The Submarine That Turned into a Ticking Nuclear Bomb
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 พ.ย. 2022
- In September of 2021, a Russian expedition searching for radioactive waste pinpointed the exact location of the reactor compartment of the troubled Soviet submarine K-19, 60 years after she was deliberately thrown overboard in the Kara Sea.
K-19 was Moscow’s first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine and was launched in 1959 as the Russian's answer to the USS Nautilus. However, her production and testing were so rushed that even her captain did not believe she was fit for combat.
Two years later, during her first ever mission in the North Atlantic Sea, K-19's nuclear compartment suffered a malfunction. Already considered one of the unluckiest vessels to ever serve any nation and without a backup coolant system while hundreds of feet underwater, Russia's mighty vessel was now on the verge of turning into a nuclear bomb…
K-19: We are the unluckiest vessel ever to set sail.
Adm. Kuznetsov: Hold my mazut.
The classic Soviet hero: someone who valiantly went above and beyond the call of duty to overcome the situation that his own corrupt, arrogant, and incompetent government put him into. You could fill a lengthy book with their stories.
I don't care what country they are from. The men who volunteered to entered that reactor room should be considered heros
I doubt they volunteered.
They should have just scuttled the sub after having all the crew get off it to life rafts. Get picked up by rescue ships that were there when this happened.
I don't care if they were ordered or volunteered they absolutely are Heroes and shouldn't be considered such
@@ultimobici. - Other than a hatred of the Soviet Union, what is the basis for your belief they did not volunteer?
The Soviet Union was a giant piece of crap...case closed
First learned of this story through 'K-19 The Widowmaker' which was an excellent Movie IMO.
Hollywood typically varies the facts for dramatization, but I think in this instance it worked well.
Those Submariners helped avert disaster on an epic scale & they paid the ultimate price with their lives later on. it's a pity that they weren't properly acknowledged for their bravery, dedication & sacrifice...true heroes indeed.
Not unlike the volunteers at Chernobyl who put the fire out and built the first sarcophagus. Russia leaders learn nothing as they are doing the same thing again in Ukraine.
I served on three ships, helicopter carriers, as a Marine. I've been aboard a couple subs, can only imagine serving on one actively. Those men knew what the cost was and went willingly. That is real courage.
I know it's cliche but I really do thank you brother
subs are scary .. they really scare the heck outta me and so does the ocean itself.
Sailors are brave heroes, regardless of political affiliation. Hate to see them sacrificed to some politician's whim, by rushing the vessel into service.
thats why they are not brave but fools for listening idiot orders, same goes for everyone who goes to war on some politician whim, they are not heroes they are killers and ignorant fools that must be iradicated and deleted if we ever want to advance as human civ
If you are in the military, your nothing but a pawn in politicians games....it really doesn't matter what your intentions are you can just as easily be ordered to your death as a cover up and/or spend the rest of your life in prison if you sniff it out and don't follow orders.
Harrison Ford went to the grave site with the survivors of K-19 after filming was completed on the film K-19: The Widow Maker. Ford and those sailors toasted their memories.
The scene of the christening was memorable because as the Soviet National Anthem was being played and a young woman swung the bottle and the bottle was unbroken, one of the sailors said, “We’re cursed.”
These men were fighting enemy that they couldn’t see. An enemy that can and will kill them all if they didn’t find a solution to bring it under control.
@@garyreid6165 the only enemy is their superiors who send em in that coffin. Nothing else and to add to the irony there was never any kind of race between US and Russia not in Space not in military wise technologies. Its all a show for the sheep and it is known well that US and Russia are working together from the beginning and the only enemy is we the people who have a mind to think for ourselves not to buy any of their BS
Sailors work on ships that sail on top of the water, submariners are a whole different type mariner because you need to be fearlessly brave to submerge in one of them things knowing a pin hole can assure your death. Needless to say if scared to death of submarine’s. I went on 20 thousand leagues under the sea at Disney as a child and I was even crying on that submarine. From that day forward I said no more submarines ever… 😂
The reactor would have melted down, not exploded. Any hydrogen gas could explode, but as a conventional explosion
And even if you consider that it got hot enough to melt right out of the bottom of the submarine it would just sink The submarine by melting a huge hole through the bottom of it hot things that are nuclear is not nuclear explosion
Yep, it could become a horrible dangerous mess, but unless the fuel was about 10 times more enriched than it needed to be for a subs reactor that won't happen. and even then a melted reactor won't explode in a nuclear explosion at worst it would be like Chernobyl but smaller, and more remote from humans.
What about the 3 warheads on board?
I was about to post the same thing, I hate it when people talk about nuclear reactors blowing up whether they be in a submarine or on land. The general public seems to believe that if a reactor had a meltdown it's going to blow up like a nuclear bomb. Which couldn't be further from the truth. If there were going to be any type of "explosion" it would be steam related.
Still way up there in the bad things category.
As others have stated, the reactor cannot explode like an atomic bomb. If it were as easy to make an atomic bomb as amassing a sufficient quantity of enriched uranium and bringing it together then any country that could obtain that material could make an atomic bomb. It doesn't work that way. It requires sophisticated technology and sufficient fuel to make an atomic bomb.
100%
Regardless, that thing blowing up miles from a NATO base would stir up some bee hives.
Out of curiosity how big of an explosion could one of these produce? Nuclear power plant failure levels? Or less of an explosion?
Basically when any reactor melts down. The fuel (nuclear material) melts and then breaches the containment vessel. When it does it flash boils the water causing extreme pressure, the neutron release can break the bonds of water into hydrogen and oxygen adding to the explosion. But unlike a fusion or fission bomb there isn’t enough chain reaction to detonate. They are good at spreading radioactive material though.
@@MrOdins007 in short, a "dirty bomb".??
No but you could get it hot enough to create a very radio active steam explosion
"turning into a nuclear bomb" is an exaggeration. What could have happened is a reactor meltdown, with radioactive contamination of the sea as a consequence. However, there are quadrillion tons of seawater and thus the overall effect on the ocean would have been only minor, similar to the non-event when the radioactive cooling water from Fukushima was discharged into the ocean.
Yeah, I was thinking;t the same thing. Doesn’t quite sound as good though does it - the reactor would have not exploded and wasn’t that much of a problem!
Also water will stop the radiation from causing a lot of harm
The 3 nuclear warheads aren’t at risk in this scenario?
@@soulesslemming no.
The uploader needs to grab attention with an alarming title.
The men who went into that reactor room, knowing the radiation would kill them, remind me of Spock at the end of _Star Trek II._ A horrible thing to have to do but, as in Spock's case, the logical thing to do.
maybe the story of Spock at the end of STll was referencing the Widowmaker (Hiroshima Submarine)
A very painful incident weak humain ever helpless on badluck death sleep
If you think that was the only sub reactor core in the Kara Sea you haven't been paying attention.
Bottom of Kara Sea is probably the best place for them. They have unlimited cooling and the actinides can gradually decay to background levels. 30,000 years to reach 50% radioactivity is a long time, but its nothing on the geological scale.
I just commented the same thing, they dumped untold amounts of all kinds of nuclear waste up there.thats how they do it over there.
Reactors meltdown, hydrogen may explode (chemical reaction) but no nuclear fission or fusion explosion will occur.
There is a vast difference between the design of a bomb or a reactor and both are intentionally engineered to do different things and are not interchangeable no matter how hard you try...
Most people don't realize this
A reactor is intentionally engineered to leave the land uninhabitable for centuries? Kinda silly comment there.
@@R0me0316 you can contaminate the land for centuries just blowing up pile of the nuclear waste. Do need reactor for that. Your comment is silly.
@@redsun9261 they aren't intentionally engineered to do so. That was my point. A reactor will do as such, while a nuclear weapon consumes the radioactive material far more efficiently and the area is habitable within a few months with minimal side effects.
@@redsun9261 good luck blowing up something encased in a metre thick, steel reinforced, armoured concrete casket designed to resist impacts from jet airliners.
Good on Pravda at the end. I understand that even that late there was pushback against telling the tale, but the journalists were finally able to reveal it. The crew of K19 were heroes of their nation, and the world.
"Just follow the trail of glowing fish" was the quip I heard about locating a Soviet nuclear boat.
I remember seeing another video about K-19...those brave volunteers could not be given the medals they deserved because they weren't at war. Very few people know about what they did, or what it cost them. I served in the military and those men deserve the highest honors Russia can bestow on them.
Honor and Russia in the same sentence is actually funny 😂
@@Shadow__133 we got another couch expert...no one cares of your opinion
@@PavelAVasilevich Aaaahh.. don't cry! 😭
Not everyone can be a winner. But every Russian is a loser, like you! 👍
Not many people know?? I mean If you ignore the endless references all over youtube...and the big Hollywood movie K19. And mention in EVERY documentary about submarines....then you must be someplace the truth is hidden from you like Russia
Not every Russian is a loser though...something close to 25,000 Russian were brave enough to let everyone know how they feel about attacking families in the country next door and now sit in Russian prisons..many more evaded capture by putins thugs
@@Shadow__133 your a Clown 🤡
"Turn into a nuclear bomb"
That's... not how reactor meltdowns work.
That's not what was meant, the radiation leak had the same effect as the radiation from the Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima did on the people of the Town, that bomb had low yield radiation that was designed to kill as many people as possible from radiation poisoning (ignore the people who died during the Blast when the Atomic bomb exploded for the purposes of the explanation because that's what is confusing everyone) over the following years and as did the radiation poisoning aboard the K-19, now after a lot of decontamination Hiroshima is habitable again with regular health checks to make sure that there isn't any radiation hot-spots
i don't think anybody on board the ship would care about the physics when it blows up
These men were true heroes.
No question about it. Thanks to them, we are here today and not in nuclear waste land.
The reactor part of the K-19 is currently on the bottom of the ocean.
These brave volunteers should be applauded worldwide as they likely saved thousands if not millions of lives
Interestingly, the XO on the K-19 was almost certainly the sole man that prevented WW3 a year later during the Cuban Missile Crisis when he refused to authorize the launch of a nuclear tipped torpedo at an American warship.
Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov Is the guys name he did serve on the K-19 and was one of the 22 that went into the reactor room on the sub
Those brave men faced death, but they did it anyway. A Russian hero. a man will lay down his life for his brother. Nuclear radiation death is the worst way to die in my book.
"The most advanced ship in the world!" Acording to the the Soviet Union-I mean Russia? -LazerPig
The movie was really well done with Ford and Neeson.
My father was an US NAVY airman with ASW patrol squadron 56 stationed on Iceland and his plane was the first on station to take pictures of the K19.
This sub wasn't unlucky, it was Soviet / Russian which is way worse than any kind of bad luck that one could have.
Still better then loosing nuclear bomb over the Europe..
Just plane ol trash (roosian)
K-19’s reactor has been under water for decades , so the chance of a nuclear melt down is low as the reactor is flooded with sea water. Also there wouldn’t be a nuclear explosion as the Uranium within the warheads would be weaken after decades of exposer to sea water.
K19 never sunk…
What? The K19 never sank!
@@shane011471 She also never sunk… 😅
@vondahe Sorry, but look it up in the di
@vondahe Sorry BUT look it up in the dictionary?
Man those were some brave souls that volunteered to enter the reactor chamber
So many parallels between K19 and what happened at Chernobyl. Brave volunteers sacrificing their lives to fight against desperate odds.
They were definitely the most elite crew. So many of them gave there live to stop a war from happening. That's pretty elite
10:30 after listing her collisions and fires he says.. “ in 1992 she is given the name Hiroshima, than in 1990 she….” And listed the next problem. This guy’s video are normally spot on so I’m just busting balls a little, “ the North Atlantic,” shows map of pacific than goes from 1992 and says than in 1990 haha just giving you a hard time. Love your videos man they are always great and spot on. Keep up the great videos!! I’m not knocking them at all.. just busting balls. I try and remember to hit the like button, I have a habit of just watching but I’m trying to remember to hit the button to help creators that make good content. I understand that it makes a difference. Anyway thanks for another well done video! I’m a big fan of all the Dark channels.
I love that “k-19 widowmaker” movie. Facing that radiation is downright terrifying to me.
The Widow Maker.. The Kursk could have been another disaster as well had the crew not shut down the reactors before they all died.
US reactors are designed to scram automatically. One of our subs was lost to this, leading to the ability to stop an automated scram.
I'm unsure about Russian reactors though. They were damned careless about this stuff.
"We need another torpedo Captain, we need to dock at a harbor we are defenceless"
"No need, we will simply use a bigger torpedo"
I was a little kid in 1960, just about 6 years old. Where I grew up was fairly close to the U.S Navy Submarine Base -Groton and General Dynamics Electric Boat Shipyard. There were noticeable Naval Presents. It took a lot of work to work out the Nuclear Powered Submarines, We lost two in the 1960s. The Russians had it worst since the country operates on a level and mindset that would never fly here in the States or elsewhere with few exceptions in the world. They tend to "Make Do" is a good description for the Russians, they do lots of things well, but damn they have a tendency to do too many seats of the pants flying just so they can tell themselves we can keep up and match up you with an economy that comes up really short. While I have no love for the Soviet Union and what it stood for, the serving officers and enlisted men did have a degree of discipline and sense of duty that is sorely lacking today. K-19 was just one of the many missed steps, tragedies, and criminal behavior that plagued the Soviet Union from the start of the 1917 revolution. It seems the Russian Federation didn't learn anything either.
Putin longs for a return to those days and we are witnessing the result.
It does not appear that Russian equipment has improved a great deal in the years since.
They have some of the most advanced weaponry in the world at the moment. People really need to read more and not rely on Google and mainstream media.
Akula class has good service records.
The Soviets were so amoral. Those men gave their life to avoid a war and they didn't even get the credit for it. Just go and forget what you have seen and done
Some brave sailors right there. Those guys are heroes not only to their fellow crew but maybe to the whole world
Another great mini doc!!
A nuclear meltdown is nothing like a nuclear bomb...
The click bait titles are not doing the channel justice. I think I can speak for all regular viewers that we’d prefer to see better ones.
We’re here for good content. Not click bait.
To be fair, most of what this guy makes is Clickbait, not just video titles!
Love the content can’t get enough of your channels.
0:41 almost every other vessel in the Russian navy: hold my beer
Russian Navy: We spared no expense!
The expense was the the sailors.
Brave brave men.. Bless them..
I remember in my AP chem class, we actually watched this movie about the sub, and I could never for the life of me remember the name of that sub.
Fascinating story that at the time, I honestly didn't believe was real.
I can’t remember if it’s the same incident, but the lieutenant who went in to fix the reactor came back out 5 minutes later vomiting and turning red because he was hit with about 100 sieverts. That man actually holds the title of most irradiated person, not Ouchi
Great story. Well presented in this short doc. Saw the Kathryn Bigelow film too. And the obsessive cherry on the overly thorough cheeseburger, I even read the book. I couldn't finish watching the piece, because my genitals started itching, just like they do when I drive past the Pickering Nuclear Station. That's a complement, BTW.
RIP to the all her crew that died . Brave seamen they were. May Russia always remember thier service.
Honestly, I think Russia could care less
@@Jermo7899 that's what I think deep down but I hope someone over there remembers
@@judydavenport9636 I hope so. People who serve honorably should always be remembered, No matter the differences
A fascinating yet harrowing discovery - playing testbed for radical technology and innovation...
...with dangerously sub-par quality control 😳
A lady did not swing the champagne bottle. Instead, a captain third rank Panov swung the bottle. He was later demoted. A number of other details are in error. Your historical accuracy needs improvement.
(per Wikipedia)
damn brave engineers, Rest Easy Hero's
Ah yes yet another fine example of Soviet nuclear technology being sound and safe
When your coolant temp gauge on a nuclear reactor starts reading "????" It's time to shit your pants
You don't know how nuclear reactors or nuclear bombs work. A reactor cannot create a nuclear explosion to suggest that is ignorant.
3:10
"They might as well be wearing RAIN COATS!!" Well, they were.
There was a Harrison Ford movie called K-19, The Widowmaker
Yes, good film too.
Did he land it on an airport taxiway? ;)
@@skydiverclassc2031 ah, no
@@skydiverclassc2031 Anywhere he wants. He is Harrison fucking Ford 😂
The voice over program used in these videos is getting more and more unreliable. It wasn't a soldering issue that caused the accident, it was a WELDING ISSUE that was the start of the incident.
A nuclear reactor cannot explode like a nuclear bomb. They are two completely different designs.
No reactor is going to turn into a fission bomb, their fuel is far too impure for that. It feels like you’re heading into clickbait territory like a bad History channel show.
A meltdown with 3 nuclear warheads on board kind of complicates the situation don’t you think?
@@soulesslemming not to the point of a nuclear bomb type explosion
Still, either way just plain bad juju all the way around.
@@scottsimon3034 bad juju, yes. But not a nuclear explosion
@@soulesslemming But the missile booster would explode well before the nuclear warhead reached meltdown temperatures
My guess is they had the moderator rods retracted too far and the “cooked the head” and couldn’t get the rods back in to slow the reaction.
R.I.P. to the brave hero's that gave their lives for the greater good!
R.I.P.
Goes to show how little human life means to governments...we are not without our dirty skeletons either.
Ok. Nuclear meltdowns aren’t like a bomb going off.
I LOVE DIS GUY MODE OF SPEAK
"And in 1992 the submarine secured her reputation and nickname of Hiroshima, then in 1990"
Wait, this sub could time travel???
This author is really irresponsible, when a reactor melts down it obviously doesn't explode, a pressure vessel can build up gasses if it isn't designed to vent.
'Not christened in champagne, then christened in blood'.
Need a follow up on the Kara sea. With multiple "dumps" well call it. I'm just a tad concerned about the effects on anything from that area.
The Simpsons 3-eyed fish comes to.ind but I know it's not just that simple.
Just imagine if there were nuclear missiles the same size of a submarine
Brave guys ... hope they are at peace niw.
what not many people know is that Anatoli Djatlov helped build the k19 and the nuclear reactor. During an accident, he received 200 rem (2 Sv), a dose that causes mild radiation sickness. and Djatlov was in charge of reactor 4 at the time of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster on April 26, 1986. so this man was a disaster to work with
Please do a video about Laffy(Benson class destroyer
a nuclear reactor can't be a nuclear bomb. Saying the opposite is physically incorrect. Percentage of enrichment of an average nuclear civil reactor is from 3 to 5%. In submarines, gets even higher for better control, going up to 20/25%, A nuclear bomb needs at leat 90% enriched fuel
I heard that the champagne bottle didn't break because of the rubberized coating on the submarine. Kind of shows how much they thought things through 😂
Yes, submarine reactors don’t simply turn into nuclear bombs. That movie reality. Not “actual “ reality.
Respect and RIP the sailors and more respect for the 22 sailors
You should know that no submarine reactor can explode like an atomic bomb!
Could a thermal explosion cause the missile war heads to detonate?
@@barrylongden7 No, that’s not how nuclear weapons work.
@@barrylongden7 Those bombs are very touchy, things have to go off in the right sequence with pretty much perfect timing, an exterior event setting off the primer would almost inevitably compromise the bomb in some way. You would almost certainly have some radioactive contamination but if the event was to happen underwater the mess would be significantly reduced.
In short it's pretty easy to blow up a nuclear bomb, but pretty hard to get an actual nuclear explosion.
The movie k 19 the Widowmaker with Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson about this is awesome
I fail to see how a meltdown of a reactor would be more extensive then the nuke bombs of WW2. Chernobal wasn't nor any other reactor explosion. An explosion yes but not like a nuke.
magnifico documental ojala lo doblaran al castellano europeo
Nuclear reactors on subs are too small to make any kind of spectacular explosion. Worst case scenario with extraordinary incompetence from the crew the reactor would melt down badly, leaving the sub dead in the water. Catastrophic explosion of a submarine nuclear reactor is extremely unlikely. In fact, so unlikely the Three Mile Island meltdown was partially caused by the fact the crew controlling it was an ex sub crew. And these people simply didn't consider such a thing as meltdown even a thing as residual heat from reaction in a sub reactor is small enough to be contained by a simple shutdown. Not so for a full sized distribution reactor.
Alvin Weinburg, who designed the US submarine PWRs, always said it was not appropriate to upscale these reactors. They are super safe at around 20 megawatts, but utility sized units have all sorts of (potential) problems with cooling especially with decay heat. That's why he advocated molten salt for utility scale plants and got told to shut up by his superiors. TMI proved him right.
The other thing is a sub or for that matter an carrier reactor is surrounded by cooling water. Commercial reactors are not and lack of cooling water is what caused all 3 commercial disasters.
How much power are you making? And did you have to do tuning or just run a fuel cut defender and let the ECU learn itself?
Even if the reactor wouldn’t have exploded as a bomb; those sailors would be dead and it could have started a war.
No way the soviets never cut corners or stole money from their budget
K19 the widow maker
Bruh why do Russians throw shit and search for it again
@John Smith Even your brain🧠 is poorly designed by nature as a 🧟♂️ you're
This sounds a lot like Clancy's The Hunt for Red October.
Creating a hydrogen/steam explosion wouldn't be too difficult for a reactor meltdown. Remember it was steam pressure in the reactor core that caused the structural failure at chernobyl. Imagine a meltdown in a sub boring through the hull and hitting cold sea water. The explosion would've been catastrophic. Not thermonuclear bomb level of destruction but the damage would be severe nevertheless. Add into the fact that the K19 had nuclear warheads onboard in the form of her missiles and it's even worse. While most safety systems would prevent an accidental arming and detonation of a nuke even we Americans had issues with safety systems failing under severe circumstances. If the shock of the steam explosion damaged the warheads they could IN THEORY go off and that would be detrimental for all the world to say the least considering where K19 was when her cooling system failed. Let's all agree to call this a nuclear near miss and pray that we as a species never come this close to bringing about our own Armageddon ever again.
VASILY ARKHIPOV was on the K-19. He saw the horror of radiation poisoning. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vasily was the ONLY person to stand against the launch of a Nuclear Torpedo and thus prevented WWIII.
Just like other commenters have observed the nuclear reactor on the K-19 submarine would not and can not explode like a thermonuclear bomb. However it could meltdown, and have a localized steam explosion that would have destroyed the submarine and killed everyone on board. Also the radioactive waste and fallout of the reactor would pollute the ocean with radioactive fallout.
Captain Natayev and his crew deserved every medal in Russia 🇷🇺 xxx
There is no equivalence between an uncooled nuclear reactor and a "nuclear bomb". They work so differently that you couldn't create a nuclear explosion if you wanted to. Even the nuclear missiles on board could not be exploded this way. However, you would get a steam explosion.
Lack of coolant while surrounded by water, Soviet irony is insane.
The only way the sub could explode in a nuclear explosion is if the war heads detonated. The reactor would melt right through the bottom of the sub if it went in to melt down, I suppose the resulting hydrogen explosion would destroy the sub which it could in theory set off one of the nuke missals, but I think it unlikely
Well it ran for around 30 years. That's about average for ships and subs tech and safety life expectancy. And long for a boat with that many issues. Submariners are a super special group anyway. No matter the power source, every deep dive could be it's last. But whether battery acid fumes or radiation leak from a reactor. Hazardous materials from either can be detrimental for a crew.
Dedicated and brave is all I can say about submariners.
Health and Safety is still not hi on the Russian priorities
The Russian military are a danger to themselves!😊
@V VR you must be a clown 🤡
Russian Sub Cmdr: Sir! Reporting fatal manufacturing flaws & catastrophic computational errors, sir!
High Russian Official: Did I hear you say your family was moving to Siberia this winter, comrade?
Russian Sub Cmdr: Sir! All testing is complete with highest marks! All is combat ready & capable, sir!
High Russian Official: Yes, that's what I thought you said the first time, comrade. Set sail!
I feel awful typing this but it’s the gods honest truth, unfortunately when I read the title of this video I had a hunch it was about Russia. And that’s not to belittle the Russian navy - The courage of these 22 sailors sacrifice Is second to none!
Simply untrue. K19 was never in danger of becoming "a nuclear bomb".
Given what we've seen from Russia this year. I am not surprised at all
Did you just say "RUH-DAY-OH" Active waste ? 😂 0:04
(Ray-Dee-Oh-Ak-tiv) Radioactive !