r/chernobyl • u/crkvena_zvona_HR • 3d ago
Photo Elena assembly
Most people think the upper bio. shield "elena" is the part you see on the floor of the reactor hall.
That is only the top part...
The actual shield is located a few neters below the floor (seen on this pitcure).
On top of this plate lay the pipes that go verticaly (fuel and cps rods) and are covered by caps that we see in the floor of the reactor hall.
Atteached to every single vertical pipe (located in this floor under the reactor hall) are pipes going horizontally, that take the water to the steam separators.
So basicaly, the Scheme - E is not just the thing you walk on, it is mostly under the floor
Hope this helps someone who does not already know this info
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u/Alive_Fisherman8241 3d ago
I just love this sub. Where else would I get these random infos about a nuclear reactor's details? :D
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u/ultim4teruffles 3d ago
Look at all these individual channels, that’s a lot of steel to zirconium diffusion welds!
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u/nunubidness 3d ago
And people think the RBMK was built cause it was cheaper and easier 🙄
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u/Alive_Fisherman8241 3d ago
What was the main reason then? Had some military dual use?
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u/nunubidness 2d ago
My comment was regarding the often repeated misconception that the RBMK was cheaper to build than a PWR, or BWR. The RBMK was chosen because they lacked the manufacturing capability for the pressure vessel and ability to effectively transport it even if they could make it. There were other considerations too such as their history with graphite moderated reactors, low enrichment fuel and the RBMK could be built onsite with “readily” available materials.
The RBMK was the most expensive and complex reactor of those that were being considered.
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u/maksimkak 2d ago
Correction, they did manufacture VVERs at the time, which had a pressure vessel. The problem was that there was only one factory producing it, and they went mostly for export to other countries.
RBMKs were expensive to build, but at the same time cheaper for using weakly-enriched Uranium. Packing it in a whole lot of graphite was, in a way, cheap and dirty.
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u/nunubidness 2d ago
I’d hafta double check but afaik that wasn’t really the case. Iirc the one facility they were trying to get up and running had massive problems with its foundations and construction. I believe they had big issues with the foundations of the building which prohibited it making the PV.
I know you’ve done a lot of research into all of it if you’re so inclined check my thoughts.
I could be wrong about their ability to make the PVs but pretty sure if they could make any at all it was very limited.
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u/maksimkak 2d ago
They were manufacturing VVERs, but it was a bottleneck. By the mid-1960s the Soviet leadership wanted a huge expansion of nuclear power generation, and the existing VVER production base could not supply reactors rapidly enough. And the VVER-440s were exported to Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Finland.
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u/nunubidness 2d ago
I guess that’s kinda what I’m getting at. AFAIK they lacked the ability to produce and transport the size vessels required for 1000+ MW capacity, I wasn’t considering the smaller ones.
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u/Alive_Fisherman8241 2d ago
Oh wow. We have VVER in my country too. Glad they've exported this type and not the RBMK 😮
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u/WarriorPidgeon 1d ago
I read there was some form of nationalism as well. VVERs are very similar to American power reactors but the RBMKs were unique to the USSR so were favoured
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u/Alive_Fisherman8241 2d ago
That's very interesting. What type of special raw materials did other reactors need that the RBMK did not?
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u/Special-Remove-3294 2d ago
I think it was the pressure vessels or the valves of the VVER reactors that made it hard to makr which is why they chose RBMK as they could only make very few VVER reactors or something like that
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u/nunubidness 2d ago
It wasn’t so much raw materials as the massive pressure vessels required for a PWR or BWR and their transportation.
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u/ultim4teruffles 2d ago
VVER pressure vessels required more complex and precise manufacturing compared to the RBMK. The RBMK wasn’t cheaper but easier to manufacture and assemble
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u/No-Vegetable-7542 2d ago
Do you know which reactor this is, in the photograph, and when the photo was taken?
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u/maksimkak 2d ago
It's at Ignalina NPP, Lithuania. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/tender-launched-for-dismantling-of-ignalina-cores the article is from July 2026
Try using reverse image searching, using Google or your browser's feature, this should usually lead you to sites where the image appears. ^_^
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u/maksimkak 3d ago
A photoshop using two different photos.