Comment by formerly_proven
5 years ago
The Chernobyl test was not a test to drive the reactor to the limits, but actually a test to verify that the inertia of the main turbines is big enough to drive the coolant pumps for X amount of time in the case of grid failure.
Of possible interest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ijst4g5KFN0
This is a presentation to students by an MIT professor that goes over exactly what happened, the sequence of events, mistakes made, and so on.
Warning for others: I watched the above video and then watched the entire course (>30 hours).
Now I know what I'm doing the rest of this week...