I have been analyzing the issue of Chernobyl for the past several years. Russians have not found an adequate explanation for this tragic event to the nuclear industry. Every nation was horrified when it occurred due to public outcry about nuclear power and it's distancing from practical applications in the public sphere. I have even read rumors, at the time, that the Soviet Union had no adequate explanation and thought Chernobyl was sabotaged.
Here I present a hypothesis as to what may have happened.
The conclusion I keep on arriving at is that when the moderators got lowered in an already critical state of the reactor, that some kind of negative neutron influx occurred due to the composition of the moderators. If this happened, this doesn't quite explain the uniform explosion of the top parts of the fuel rods in the reactor. What I hypothesize is going to sound outlandish; but, to the best of my knowledge a resonance occurred within the nuclear fuel rods. Supposedly an electromagnetic field formed due to this resonance. I can only extrapolate that the fuel rods might have self-enriched for a brief while, which may or may not be explained by analysis of the debris of the explosion.
I have even gone as far as surmised that time might have ticked a little faster for a brief moment leading to the explosion.
Now, the implications are really vast for such a physical phenomenon, ranging from nuclear reactors that can be directly used to generate electricity, to multistage nuclear bombs. I hope someone can look past this far-fetched hypothesis, and consider that nuclear self-enrichment from a resonance is actually possible.
Thanks.