"Control rods are boron cylinders that slow nuclear reactions. Their purpose is to decrease power output, which they do by simply coming into contact with the core."

Reactor 4 was equipped with 211 control rods. Regulations stipulated that 24 rods were to be kept in the core at all times to prevent a meltdown. Through my interference, at the time of the test, all but 18 rods had been ejected from the core.

This only served to help hasten the meltdown when the rest of the rods were re-inserted into the core.

"The reactor was designed to run at 3200 MW and had a minimum power of 700 MW. Dropping the power to 50 MW was enough to send the untrained officers on duty into a panic, making them behave exactly according to plan."

"When the reactor operates below the minimum power output, there is not enough heat to burn off the byproduct of the nuclear reaction, Xenon. This causes the byproduct to, in essence, suffocate the reactor, preventing more reactions from taking place. This causes a feedback loop of low power output, which was perfect for my plan."

“The control rods, while themselves being made of boron, were tipped with graphite. Boron decreases nuclear reactions and graphite does not react.

In effect, this means that while in the core, the graphite does nothing, but while being inserted into the core, it displaces particles within, causing more reactions for a short period before the boron is lowered far enough to counteract these effects.

If the operators had simply inserted control rods one at a time, they could have prevented the meltdown. Instead, they inserted all of them at once in their panic, and the graphite tips of the control rods caused a massive power spike, which led to the core exploding.”