Part 1 The Chernobyl Disaster Explained 1986 | A Brief History of Documentary
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- #Ukraine #chernobyl #nuclear #disaster
35 Years ago an event changed the way we look at nuclear energy.
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear reactor accident that occurred on Saturday 26 April 1986 35 years ago.
The meltdown happened at Unit No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat, in the former USSR.
The accident started during a safety test on an RBMK-type nuclear reactor, and was one in a long list of disaster linked to this reactor type.
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Fancy another Nuclear video? th-cam.com/video/o0xNzLp5b3c/w-d-xo.html
Looking forward to the next video ;)
Edit: He made the next video finally.
PD love the videos my man. !
Without a doubt!
I could go for another video or three. You make some proper yet simple videos that have answered a lot of unknowns on a lot of events. Very good work here.
perhaps when you learn the algebra?! Chernobil was 600 MW, Fukushima was 2 GW... so mother of all,,, why not make a video about Sellafield, when British decided to EJECT NUCLEAR MATERIAL INTO ATMOSPHERE
The Soviet bureaucracy is so depressing. Like, "Oh hey, what if something goes wrong?" "Good point, comrade. Let's just not think about that because THE STATE IS INFALLIBLE."
In western capitalism: if something goes wrong: just trust the market
@@henrimessinghausen5185 at least in capitalism they put a bit of security because there's insurance companies forcing regulation.
*Somewhere, the soviet anthem plays LOUDLY COMRADE*
@@henrimessinghausen5185 the difference being that the thing that went wrong is not censored for decades.
I don't remember anything like that being an aspect of the late Stagnation Era Soviet bureaucracy. Everyone knew just how fallible the state was and took advantage of it, by slacking off in their leather-clad offices and stealing as much as possible, before it all rotted away. By that time, all that was left of revolutionary spirit and fervor, and war-time heroism, were portraits of Lenin and empty slogans on propaganda posters. BTW, the word "comrade" was only used in official state media and mandatory Party meet-ups. Even at those, if you said something like "the state is infallible", you'd develop a reputation as a mental case. It was very much depressing though.
My uncle was one of the liquidators, his daughter. Born after the accident couldn't grow hair until she turned 8. He ended up dying from leukaemia when he was in his 50's. It's always been speculated by doctors that the work at Chernobyl caused it.
He must have been in a dangerous job, most likely clearing radioactive debris from the roofs, or pumping water from under the reactor, do you know if he was in the fire brigade at all? To pass away at 50, he must have received a really high dose. If he was on the roof, he may have been unlucky enough to stand on a tiny fragment of a fuel pellet which were extremely radioactive. What was so scary about these tiny pellets were that they emitted 100's of sieverts (5 sieverts is a lethal dose), and if you accidentally stood on one with out realising, you would most likely lose your foot or leg. I have a huge respect for your uncle.
I've been told he was just a soldier in the army. You have to remember how hard the Soviet union tried to cover it up. Enough that they ruined a lot of lives. He never would speak about his time there and was always sick. I don't know to much about logistics of radiation exposure. All I know it's growing up if I questioned why he was wheelchair bound and often too sick to lift his own spoon. I'd get carted out of the room by my mother and reminded that we weren't allowed to talk about him being forced to clean up Chernobyl.
If he was one of the men who was on the roof of the building where 20,000 rads an hour of gamma and neutron radiation was present, I have no doubt his exposure was the cause of his leukemia.
@@fin4289 He was a LIQUIDATOR... Liquidators shoveled radioactive debris off of the roof top, all of them did.
It's impossible to tell.
This is 1980s Ukraine remember.
How many of them smoked?
Where they even filtered?
Did they live near a coal fired power plant?
Did they heat their houses with coal?
In the West we tend to build power plants on brownfield sites, so people correlate an uptick in cancer rates with the power plant if it's nuclear.
Thing is, brownfield industrial sites are generally soaked in poison from decades of not having any environmental regulations.
You'll get cancer living near it regardless
In April 1986 I was at University in London. Two of my social group were taking Degrees in Nuclear Engineering. On day after the accident they explained how the RBMK design had been studied on their course as the ultimate example of 'How not to design a Reactor'. There were so many good Teaching Points, practically every aspect of the design (or every aspect then known in the West) allowed the lecturer to say 'This is bad because ...'
"What if it explodes ?"
"It won't because comrade Stalin spirit is protecting us"
Yeah... There is more advanced reactor designs, like PWR in Three Mile Island, or BWR in Fukushima. That's how you build reactors.
@@ДикинШмули reactor design doesn't really matter when the plant gets tsunami'd
@@Snipurss Sure... And placing emergency generators for powering cooling system in a basement under sea level is ingenious engineering decision.
@@ДикинШмули they put a 10 meter wall to protect the power plant
but the wave was 15 m high *sad engineer with budget restriction noises*
I appreciate the fact that you didn't simplify the displacement rods as "graphite tips on the control rods." I HATE that simplification because it leads to all sorts of bizarre ideas of why they would be designed that way.
One TV show and all of a sudden everyone is a nuclear engineer
@@masonmunkey6136 ain't even seen the show. Been a nuclear history buff since the nineties.
@@tjzambonischwartz I wasn't referring to you with that comment. The extent of my knowledge about Chernobyl was pretty much limited to the show up until today lol.
And thank you for pointing this out, too! I've read extensively about this disaster and have watched many videos, and Plainly's is the first one to actually explain what the control rods are clearly and not just describe them as "graphite tipped" with no reason as to WHY they were made that way.
@@CobaltThunder267 Scott Manley's video also explains these properly. He really did a good job th-cam.com/video/q3d3rzFTrLg/w-d-xo.html
“There is no war in ba sing se”
Soviet government: *there is no radiation in Prypyat*
Half this comment section: "there is naught to regulate as human decency exists"
Interestingly, the Chernobyl plant continued to run the other reactors after the disaster, with the last one being shut down in 2000.
Ukraine needed power, and the other reactors had safe, post soviet uppgrades
They operated the older units (1&2) for a few years' more but they kept the significantly upgraded unit 3 rolling until 2000.
I have watched a lot of videos on Chernobyl, but this one is simply a level above the rest. The explanation of the causes of the incident is so clear but also detailed. Very well done.
One key thing that is rarely mentioned in any of these documentaries is that in the USSR/Russia (unlike in the West) nuclear reactors do not have a containment vessel. The reactor has shielding around it but no concrete containment vessel. This meant that the explosion, once it occurred, allowed radioactive material and gasses to immediately escape into the open air. The arrogant Russians thought their RBMK reactor flawless - no accident could happen. The Three Mile Island reactor did have a containment vessel and therefore there was extremely limited release of radioactivity.
Also, the TMI wasn't nearly as bad as the media made it out to be. And a far *_far_* cry from Chernobyl.
23:37 "And as such, the blatant evidence to the opposite was ignored."
If ever anyone wondered why mental gymnastics such as doublespeak and doublethink are so dangerous
Or as any ordinary man would call it, hypocrisy.
@@sintheemptyone8108 This is beyond hypocrisy. A hypocrite would see you imprisoned for smoking weed while halfway through a blunt. This is next level, an emotional wall ringfencing a set of beliefs (regardless of evidence). The basis of all ideologies, of which organised religions have historically been the most egregious examples.
As such, the time stamp is probably referring to something else, you might want to fix it.
@@233kosta so like the people rioting for years on end, being encouraged, even during a pandemic, burning, looting and murdering people, and the media saying its "peaceful protest" and safe, to be encouraged, but, peaceful anti-lockdown or gun-rights protesters, standing around talking and being...genuinely peaceful... thats a danger to society...
the people i know who believe and back those views..are.... genuinely worrying if not frightening...
like a friend of ours whos sister went off the deep end after 2 years away at uni... from a nice, normal, happy girl, to having half her head shaved, and hating all white people, shes white and her family is white... lecturing them about white privilage and how its wrong for their family to own land and a home when so many people cannot own land or a home.
she started to lecture me about biological sex being a lie, but then couldnt actually justify that with science, just emotion... the whole family had a meeting when she was away for the day over thanks giving and... she wasnt going back, if she did, it would be her own back the debt would fall on... she tried to go back but, was smart enough to recognize that getting a degree that wouldnt let her pay off the loan sshe would need to get it, would be really fucking stupid...rather then admit this she went crazy on her parents with "friends" encouragement... shes better now... last time he took me to their place for a visit, her hair is growing back in on her head, and, she started shaving her legs again..(admitted the itching hadnt stopped the whole time she had stopped but she was assured it would... and she would be much healthier and happier as a harry woman... shes realized how insane she was for getting sucked into that culture... has no intent to go back, infact shes loving taking classes locally and online, says part of what let them get their claws into her so easy was the fact she moved like 6+hrs from home(her dad drives fast...so for most of us add a couple hours...), no local support and all these people pushing her to join their cult...
she keeps having to block people on fb because the crazies who were the core/leaders/dictators of that group keep using alts to harass her on facebook, when they found out she mostly used minds they started calling her a nazi.. she was upset at first..but.. well.. when i read the shit they were saying and rather then what she expected, started laughing and "wow, talk about desprate, attacking a woman for leaving your cult and finding, shes much happier not hating herself and everybody else..." (more...but she took her laptop and typed out a modified version... i told her.. "want to post a video of me saying it?" she loved that idea... i said it my own way... omg the fuckers tried to get me kicked off SSI over it.. thankfully the gal at SSI did a quick review, got a few medical records, then when i mentioned they said they would get me kicked off ssi, and told them who to look for..the gal was able to find them fast... and... the best part... the idiots had posted screenshots of their reports against me.... AND AUDIO OF THEM CALLING, then talking about how screwed i was... so.. yeah... my acct now has to have a note warning of facebook fgts making false reports that im not a gimpy mofo...
i genuinely hate this world/society we live in...
@@sintheemptyone8108 I call it deception (which includes self-deception)
I just love that you posted this on the 35th anniversary of the disaster. Excellent video, as usual! Possibly your best so far.
I'm also super grateful you gave a full description of a full system cycle and the total theory of its operation. Fantastic video.
This video series has been fantastically detailed about the Chernobyl disaster. You've been going much more in depth than a lot of other channels have done and it's fantastic.
When you go to shut down an automobile, you typically release the accelerator, brake to a stop, take the transmission out of gear, actuate the emergency brake, and turn off the keys.
If you then need to move it a few feet, the safest way is to reverse the above process.
If you're feeling bold... and in a hurry... and you aren't an engineer, qualified properly... (just like Dyatlov)...you might leave the emergency brake on...
...rev the engine to redline rpms...
...and use the footbrake, on top of the parking brake, to control forward speed.
The iodine well was the emergency brake. Those simply do not go away today, period.
Removing almost all control rods was like flooring the gas.
The few remaining control rods were the footbrake.
The operators had a tiger by the tail, and they knew it. This was not a 1000 MW core at 30 MW. This was a big hot rod, screaming thunder, barely held in check, and they KNEW the tachometer was "lying" to them.
The instant it got away from them, they knew the core was gone. The knew the refuelling blocks were jumpIng up and down in the channels BEFORE it blew. Those detonations were the speedometer hitting 150, after the brakes were ripped clean off the wheels.
Dyatlov ordered them to cool the core, and they did, even though the core was now a crater.
Dyatlov was the kind of guy who rose to mediocrity by ignoring rules, and gettting boxes checked... till a box he didn't really understand enforced simple math upon him.
He did not believe the core was undamaged, or even still in place. He HOPED it was, and gave commensurate orders, because he knew those huge explosions had his name on them, in an unforgiving empire.
The rest kept quiet, followed orders, and counted minutes till they could escape the invisible... giant... they had let out of its cage.
They all had watched, earlier this same shift, when Dyatov fired the chief operator for voicing exactly these objections.
dyatlov also blew up a reactor in a nuclear submarine. so he seemed to be highly skilled.
This is the case when someone gains their position not through knowledge, but through quotas, skin color or sexual orientation.
Oh, wait...
@@jakubjandourek2822 …what???
What is often missed in describing this accident is that the experiment was performed only because they *knew* that the station design was not robust to station blackout. The reactor design was bad, but the over-all systems design of the power station was criminal. It should never have been permitted to operate at all.
the reactor design was risky, but i wouldnt call it bad. they built lots of them and they ultimately worked fine, once the bugs were cleared out. the problem is when you get bureaucrats and bureaucracies to manage complex machines. like the space shuttle, for example. when the accident happened, most people on site were inexperienced, they did what they were told to do.
Even with all these faults, corner cuts, cost reductions, and the following disaster, you gotta admit, the RBMK is still a massive achievement in nuclear power. What's even more astounding, they somehow managed to get it working without a prototype, and it worked fine for years. Like, say what you want, but that's damn impressive, especially considering how complex and difficult to design and manufacture nuclear reactors are.
Who's here because they've always found the Chernobyl disaster interesting and the current Ukraine/Russia conflict reminded them about it?
I really enjoy how you take the time to explain the engineering behind the facilities you cover. It's fascinating to learn about technology and the advent of human prowess in the modern age.
This is the best explanation I've seen of what really happened at Chernobyl, and why it blew up the way it did. It's the first time I felt like I really understood it. Thanks for doing this video!
This has been the best balanced documentary on the technical reasons for the accident and the aftermath.
Thanks for covering this John. I was in Europe at the time as a young boy, to you and everyone else believe you me that we were very afraid of the outcome and the dangers after the incident. Remember this is before the internet era, zero to no access to scientific research, not to mention mother USSR was very suspect and hush hush so we didn’t know what to expect in the Mediterranean. Picture millions in fear, we had no clue what to expect in the aftermath.
I watched this 2 years ago...here I am.watching it again- excellent work mate
And you made my day a little brighter for your like:-) your efforts are appreciated. (Also... I had notifications on for your channel for a long time and then one day I noticed I hadn't seen anything pop up for a while- worried you went dark... turns out for whatever reason TH-cam just up stopped showing your content)
Imagine a conversation like - "Comrade! Take a peek outside at 2am, to make sure everything is okay!" (comrade) "Ah yes, beautiful bright blue sky as usual, everything is fine..."
14:45 "The reactor needs around 28000 liters per hour during full power operation".
Correction: EACH FUEL CHANNEL needs 28000 liters per hour during full power operation.
"Reactor No. 4 had 1661 individual fuel channels, each requiring a coolant flow of 28000 litres per hour at full reactor power, for a total of over 12 million gallons per hour for the entire reactor." From Wikipedia, referencing Medvedev, Zhores A. (1990). The Legacy of Chernobyl (First American ed.). W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-30814-3.
THANKING YOU, FOR TAKING THE TIME TO EXPLAIN IT ALL SO VERY WELL...
It begins the wall of people saying first
Come on, people, let's disappoint Joel's expectations!
Was that your way of saying FIRST!?
TSRIF
Last time I was this early, I didn't see graphite on the roof.
welp i did not expect this to happen
but really enjoyed the video though great job :D
Beautiful explanation of a complex failure. Yes, a disconnection between the need for sufficient power for the grid, the training of operators, correct testing procedures and a woefully optimistic design results in the nightshift accidentally creating a prompt critical explosive device.
I really like the longer format, nice work
Finally, never clicked faster
Thank you Duckie!
DUGA-3 is just a couple miles away, many people don't mention it when they cover Chernobyl and Pripyat. I've always wondered how much power demand the "Russian Woodpecker" required, did it need a power plant nearby to make it work? It is absolutely massive!
The thing that gets me about these kinds of stories from the old nuclear plants is how often they start with the workers literally poking the beast to try and check if the plant's running correctly-- but then when it turns out it /isn't/ running correctly, they don't actually have a response plan because barely anybody understood what was going on in the first place.
Which nowadays is like, surprised Pikachu face. What was the point of the test if there wasn't even an emergency plan to begin with. They probably could've saved themselves some trouble by just /never/ testing the things in the first place, since half the time they just expedited the inevitable disaster and didn't have an action plan to begin with, so if they'd just left them alone, most probably would've gone into the history books instead as an, "LOL, look how unsafe these old plants were-- thank goodness that never bit us in the ass, right?"
I heard in another video that they rated nuclear disasters from 0 to Chernobyl. Never could forget that one.
Chernobyl happened because nobody was willing to say, "This test is not worth blowing this reactor to pieces to perform."
Doing the test on an active ,loaded reactor was insanity.
And the excuse was floated after the fact that nobody ever thought the reactor could explode.
Well,water and heat makes steam....steam pipes have been exploding since the birth of both being in the same place.
And it was a steam explosion that lifted thr entire top unit up and then the ultrahot fuel got exposed from the core tubes and touched each other ,igniting an open fission explosion.
The top tilted to the side and the core cylinder focused this explosion like a mortar round, and forty percent of the fuel was propelled as far as a hundred miles away.
Then the top sat down on its side and the other sixty percent of fuel cooked in the open,directly in the bottom of the reactor core area.
The blue light going straight up was a stunning testament to the evil this incident let loose on the world.
May we never ever see such a disaster ever again.
Massive condolences and respect to all the Ukrainians and Russians who fought to contain this massive disaster.
As usual,great video.,PD.
I can't stop picturing Homer Simpson pouring water on all the controls.
Just watched a few of your videos. Great content, faved & subbed. Keep up the Good stuff bro.
The core asking it's creator if he loved it and replying hyper confused had me physically suffering from an attack of the giggles.
🌞
I really enjoyed this mr difficult. Some of your best work to date. Thanks for the great free content
27:37 that's actually a good evacuation job.
It was only inevitable because of ruzzian incompetence. Had competent management been there, it never would have happened.
I can't believe that you are showing a "Gamma Scout" Geiger counter in this context !
The Gamma Scout has EXACTLY this problem, getting saturated really quick !
26:02 !
Finally, been waiting for this one for so long. Thank you so much
Some extra info regarding the Chernobyl catastrophe.
1. The Soviet Nuclear industry and its reactors were regarded as state secrets that could not be seen by foreign eyes or discussed in public. The RMBK reactors main purpose, besides producing electrical power, was to be able to on short notice produce plutonium for Soviet nuclear weapons. Thus a secret of the state and the lack of security measurements, like Kyshtym and Windscale. Sweden built a somewhat similar reactor (moderated with heavy water, not graphite) for similar reasons but scrapped by being too expensive and dismantling its nuclear weapons program. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R4_nuclear_reactor
2. 25% of the electric power from Chernobyl seem to have run the Over-the-horizon DUGA radar situated outside Chernobyl. It was used to detect and trace ballistic missiles from USA. Thus also a secret of the state, not to be seen by foreign eyes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duga_radar
3. The explosions in Chernobyl seem first to have been nuclear explosions (caused by steam explosions that compressed the uranium fuel in some of the graphite channels, leading to local nuclear “explosions”. Those explosions opened up the reactor tank to the air, causing the large second steam explosion).
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1384269
4. The radiation hazard seem primarily to have been caused by fragments of the ceramic uranium oxide fuel rods, not by the graphite blocks. Explained with photo in
www.quora.com/Where-there-uranium-fuel-rods-littering-the-premises-after-the-Chernobyl-explosion-In-the-HBO-series-there-are-only-graphite-blocks-to-be-seen-Would-such-rods-be-more-radioactive-than-the-graphite-blocks
and example at 6:30, Perchuk:
th-cam.com/video/F2gnooj2xac/w-d-xo.html
Really look forward to the follow up video. Thanks!
WOAH ! I thought the three guys who drained the basement pool under the core were on a death mission, that's amazing!
This is the best explanation of the accident I’ve heard, well done. Oh and I love your diesel generators 👌
The graphite also is what made the elephant's foot along with core. Funny you said elephant in the room lol
I will forever remember my first exposure to what happened here:
"Fifty thousand people used to live here..."
The fact that the Elephant's Foot is still out there burning today gives me some mild existential terror
Boris Shcherbina and Valery Legasov are often ignored when talking about Chernobyl, which is quite sad as they played a major role in the clean up operation, with Legasov bringing his scientific knowledge and Shcherbina bringing his experience and political power
1st explosion was a stream explosion
2nd explosion seems to have been an actual runaway supercritical event, a fizzled nuclear explosion.
About 30 tonnes of TNT I think it was?
It took something like 30 seconds for the reactor lid to come back down after being thrown up by the explosion.
Excellent documentary! So much info crammed into 40 minutes. Thank you for this.
@13:45 Why would the reactor being poisoned my xenon be called an "iodine pit". I don't necessarily believe everything that the HBO series "Chernobyl" showed, as some of it had to be changed for entertainment purposes. However, they called it a "Xenon Pit"
I am one of the few people who went to watch previous video first. And I am proud of that.
Also not to forget: Another reason to choose the RBMK was that it could be used as a breeder for Pu239
correct
*Pu239 ?
@@derekp2674 yeah correct thank you
@@derekp2674 yes
Unit 3 was definitely NOT a 1000w.
MWe is electrical capacity, for one of the units to have "a fowzand mega Watts of electricity" that would be a storage device.
Wow this was best video I've seen on this disaster I've seen. Fantastic job, I learned a lot.
as a person whom has OCD and Im glad you showed a fundraiser for it
Big brain doc. I honestly spaced for the first part. Too smart
The plainly difficult disaster scale needed to be turned up to 11 for this one.
Instead of a grenade without a pin it’s more like they threw around a grenade without a pin that they were told was a dud but some thought they said ‘spud’ as in potato so they assumed they were playing hot potato
I vividly recall when this accident hit the news, everyone lost their minds for a time, which was understandable.
Thanks for this episode! There is really one thing that nags me, and that is your careless way with uppcase and lowercase characters. The chemical symbol of Xenon is Xe, not "XE" and in another episode about the Therac-25 Radiotherapy machine you wrote "meV", instead of MeV. Otherwise I think your videos are well researched and presented.
"It happened late Friday night. That morning no one suspected anything. I sent my son to school, my husband went to the barber's. I'm preparing lunch when my husband comes back. "There's some sort of fire at the nuclear plant," he says. "They're saying we are not to turn off the radio." I forgot to say that we lived in Pripyat, near the reactor. I can still see the bright-crimson glow, it was like the reactor was glowing. This wasn't any ordinary fire, it was some sort of shining. It was pretty. I'd never seen anything like it in the movies. That evening everyone spilled out onto their balconies, and those who didn't have them went to friends' houses. We were on the ninth floor, we had a great view. People brought their kids out, picked them up, said, "Look! Remember!" And these were people who worked at the reactor -- engineers, workers, physics instructors. They stood in the black dust, talking, breathing, wondering at it. People came from all around on their cars and their bikes to have a look. We didn't know that death could be so beautiful. "
-*Nadezhda Petrovna Vygovskaya, evacuee from the town of Pripyat*
I get chills whenever I think of that quote.
Cherenkov radiation... that "shiny" strange glow... is... particles and... non-particles... that shoot clean thru steel and zirconium and on the way... excite electron orbits enough to emit energetic photons...
...which means you have light... going THRU metal...
...which is pretty rare, and, in my case... the kewlest thing I've ever seen, hands down.
Second place was a plasma torch cutting two foot radius quarter circles... out of ten by ten foot, two inch thick stainless steel blanks, so that Fermilab could wrap four of them with huge cables, in banks of who knows how many...
... to make a particle beam shoot oit the end of the "block."
A lightning bolt one inch across... cutting two inch steel.
But that was a DISTANT second place.
:-)
I haven't seen cherenkov radiation, but I have seen red and green lightning. Both were in the same storm... Said storm was a hum-dinger from memory.
@@sball1990rack Oh I've seen *images* of it, just not in person :P
(Which, upon reflection, is probably a good thing)
@@malusignatius oh I understand. It’s absolutely beautiful. I mean more beautiful than anything.
Big brain doc. I honestly spaced for the first part. Too smart
My grandfather is one of the liquidators and I am proud of him. I say IS because he is still alive to this day!
If it's my place to ask, what was his responsibility as a liquidator?
the f**** a living legend
@@Fighterpilot555 - The guys that went in to scrape the bits of reactor core back into the reactor hall and other insanely dangerous things.
They essentially know they would die - which is why it is amazing his grandfather is still alive. Some died within hours.
Yeah ok mutant
Legend !!!!!!
Waiting an extra week for a 40 minute video about chernobyl is definitely worthwhile.
Feels almost cliche for him of all people to do Chernobyl
@@THICCTHICCTHICC I know nearly everything there is to know about Chernobyl, and i still watched this because his presentation is fantastic.
@@alexcrouse Unless you were high-ranking Soviet communist in the 1980s... no, you don't.
@@Mgunner7623 90% chance i know more about it than them. Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about it.
@@alexcrouse Yeah, I get it. We've all watched/read the same stuff. But I think that you underestimate Soviet secrecy. Your assumption feels very... Western millenial?
Operator: "Anatoly, what do we do now?"
Dyatlov: "Pass..."
I'll get my lead lined rubber coat...
😂👍
Beautiful
I'd been trying to think of a Dyatlov Pass joke for some minutes, glad I wasn't the only one.
Blyatiful!
Why don't you buy your underpants from Ukraine? Because chernobyl fall off
I was born just mere months before this tragedy. My father says he was meant to be sent to the plant by authorities to be one of the liquidators. But my birth gave him the opportunity to dismiss the order. He often says I am his savior. I love my dad. I am glad he could avoid being exposed to the radiation.
That's so sweet, what a miracle!
The liquidators were volunteers. They werent forced..
@@davelowets 1980's Soviet Union: volunteering=forced to do it or face severe punishment
@@coltongraves9331 It was the other way... The guys who volunteered to do it were rewarded with early discharge from the military.
@@davelowets Because there was a reward for going, doesn't mean there wasn't punishment for not going. It was still Soviet Russia, even if they got rid of the name, the population was expendable, and if they didn't do their jobs, they were punished
alternate title: how cutting costs in reactor design yeeted the lid of a reactor through the roof.
And it ain't even clickbait
Not shown: that lid weighed about 1000 tons
You must have stolen this from somewhere else in the comments. I've seen the same thing posted over a dozen times already, and you were not the first one.. Don't steal and plagiarize someone else's work, get creative and come up your own if you want attention.
@@davelowets no i thought of it on my own, didn't know other people had the same idea, sorry
The yeeted madr me laugh more than it should have.
I've probably watched 7 dozen Chernobyl docs over the years, but I am so very down for another if it's a Plainly Difficult doc.
Thank you!
@@PlainlyDifficultAs a navy nuke who was taught about chernobyl and had to learn reactor physics for my job as reactor operator, I really appreciate the research that was done to produce this video. I couldn't find anything inaccurate about the explanation of the physics even though it was put in semi-laymans terms. The only thing I caught that was missing was the fact that the xenon burnout also contributed heavily to the reactor power excursion. As soon as the reactor was brought critical again, the xenon burned away adding positive reactivity and it essentially created its own feedback loop in addition to the ones you discussed. Fantastic video and well informed which is why I enjoy your channel.
Kinda hard to cover it deeper... This was both comprehensive and concise. Outside of actual observed environmental impact, I think this is pretty much the entire story.
There are* only 81 documentaries about Chernobyl in existence (including this video) so I doubt it.
@@LoLFilmStudios are*
Plainly difficult uploads 40 min vid with a disaster rating of 10
My brain: click it. Click it now.
😬😬
@PlainlyDifficult isn't this like the only 10 you've done so far?
@@Rammstein0963. I'm pretty sure that Fukushima scored a 10 as well. I was kind of expecting this one to be an 11.
@Mp Cops Fukushima was worse? The total radiation released was a fraction of that released from Chernobyl.
That just means your brain is operating properly.
What's crazy is that divers who went in after the meltdown are still alive and just live normal lives...
Correction: 2 are still alive
One of them died from a heart attack a few years ago..........
One of them works as a CEO of Energoatom, nuclear energy generating company
also the man who took the photo with the Elephant foot is still alive
@@cjwiffle4714 i still am sure not , if that picture is "real" . I have run across mentions that say it is a double exposure, or two pictures semi-imposed on each other some other way. Never investigated it fully myself yet.
Doing that , especially at that time, should have been fatal in days/hours.
@@chrisperrien7055 the man on that picture (that he made btw) is Artur Korneev. He is still alive at 71 years old and worked at chernobyl site since the accident and while the second sorcophagus was being built, teaching and instructing new workers. Times interviewed him in 2014 (if im not mistaken) and he is still mentioned here and there in our russian news.
Having spent my entire life living around and working in nuclear power plants, it is so incredibly painful to learn about the failures of Chernobyl. There are so many ways that the disaster could have been avoided, and even a simple containment dome would have either completely negated, or largely mitigated, the effects of the explosion.
It breaks my heart that so many people view this disaster as a reason to vilify nuclear power.
Thank for taking the time to research and produce this video!
I am not sure if the explosion could have been contained, not when the reactor top, control rods, and a third of the fuel were hurled a kilometer into the sky.
@@taraswertelecki9886 that’s what an actual containment building would have prevented or reduced
Give these guys any types of power plants other than boiling water on a pile of burning wood and they will doom it one way or another.
@@OrdinaryEXP never doubt a fool's ability to fuck something up
@@OrdinaryEXP I saw a movie where a hurricane hit a nuclear plant and got irradiated. Saw another one where it happened with a tornado. Those 2 documentaries scared me.
It's insane that they kept operating Unit 3 until 2000.
To be fair, it was upgraded significantly.
Yea, rbmk is save... Unfortunlly after non soviet upgrade xD
@@zerghydralisk1837 The bad capitalists disabled the explode mode.
@@u.v.s.5583 true
Greedy (USSR)...
How does a Soviet RBMK reactor explode?
A: It doesn’t
B: It was the hydrogen tank
C: 3.6 Roentgens; not great, not terrible
D: He’s in shock, get him out of here
E:
F: Human stupidity
G: Taliban
H. COVID-19
I: You didn't see graphite because it's not there..... Excuse me.....
We all know about Chernobyl, but I love how deep you get into disasters like this. The technical aspects, the buildup and causes, the aftermath and everything in between. Thanks again for another thoroughly interesting video. I look forward to the next one(s).
Absolutely. I've watched many Chernobyl documentaries, this is the best one from a technical perspective.
I remember a party in Östersund just a week or so before the disaster. There was a sami girl who was included in a family clan owning a lot of reindeers, she was kind of rich. After the accident these reindeers meat was forbidden to sell for human consumtion because och the cesium downfall that occured on the area the animals feeded on.
Free reindeer meat all around!!!! 🤣
@@yankees29 I think it's actually called Rudolph meat because "you would even say it glows".
I remember that whole herds of reindeers were clubbed. It was horrible.
Theres a breed of dogs that live in that area. They're really pretty dogs actually, they're all okay though they've been there the whole time nothing weird happened to them, I'm not Chinese so I wouldn't eat one but I'd pet one for sure. They're call pupyats. I'd like to adopt one maybe but they don't have really long life spans but I think that's because they're wild dogs and just hangout in the abandoned buildings
I've watched a lot of documentaries about this and this is the first time I've ever heard what the test actually was and why they were doing it.
Then you haven't watched any good ones.
Even this video omits that it was in fact a proficiency test, a prerequisite for officially considering the 4th reactor (and entire plant), complete with staff, ready for use.
Anatoly Dyatlov? If he’s related to the Dyatlov pass guy... *begins to craft tin foil hat*
😂😂
Wrong Dyatlov, the hiker got *[REDACTED]*
Ominous Russian Introduction: "Meet your new team leader, Mr. Dyatlov".
@@Tindometari yea if that happened I’d just quit whatever job; it would end in disaster for sure 🤣
But seriously, are they related or is Dyatlov just a common last name in Russia?
"A brief history of"
40 minute video
props to you
Thank you!
In fairness, given the decades long (with no end in sight) run its had as a storyline in history... 40 minutes is damn concise 🤣
@@MadScientist267 IIRC, there's a twitter account with regular updates as to how much cleanup is left at Chernobyl. Last time I checked, I think they had gotten it down to something like only 99.999994782% cleanup left to go.
Trust me, this vid is a masterpiece of clear explanation of a very complex failure
@@FilosophicalPharmer And tepco started off by saying 20 years they would have it all cleaned up. Yeah right good luck with that one. And they have the ocean to deal with and all the cooling water flowing into It since 2011. Too bad GE didn’t listen to those 3 engineers. We’ll to be fair they did but said we’ll if we do x then that’ll kill the nuclear side of GE. Profit over life once again wonder how many 10s of thousands of cases of cancer will come out of this one?
It was inevitable that you would cover chernobyl
😂😂
It had to be done!
@@PlainlyDifficult
A real sarcophagus of a video.
@@PlainlyDifficult You give hints, that this will be 2 parts, if not 3 or 4 . I see 3 at least. This disaster has been with us 40 years or so, and is still going on.
@@chrisperrien7055 No, you didn't see three. You didn't see three BECAUSE IT'S NOT THERE!
@@thedungeondelver Love your Avatar , D&D/TSR in 1978, I remember it well .
I went to the store this morning and bought snacks because i knew this was coming and here we go!
I hope you enjoy it!
@@PlainlyDifficult I indeed did enjoy! Thank you for making these, your channel is excellent!
So did I!
My grandfather was a liquidator. He wasn't directly at the unit, but he was a part of a cleanup, as he was a soldier, and then he has, for the rest of his service, been a part of a guard that was controlling the exclusion zone
He was my icon of what a man should be, very organized, with strong will, always calm and collected
He didn't die from his radiation-connected diseases, but from coronavirus... I couldn't believe that the virus was what took him, and I miss him every day
Rest in peace, Viktor, we will always remember you
"Put the new RBMK reactors in Chernobyl comrade."
"We aren't going to build a prototype first to make sure it works?"
"We'll do it LIVE!"
"It'll be fine, just don't build it in Russia I hear Ukraine is expendable"
@@Jabarri74 they built the first one in leningrad, which has literally been russia's capitol at various points in history.
A fellow Christian
@@gingernutpreacher :)
Please don't get that feeling of smugness because you don't live in Russia. Your government doesn't give a shit about you, whatever country you live in. CIA testing LSD on citizens, our own UK government testing chemical & biological weapons on army "volunteers". And lets not even get started on how companies are willing to kill people for a quick buck.
Despite watching a zillion videos on this tragedy, as well as articles, and even movies, I still managed to learn several new things today. Love the depth and clarity!
thank you!
Me too, I’ve seen and read so much and it turns out I have a lot to still learn :)
Was wondering when you'd finally have an event with a rating of 10. No surprise it's Chernobyl. I can't believe it's been 35 years!
Oh, this madlad DID go ahead and release it one day ahead of the 35-year anniversary, didn’t he?
gods...im old...
@@AshenTechDotCom I doubt this will help, but I was surprised at how recent this disaster was (born in 2003). It always seemed like it was one of those things that happened forever ago, maybe in the 60s or 70s
In the mid 1990's our company (in the US) employed a few contract electrical engineers to do a controls system upgrade. I was supervising the team and one of the engineers (his name was Igor) was a former Chernobyl electrical engineer (not involved with the incident in any way). He had emigrated to the US a few years later and we picked him up for a few months to do some PLC (industrial controller) programming. His approach to process control safety was horrifying; I had to say NO! NO! NO! to so many of his ideas that would of put on systems in a perilous state of functionality. Even after saying NO! I would have to to back and check his programming and many times I found that we went ahead and did these crazy-unsafe things anyway. I was not in a position of removing him from the project (my manager has that authority) but yet I was responsible for his work. It gave me a low level of PTSD from dealing with him constantly. I was not surprised that dangerous and catastrophic things happened in the USSR with this being the quality of the safety culture there at that time.
Your grammar tells me you've never held any position of authority... unless of course English is not your first language. Please clarify.
@@paulcunnane4 Their grammar is more then acceptable, Fuck are you on about ya weirdo?
@@paulcunnane4 Maybe the issue is on your end, that was an entirely comprehensible paragraph.
I had an older Russian software engineer on the team. He got fired for exactly this kind of stuff.
Younger Russians aren't much better, though. I've caught one uploading internal documents to Google Docs - he wasn't stealing them, just going around safety measures.
I can tell that your low level PTSD has caused you to consume high levels of alcohol, the terrible grammar was a dead give away. I hope you recover. By the way, cool story.
Imagine this guy talks about the meteor that ends the dinosaurs.
"I'll rate this 11 on my disaster scale."
"I saw a playlist with other videos."
"No you didn't."
You're delusional. Go to the infirmary.
YOU DIDN'T BECAUSE IT'S NOT THERE!
YOU DIDDANT! Because it's not there.
b e c a u s e i t ' s n o t t h e r e
you DIDN'T, BECAUSE IT'S NOT THERE!
Good explaination of this insane tragedy.
Some notes from Dyatlov's book on it (take those with a grain of salt, he himself even said that):
-Nowhere in the documentation was it stated that the violation of the ORM would turn the scram system into an explosion initiator.
-There was no instrument in the control room to monitor the ORM as it wasn't just a sum of lengths of the control rods and depended on the shape of the neutron field. It was calculated both periodically and on demand by a (rather slow) computer installed in another room, which took about 10 minutes, and its output was only printed on paper and had to be hand delivered to the control room.
-The shutdown wasn't a response to the power increase, rather was a delayed by a few seconds part of the testing procedure. While the opposite is stated in the verdict of the USSR court, he claims that even on the graphs taken from the control room said increase could only be noticed using a magnifying glass.
-The method by which the void coefficient was calculated by the plant's department was cooked and post explosion investigations came up with a dramatically different number. Not only that, but the reactor as installed was in the configuration that its chief designer called "uncontrollable" in one memo.This relates to percentage of uranium enrichment (lower than recommended) and absence of those short control rods at the bottom. Worse still, the ORM limit (at the time of the disaster only 15, not 28) was put in space only after the Leningrad incident, further demonstrating the issues with the design.
-The reactor had to be built in accordance with rules about safety and Dyatlov argues that dozens of those rules were broken. Of course, he wasn't given the chance to prove that during his trial.
Thank you!
There is a long interview to Dyatlov on YT
It's not just his book either, if I remember rightly one of the later IAEA reports said that the USSR had lied to them about the existence of operating procedures that were meant to stop an incident like this, that in fact those supposed operating procedures were made up after the fact, and that misleading information had made it into earlier reports in the series. I think it may have taken the fall of the USSR for this information to come out as well.
Moreover, according to Dyatlov, the RBMK reactros were already working, unknowingly for their operators, in conditions that the same RBMK Chief Designer, N A Dollezha, considered incontrollable. Infact, with 2% enrichment of the fuel, special absorbers should have been inserted into the channels to contrast positive void coefficient at low power levels. In reality the commercial RBMK worked with 2% fuel enrichment, no special absorbers, and none of the operators even knew that those absorbers should have been present.
It's typically Soviet. The chief designer states that, if made in a certain way, the reactor is safe and can rise power from any energy level.
The designers of the plant remove safety measures (maybe simply implying that low enrichment fuel would not have been used), but mantain the statement that the reactor is safe and can rise power from any energy level.
The operators only know that the reactor is safe and can rise power from any energy level.
As far as I know there are short control rods at the bottom, but they weren't connected with the AZ system back then. Fun fact: the reactor was supposed to undergo maintance after the test and the shutdown, and one part of it was connecting those short control rods to the AZ system, which as I read somewhere, would have probably prevented the disaster.
THIS IS THE BIG ONE FOLKS WE"VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR!!!
One of the interesting stories about the world learning of the disaster was at a nuclear power plant in Norway (Forsmark).
It was standard procedure for employees leaving the plant to walk through radiation detectors to ensure they weren't contaminated with radioactive material on them. The alarms began to go off during a shift change, so they immediately began tracking down the source of contamination within the plant.
Eventually, they realized there was no leak at the plant, but they still had employees leaving the plant who were contaminated. So, they tested employees _entering_ the plant and found they were contaminated as well. It was one of the first indications somewhere in the world, there has been a major release of radioactive material.
Forsmark is in Sweden, not Norway but we are close neigbours.
Thank you for being a decent human being and not calling him all sorts of things about being wrong and just letting him know he was so!
I remember that the USSR didn't say a word for days what happened there and that Westerners recognized a lot of radioactivity in the air and assumed it must be an ultimate MCU somewhere in the East. Scary times. Didn't know it was at another nuclear power plant in Sweden.
That is one of the worst ways to find out!
"Um,Jimmy,you seem to have a bunch of radio active materials on you,where have you been going lately?"🫤
As someone who lives near a large nuclear power plant ( I live in the US ) the story of Pripyat and the Chernobyl plant has always captured me. God bless the firefighters and cleanup crews who lost their lives.
Just one? I guess you don't live in Charlotte, NC then!
Ours are a lot safer lol. This one is the nuclear equivalent of a trashcan fire.
@@RobinTheBot I’m from PA, where the 3 mile island plant is located, so while safer yes, my grandma got cancer because of the meltdown there
@@FilosophicalPharmer well my state had a reactor meltdown so state legislation is super iffy about it
@@stuglife5514 Understood! I was only a kid but I can remember talking about it in church that Sunday! It was a scary time.
"This thing cannot blow up!"
_Thing blows up_
*Surprised Pikachu management face*
😂
I keep coming back to this episode because it's so well made. It's an absolute joy to watch. Your entire channel is amazing, so much effort put into research and explaining the little details.
Last time I was this early, Anatoly Dyatlov was still working on submarines.
And he still had a son
No he was still on the toilet
I was in high school when this happened. I remember it being a big deal, but because the Soviets kept so much from the western press it was only after the fall of the Soviet did the true scale of the disaster became known.
Damn you're old
@@keepmymindpreoccupied2892 youll be too
@@keepmymindpreoccupied2892 That's not "old". Your just a young puppy, that's all.
@@davelowets no no no sir i am the big bad dog 😎💪
I remember back when the history channel provided content for actual learning.. They went in on the liquidators and the man chosen to lead those poor heroic bastards in the rooftop cleanup. Mad respect for their sacrifice.
Well, gotta pay the bills. So they put on the content that brings in viewers. Which can be...less than educational.
There are stories that some of the liquidators would trade tags that had been on the roof with those that had not yet gone up there. men sacrificing themselves willingly to save others. they are heros.
@@trinalgalaxy5943 there's also stories that there were people who "forgot" to check tags to let people serious about reducing risk to others, too! Those guys are honestly the first people we should remember when we hear "Chernobyl". They knew it was probably going to be lethal, and they were willing to do this so others wouldn't.
@@trinalgalaxy5943 Reminds me of a scene in the Battlestar Galactica episode "The Passage" (I think): a pilot secretly swapped radiation monitor tags from another pilot, absorbing a lethal dose.
@@ironhead2008 disasters have a way of boiling everything away and leaving us with the best and the worst of humanity.
It is quite impressive how you take a difficult and complicated issue like this and explain it so clearly! Appreciate you doing this.