Fu Ming had a good plan. Right now, there was a training session, but it was not aimed at newcomers like Zhang Heng. Instead, it was aimed at the veterans who had worked at the nuclear power plant for a while. This was equivalent to a refresher course, and the people on the list were more likely to be promoted after the training ended.
Fu Ming did not greet the chief engineer of Zhang Heng's department, but when he received the list, he found that Ivan's name was also on the list.
Fu Ming was taken aback. When he found someone to ask, he didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He didn't expect that Zhang Heng would go straight to the head of the department and use his tiger skin. Many people already knew that he spoke up for Zhang Heng during the interview, and after that, he talked to Zhang Heng privately.
Fu Ming originally wanted to show his approachable side and win people's hearts, but he did not expect to be used by Zhang Heng instead. The latter did not even say anything about it. All he did was give a hint, and the department head added his name. After all, Fu Ming was the chief engineer of the nuclear power plant's operation department, and no department wanted to offend him.
Even those who did not like him would not want to go against him on such a trivial matter. It was just a training spot, and no one even came to him to ask for credit. This was why Fu Ming did not know that Zhang Heng was on the list until he got it.
However, this list still needed to be approved by him. Fu Ming's pen stopped on Ivan's name for a moment, and finally moved to the lower right corner. He wrote the word "agree" and signed his name.
Although Fu Ming was a little dissatisfied with Zhang Heng's decision, his intention to recruit Zhang Heng did not change. It was one thing not to greet Zhang Heng, but taking the initiative to cross out Zhang Heng's name was another matter. It would completely force Zhang Heng to the opposite side. So Fu Ming finally pinched his nose and accepted the matter.
It turned out that Zhang Heng, who had been baptized by the Blacksail Pirate Island, could easily deal with the factional struggle in a nuclear power plant. Even ten Fu Mings would not be his opponent.
It took Zhang Heng less than a year and a half to figure out the relevant physics, the design drawings and design principles of the reactor, and even all the equipment circuits of the entire nuclear power plant. In the second year of Chernobyl, he also obtained the safety experiment plan designed by Fuming. He even witnessed the failure of the first safety experiment.
During the day, he worked at the nuclear power plant, and at night, he would continue to learn Russian and Ukrainian from the receptionist. Other than that, he also took the time to go to the hospital in Kiev for two check-ups. Perhaps it was because he was young and strong enough, at least for now, his body was recovering well, and there were no signs of malignant tumors.
After Zhang Heng practiced Ukrainian to a level where he could communicate normally, his language proficiency skill, which had been dormant for a long time, finally leveled up from Level 2 to Level 3. At this point, including his mother tongue, Zhang Heng had reached the standard of daily communication in eleven languages.
And this parallel quest also gave him another nuclear engineering skill, which was now at Level 2. Of course, Zhang Heng's biggest gain was figuring out the flaws in Fuming's safety experiment and reactor design.
It must be admitted that compared to the pressurized water reactors used by most countries in the world today, the RMBK reactor had natural flaws at the beginning of its design. It sacrificed part of its safety in exchange for faster construction speed and lower operating costs. It could be recharged without the need for a reactor shutdown, and it could also produce military plutonium.
From the perspective of people at the time, if there were any flaws, it would probably be that the RMBK reactor's emissions were slightly more radioactive, and it wasn't as clean as the VVER pressurized water reactor.
But in fact, the more serious problem was the design of the control rod. Previously, Dyatlov also mentioned that the control rod was used to regulate the nuclear fission reaction because the boron that made up the control rod could absorb neutrons, thus reducing the reactor's power. However, the problem was that there was a small piece of graphite at the bottom of the control rod. As a neutron moderator, graphite was the opposite of boron. It was used to slow down fast neutrons into slow neutrons, thus increasing the reactor's power.
Of course, the reason why the early designers designed this way was not to let the reactor operators feel the "surprise" brought by the reversal. The graphite at the bottom also had its role. Because the graphite pile had a significant neutron deceleration effect, it could appropriately reduce the purity of the uranium fuel, thus saving costs.
From an economic point of view, this was not a problem, but the low abundance of uranium fuel was not stable enough during the reaction, especially when the reactor was operating at low power. At this time, the graphite at the bottom of the control rod could play a role, allowing the reactor to be better controlled.
This design, however, came with potential risks. When the control rod was completely removed from the reactor and then inserted back in, the first thing that came into contact with the nuclear core was graphite, not boron. At this time, the reaction power would not be reduced, but increased instead, although the whole process took a very short time.
What surprised Zhang Heng was that according to the information he collected, before the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, other nuclear power plants had already discovered the problem of the control rod first rising and then decreasing after it was inserted into the reactor. They had reported it to the relevant departments, but because it did not cause any safety incidents, it did not receive enough attention.
On the other hand, the designer of the RMBK reactor had put in a lot of effort to ensure the reactor's safety. For example, the safety manual clearly stated that during the reactor's operation, at least 28 to 30 control rods must be inserted into the nuclear core.
Other than that, the reactor was also equipped with an emergency core cooling system. When the cavitation coefficient in the reactor rose, the emergency core cooling system's water tank would immediately be opened and injected into the reactor. However, to prevent the cooling water from entering the high-temperature reactor and causing a thermal shock, Fu Ming disconnected this life-saving device from the multiple forced circulation loops during the experiment.
After seeing Fu Ming's first failed experiment, Zhang Heng was almost certain that on the night of the explosion, the people in the central control room did not fully follow the safety manual as they had said before.
The situation on the night of the explosion was also much more complicated than the first experiment. Because the safety experiment did not go according to plan, the reactor had been operating at low power for quite a while, and it fell into the iodine pit. In order to climb out of the iodine pit, the operator pulled out too many control rods, eventually causing the reactor's power to rise rapidly. After that, because the safety system was cut off, it could not take effect immediately. The people in the central control room could only hurriedly insert all the control rods back into the nuclear core, trying to suppress the fission reaction.
Unexpectedly, the design flaw of the reactor was triggered, and the entire nuclear power plant was doomed.
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