Sit back and do nothing

The 1986 accident at Reactor Number 4 at Chernobyl is possibly the most famous nuclear accident in history. What is less well known is that the trigger for the accident (although not the root cause) was the testing of a safety backup system. Ironically, by testing if they could safely shut down the reactor during a power failure, the operators triggered an unstable, and ultimately explosive, reactor configuration. Despite heroic efforts by the reactor staff to control the situation, the resulting radiation leak caused the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people and much-debated ...