Chernobyl DP-3V, the MOST HARDCORE dosimeter ever
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 มิ.ย. 2024
- We've been cleaning our shed and found this legendary Chernobyl device. It is a DP-3B dosimeter originally designed for the nuclear war back in the 60-s. This one was produced in the 1980-s with minor changes and could measure up to 500 Roentgens per hour. With such specs, these radiometers became very useful in Chernobyl back in the hardest days of 1986. So, let's look closer!
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What you will find in today’s episode:
00:00 - Intro
00:23 - DP-3B in Chernobyl
00:03 - Specs and user cases
02:39 - Let’s look closer!
03:32 - Operator’s unit review and functions
06:30 - What is below the front panel?
08:24 - Electronic circuits
09:53 - This is THE detector
11:30 - Wirebox
11:55 - Outro - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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Actually, those tubes inside the detector are 6H16Б-B double triode radio tubes. I am sure radio tubes are used instead of transistors because they operate better in high radiation conditions.
Yep - I was going to say that those indeed are vacuum tubes. Beautiful ones.
Thank you for the correction!
Bipolar transistors exposed to radiation loose gain, or if exposed to neutrons , get their silicon transmuted and loose the doping . Their breakdown threshold also drops in presence of radiation and some can get even saturated by gamma radiation, working like phototransistor.
In 500R range this could be a problem 😂
They're also immune to EMP. The Soviets were using them in their frontline military equipment as late as the MiG-25 interceptor and I suspect that's part of the reason.
@@ironhead2008 thank you for the details!
09:53 - It's not a Geiger-Müller tube. This particular detector is an ionization chamber.
Thanks!
The aesthetic and performance is what it is, also very crummy looking readout gauge but the electronic internals looks well built and very repairable. The 3D component arrangement is almost artful.
There was one more modification from the late 80-s, where the meter was a squary one. Had a luck to get one with more original design. Well, i suppose that when you deal with that high levels, even approximate readings are pretty sufficient, though. Totally agree on 3D arrangement. Not my style, but how much patience one would need to make it that straight!
Wow, that's a really big GM tube. Very scary to think of test personnel being exposed to what this could measure. Thanks for showing us Alex.
You are welcome! Stay tuned!
I tested this with an X ray emitter and it still worked perfectly, the red pulse light is a really good feature as it will warn you of radiation even when it's below the lowest range.
Fantastic! Cool!
In Socialist Poland a meter with similar specs was made. Polon-Alfa DP-75 with first range up to 0.5 mR/h, and last with 500 R/h. It was designed for carrying. The detector section contained DOI-30 and DOI-80 lamps.
I owned one for a few years, and scanned the whole manual w/ the electronic schematics.
Although I dod not have the device you mentioned, I remember having a radio with the vacuum tubes marked with Polon-Alpha. Cheers!
Hope you uploaded the manual to the internet archive :)
9:27 That is really beautifully constructed internally. Someone cared about their work when they assembled those because they went beyond just functional the alignment of the parts is more than what is needed to work reliably for years to come.
That's not sloppy construction at all. It's first rate 1950's and 1960's circuit construction techniques. American hardware from those decades looked just like that. If there's a big difference, Americans liked to use bus designs with backplanes. But really the workmanship and PCB's look first rate for the technology employed.
I agree. Though the point is, this very device is from the 80-s, the practices were the same. Well, might be retained from radiation resistance considerations.
@@ChernobylFamily I worked on electronics in the 1980's and nuclear rad hard high power systems looked just like this. The components started becoming more integrated by '85, and by then yes the look had changed. But consider a unit built in 1969 would only be 11 years old in 1980 and still have a lot of life in it. In the 80's these electronics would not seem old, only slightly dated. Their age would have been apparent in the 90's. I'd love to see the amplifier technology used in this unit. Tubes or early rad hard transistors? As an aside, in American electronics circles in the 1980's we'd joke that the USSR made the best vacuum tubes in the world, and the old guys would quip back that yes indeed they do and they reap a lot of benefit from it. Some radar guys I know say that modern radar did not truly exceed every metric of tube based radar until the late 90's. Soviet/Russian tubes now have a reputation for excellence in the USA.
@@AndrewTubbiolo Soviet era electronics are next level, built to last til the end of time
"...it's already too late to worry about, so well it can be green..." I really like your approach and enthusiasm.
Trust me, I am slavic scientist
It is not a geiger tube, but an ionisation chamber tube. It has a high value glass resistor and a small vacuum tube installed too! Careful with touching those parts because contamination from the fingers can affect the measurement.
Thank you very much for this clarification! Some people before also pointed on the fact it is an ionization chamber, but additional details are very valuable too.
@@ChernobylFamily Oh, I'll gladly look into the working principle of this device. I have a hungarian device which is similar in principle, it is the "IH-2" field dosimeter which can measure up to 200R/h. It doesn't have an external probe, but it is sealed into a sturdy chamber. The working principle is very similar: You have a dry air filled atmosphere in a can, there are two electrodes which are very well insulated electrically (with teflon or other materials). Depending on the design a voltage is applied to one electrode of the chamber (usually the outside electrode is the can itself). This voltage presence is converted to a current when ionising radiation is present. The current flows towards the inner electrode and the glass sealed high value resistor converts it to a voltage, which is amplified by a vauum tube. This vacuum tube is special, because its pins are arranged in a way that the sensing/control pin or grid pin is placed the furthest away from the other pins. The vacuum tube configuration is needed because it provides an almost infinite input resistance to the very small ion current produced by the ionisation chamber. Then the amplified signal will travel to the operator side and will be processed by it. The audio signal is not really a geiger sound but more like an alarm sound.
Especially that high-value grid-resistor is brr... Don't touch with sweaty palms indeed!
Then: "3 roentgen. Not great not terrible"
Now: "it's not 3 roentgen. It's 15000"
Exactly. In fact, can you imagine how scary would be to sit in front of this and see that it goes out of the scale on the highest measurement mode?
Awesome video, guys! Keep them coming!
Working hard against all the circumstances!
Yep, typical 1960s design. Point to point wiring of the components in the circuit would make it very reliable, so it probably still works. But considering the age of those components, it's probably well out of calibration. If you had a radioactive source to test it on, it would probably give you a reading, but I wouldn't rely on that reading to be accurate. And I can definitely understand not wanting to have a radioactive source around just sitting around the house, your channel isn't Cody'sLab!
I believe this was made with low-integration and 3D mounting also from consideration of radiation resistance.
The DP-5B (1 perosn carry variant of this one) has a small radioactive source on the probe itslef. You need to turn the probe lid 180 degr. and the small radioactive material will be over the dedector tubes. You check if the redaings of the meter fall in the specs and then turn the lid 180 to use the meter. I used one made in 1965 in the bulgarian army in 2014 and it was still in spec. The capitan had no idea where he was and what to do, so I would strap the meter on my waist and go around the base "doing my monthly check". Fun times
I liked the bit where you said "first you have to remove the knob"
))
That's an ionization chamber meter. It's way too large for a Geiger-counter tube. Also the vacuum tube amplifier indicates it's a ionization chamber circuit. They build a LOT of these vacuum tube radiation meters during the 60s and 70s. It was one of the last holdouts of vacuum tubes (and Space Probes) because of the radiation resistance mentioned below. The problem with Geiger-counter tubes is that they're only sensitive to gamma-radiation. The problem is that they're almost 'deaf' for beta radiation and completely incapable of handling alpha-radiation.
Also, geiger-tubes can undergo a limited amount of discharges before they're 'exhausted' (just like any gas-filled tube for that matter, like thyratrons). And if you're looking into a 500R/h source, they die very quickly, the gas simply becomes ionized permanently, unless hardening is applied. Also, the beta-radiation versions are not as strong mechanically I'd think? I have one of these things, and they won't survive the blast effect of any weapon I'd say.
I still realy like the design of it. Thank You for making those videos!
Much more to come! Stay tuned, dear friend!
@@ChernobylFamily I realy looking forward to that!
4 minutes in, and I'm laughing. My sympathy for your shed floor. Reminds me of the stereotypical jokes about old Nokia phones - if you drop them, the floor or ground will be damaged, the phone will be fine.
The truth is, when you deal with soviet stuff, this issue is no longer a joke...
I expect any country's military-spec equipment is the same way.
Thanks for the internal view on this device, I am considering getting one form ebay if a good bargain pop up someday.
Please pay attention that it does not have radium marks around the switch. That may be very dangerous.
Maybe a Clear Sky mechanic can turn this into a Bear Detector for artifact hunting.
The most epic thing in this is that we personally know very that one clear sky mechanic. I mean it. Because it is a real person inserted in the game.
IDK...To me, it still looks like something you can use today, and for the part of the world we're all talking about, that equipment is _STILL_ going to let you know of certain areas where you really _SHOULDN'T_ be!
Technically you are completely right. However, the biggest trouble with those analog-display based devices, they are very slow. Once for an experiment I went to the red forest with a bunch of this kind of devices. Response of them (I mean, then the pointer will get to the position) was 1-3 sec; sometimes in high radiation fields that may cause an unwanted extra dose received. Nevertheless, if you have nothing else, better to have this than nothing at all, that is for sure.
Very funny remark about the green indicator!
Glad that you liked!
This reminds me of the “Proton Packs” from the movie Ghostbusters. Perhaps a real-life design inspiration? 😀
This one is gooooood :)
Interesting electrical componentry as expected for the 60's from very late in 1959, i'd suggest that this could have been used on the Tsar bomb testing too as well as the area zoning of the fallout after the 1986 reactor accident.
Well, actually the point of this video is that it was used in the Zone widely. Czar Bomb, however, is a bit too early, at that time they used more primitive meters.
Hi Alex, that is a lovely old bit of kit. It is a shame it had to exist. Considering its 60 years old design it is pretty cool. 60years before that electricity hadn't been discovered. The thing looks so well, you could probably repair it, if need be.
Thank you! It seems to be fully functional, not sure whether it actually needs a repair. However, its specs are too high to get any meaningful result apart from the backlight of a meter working, therefore I did not try to power it on.
Hungary made a copy of this in the early 1960s, called IH-3. It was very similar but it had a different probe box. Then came the IH-3M in 1962 which was a very different device but it also used an ionisation chamber like the DP-3. In 1970 the IH-31 entered service, a device with a digital display, the first one in the Warsaw Pact. It has a Si(Li) semiconductor detector and has a 1000 R/h upper limit of detection.
I have a question for you too. Some sources claim that some IH-5 detectors were sent to Chernobyl from Hungary because the GM tubes in the DP-5 detectors died too quickly and saturated a lot due to high radiation levels. This was not the case with the IH-5 because semiconductor detectors don't saturate and they last much longer than GM tubes. Have you ever heard about these devices in the context of Chernobyl? An other interesting device which was sent to help out the Soviets was the RAM-II mobile laboratory from DDR for chechking soil and food contamination. An other good device with a semiconductor detector, but unfortunatelly similarly hard to find info about them in context with Chernobyl.
About RAM I've heard, while about tubes I'll try to check with a few engineers.
"I do not think there is a need to attempt to power it" , what?! it's like getting a classic car and not trying to get it running! , you HAVE to get that thing powered at some point PLEASE :)
I meant only that this will not give anything at all in current ambient levels, except a risk of getting an electric shock:)
Will do of course...)
Is this the dosimeter that made General Pikalov realize *it's not 3 Roentgen, it's 15'000?*
Unlikely, but given this is normally installed on nearly all combat vehicles it surely added bits to the picture.
That’s really well made! Great video.
Thank you! Check other our episodes!
Those khaki or olive shade connectors so called "cannon" were originally implemented probably by Amphenol manufacrurer for military applications.
Correction: OEM - ITT Cannon Electric
I thought about Bendix
@@ChernobylFamilyWhen I used to work at TI plant my mentor showed to me a few of Amphenol's "cannons" in sealed plastic bags dated back to 1960, if I'm not mistaken there was indication of OEM on those packages.
Correction: I keep records of that inventory, where is my indication what cannon's OEM: ITT Cannon Electric, they were just mixed with Amphenol's ones in the same bin.
@@jacobsandler438 that is a very interesting detail, thank you!
So the Soviets copied that too? Lol
If German ballistic missle V-2 became soviet R-1, American bomber B-29 became soviet Tu-4. Soviets practiced reverse engineering from beginning of Cold War reproduced someone's products.
11:18 "neon tube" .... wrong, these are vacuum tube in a subminiature envelope... First time (for me) to see such kind of tube in a soviet device
Need to check it closer.... from outside looked like a neon one. Might be wrong.
I remember there was back in the cold war 1980s a rumor among pre-internet amateur western miltech watchers of soviet use of "miniature vacuum tubes" in the MIG fighters, allegedly making their avionics invulnerable to EMP effects. They may have been referring to things like these, or perhaps in the "nuvistors" found in Viktor Belenko's MIG-25.
@@KanalFrump i remember in my childhood i have been reading a book titled "a basics of electronics" from the 60-s, and there they were describing sub-miniature vacuum tubes of a size 3-6 mm as a perspective way of development of devices. There were also a but funny (from the modern time) predictions about future, such as "never ever CRT tubes and vacuum tubes will be replaced with anything".
@@KanalFrump no, please see the ebay link for reference. The tubes inside the soviet detector are simply pentode tube (or dual triode)
I really like the low voltage rod electrode tubes - probably the only ones I don’t worry about experimenting with and avoiding electrocution. Beautiful things. Most likely those were also lower voltage types. There is an oscillator and voltage multiplier in the big box. Probably one of the big transistors drives the multiplier.
Very nice construction.
Yes :)
If you have to change the scale to the 500 mark, it will be one of the last machine operations you do as a healthy person. Strange as prompt fallout from a nuclear burst near the ground can be as high as 1000 R/hr. You'd expect nuclear troops to have full scale meter to match combat conditions.
Well, in reality not really, if it is not about the nuclear blast (in regards of which I'd agree). In the Zone, specifically if we talk about the engineers who work with the Shelter, the levels may be much higher. The question is a proper dose management - time, distance, shielding. However, the question is, when their work will strike back (knowing many personally, hope never)
Those guys from military recon NBC unit rided recon armored vehicles showed-up in midmorning hours to do very first survey of the area around unit #4.
Great video! Lol yeah if the radiation is that high, the color of the light is the least of your problems! 😂
In fact, that notice was pretty from my past practice :)
I was trained in the U.S. Navy what to do if we received such a heavy dose of radiation: stand up, put your head between your knees, and kiss your a$$ goodbye ...
Sounds oddly familiar..
We need to see it with power on!
Will do!
Interesting to learn about these detectors I feel like this wasn't mentioned in the Chernobyl series that this was initially made in the event of nuclear explosions and it looks like this was the dosimeter on the side of the vehicle that was driven into the power plant zone to get an accurate reading
Correct. Initial planned purpose was for a nuclear war, and those have been on nearly every APC as a standard on-board instrument.
The perfect measurement tool for a fishing trip at lake Karachay.
Not enough watertight, imho
I know exactly what that smells like inside! I have worked on a number of 1960s Soviet era audio electronics (microphones, preamplifiers, etc. both tube and transistor) and they all have that same construction style.
Thank you for sharing!
Nah green light just means a FULL de-briefing right after you come back, nothing to worry about... 😬
LOL
Oppenheimer was fantastic. Thanks. Really surprised by the market-segmentation of the movie though: apparently, you only got to watch Cilian Murphy as JRO speaking heavily German-accented Dutch if you were in the USA. In Belgium that scene was absent. But! We got period-correct 48-state American flags. Unlike the USA, which apparently got later, period-incorrect 50-state flags. Odd. Nevertheless, great movie. (And hat!)
Happy that you liked it..!
i wonder since the bmp was all made to be sealed from fallout with filtration and whatnot, it maybe would be detecting outside and read from the inside and allow the bmp to move far enough out of the fallout zone of tactical nukes to refill petrol/maintenance before moving on to somewhere else. the soviets really were serious about ww3 employing widescale nuclear weapons. i wonder if you could survive a close hit from tactical nuke inside of bmp with enough fuel to travel a few dozen miles away?
From the civil defense lessons in my school back in my childhood i remember that if you are inside APC/BMP you have zero chances. However, they are good for radiation reconnaissance (especially, BRDM-2). These devices were mounted at the front passenger seat, and detector was outside below the machine.
@@ChernobylFamily cool, thanks for the reply
probably an ionization chamber detector rather than geiger counter tube. (better for very high radiation levels)
Thank you for the hint!
This is what was probably used on the BRDM that did the initial on the ground survey (it wasn't a GAZ-66 with makeshift shielding as in a certain TV series). Honestly I don't know why would they need this high of a range, you're as good as dead much below this, and I don't expect the military to be interested in measuring extreme radioactivity beyond "gtfo and cordon the area" nor this sort of a device being used in a physics lab or other scientific research.
They needed it for surveying the areas affected by a nuclear blast. Another thing, that during the Chornobyl disaster there were additional factors that exceeded the original doctrine. As for that range, well, it is not that deadly; 500 R/h = 8.3 R/min = 0.13 R/sec, which is not good, but far from deadly; even 500 R/h cumulative dose gives pretty good chances unless it is instantly received.
Those industrial connectors are no joke, i had to take one that was on the engine of a Mi-8 apart, it needed a lot of persuasion with penetrating oils and a pipe wrench with some newspapers to get it apart
Oh yes...
I like the build quality. It's literally built to survive a nuclear disaster! I would be curious to see if it still powers up and passes the test. Was it built with electrolytic capacitors that have dried up, or can it still bias the Geiger tube? Those look like regulator tubes. I would like to see if the circuit is still functional. Is there a circuit diagram available?
It should work, just it used a but exotic voltage, so need to find the power source. These capacotors here are pretty stable, contrary to infamous K50-6. As for documentarion, if will find it, will post on Patreon with a translation!
.....the test button, and the neon tubes inside of the detector...could it be, that the test button blasts high voltage into those neon tubes and produces X-ray to test the the device? 🤔🤔
Hmmmm look, I need to check the documentation. I do not recall having a checksource ever mounted inside (which is common for soviet detectors). Will write later.
Yep, have such device in my collection in NOS state. Actually, nothing to do with it, just a collection. What to expect from the device which has air based ionic chamber?
Exactly
US high rate meter I have uses a ion chamber vs GM tube
The Czechoslovak made IT-65 (a clone of the Yugoslavian made DR-M3) does go to 500R/h on high range...but it uses an ionization chamber integral to the meter (you have to get cooked as well if you actually want to see the reading) and the scale is logarithmic (large error on the upper limit), so it's more of a "yep, time to GTFO of here, ASAP" measurement
Thank you for the story!
Just one question: How do you /calibrate/ this?
Do you need to set off a calibrated nuclear bomb next to it?
You place it near a standard with the known activity and adjust the knobs. In fact, there are a lot of types of sourses with ~0.10..1Sv/h power exist. 5Sv are less common, but they are also used, when it comes to calibrating e.g. survey/search radiometers.
Not sure but isn’t it possible that the check mode is implemented with measuring some kind of a radiation source with known intensity integrated inside the device? If so it basically means that you are dealing with some radioactive materials
This way as you describe it works in some devices, but this particular has electric check only, by giving standard impulses to its circuit. Basically it is a classic 'check circuit' mode.
500 rad = 100% fatality… your survey meter “tube” appears to be some kind of ion chamber and likely gamma only, in the US those type high dose meters all used ion chambers for detection because all Geiger tubes I know of would max out at just a few rads. In the military we used ion chamber and dosimeter pens meters for survey and dose rate recording, we also had AN-PDR 27s for low dose alpha/beta/gamma surveys of individual, food, water, etc.
Thank you for those details! Well, with modern medicine 500 rads is not a 100% fatality anymore IF the treatment is applied ASAP and IF those received not within a second. In the described case it'd cause radiation sickness of a severe level, but chances still exist. It will very much change if it is an impact dose.
If I remember my radiochemistry correctly, the Geiger-Muller tube has an ionized plate, and the radiation knocked an electron loose. That would be the ticking from a speaker. We hooked ours up to counters with dekatron tubes (they could count pretty quickly, tens of thousands in a second). Pretty sure we just did stuff with alpha radiation, maybe beta, with a half-life of minutes at most. That was in high school for me, 4 years before Chernobyl.
If you need help
cleaning out your shed, let me know 😅
All right :)
Machines used to built different man.
I would use another radiation meter to check the radiation levels on the crud that had built up in the DP-3B screwholes... 🕶🕶🕶
:))
:))
Detector is not a Geiger tube. It is air based ionic chamber. The tube is an electrometric amplifier, glass component is a high ohmic load trsistor for a chamber. In my case I have не стержневі лампи як у Вас, а пентод жолудь типу 6ж1ж. I do not kbow how to say that specific thing in English, so I said in Ukrainian )
Дякуємо you very much!))
Is this the good dosimeter from the Safe?
Please clarify what do you you want to ask.
Интересно, номер 666 на задней стенке измерительной головки, это случайность или знак!?...)
)))))))
Нажаль, це було розроблено для вимірювання потужних випромінювань після наслідків ядерної війни. Пам'ятаю стояв на МІ-8 щоб пілот міг вибрати менш заражену ділянку для посадки. А взагалі це все дуже жахливо. Тоді коли це розробляли не усвідомлювали який жах це радіоактивне забруднення
Is it safe to say people would enjoy a power up video?
I have one of these detectors in full serviced and working order.
Lucky you, as when I tried my I've got a massive blow.
Isn't it a sintelator type of detector?
People in the comments wrote it is an ionization chamber. For a scintilator it is way too sealed...
I would love to see it power ed on
Maybe at some point - Museum of Chernobyl wanted to have it as a functional exhibit.
это же дп3б
Captain!
Lart nsa vertigon neirdow ledna schlotter 🤣
I have a bit trouble with encoding in my browsew. What did you mean?
@@ChernobylFamily dardu bander slingslat
Very high quality construction really, I’m surprised. It’s so sad to me that the Soviet Union, with all of it’s human potential and technical expertise was effectively ruined by its oppressive political system so much so that it collapsed. I’ve met several Russian expats who emigrated to the US to escape Soviet oppression, perfectly lovely people, had to put up with awful hardships to learn English and find work. It must have been hell back home.
Yes, the device is good.
Although I do not mean specifically those people you've mentioned, must say - *sarcasm* i love two categories of people: lovely russian expats and western teenagers who both build a romantic vision of the USSR and distribute it further. Both somehow do not like to say (though second do not know), that potential has been created itself by a repressive system, jail-like research facilities of the 50-s and 60-s, and at any part of its history was military-first, etc. Also, those who emigrated before the fall of the ussr, normally have shady stuff behind, as it was not possible to leave the country without insanely huge efforts; That empire was wrong in its every bit. Sorry. We lived in it.
very nice joke my friend 😸. are you sure about this?
Which one?)
@@ChernobylFamily for the first time i understood its came from a different "univers" . for second watch i canhear u said fallout univers so the joke not really applies