humor?
No. In the Cold War, which threatened at times to become hot, the plutonium production aspect of the RBMK-reactor imposed a sense of urgency on their design, construction and operation; no time was to be "wasted" on improvements however essential to a safe operation. The scientists and engineers worked under one and only one guideline: to produce weapons-grade plutonium - as much as possible and as quickly as possible. Budgetary problems drove them in the same direction. Not that there was any question of reducing expenses but simply of using the funds available to produce the maximum amount of the highest quality weapons-grade plutonium-239 as quickly as possible.
It was under these circumstances that the Minister of Electrification declared at a Politburo meeting on May 2, 1986, six days after the explosion: "In spite of the accident, the construction team will meet its socialist obligations and soon begin to build reactor number 5."
The culture of secrecy was universal in the USSR. It imposed compartmentalization of knowledge: no single person was allowed to see the big picture and to integrate all aspects of the safety of the operation. In civilian nuclear energy the Soviet culture of secrecy lasted until 1989. Some Soviet scientists were strictly honest and open. Others who were as competent, and known to be so, were motivated more by their personal interests than by scientific objectivity and lacked the courage to be scientifically rigorous. They accepted or even encouraged the political powers-that-be to make certain questionable and even dangerous decisions. The struggle for influence replaced scientific, technical and technological debate.
The design errors of the reactor did not arise from incompetence of the engineers. They were rather the result of the bureaucratic dictatorship which presided over all decisions in the Soviet system, even those dealing with safety. It is clear that the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor was made possible by the many shortcomings of the Soviet system; one may well say that the Chernobyl explosion was more a Soviet event than a nuclear event.
