Quote Originally Posted by HukoJIau View Post
Yes, I agree, the station personnel must hold responsible, but they was only engineers and couldn't to know all about positive reactivity in reactor. In the operation instructions was no information about this effect.
Well, I agree, when they write in the manual for a wristwatch 'DO NOT BOIL', 'DO NOT EAT', now I see why.
They couldn't know about positive reactivity but the reactor has to be shut down when the initial power drop occured, but Akimov decided to continue the experiment and ordered to raise the power by extracting more rods.
There were at least 5 (FIVE) alert signals each of them demanded the operators to shut the reactor down (I know that they could use the reactor in this mode because they read the documentation and knew what to expect). But this situation was not in the regulations and they were using what we call 'undocumented features'. По-русски всё просто -- положились "на авось". 'The manufacturer does not guarantee safe work... blah blah blah... use at your own risk.'

Quote Originally Posted by HukoJIau View Post
And another fact, the reactor exploded after pressing the emergency stop button. It's impossible in normal system.
This button was pressed when the core has already been melted. The rods simply couldn't go down under the vapor pressure and the shafts were already damaged. They pushed it too late.