If it wasn't close, as you suggest, then why did a crew of people wade into highly radioactive water -- a probable suicide mission -- to manually operate the valves to drain the water?
> That water was drained, precisely because of concerns that it would melt down and come into contact with water.
Even if the concrete base under the reactor was breached, the water underneath had been drained. In retrospect this was unnecessary, but it added another layer of precaution.
Furthermore, what makes you think a potential explosion after coming into contact with water would be "massively" worse than the original reactor explosion? In case you aren't aware, the RBMK-1000 was a water cooled reactor. The explosion happened because the temperatures inside became so high that the pressure vessel ruptured. By comparison, the contact with the water beneath the reactor hall would not be trapped in a pressure vessel and wouldn't result generate such pressure.
What actually produced the most amount of nuclear contamination was the period of time when the fuel rods were exposed to atmosphere and burned. This put large amounts of contaminants - radioactive smoke, essentially - into the atmopshere.
You are certainly entitled to your own opinion, but others who have researched Chernobyl far more extensively than you or I have concluded differently. I am primarily getting my information from Andrew Leatherbarrow's book "Chernobyl 01:23:40". In that book, he states essentially the same as I have above.
However, it's not just Andrew Leatherbarrow who thinks so. All it takes is a simple Google search and you'll find reputable research papers hosted by the IAEA whose primary conclusion is that the accident could have been much worse. Here's one example: https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:18009127
Popular books have the incentive to garner sales - often through dramatization - not report accurate findings. Furthermore, the paper you linked was talking about wind directions not about whether the molten rods reached the cooling water underneath the reactor room floor.
> Furthermore, the paper you linked was talking about wind directions not about whether the molten rods reached the cooling water underneath the reactor room floor.
I did not say that the IAEA paper was about molten rods hitting the coolant water. There is more than one way that Chernobyl could have been much much worse. According to the paper, different wind and rainfall could have made the disaster 200-400x worse in terms of radiation consequences to humans. To say that is significantly worse would be an understatement.
> Popular books have the incentive to garner sales - often through dramatization - not report accurate findings.
It seems like you've made up your mind and no amount of evidence to the contrary will change it. I don't think I'll bother to continue participating in this line of discussion.
> why did a crew of people wade into highly radioactive water -- a probable suicide mission
This is a common myth (probably recently propagated by the scare-mongering TV series), but that mission was perfectly safe. Three men, equipped with dos meters, waded into the water and opened a valve, that was it. One died of a heart attack at 65 and the other 2 are still alive.
Furthermore, the operation was in the end unnecessary: there was no risk of such an explosion.
I'm getting my information from the book written by Andrew Leatherbarrow "Chernobyl 01:23:40" -- not a TV series. Yes, according to him they are still alive. It was indeed a probable suicide mission because all of them went in there knowing full well there was a significant chance that they would die from it.
So, considering that all three of them lived, was it that they got exceedingly lucky, or was their risk assessment just way off?
I guess the point is that it doesn't matter; if you believe something to be a probable suicide mission, then you don't do it unless you are very afraid that a disaster will otherwise occur.
But then you also have to question if their assessment of the risk of further disaster was also correct. But I guess subsequent studies have confirmed that high level of risk?
No, it did not. That water was drained, precisely because of concerns that it would melt down and come into contact with water.