I know who - came up with a "brilliant" idea - to find out if for those vital few seconds, the generator rotors, which would slowing down but still just turning, could produce enough current to power the safety circuits and keep the pumps working!!!!
The experiment was scheduled to be carried out by the daytime shift on Friday 25th April, and to do it, the generating unit powered by reactors nos 3 and 4 were to be disconnected from the Soviet grid and the experiment carried out by the (well-trained) day-shift. But - it was 25th April... and all through the Soviet Union factories were in "storming" mode - frantically trying to meet targets before the May Day and Victory Day holidays. (Quality of output did not matter during "storming" - only gross output... but if targets were not met, workers - and managers - would not get their bonuses!). Demand for electricity was soaring - and the Kyiv power dispatcher telephoned to ask them to keep reactors 3 and 4 on-line. So the experiment was suspended - and went ahead only late that night, by which time a less-experienced team had come on duty. And they - apparently to make it easier to take the reactors off-line, disabled the safety circuits.
The RBMK was NOT well-designed... I will not bother you with the engineering details... but basically, there was a positive feedback factor .. so that if something WERE to go wrong, the problem would escalate. (Normally engineers aim for negative feedback... i.e. if a problem arises, it initiates a process to eliminate that very problem... e.g. the thermostats in domestic stoves - if the temperature gets too high, that very rise in temperature triggers a switch which reduces the supply of gas or electricity). But Soviet political correctness insisted that Soviet reactors could NOT go wrong... only those built by profit-grabbing capitalists could go wrong (as at Three Mile Island!!!) Indeed, at the first international review conference on Chernobyl (Vienna, August 1986) some of the Soviet experts were still arguing - at least in the official sessions - that the RBMK was "quite safe" ... it was human disobedience to the rules that had caused the disaster (true, indeed - as far as it goes), and that therefore all that was necessary was to redesign the control room so that it was physically impossible to disable the safety circuits!
That - as simply as I can put it - is what happened.
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This was brilliant. Love the way the complexity escalates....
Penultimate line - 'possibly'?
x Deb
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Thanks so much. I've fixed the typo as directed.
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It was truly my pleasure. You know that I love what you write and count you as a pal. xx
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