Wait wait, let me get this straight. There was a nuclear reactor so poorly maintained that it was literally falling apart, so poorly designed it'd explode from a slight misalignment of just one control rod, which was so poorly designed it got stuck often, and which had to be moved by hand and that reactor was operated by just three people who were also inexperienced? Just WTF did I just watch.
I was also thinking the same thing like wth? luckily they learned from it and made new procedures, allthough after this incident, chernobyl happened 🤦♂. I so do hope it doesn't happen again....there is an invasion taking place in that region 🤔😒
The fact that you could pull the rod out that far to cause criticality without some kind of lock or limiter is unbelievable from an engineering point of view.
Agreed. The design was flawed from the start. The X pattern of the control rods is an unconscionable engineering oversight. Even so a limiter to prevent extended removal of the rods should have been in place from the get go. Also this accident is only remotely like Chernobyl.
@@ch1ppychippbut the fact they knew what would happen if it is pulled too far beforehand and still continued to operate that way is fucking asenine. I mean beating the thing with a damn pipe wrench, what the hell...
Yup. People can't even learn the most basic lessons from history. Either routine calibration was never done or crews never learned to trust their instruments, also a lack of training for what scenarios will cause what type of measurements.
@@NuncNuncNuncNunc Know your limits, know your gear's limits, trust yourself, trust your gear and when in doubt fall back and reassess. This simple maxim will keep you safe always. Source: Roofer
@@NuncNuncNuncNunc Counterpoint - 9 times out of 10 when the readings are that high it is a faulty meter and not a catastrophic nuclear accident. These things are, thankfully, quite rare. Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but at the time, if you were dealing with this environment day in and day out, your mind would be in a very different place than if you are watching the TH-cam video that you already know is about a major accident
This is utterly fascinating. My grandfather was one of the army reactor technicians operating on that reactor. Luckily he wasn’t there that night! Hell of a job.
The blast of radiation would have killed anyone else in that building, it was a good thing nobody else was there when the reactor went prompt critical. They would have been dead or dying in less than a hour.
Very interesting. Richard McKinley was my mom’s uncle, most of my family believed in the murder/suicide story or rather, that there was “more to it” than an accident. Although I’ve read about the incident over the years I wasn’t aware of his state when they discovered the bodies. Not something I intend to share with our family though…
"Just exercise the nuclear rods" is the most Army response I could imagine when your scientists and engineers report an issue with the nuclear equipment
@@kylegoodwin8673 "Professor Legasov, If you mean to suggest that the American state is somehow responsible for what happened then I must warn you, you are treading on dangerous ground."
Yup. This from an organization that wanted everything nuclear. Nuke artillery. Nuke planes. Nuke earth moving charges. Literally like children with a new toy trying to do everything with it. Just because it sounds like fun. A time when they had way too much time and funding on their hands. I can just hear the top brass saying (imagine George C Scott) “To Hell with the warnings of those timid nerds, history favors the bold. Let’s get this nuke stuff to work for US, before the Rooskis beat us to it!”
Yep, I see how even our medics perform from a clinical standpoint. We'll do everything to keep you alive and get you home, but fuck, dont expect us to do paperwork correctly when you show up for PHAs
@@mk-1579 That shit always pissed me off. Losing files and all that bs. I was a grunt, so idk the paper side of things that happen in the Army except peoples shit always ends up missing. It’s literally people’s jobs and they can’t even get that crap right? 🤦🏽♂️
"My Geiger counter must be broken" I've heard that often in these videos. If I was doing ANYTHING that had to do with nuclear radiation, I would really hope the counter is broken. I'd still run right back out of the area and be extra careful going in. A machine is designed to do its job. If it doesn't turn on, then its broken. If its screaming at the top of its lungs/ the dangerous edge of its meters, its probably working fine... and I'm in danger.
Those CDV units were known for shorting the tube and tripping the meter and worse yet when the tube gets oversaturated with radiation the meter goes to zero. So it’s possible they left because they thought the meter was being fooled
what is scarier is not knowing the full extent of it because the device is maxing out. like in the chernobyl series where everyone thought it was just 3.5 because the device only showed that amount. the real number was 15000
It's more likely to be broken than a meltdown. Back then, they broke all the time. The bad decisions start when someone proceeds forward without confirming the detector is broken.
My great uncle was Richard McKinley so I’ve heard of this incident for many years growing up and I really appreciate the detailed coverage in your video. There’s still people in my family that believe it was murder/suicide but they were from rural Ohio with limited education to understand what occurred. Unfortunately it’s unlikely I’ll share this video with them as the details of his death may be too disturbing. They’re aware that at least his hands were removed before the rest of his remains were interred at Arlington, I don’t believe they understood the brutal nature of the incident though. I at least had a chance to visit him at Arlington about 20 years ago.
I am so sorry for your loss. My family lost 90% of their relatives at Hiroshima. Innocents in a war. I go to the peace dome every year to pay my respects. My father was born 2 years after the bomb dropped.
Spoiler Warning: The man who was impaled to the ceiling makes this seems like a proper horror story, imagine being one of the firefighters and first realizing what you were seeing
@@Megalomaniakaal the worst part was his subordinate told him it maxed out the scale at 3.6, not that it was 3.6. he just chose to ignore the almost certainty that it was much higher than 3.6.
I haven't seen a lot of comments talking about how one of the men was still alive when the team found them. He probably lied there conscious and paralyzed for well over the nine minutes it took the response team to even arrive. That's the part I couldn't stop thinking about.
Feeling all your organd slowly shutting down while every neuron in your body goes crazy and you see your friends turned into miscellaneous bags of flesh. Trying to scream but now having the strength or the air to do so. Knowing you are dead but not knowjng whether it is know or 25 days later slowly feeling your organs shut down or feeling your blood slowly leeking out while seeing people come up, but no hope no chance. He knew he was dead by the end of the hour.
@@AlechiaTheWitch This. Honestly, the way Kyle just glossed over that and then said the two dead were housed in the hot room make me think the man was alive when they removed him from the debris and someone put him out of his misery. Considering the staff had discussed what to do if the Russians arrived, it wouldn't be a stretch to think they also discussed the lethal effects of radiation and their wishes to suffer or not. The firemen may have even been friendly acquaintances of the men/staff in general after the previous false alarms, and knew the outcome of the dying man before them and possibly his wishes to not suffer. Hell, even without the previous conjecture, it's possible the dying man begged for mercy as he knew too well what was happening to him and didn't wish to see it to its natural end. Regardless, this incident is a tragedy for all involved.
He got hit by a jet of water 4" wide that went from one ankle up to his jaw. The jet was so powerful it stripped off skin and broke bones. He died of his physical injuries ( bled out ) before radiation sickness could even set in. He was unconscious , and everytime he tried to "wake up" the intense pain would cause him to moan and be rendered unconscious again by the shock.
I live in Idaho Falls and am a third generation nuclear brat. I remember listening to my father and grandfather playing cribbage and talking about this incident. Grandpa worked at the Naval Reactor Facility and on his way to work that morning had to pass right past the SL-1 facility. THAT morning was a bit different. I also knew the first firefighter on the scene. He was one of the ones whose Jordan Detector went off scale. The radiation field was higher than their instruments could read. I remember driving past what was left of the facility. The administration building were still there until the '90s and honestly, it was a little eerie driving by...
It's gone now. The only thing left is an old gate if you know where to look. All the buildings and structures were completely leveled in the late 90's.
@@robertdean6084 we see inl and all the new buildings since it is part of the department of energy now. It's not like they moved everything to new land it's in the same area
Did you even watch this video? It's about the SL-1 reactor that blew up in 1961. The site it was on is what I was talking about. The INL is spread out over 960 square miles. The are many different facilities out there. The SL-1 facility is no longer there. That was my point... I'm not sure what your point is. The Department Of Energy runs it, yes. Before that it was the Atomic Energy Commission. Let me know if I can help you with any other history of the Site, and even Atomic City. You don't seem to know much about it.
My dad worked at the inel for the last 30 years of hi career. I remember him telling me about a accident that happened out there before he started to work there. I just bought the Idaho Falls book
McKinley being alive for that long is so horrifying… the whole thing is horrifying but just knowing he was laying there absolutely mutilated and groaning send chills down my spine. Can’t imagine what he might’ve been thinking-if he was thinking at all.
After an explosion that big, being that close, he would absolutely have been unconscious for the entire duration, not to mention the shock of blood loss doing the same.
"The men didn't know it, but this minuscule moment... much faster than the blink of an eye, was the rest of their lives." I don't know how much effort you put into this line, but *holy shit*.
I STRONGLY DISAGREE! Being as famous as I am on TH-cam, I know that it gets hard to read every comment I get. I try my best, but I am just so famous, that I can't do it much longer. Sorry, dear sgt
That's the only horrifying moment I fear about nuclear energy. Accidents don't mean losing a finger, they mean seeing a sudden flash of light and knowing that you're going to die painfully before seeing the end of the year.
Honestly, these half life histories need to win some form of award. Not sure what categories exist for the webbies or whatever, but the writing and effort Kyle puts into these deserves a larger scale recognition.
I regret that I can only give this comment one thumbs up. You're absolutely right. Heck, I'd say that this series should be played in history and/or science classes, but I worry that it would create an inappropriate bias against nuclear power overall.
For those posters who are suitably horrified by bodies smashed into a ceiling - you don't need to be in a nuclear facility to be at risk. Years ago I heard of a Swedish mechanic who was changing an earthmover tyre, attached the air line and went off to answer a phone (days before cells) suddenly realising what he'd done, he rushed back to the tyre which exploded as he approached - he was comprehensively smashed into the buildings' roof 22ft up. I have just done a Google and there's ten deaths from bursting tyres on the first page. While I was still working here in the U.K. guys building up a large boiler returned to site one Monday after leaving their welding kit in place over the weekend - shortly after the was an explosion so violent that it propelled the boiler through a 2ft thick wall killing all inside and people at a bus stop in the street. And people my age all remember Ronan Point - a medium rise tower block - that partially collapsed following a small gas explosion when an old lady put her kettle on. Blasted back into her living room, she survived but three others were crushed. All these disasters happen because folk fail to think or act on previous thoughts.
The Russian lathe accident is even more graphic, and if you look good enough, you can even find a video of it. Google it if you're not too squeamish. The only other instance of seeing a human reduced to pink mist I've seen was a sedan driving into a dump truck head-on.
Yep. Seems about right. Although for my shop it was a coolant alarm that was too sensitive and went off every time we took a good roll. Of course this was for a phalanx weapon system not a reactor. Also, don’t bypass alarms. CO doesn’t like that it seems.
Yeah, as an ex-ET1(SS), this was my thought as well. I remember seeing the full non-redacted training films in nuke school, and reading the 'T' manual stories about it.
We had someone who would "accidentally" bump the control rod power supplies and trigger partial SCRAMs. Didn't take long for that to stop being a problem for us.
ELT, sub type. I'd just set my frisker alarm down to background make it alarm if the coners bugged me while walking the dog. I'd then tell people they needed to go get a decontamination suppository from doc. He'd put a tylenol up their butt.
The idaho and chernobyl events are both interesting because both nuclear reactors were the equivalent of doing fission in a trashcan with the thin aluminum lid as your safety
and in both cases, the aluminum lid made like the atomic manhole cover. There are a few pictures of reactor 4 in chernobyl immediately following the meltdown and you can see the top of the reactor shielding laying on its side, with a mass of twisted and mangled pipes (cooling jacket? Slots for control rods?) on its underside. It looks like a boiler explosion of a steam locomotive but several billion orders of magnitude worse.
@@lsswappedcessnathere is a video where some folks with balls made from lead where INSIDE reactor 4 building in the early 2000s, you can clearly see the 2000 Ton reactor lid laying on its side because, well they were standing on and next to it filming
@@lsswappedcessna Yep. That video is terrifying, not least because there's an almost constant stream of white particles on the footage which clearly show just how intense the radiation still was.
Hey Kyle, just wanted to say that I absolutely LOVE these HALF-LIFE HISTORIES investigations. Your style, approach and presentation of the events is on POINT.
19:15 My dad was there when it happened, at the next reactor down the road. My dad told me since I was 5 that he and his buddies all knew why, or now I believe that at least they held their own compelling theory that no one could convince them was wrong. Dad says they had shut off all the recording and safety systems just prior to the accident. And that dad took as proof that they just wanted to see the legendary blue glow that irradiates from the rods just prior to going critical. My dad is named Gordon Simkin -- and he was there, at that very reactor, that very day; and working in the next one down the road at the very moment the accident happened.
That blue glow is always there in underwater reactors, it's called cherenkov radiation, simplified the equivalent of a sonic Boom, but it's radioactive particles in water.
Designing a reactor where a single control rod could start or stop the reaction feels like it's up there with separating a critical mass of radioactive material with a handheld screwdriver in terms of risky hijinks with atoms.
@@staciasmith5162 Well, it’s not necessarily the design of a reactor that causes these types of things to happen. In pretty much every case where something like this has happened it’s been operator error or neglect. SL-1 was operator error, Chernobyl was operator error, TMI was negligence and operator error, Fukushima was negligence. Bad design plays a part to some degree though as SL-1 wouldn’t have happened if one control rod didn’t have that much power. It’s just that generally, it’s the people doing stuff wrong that ultimately causes the real bad stuff to happen. These days nuclear power is actually very safe. It’s heavily regulated and is one of the most environmentally friendly ways to generate large amounts of power.
@@arc46789 and what really makes me totally unconfortable is these questions: why these unsafe forced maintanances made by youngsters without supervision? I mean, I dont wanna think about conspiracies, but it is just like someone was toying with their lives and saying: yeah let's see how many of these unsafe maintanances they can endure. If this tricky rod don't make them explode in this one, maybe in the next? I mean: at the demon's core video one scientist clearly says: keep these unsafe experiments and you will be dead in less than a year and the guy died 7 months later. So there was someone that was alerting the consequences and there was someone that was absolutely ignoring it at the very least!!!
This reminds me so much of Hisashi Ouchi. It is a very graphic and tragic event of a man who underwent the most cruel and painful death in history. On the morning of Sept. 30, 1999, at a nuclear fuel-processing plant in Tokaimura, Japan, 35-year-old Hisashi Ouchi and two other workers were purifying uranium oxide to make fuel rods for a research reactor. For over 80 days Hisashi would remain in hospital to experience the worst possible outcome an irradiated death could bring.
That poor man ended up with total chromosome damage but he lingered for weeks until he finally succumbed to the damage from the massive radiation dose he received.
Turns out, by the end, almost his entire body was not only no longer functioning, but decaying. He was just a barely functioning brain, and a beating heart inside a decaying corpse.
hmm these guys were pretty much f troop....wonder if they fatherd any of the crack engineers who changed the desigin of san onafre nuclar plant cooling tubes eighty feet long sixty in original design...fresh out of collage on site new hire engineers ..why not one hundred cooling tubes..any of you grow up rural area ..when you turn on water in a pipe that long ..flexes..dah problem.
@@Phenrex because nobody does reports on disasters? I mean I did one on colombine in high school. It's not all that absurd. There's a very darkly human element to looking into stuff like this. It's like that part of you that makes you look at a car accident or a dead body at a crime scene. It's fascinating even if it is horrible. It's just how people are wired.
It's fascinating to me that every time one of these first responders comes in with a radiation detector that starts tickng off the scale, their first response is always to think that their detector is broken rather than the horrible truth. It has come up several times in this series and it says something about human psychology. I'm not entirely sure what but it's something. Edit: It also completely boggles my mind that one of them actually somehow survived the initial event long enough for first responders to get there. Even though he was deeply messed up by it, and had no hope of recovery it is still incredibly impressive to me that he didn't die instantly.
As someone who’s worked as a health physicist/RP tech, something as simple as the cord being bent the wrong way, or the detector having a puntcture in the mylar screen, can cause the meter to go crazy, especially with the old detectors that most power plants are working with today
The first action in most radiation based casualties is to confirm readings so you know the extent of the casualty. It is usually called out to confirm levels of radiation with a different radiac just to confirm the levels
In physics as well, many discoveries were first dismissed as equipment flukes, or errors in the math, until they were double- and triple-checked. Most peoples' first instinct is to doubt readings that seem "off".
My father was a nuke in the navy and told me this story when I was 9 and first learning about what he did. I had asked “is it dangerous?” And he told me this story. He said when he was training that it would be miles and miles of snow but our in the middle was a dome concrete the snow didn’t stick to. That is where they buried the materials. Thanks for the awesome video
Both SL-1 and The Demon Core incidents are prime examples of how sometimes absolutely horrible things happen to change protocols and improve safety designs. Both are clear examples of unacceptably unsafe testing and operating conditions that put operators within inches of particularly gruesome deaths
@@str8up598in a way - you don’t. That being said with the demon core both of the victims went outside of protocol which led to their deaths, and with SL 1 Training could have certainly been better, on top of designing the system to be a bit less risky adjusting the reactor. The latter was learned through this incident though. A good way to view basically any safety measures is that they are all written in blood. People either were injured or died as a result of not following that policy or simply not having that policy. The same goes for nuclear reactor safety.
I literally saw that body on the ceiling in that illustration and thought, “Is he not gonna address that?” Then he did, and I instantly wished he didn’t
I was a Naval Reactor Operator/Technician 1975-82. We were taught about this incident and the lessons learned from it. We also had the 3 mile Island accident happen during my time in service. As a mental exercise, when we were bored, we wold talk about ways to melt down the reactor. With all the safety engineering designed into the reactor system, you could do it, but you would have to work at screwing a lot of things up to get there. TMI was a demonstration of the fact that you could screw enough things up to cause a melt down, but they really worked maintenance complacency, lack of supervision, lack of understanding of instrument readouts and situation, in order to get there.
Out of curiosity, once youd managed to work out a way to force the reactor to melt down, would you being your method to your superiors so safety measures could be brought it to mitigate he possibility? Or were the ways to reach that point so convoluted it wasnt worth bothering your superiors with?
@@dalegaskill7352 Hi! Yes to both. Sometimes, in these bull sessions, you can find problems with procedures or equipment that are correctable. Usually the problems are not catastrophic in nature. In just about all melt-down scenarios, you had to bypass or override some many safety system it was ridiculous. One time we were able to figure out, if the ship was in port with both plants shut down - but still hot - if the Captain walked in and told us the missiles were on the way, we could get a plant up and running in 20 minutes with only three guys, without breaking anything - except a million procedures, of course!
I noticed the CGN-41 emblem. You must have been stationed on the Arkansas around the time it was commissioned. I was a "nuke" electrician stationed on her when she was decommissioned in 1997 and 98. Richard is not kidding about the emphasis the nuclear engineering program in the Navy put on on both understanding the analysis of these disasters - and the resultant safeguards. TMI wasn't great - but it was not this bad.
@@rickslingerland1155 Regardless of the industry, it's the people running things on the bottom levels who have to handle everything that know best how things can go wrong, and have to find bypasses (often breaking rules) to get things done at the pace the disconnected people at the top want things done. I'm glad you had higher level people who listened.
Could you imagine being Byrnes' wife and getting the call that your husband died? Imagine how many people in the town blamed her for what happened. Or if she did care a little, how much guilt she must've felt for it. Like her one phone call killed her husband and two other men. Then the whole love triangle shit... She could have been completely innocent and the book/runors probably caused her so much unnecessary hate.
She wanted to delete the man from her life. She got it. I feel much more sorry for the men who *actually died* in the disaster. Poor McKinley had nothing to do with the utter bullshit of the love triangle yet died a horrible, gruesome death.
it boggles my mind that three men died from a nuclear accident and yet SOMEHOW you men manage to make it allll about a random woman who had nothing to do with that accident and blame her. the wife story was made up by the MILITARY so they wouldn't have been held responsible for not repairing the faulty rod. if you guys are so braindead that you can't even understand this basic level of manipulation, then please, don't procreate. it's amazing the mental gymnastics men will go through to find some way to blame women in every single situation.
@@peterkiss1204 which would you rather experience- dying that way and then it's over, or having rumors and gossip and guilt (either internalized from others shaming her if the love triangle isnt true, or real visceral 'it's all my fault' shame if the love triangle was true) following you around for the rest of your natural life (unless you delete yourself from your own life) for years? imo, both can be tragic and horrible, and i don't like the misery olympics. i personally don't envy the firefighters who had to carry the sight of the 3 mens bodies with them the rest of their lives, it had to have been traumatic. everyone suffers here :(
In my profession (Engineering), many of my classmates worked on nuclear reactor construction in the mid-late seventies before TMI shut all that down. The No.1 issue with long-tern reactor service was (and still is) corrosion. This makes me think that the corrosion problem was not well understood in the Fifties when SL-1 was designed. Hats off to all who commented. Lots of intelligent discussion evident here, which is refreshing as TH-cam seems to be famous for idiots talking $hit in the comments.
@@jimclark6256 True, but it was less that corrosion wasn't as understood in the 50s, so much as it was likely believed to not be an issue. Given that SL-1 was temperamental at best and uncooperative and dangerous at worst, I'm pretty sure it ended up becoming an issue.
Occam's razor. The fact that the rod regularly got stuck, and that he probably yanked on it hard enough so when it released, it lifted too high, is the most likely scenario.
Actually a good theory. Working with metal I have had metal bind and release suddenly so I could see how it could bind and break loose and if he had enough force he could have taken it up a foot or so and boom
a friend of mine was a nuke tech in the navy. he told me about this, all of the particulars about it, some choice words about army techs, and he said it was exactly this. the rod was stuck, he yanked on it, it became unstuck, he pulled it out 18 inches instead of 4 and that was it.
@@kayleescruggs6888 I wouldn't say it was all because of stupidity. They HAD to go with all that was provided to them; a worn-down nuclear facility that their superiors didn't even care about. The smarter alternative and maybe the only alternative that they had was to quit their jobs after seeing such lax protocols for a nuclear facility.
The fact that they were well aware of what would happen if lifted too far and that he had just gotten off the phone and had little sleep, coupled with him possibly thinking the other guy had been having an affair with his wife makes the more likely scenario to be murder suicide to me.
@@scurvy135 I'm betting it was more of a shocked and stunned state. When you've experienced trauma of this magnitude, your mental state is reduced to a semi conscious form.
My dad lived in Rigby, Idaho many, many years after the accident. Many people who lived in the town (and other areas) called it ‘The Site’ and my grandfather worked nearby. So when my dad, his siblings, and any other kids visiting would visit and walk around the area. It’s quite interesting to see how it is even years later after the accident.
The worst thing for the fire fighters is they were continually getting false alarms from SL-1 so imagine expecting just another false alarm and arriving to that!
Firefighters are the best, but they do get paid for false alarms. I can't count on my fingers and toes the "password" to call off a fire truck at my last location... it didn't matter - they still showed up. Fun fact, I was probably the only one to know the password years later and I was on 3rd shift...
I decided to ask my dad some questions about this. He lived in that Idaho Falls/ Arco area. Turns out; my grandpa, my dad’s father, was one of those health physicians that first saw “something” up in the rafters. My dad recounted that my grandpa was send home in a borrowed car, and overalls and shoes. Anything he had was taken due to the radiation. Before he left, they told him that he had had his lifetime dose of radiation. He can not do that again. I have to admit, I was not expecting that to be the story when I asked him about the personal impact of SL-1.
@@Stonehawk The basilisk won't be a problem unless someone specifically builds an AGI with the basilisk's illogical value function. The vast majority of possible AGI's simply won't display the behavior of the theorized basilisk.
@@josephburchanowski4636 well that's the thing it won't be made unless someone made a super AI with its flawed logic. But the thought experiment proposes that it will kill anyone who didn't help it come to existince. If no one makes it it will never come to reality. But if some does than everyone who didn't help dies. The reason the thought experiment scares so many people it that if you don't help it come to reality than it isn't an issue. Unless someone else or a group of people decide to build it in which case you are dead. If this was a world were the basilisk was to be real in order to survive you would have to help build it. Of course this will never happen because the idea isn't popular enough and no one is dumb enough to make an AI on perpose that has reasoning so flawed it thinks improve the human race means killing people (probably).
" when we don't learn from history, it tends to repeat it self". this is why I find it so disturbing when ppl try so hard to remove parts of history from the world we live in. that history that was not a testament of greatness but a reminder of the history we wish not to repeat.
Well in the case of statues CSA generals, it is not reminder of history we shouldn’t forget. It is a statue of admiration for their efforts in defending slavery. A true monument would show those who suffered the war and the evil that started it in order to avoid repeating history.
It’s amazing that there were no fail safes to keep the rob from being pulled too far.. like, a simple device that could be set to a specified distance, preventing the rob from being pulled being on that distance. You could probably make something rudimentary but effective with less than $100 of material from a local hardware store
What surprised me was that such a powerful moving rod had it's movement done directly... I think that if such arrangement had to be done, it would be best if the rod was lifted through something like a screw and nut
...I have a sickening feeling that Byrns and Legg were sent to their death, or that this task was some sort of punishment for them (this is acknowledged with Bryns being "professionally stuck"), since nobody seemed to really like them and McKinley got caught in the middle hoping to be the cause of incident due to his inexperience or was just someone put there as an "extra". If something went wrong, the army would consider them all expendable. Test subjects. People in general usually have almost no problem wishing horrible things on other people they don't like, or have been told to hate. Commanders were aware that there were incidents of the rods getting stuck, and the scientists likely explained the issue at length of how it could mean the death of everyone in the room. Then the scientists were brushed off by cause of rank, or as I mentioned, the commanders knew and didn't care because these men were expendable.
“When we don’t learn from history it tends to repeat itself. Until next time....” Cmon Kyle, the video hits hard enough without the cryptic outro. /shudder
@@frostyguy1989 As discussed at length by Prof. William M. Joel in his thesis, "Pyrotechnics, Novel Ignition Sources, and Perpetual Thermal Reactions."
@@prodfife To be honest I wouldn't. That level of radiation poisoning equals 2 weeks of suffering. They can't even give you pain meds because your veins don't have enough blood from them leaking out of your now diseased and rotten skin.
I first learned about this accident in 1972 when I was attending Navy Nuclear Power School at Bainbridge, MD. There are some grizzly photos that no one seems to show anymore. Thanks for making that final statement. The stupidity of the design...
These Half-Life stories actually lessen my fear of nuclear power. It's horrible yes, but it'd be a hell of a lot scarier than it already is if it was something unpredictable.
Same. If we know exactly what's going on, and simply neglect to handle it correctly, then the solution is obvious. But if we didn't even know why this happened, well... maybe we shouldn't be doing it.
@Albert Fels I mean, that's true for most people, period. And honestly, I can't blame people for distrusting an industry with such abysmal messaging. I'm pretty sure we now have the technology to build safe nuclear power plants but that obviously wasn't true in the past and yet, there wasn't a time when people weren't told that nuclear power was absolutely safe by the industry and by politicians and never was a reactor generation taken offline when it turned out that it wasn't safe. So really, can you blame people?
@@unvergebeneid I honestly didn’t understand a thing about how nuclear reactor meltdowns work until watching this- I didn’t understand how they work period, except that they somehow emit heat to turn water to steam. They sound even more terrifying when one realizes they operate on fairly simple principles…
@Nybbl er Actually, that's more than true. We have plenty of wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal energy production going on right now if we'd just Thanos-snap away half the population.
Conservation of momentum be damned! Yeah, if something doesn't budge so you apply more force to it, and then it suddenly releases, you inevitably end up pulling too hard and losing balance. Sounds like the most plausible explanation.
There was no system to remove hydrogen gas that accumulated during shut down. ( decay radiation splits water molecues ) When they wiggled the rod to break it free it caused a spark ,ignited the hydrogen and the rod shot up on its own. The wrench attatched to the rod hit the Electricians Mate in the chest so hard it shattered his rib cage killing him instantly. The problem with the investigation was the people that designed the plant ( and wrote the proceedures ) are the ones who did the investigation...so they pushed the blame off on a guy who couldnt defend himself.
"They had to pull the remains of Legg's body down from the ceiling with hooks on poles" Me: "Dont think it. Dont say it. Dont think it. Dont say it." My brain: "Jeez you gotta be pulling my Legg."
I’m a junior in high school atm and for fun I wrote a research paper on the SL-1 accident and when I showed it to my physics teacher, he was shocked at the amount of detail I had added that he had never heard of. Thank you so much for your amazing videos Kyle!
@@scaper8 you didnt get my point. He doesnt either, he just talks about stupid theories and crunches very little science unless its about narru running. Im just saying i prefered when we got lots of data and he went through it. He just talks talk talks now...and 5 mins of the show is names on a board
Sexy is in the eye of the beholder... I worked in a factory with old machinery that would get stuck, and when someone behind schedule on a night shift lost a finger trying to manually force something to move, the higher-ups blamed him for not following procedure. It's actually super emotionally/politically relevant to me, to see this same pattern repeated in such a high stakes situation.
I've seen this kind of thing play out often enough. Guys hurts himself in order to maintain production, gets blamed for not following procedure. Or gets in trouble because production fell behind as quotas are missed. Faulty equipment is not seen as a viable excuse as they should have worked harder.
@@TheNathfan yep. Worker reports "hey this equipment is in bad shape," and the higher ups not wanting to spend money to fix/replace it hold the "but it still works" mentality. Then thing breaks/hurts someone/blows up and they blame the person because how in the world could it be the company's fault? What's that line about the seemingly obvious OSHA regulations? They were written in past worker's blood. Something like that, right? You'd hope common sense would win out, but clearly it still doesn't.
@@TheNathfan that's why we need to teach people to accept "failure " I've told younger kats b4, I'd rather be fired for not making quotas than die for making one. I ain't no 47 Ronin.
@@mildsoup8978 Unfortunately with so many of the people working living at or near paycheck to paycheck, they can't afford to take that route. They should, and they should be able; but they can't.
SL1 added excess fuel to the fuel modules to extend its operating life. This was done after the original design. To compensate for the added reactivity caused by the extra fuel, they covered the OUTSIDE of the fuel modules with boron coated plates (a neutron absorber). This significantly narrowed the channels that the control rods occupied leading to them sticking when these boron coated plates started to warp and deteriorate. This was one of the root causes identified by the report. This and the horrible five control rod design enabled the final disaster scenario. After the SL-1 incident, Adm. Rickover made sure the Army didn't get to play with any more nuclear reactors.
You are telling fairy tales. These boron plates where in the original design. A reactor core has enough fuel to go critical. These boron controls are for regulating the neutron flux. This has nothing to do with excess fuel. The reason that these plates startet to slide heavy is because the plates and boron where corroding and thus not sliding freely in the channels. There is nothing wrong with a five, six or whatever control rod system. The only imported design factor is that a nuc reactor never ever may become critical with only one rod. That is a matter of design. In those times they did not think carefully on normal safity.
The more I hear about this thing the more it reminds me of the absolutely batfracked repairs that you make as a shift worker. Which, obviously, given that it fuckin exploded, is almost certainly not the level of ingenuity that should be going into a nuclear reactor. Fixing a desk? Sure. Fixing the breaking freezer at work? Sure. Unclogging a drain? Maybe. Fixing a broken rolly-cart that you need to actually work? Absolutely. An aging nuclear reactor? No. Nope. Nuhuh. Nyet. Nein. That is a terrible idea. I dunno but maybe we should have people with better risk-assesment skills working on this stuff, because every detail of this thing sounds like it was designed by an inattentive 22 year old and then modified by a 19 year old who's been repairing ancient cars and tractors with aluminum foil, coat hangers, and duck tape since he was 13
The Army should have never had them in the first place. Under what scenario would the Army need a nuclear reactor? Power generation is usually done with portable diesel generators. How portable can a nuclear reactor be?
@@idon.t2156 Korea was a UN police action because North Korea trued to invade South Korea and the UN forces had even pushed the North Koreans back to the border between North Korea and China, then China sent and estimated 300,000 troops into Korea and pushed the UN Forces back into South Korea before the UN were able to eventually push them back again leading to a stalemate at the current border today
Growing up in idaho falls, I have heard this story hundreds of times, but no one has told it as beautifully as you did! Thank you Kyle for sharing it with the world!
I grew up in Burley and we've heard many versions of this story. Every time I've taken the Arco highway to Idaho Falls over the years whenever I get close to that area I get the creeps. Every living thing kinda disappears for several miles out there.
@@Powermad-bu4em the test site is certainly a barren place. Aside from the fuel assembly building, EBR-1, and what's left of EBR-2, there's really not much to see on that road made by man. I wish they would have a marker on the highway where the gravel turn off is though.
@@Powermad-bu4em it wouldn't be that bad. If you broke down all you'd have to do is step off the road and touch the fence. Security will be there to help very shortly. It would worse breaking down the other direction near Craters.
My guess is the control rod was stuck, leaving the operator to over-exert themselves to move the rod, when it came free a spring action likely took place moving the rod too far. There should have been some leverage device that could have been affixed to the control rod allowing for a slow controlled movement of the rod, a 10 to 1 leverage action such as this probably would have saved the lives of these men.
I was thinking the very same thing. Its almost infuriating there wasnt such a device required to be used on rods that were stuck, since it had a pretty clear history of stuck rods being a problem on this reactor.. And over exerting ones strength to try to manipulate an object... can easily and often does end in some sorta injury... i mean its just common sense thats probably been around since us humans first started manipulating objects w/ our strength =)
It was stuck, so he gave it a big yank! What a Three Stooges situation, because our government put boys in charge of something that was cutting edge yet lethal science at the time. Something tells me that this is not the first nuclear accident in the USA, but merely the first reported.
Kyl, I'm at the 1 minute mark into this video and I want say thank you for the way you break down these incidents into a way that's easy to understand the history behind the why's of Nuclear Power mistakes when made.
I would argue that simple error made possible by a stack of other, preexisting errors, is much more human, and much, _much_ more haunting than a lover’s malice. I love how somber this series is
The problem is that by accepting that it was a 'simple error' "made possible by a stack of other, preexisting errors", we are accepting that there were preexisting errors in the first place. For example, let's say the pole got stuck. Either no one reported that the pole was sticking, or people did report the pole's sticking and no one elected to investigate why it kept jamming. One of these is negligence, the other is apathy. Either way, people didn't do their job and were not punished for not doing their job. If the person was maliciously suicidal as a result of his wife's divorcing him, then the people who made the reactor and refused to clean the reactor regularly can get away with doing the bare minimum. They don't need to replace all control-rod mechanisms to be more rust-resistant, or to not rely on being manually lifted by the imprecise means of human hands, or to perform regular cleaning of the control rods and tanks to remove the ever-accumulating rust. They can lazily replace any single 'massive' control-rod that could repeat this incident with as little as two control-rods of equivalent total power. Because this minimal "fix" is all it takes to prevent a single jilted lover from again attempting to suicide with a nuclear explosion.
@@onijester56 As Kyle mentioned, the sticking control rod was reported, and the army basically said "kick sand". That is why they were in there messing with the control rod, rather then fix it, higher ups determined that people need to go in there and periodically move it to prevent it sticking. As for getting in and cleaning it, you couldnt. Due to its design, the complete removal or replacement of a rod would immediately cause criticality. Since it was an experimental reactor, it was not designed with the idea of refueling or replacing control rods. At the longest, that particular reactor would last a few years before being retired. So while the idea of a murder suicide is very tantalizing, more then likely it was the militaries refusal to address issues with design. Even something as simple as installing a removable brace could have likely prevented this particular accident. (though the poor design of the reactor probably would have caused an accident eventually.)
@@tlpineapple1 Yes, anybody who's spent time in the military and read many of the NRC reports of the time, poor engineering and military mindsets resulted in many disasters.
It can easily be a little bit of both, tbh. I don't really see how the singular moment of "oh the army found no evidence of a lover's quarrel" is supposed to immediately kill the idea that this could've influenced him. The US police NOWadays even still lies about their own wrongdoings. And if we are to believe they're 100% truthful, how the hell would information like that get into a scientific report on a nuclear meltdown? Seems a bit too easy to go "not in the report, therefore not real", rather than accept that the guy just had this extra bit of shit to deal with on top of the pile of garbage and the terrible safety precautions around him. Literally no report in the world can glimpse into the mind of a dead person to evaluate their very last moments. And hard disagree on the "haunting" part. There's nothing haunting about human error creating a catastrophe in an already bad situation. Spilling your coffee on your keyboard would be just as "haunting". Personally the idea of a man deciding to not just kill a man AND himself, but also another bystander, just out of spite; that opens up much more horrifying depths of humanity than just "oopsy, pulled too hard".
@@ginnyjollykidd I'm not sure. From the point of view of the student, "learned" seems correct. But if you are personified History, and doing the teaching, "taught" looks okay.
So, in the first 3 1/2 minutes of this video we know exactly why this tragic accident happened - a command and systems failure. These men were not at fault, there was no conspiracy, it was simply the case that individually and as a group they should never have been selected for this kind of work. It's 'interesting' to consider that nearly every major accident has the same route cause but instead of lessons learned the individuals involved are blamed.
I’ve read all the reports in great detail: an extremely interesting accident. The surprising this, when I read this, is how much the health physicists knew. A fascinating (and sad) event.
My late grandfather did the sheet metal work on SL-1. He always said that though the official line was the love triangle, it was really just "stupid kids being stupid". I highly recommend William McKeown's 2003 book, "Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident". He had access to a LOT more information and internal military investigative reports and other declassified documents. Tucker's book is from 1968 and is, sadly, horribly out of date. Also, the bodies were returned to the family. There's some real strangeness there. One family demanded to see the remains. A wish that was....kind of...granted. The most radioactive parts were removed, entirely, and put in lead caskets and interred in the trench with the rest of the bulldozed remains, as well as personal items, like watches and clothing. What was only very radioactive(or less) was given to the families in sealed lead coffins that were buried at double depth and encased in concrete. One of them is actually in Arlington. All three have special instructions that if anyone of them is exhumed, the DoE and DoD are to be notified immediately, and THEY have ultimate authority in approving or denying exhumation. And they WILL deny anyone the permission to disinter any of those three men. You can't be from that area and be completely ignorant to the fact that in the middle of SE Idaho, is the largest concentration of nuclear reactors in the world. And no one ever forgets SL-1.
Not to mention how close to Yellowstone Idaho Falls is… I was raised in the area and wonder what kind of chaos will go down if Yellowstone pops off. It’s less than 200 miles apart… Gods only know what the death toll would be if a pyroclastic flow hit the site…
@@brodesson literally what I was thinking when watching this video. As tragic as all the "What if?" videos are on what if Yellowstone were to erupt, I have not heard one single one mention the consequences of SL-1's remains interacting with the disaster.
@@cruzgomes5660 I knew cause of Ricks college/ BYU-I… one of the buildings is built on a fault. I thought what if someone didn’t realize that, why couldn’t they oversee the issues with the Navy site N. of IF? Hell the entire Eastern side of Idaho is seismically active…
You and the channel get this wrong... it's not 1968. Tucker's book is the newest one out, 2009, and is the one with all the autopsy proof used in this video ... and the Wikipedia SL-1 article that I helped write.
Holy cow, Kyle covering one of my all time favorite pieces of nuclear history? Christmas came early. Always thought this accident would make for a really suspenseful Hollywood style movie.
@@maple22moose44 I should've mentioned there IS a fan film available on TH-cam called "Prompt Critical," but it isn't very good. Extremely low budget, but worth a watch if you want to see a short dramatization of the events. When I say "low budget"...I think they used a water treatment plant or something for the "reactor room." It's literally just a bunch of white pipes and fly wheels. Pretty funny, but if you squint a little and use your imagination, I guess it could be what someone would think a nuclear reactor would look like.
I drive by the site of this on a regular basis. You wouldnt believe how close it is to the state highway. A few hundred yards i would guess. Ive been fascinated by this story for years. It amazes me how many people dont know about this nuclear disaster
Given the unacceptable behavior of Legg, it seems unconscionable that they allowed him to work with someone he hated and also to work with something so dangerous.
I read the SL-1 story on Wiki , honestly one of the most grusome deaths ever recorded , the rod went in through his groin and out through his shoulder , piercing him to the ceiling. In terms of gorey deaths this gotta be up there !
About half way through, the fact that unlike your other videos you haven't made an onscreen appearance conveys to me a great sense of respect to the people who died. I have to tip my hat, sir.
Whenever I see these, I'm split in my reaction. On the one hand, the stories capture my attention and imagination in a way I kind of enjoy? On the other hand, I'm horrified that there is yet another story.
Growing up within an hour of the site, we’d learn about it in high school but they only discussed the event, not the personality clashes of the crew or any of the theories. But the idea of a man getting impaled to the ceiling even as a kid gave me chills.
What gives me the chills is not only that, but the fact in a flash a person could absorb enough radiation to kill him in an hour or less. That is thousands or tens of thousands of Rads, 600 rads kills everyone and most die of much less than that.
I believe what happened was the rod got stuck and maybe after a minute or two of trying to gently work it free he got frustrated a bit and gave the control rod a yank. And perhaps with him not being in the best state of mind for work he yanked it a bit harder than he probably should have and the rod moved more than he anticipated. I bet he instantly realized his mistake but there was just no time to fix it.
It's just sad to know that more than likely their last moments on Earth they were all very angry frustrated depressed or feeling some other negative emotions
Pretty much ANY "incident" that is an industrial accident is scary but often nuclear power accidents seem just a little scarier for people that don't understand radiation because it is something that seems completely unknown but can still kill you. However the chances you will sick and/or die from it are so low (unless you hang out in a basement that has radioactive particles floating around) that it is "almost" a moot issue unless your job involves dealing with radioactive substances. Each year thousand die horrible deaths by automobile accidents which is also a scary way to die but because we are use to it, we really don't think about it. While you can't see radiation, at lethal levels people report there is a metallic taste to the air and your skin feels like it is being pricked by needles. Also people often soon experience fatigue, nausea, and/or headaches if they remain in such areas If you are ever in an area that you are experiencing one or more symptoms it would best to relocate to an safer area before you get a dose that will cause radiation sickness or even death.
I have to admit, this is the best video on youtube that explains why things went so wrong in this disaster, and Ive watched several videos on this one.
"Hit with pipe wrenches." I know not to use the right tool for the job, working in the oil and gas industry. You're telling me that these guys used pipe wrenches as hammers in a nuclear facility? I'd nope out of there real quick. I can risk losing a job, versus millions / billions of damage to property. That isn't even including the priceless lives of my coworkers.
I think it's sad that the men never got a proper burial and that their families never got their bodies back. Imagine not even being able to visit your dead relatives grave, especially when they had died in such a horrific manner. Heartbreaking.
The families can visit the grave sites, it's just that the bodies are buried around 18' down in lead-lined caskets surrounded by and covered with cement. The bodies are apparently so radioactive that opening the casket would give you a lethal dose of radiation. I believe at least one of them is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
@@koitorob Yep. Their loved ones could manage. Not to be mean, but asking someone to take a significant radiation dose for a corpse... uh, just no. The fact that they got an autopsy and weren't just dumped in with the other high-level waste was already going above and beyond.
@@travcollier Although for at least one of the families the funeral service lasted at most 5 minutes because of the potential for receiving a lethal dose of radiation. Scary stuff.
My great grandfather was involved in part of the clean up in Idaho falls and knew one of the men involved in accident. I showed this video to my grandma who showed me the photos and videos used in this video. I am amazed at the level of love and devotion to this subject. Keep doing amazing work Kyle!!
Which is why I will never support nuclear power in America. We treat our infrastructure like shit and our workforce like shit, it's only a matter of time before we push our luck and get stuck with our own Yee-Haw Chernobyl
@@CodeineAbdulJabbar If you have to move to a third world country to compare the badness of US infrastructure that's more damning of the US than anything.
@@CodeineAbdulJabbar most third world countries are like that because of the US. It's not a vacuum. Worse still we shouldn't be pointing at said countries to have an example of something worse. That shows we're in the bottom of the barrel, which is a terrible realization to be ok with.
Edited: I honestly don't know how i goofed up the name of the literal channel, my bad lol. I'm distantly related to Richard Legg. My grandfather would've been his first cousin once removed. There's another book I believe called "The SL-1 Incident" which details far more, my mom has read it and I intend to read the rest of it when I come back to my hometown next year. This book had information that wasn't declassified by the gov until like 2003. I wanted to thank the heck out of Kyle Hill who took the time to make a vid on this event. You hit it right on the dot on how this could've been prevented if the government didn't neglect the needed maintenance. I was also never able to find an actual picture of him online anywhere, but I'm so glad someone could find this. I'm really thankful because I never knew what he looked like. 🙏🏻 I also wanted to clear up a few important factors regarding the drama the media portrayed on the incident to distract the severe government neglect on the facility at hand. There was no murder/suicide. This was an act of carelessness and leaving dangerous responsibilities on people with limited experience. Like Kyle described in the video, Chernobyl happened in the same fashion. The reason Legg headbutted with Byrnes (sorry if I used the wrong name, couldn't remember which one was the one w/ marriage probs) at that party was because Byrnes was sneaking off with prostitutes when Legg knew he was married. The men drank and partied at the same places. Even if there was a love triangle, which I highly doubt, Byrnes already screwed it up. Family have always said Richard and his brothers were troublesome and downright cocky, but he really was sick of the way Byrnes acted. Also a portion of Legg's remains did get sent back to be buried in my hometown in MI. It was put into a lead capsule and buried in so many feet of concrete. The government used to have to come out to the gravesite yearly to check radiation levels but I'm not sure if they do anymore. The burial was a bit creepy on its own bc apparently they didn't mix the concrete right and the capsule sarcophagus just popped back up, scared the hell out of the town.
You wrote "John", but they're addressed as "Kyle". Tell me you don't watch this channel without telling me you don't watch this channel. 💀 Edit: Also, there's pictures of Richard Legg on Google... Nice try.
@Runavala No, I don't watch this channel relatively often. This video was suggested to me and i subscribed not long after. Yes, I confused the names from one of the men mentioned in this event. My deepest apologies. If you know of any other existing photo online besides the one this video showed, it'd be kinda greatly appreciated if you dropped a link? I don't personally know who his direct descendants are, as I said they're distant cousins of my maternal grandfather or somewhere on my mother's side anyway. My mother seldom visited his close family as they were very private. She met his mother a couple of times and apparently showed her a photo of him but that was like, close to 45 years ago now. She'd be more enthused to see other photos than I would! Feel free to be a jerk and disregard my comments as a big fabricated lie but at least drop a link to the other photos you claim to see? If I really have to, I'll figure out how to link a personal photo of my Kingston school card I still have in my wallet lol. I have like dozens of photos of Legg family closer to my side (edit: possibly one of his brothers as well) at my moms place but ya won't get that for another 6 months lol. Quite sure my mom has Legg family tree copies from Ancestry as well, it's literally my grandfather's mother's maiden name...
@Runavala yooo, you got a link pls? Like I said ik that the one pic this video mentioned is online but if you know of any other existing photo on here that'd be, well, nice?
History teacher in New Mexico here. Thanks for giving me so many ideas for New Mexico history, as well as just world history. You really are an amazing storyteller. Keep it up!
I walked this site in early 1992. In addition, I snapped a picture of a prototype nuclear aircraft engine in front of what I assume was the former offsite hot shop. Love the videos, Kyle.
Pleeeeeeeease, pleeeeeease keep making these videos! I'm really enjoying the Half Life Histories series you're doing! You always thank us for watching, I wanna say thank you, and the whole facility staff (yes, including Kevin(s) lol) for all this content! Can't wait for the next one :D
@@nathaniel3102 I didnt end up joining, but i was working with the navy for 3 years because of asvab scores and they were really trying to get me to go nuke.
@@faithrider94 Too bad you didn't sign, but at least you were NAVY adjacent, so thanks for your support 🤜🤛 ...but yeah, I kept thinking "wow, should I be worried? Is there some big nuclear program in the works or something?" ...so instead I went AECF (which now has a different designation) instead of nuke, but my cousin went nuke and ended up just polishing warheads in [redacted] 😜.
I left Oregon 2 days ago to move to Montana. stayed at a really cool donation based private campground in Arco. REALLY cool little town with super nice people. I got to talk to a nice old lady who's husband was one of the people who died. Her son, went back to help clean up the site.
A lot of military fatalities have to do with something becoming a projectile when somebody is standing nearby and not expecting it. Personally, I never bought the "love triangle" story. Just some guys who made a fatal error. It wasn't the first time it would happen and nuclear energy was still in its infancy back then.
There was an explosion in one of the turrets of the battleship Iowa in the 80s. One of the theories was that one of the men killed was gay and suicidal: "The first investigation into the explosion, conducted by the U.S. Navy, concluded that one of the gun turret crew members, Clayton Hartwig, who died in the explosion, had deliberately caused it. During the investigation, numerous leaks to the media, later attributed to U.S. Navy officers and investigators, implied that Hartwig and another sailor, Kendall Truitt, had engaged in a romantic relationship and that Hartwig had caused the explosion after their relationship had soured. However, in its report, the U.S. Navy concluded that the evidence did not show that Hartwig was homosexual but that he was suicidal and had caused the explosion with either an electronic or chemical detonator."
@@dongquixote7138 Captain Fred Moosally infamously threw his crew under the bus: "Moosally testified that the Navy had assigned personnel of inferior quality to the Iowa. The investigation found that Iowa had been operating with severe deficiencies in safety and training procedures, for which Moosally was disciplined." The Navy concluded that the cause of the explosion could not be known. The Captain made up the story about Hartwig to avoid blame. A real scumbag that guy. He even ordered the men to repaint the ship on their way back to port after the explosion. Had the outside painted so the families couldn't see the damage, and had the inside painted to cover up all the blood and burns and tossed most of the bodies over board. There wasn't much left for NCIS to investigate which added to the confusion.
I am unable to comprehend that there wasn't an NCO on duty at the same time as these three enlisted. As an Army Vet that held the rank of Specialist... 1961 I cannot believe that a facility as such wouldn't have a Sargent or even a Staff Sargent on duty with them.
The whole point of SL-1 was to show reactors were safe enough for civilians to have them in power plants at remote research stations in the Antarctic, listening posts in “neutral countries” that sort of thing - places where you couldn’t just drop in a bunch of Army specialists like my dad unnoticed if something went sideways. My dad was a nuclear ordinance officer, and he told us in later years he saw things that would curl your hair, just because everybody was so scared to tell people working on the things stuff like, “if you pick this up with a forklift, and the thing gets pierced or cracks open if you drop it, you will all die.” Just in case they were a “Red.” Dad said you do see your life flash before your eyes when you see “something” out of the transport crate, rolling back and forth on the forklift because the guys that worked for him all wanted to go party after work and wanted to hurry and get uthe thing onto the truck. Shortly before dad’s death from cancer, he told me to go look in his old footlocker after he passed. When I looked, there were two Geiger counters, and two notebooks. Mom never knew but dad tested my sister and I when we were babies to make sure he wasn’t contaminating us. There was a list of dates and readings, with the occasional note like “fussy, but no signs of rad.” Miss you, daddy, every dang day.
Kyle, this was excellent. I worked in the nuclear power field for 20 years and taught SL-1, Chernobyl, and TMI scenarios. You simplified some of the facts, but did an excellent job!!! Well done good sir.
I've watched several of your videos, and I like your style. Very simple, straight forward, not exaggerated or overblown, just letting the facts speak for themselves, and I like that. It's very refreshing amongst click bait and irritatingly, excessively dramatic videos
Please, PLEASE keep doing these. This is seriously one of the greatest docu-series-esc things I've ever seen, and it's been absolutely mind blowing, and i can only hope you continue doing things like this. I love your other content, but this is just.... this is good.
Working in the nuclear engineering field for years out there at that location it was a sobering drive past that big dirt pile that now covers the remains of this tragic event. The original interior pictures from investigators are etched indelibly in my mind.
As a maintenance electrician around the same age as these guys, I'm really glad we have strict safety procedures and my work can't cause a massive radioactive explosion. I can't imagine the stakes being this high, a lot of people get comfortable with danger in a maintenance setting but luckily I'm just as cautious of electricity as I was in the beginning, if not more after seeing some arc flashes that vaporize copper lol
*The next in my [HALF-LIFE HISTORIES] series.* Enjoy our deepest dive yet. Thanks for watching.
Hey kyle!
I dig these minidocs
It was incredible.
BEST SERIES ON TH-camEEEE
Are you gonna do a video on the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown?
Wait wait, let me get this straight. There was a nuclear reactor so poorly maintained that it was literally falling apart, so poorly designed it'd explode from a slight misalignment of just one control rod, which was so poorly designed it got stuck often, and which had to be moved by hand and that reactor was operated by just three people who were also inexperienced? Just WTF did I just watch.
Just another typical US government/Army cluster fuk.
Thats the US military for you.
I was also thinking the same thing like wth? luckily they learned from it and made new procedures, allthough after this incident, chernobyl happened 🤦♂. I so do hope it doesn't happen again....there is an invasion taking place in that region 🤔😒
The 50s
🤣🤣🤣 This is perfect!!!
The fact that you could pull the rod out that far to cause criticality without some kind of lock or limiter is unbelievable from an engineering point of view.
Agreed. The design was flawed from the start. The X pattern of the control rods is an unconscionable engineering oversight. Even so a limiter to prevent extended removal of the rods should have been in place from the get go.
Also this accident is only remotely like Chernobyl.
@@bobdawonderweasel2 Since it was one of the first disasters, those measures just weren't thought of until after something like this occured.
@@ch1ppychippbut the fact they knew what would happen if it is pulled too far beforehand and still continued to operate that way is fucking asenine. I mean beating the thing with a damn pipe wrench, what the hell...
But they KNEW what would happen!! How was such a thing not considered during the design phase? like WTF @@ch1ppychipp
They knew beforehand, so there was probably some kind of procedure, but mechanics always break more safety rules than anyone else
It's incredible to me that seemingly every single nuclear disaster has a "oh, these detectors must be broken!" part in the story.
Yup. People can't even learn the most basic lessons from history. Either routine calibration was never done or crews never learned to trust their instruments, also a lack of training for what scenarios will cause what type of measurements.
The only saving grace of that is that it usually gets them to immediately leave to find new equipment
@@NuncNuncNuncNunc Know your limits, know your gear's limits, trust yourself, trust your gear and when in doubt fall back and reassess. This simple maxim will keep you safe always.
Source: Roofer
wishful thinking. Rather find out your detector is broken than find out you're currently standing in a hot zone that might kill you.
@@NuncNuncNuncNunc Counterpoint - 9 times out of 10 when the readings are that high it is a faulty meter and not a catastrophic nuclear accident. These things are, thankfully, quite rare.
Hindsight is 20/20 of course, but at the time, if you were dealing with this environment day in and day out, your mind would be in a very different place than if you are watching the TH-cam video that you already know is about a major accident
This is utterly fascinating. My grandfather was one of the army reactor technicians operating on that reactor. Luckily he wasn’t there that night! Hell of a job.
The blast of radiation would have killed anyone else in that building, it was a good thing nobody else was there when the reactor went prompt critical. They would have been dead or dying in less than a hour.
@@taraswertelecki3786 Imagine just being the fourth soul in the facility and then arriving where the operators were standing, dear lord.
Very interesting. Richard McKinley was my mom’s uncle, most of my family believed in the murder/suicide story or rather, that there was “more to it” than an accident. Although I’ve read about the incident over the years I wasn’t aware of his state when they discovered the bodies. Not something I intend to share with our family though…
@@derekbloom633 I don't blame you. Sorry this happened in your family.
This happened 16 years before my dad started to work out there
"Just exercise the nuclear rods" is the most Army response I could imagine when your scientists and engineers report an issue with the nuclear equipment
And then blame the operators when it goes wrong. "How did the equipment let the operator cause an explosion?". "Well, we TOLD THEM to be careful."
The mechanical equavlant of the human version "You'll be ok, just walk it off. Take a lap"
@@kylegoodwin8673 "Professor Legasov, If you mean to suggest that the American state is somehow responsible for what happened then I must warn you, you are treading on dangerous ground."
Literally though the same thing.
Yup. This from an organization that wanted everything nuclear. Nuke artillery. Nuke planes. Nuke earth moving charges. Literally like children with a new toy trying to do everything with it. Just because it sounds like fun. A time when they had way too much time and funding on their hands. I can just hear the top brass saying (imagine George C Scott) “To Hell with the warnings of those timid nerds, history favors the bold. Let’s get this nuke stuff to work for US, before the Rooskis beat us to it!”
As a former soldier I couldve told you from the beginning that putting nuclear anything in the hands of military standard soldiers is a HORRIBLE idea
Especially marines
Yep, I see how even our medics perform from a clinical standpoint. We'll do everything to keep you alive and get you home, but fuck, dont expect us to do paperwork correctly when you show up for PHAs
@@mk-1579 That shit always pissed me off. Losing files and all that bs. I was a grunt, so idk the paper side of things that happen in the Army except peoples shit always ends up missing. It’s literally people’s jobs and they can’t even get that crap right? 🤦🏽♂️
Agreed
In Navy nuke school we joked and call this the "Soldier Launcher 1"
"My Geiger counter must be broken" I've heard that often in these videos. If I was doing ANYTHING that had to do with nuclear radiation, I would really hope the counter is broken. I'd still run right back out of the area and be extra careful going in.
A machine is designed to do its job. If it doesn't turn on, then its broken. If its screaming at the top of its lungs/ the dangerous edge of its meters, its probably working fine... and I'm in danger.
Those CDV units were known for shorting the tube and tripping the meter and worse yet when the tube gets oversaturated with radiation the meter goes to zero. So it’s possible they left because they thought the meter was being fooled
what is scarier is not knowing the full extent of it because the device is maxing out. like in the chernobyl series where everyone thought it was just 3.5 because the device only showed that amount. the real number was 15000
@@ali32bit42What's even scarier is that 15000 was apparently just the limit of the 2nd device, we'll never know how high it actually was at the time
The technology back then was pretty bad.
It's more likely to be broken than a meltdown. Back then, they broke all the time. The bad decisions start when someone proceeds forward without confirming the detector is broken.
My great uncle was Richard McKinley so I’ve heard of this incident for many years growing up and I really appreciate the detailed coverage in your video.
There’s still people in my family that believe it was murder/suicide but they were from rural Ohio with limited education to understand what occurred. Unfortunately it’s unlikely I’ll share this video with them as the details of his death may be too disturbing. They’re aware that at least his hands were removed before the rest of his remains were interred at Arlington, I don’t believe they understood the brutal nature of the incident though. I at least had a chance to visit him at Arlington about 20 years ago.
I’m sorry for your family’s loss; I can’t imagine a loved one experiencing such a horrific passing.
Dude I’m so sorry about that. You have my deepest sympathy and condolences
Sucked to be him.... For about 4 milliseconds anyway
I am so sorry for your loss. My family lost 90% of their relatives at Hiroshima. Innocents in a war. I go to the peace dome every year to pay my respects. My father was born 2 years after the bomb dropped.
😂😂😂😂
Spoiler Warning:
The man who was impaled to the ceiling makes this seems like a proper horror story, imagine being one of the firefighters and first realizing what you were seeing
But Karma too as he was shaggin' the other guy's wife.
@@shitmandood But also, that seems like a made up story.
Like you dont even notice at first. Then you happen to look up
Would be even worse having to be the guy to saw the radioactive remains of the guys head off and hook it over into a "lead cave".
When the boss finds out about our fuck up he's gonna go though the roof
“Our radiation detector is going crazy, it must be broken. Let’s keep going!”
Something you will never hear me say lmfao
At least it wasn't "3.6 roentgen, not great, not terrible"
Nope, my reaction would be... "Uh let's just back off and find another detector with a higher threshold before continuing."
@@Megalomaniakaal the worst part was his subordinate told him it maxed out the scale at 3.6, not that it was 3.6. he just chose to ignore the almost certainty that it was much higher than 3.6.
@@Megalomaniakaal "they gave them the Propaganda number"
I feel like I've heard the, "our radiation detector must be busted; readings are too high," in more than one nuclear disaster story 🤣
I haven't seen a lot of comments talking about how one of the men was still alive when the team found them. He probably lied there conscious and paralyzed for well over the nine minutes it took the response team to even arrive. That's the part I couldn't stop thinking about.
I didn't even think about that. All I can think of is one word..."horrifying"
Feeling all your organd slowly shutting down while every neuron in your body goes crazy and you see your friends turned into miscellaneous bags of flesh. Trying to scream but now having the strength or the air to do so. Knowing you are dead but not knowjng whether it is know or 25 days later slowly feeling your organs shut down or feeling your blood slowly leeking out while seeing people come up, but no hope no chance. He knew he was dead by the end of the hour.
@@AlechiaTheWitch This. Honestly, the way Kyle just glossed over that and then said the two dead were housed in the hot room make me think the man was alive when they removed him from the debris and someone put him out of his misery.
Considering the staff had discussed what to do if the Russians arrived, it wouldn't be a stretch to think they also discussed the lethal effects of radiation and their wishes to suffer or not. The firemen may have even been friendly acquaintances of the men/staff in general after the previous false alarms, and knew the outcome of the dying man before them and possibly his wishes to not suffer. Hell, even without the previous conjecture, it's possible the dying man begged for mercy as he knew too well what was happening to him and didn't wish to see it to its natural end.
Regardless, this incident is a tragedy for all involved.
He got hit by a jet of water 4" wide that went from one ankle up to his jaw.
The jet was so powerful it stripped off skin and broke bones.
He died of his physical injuries ( bled out ) before radiation sickness could even set in.
He was unconscious , and everytime he tried to "wake up" the intense pain would cause him to moan and be rendered unconscious again by the shock.
@George Thomas hey that's every country. Dont just exemplify the us.
I live in Idaho Falls and am a third generation nuclear brat. I remember listening to my father and grandfather playing cribbage and talking about this incident. Grandpa worked at the Naval Reactor Facility and on his way to work that morning had to pass right past the SL-1 facility. THAT morning was a bit different. I also knew the first firefighter on the scene. He was one of the ones whose Jordan Detector went off scale. The radiation field was higher than their instruments could read. I remember driving past what was left of the facility. The administration building were still there until the '90s and honestly, it was a little eerie driving by...
I have 26 acres in atomic city so we see that everytime we visit my property
It's gone now. The only thing left is an old gate if you know where to look. All the buildings and structures were completely leveled in the late 90's.
@@robertdean6084 we see inl and all the new buildings since it is part of the department of energy now. It's not like they moved everything to new land it's in the same area
Did you even watch this video? It's about the SL-1 reactor that blew up in 1961. The site it was on is what I was talking about. The INL is spread out over 960 square miles. The are many different facilities out there. The SL-1 facility is no longer there. That was my point... I'm not sure what your point is. The Department Of Energy runs it, yes. Before that it was the Atomic Energy Commission. Let me know if I can help you with any other history of the Site, and even Atomic City. You don't seem to know much about it.
My dad worked at the inel for the last 30 years of hi career. I remember him telling me about a accident that happened out there before he started to work there. I just bought the Idaho Falls book
McKinley being alive for that long is so horrifying… the whole thing is horrifying but just knowing he was laying there absolutely mutilated and groaning send chills down my spine. Can’t imagine what he might’ve been thinking-if he was thinking at all.
Exactly I was looking for this comment.. McKinley got dealt a pretty brutal death.
Hopefully McKinley was rendered unconscious immediately and the groans were just reflex actions.
After an explosion that big, being that close, he would absolutely have been unconscious for the entire duration, not to mention the shock of blood loss doing the same.
I kind of hope he wasn't...
@@SMGJohn 🤨
"The men didn't know it, but this minuscule moment... much faster than the blink of an eye, was the rest of their lives."
I don't know how much effort you put into this line, but *holy shit*.
As an aspiring storyteller with no skill in the actual wordsmanship, I'm so impressed by Kyle's scripts.
I STRONGLY DISAGREE! Being as famous as I am on TH-cam, I know that it gets hard to read every comment I get. I try my best, but I am just so famous, that I can't do it much longer. Sorry, dear sgt
That line went 20,000,000% harder than it was designed to.
That's the only horrifying moment I fear about nuclear energy. Accidents don't mean losing a finger, they mean seeing a sudden flash of light and knowing that you're going to die painfully before seeing the end of the year.
Not much effort, if you've read a book
Honestly, these half life histories need to win some form of award. Not sure what categories exist for the webbies or whatever, but the writing and effort Kyle puts into these deserves a larger scale recognition.
~standing ovation~ Excellent idea, and one I wholeheartedly agree with!
I regret that I can only give this comment one thumbs up. You're absolutely right. Heck, I'd say that this series should be played in history and/or science classes, but I worry that it would create an inappropriate bias against nuclear power overall.
TH-cam TV level
I couldn't agree more.
Indeed
For those posters who are suitably horrified by bodies smashed into a ceiling - you don't need to be in a nuclear facility to be at risk. Years ago I heard of a Swedish mechanic who was changing an earthmover tyre, attached the air line and went off to answer a phone (days before cells) suddenly realising what he'd done, he rushed back to the tyre which exploded as he approached - he was comprehensively smashed into the buildings' roof 22ft up. I have just done a Google and there's ten deaths from bursting tyres on the first page.
While I was still working here in the U.K. guys building up a large boiler returned to site one Monday after leaving their welding kit in place over the weekend - shortly after the was an explosion so violent that it propelled the boiler through a 2ft thick wall killing all inside and people at a bus stop in the street. And people my age all remember Ronan Point - a medium rise tower block - that partially collapsed following a small gas explosion when an old lady put her kettle on. Blasted back into her living room, she survived but three others were crushed.
All these disasters happen because folk fail to think or act on previous thoughts.
The Russian lathe accident is even more graphic, and if you look good enough, you can even find a video of it. Google it if you're not too squeamish. The only other instance of seeing a human reduced to pink mist I've seen was a sedan driving into a dump truck head-on.
My step-dad was a diesel mechanic years ago. He had a semi tire blow up on him and sent him onto the side of another truck
@@william8300 did they have tire cages then?
"He would set off alarms intentionally just to startle his crewmates"
Me, a former navy nuke and electrician's mate: "Yep, sounds about right."
Yep. Seems about right. Although for my shop it was a coolant alarm that was too sensitive and went off every time we took a good roll. Of course this was for a phalanx weapon system not a reactor. Also, don’t bypass alarms. CO doesn’t like that it seems.
Yeah, as an ex-ET1(SS), this was my thought as well. I remember seeing the full non-redacted training films in nuke school, and reading the 'T' manual stories about it.
We had someone who would "accidentally" bump the control rod power supplies and trigger partial SCRAMs. Didn't take long for that to stop being a problem for us.
ELT, sub type. I'd just set my frisker alarm down to background make it alarm if the coners bugged me while walking the dog. I'd then tell people they needed to go get a decontamination suppository from doc. He'd put a tylenol up their butt.
Damn Electricians. Spoken as a former Electrician. Lol.
The idaho and chernobyl events are both interesting because both nuclear reactors were the equivalent of doing fission in a trashcan with the thin aluminum lid as your safety
and in both cases, the aluminum lid made like the atomic manhole cover. There are a few pictures of reactor 4 in chernobyl immediately following the meltdown and you can see the top of the reactor shielding laying on its side, with a mass of twisted and mangled pipes (cooling jacket? Slots for control rods?) on its underside. It looks like a boiler explosion of a steam locomotive but several billion orders of magnitude worse.
this video was real interesting for me bc I have been in Idaho nearly my entire life and this event was never brought up in school
@@lsswappedcessnathere is a video where some folks with balls made from lead where INSIDE reactor 4 building in the early 2000s, you can clearly see the 2000 Ton reactor lid laying on its side because, well they were standing on and next to it filming
@@huey-fan8335 Balls of lead must be literal in this case!
@@lsswappedcessna Yep. That video is terrifying, not least because there's an almost constant stream of white particles on the footage which clearly show just how intense the radiation still was.
Hey Kyle, just wanted to say that I absolutely LOVE these HALF-LIFE HISTORIES investigations. Your style, approach and presentation of the events is on POINT.
I agree with chase. Couldn't have said it better.
They're equal parts fascinating, informative, and horrifying. I love them
i love them, thank you
Aww you didnt even get a heart.
19:15 My dad was there when it happened, at the next reactor down the road. My dad told me since I was 5 that he and his buddies all knew why, or now I believe that at least they held their own compelling theory that no one could convince them was wrong. Dad says they had shut off all the recording and safety systems just prior to the accident. And that dad took as proof that they just wanted to see the legendary blue glow that irradiates from the rods just prior to going critical. My dad is named Gordon Simkin -- and he was there, at that very reactor, that very day; and working in the next one down the road at the very moment the accident happened.
@kylehill
Incredibly ignorant if that is true.
That blue glow is always there in underwater reactors, it's called cherenkov radiation, simplified the equivalent of a sonic Boom, but it's radioactive particles in water.
Designing a reactor where a single control rod could start or stop the reaction feels like it's up there with separating a critical mass of radioactive material with a handheld screwdriver in terms of risky hijinks with atoms.
If not more so since the Demon Core couldn't explode with 32kg of TNT if touched wrong.
@@concept5631 You're right, the demon core had the potential (if put in a bomb as designed) could explode up to 36,000 tons on TNT.
@@chromewolf8432 But it wasn't.
All cores were repurposed into nuclear devices after testing was concluded.
A reactor like that is a ticking time bomb, like the reactor at Chernobyl.
Whether by accident or on purpose, that kinda engineering on a reactor was just downright stupid.
Sounds like GE to me
I was thinking the same. It's always the poorly designed reactors that cause a disaster. Some of those designs like this are head scratching.
@@staciasmith5162 Well, it’s not necessarily the design of a reactor that causes these types of things to happen. In pretty much every case where something like this has happened it’s been operator error or neglect. SL-1 was operator error, Chernobyl was operator error, TMI was negligence and operator error, Fukushima was negligence. Bad design plays a part to some degree though as SL-1 wouldn’t have happened if one control rod didn’t have that much power. It’s just that generally, it’s the people doing stuff wrong that ultimately causes the real bad stuff to happen. These days nuclear power is actually very safe. It’s heavily regulated and is one of the most environmentally friendly ways to generate large amounts of power.
@@Yomom12388 when a simple mistake by the operator can destroy a reactor that mean that it's a bad design.
@@arc46789 and what really makes me totally unconfortable is these questions: why these unsafe forced maintanances made by youngsters without supervision? I mean, I dont wanna think about conspiracies, but it is just like someone was toying with their lives and saying: yeah let's see how many of these unsafe maintanances they can endure. If this tricky rod don't make them explode in this one, maybe in the next?
I mean: at the demon's core video one scientist clearly says: keep these unsafe experiments and you will be dead in less than a year and the guy died 7 months later. So there was someone that was alerting the consequences and there was someone that was absolutely ignoring it at the very least!!!
It’s amazing how much our knowledge regarding nuclear science has evolved in the past 50 years
evolved?
@@lokeegnell3991 verb
past tense: evolved; past participle: evolved
1.
develop gradually, especially from a simple to a more complex form.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Absolutely. The last 100 years must have been the most prolific years in the history of science. All thanks to computing and telecommunications
We learn from the past mistake, hopefully
This reminds me so much of Hisashi Ouchi. It is a very graphic and tragic event of a man who underwent the most cruel and painful death in history. On the morning of Sept. 30, 1999, at a nuclear fuel-processing plant in Tokaimura, Japan, 35-year-old Hisashi Ouchi and two other workers were purifying uranium oxide to make fuel rods for a research reactor. For over 80 days Hisashi would remain in hospital to experience the worst possible outcome an irradiated death could bring.
That poor man ended up with total chromosome damage but he lingered for weeks until he finally succumbed to the damage from the massive radiation dose he received.
Turns out, by the end, almost his entire body was not only no longer functioning, but decaying. He was just a barely functioning brain, and a beating heart inside a decaying corpse.
Ouchie. Fitting last name.
"Jilted lover bent on nuclear revenge" is the perfect Fallout quest name
I can imagine it as a two-parter.
Completing Jilted Lover unlocks Nuclear Revenge.
Sounds like a good time, love a good revenge story.
You also get a legendary weapon called 'Revenger' , heh heh.
hmm these guys were pretty much f troop....wonder if they fatherd any of the crack engineers who changed the desigin of san onafre nuclar plant cooling tubes eighty feet long sixty in original design...fresh out of collage on site new hire engineers ..why not one hundred cooling tubes..any of you grow up rural area ..when you turn on water in a pipe that long ..flexes..dah problem.
@@alecdickens1042 yours sounds much more fallout than OP
@@Astares9 Much appreciated :) I take pride in details like that.
I did a speech on this in high school. Surprised everyone. Had hair-raising answers for every question. Got an A+.
Big W
@@koala5992 Target
nice! sadly in my school no one is interested in these kinds pf things
This sounds like a flat telling of a story from r/thathappened
@@Phenrex because nobody does reports on disasters? I mean I did one on colombine in high school. It's not all that absurd.
There's a very darkly human element to looking into stuff like this. It's like that part of you that makes you look at a car accident or a dead body at a crime scene. It's fascinating even if it is horrible. It's just how people are wired.
It's fascinating to me that every time one of these first responders comes in with a radiation detector that starts tickng off the scale, their first response is always to think that their detector is broken rather than the horrible truth. It has come up several times in this series and it says something about human psychology. I'm not entirely sure what but it's something.
Edit: It also completely boggles my mind that one of them actually somehow survived the initial event long enough for first responders to get there. Even though he was deeply messed up by it, and had no hope of recovery it is still incredibly impressive to me that he didn't die instantly.
As someone who’s worked as a health physicist/RP tech, something as simple as the cord being bent the wrong way, or the detector having a puntcture in the mylar screen, can cause the meter to go crazy, especially with the old detectors that most power plants are working with today
The first action in most radiation based casualties is to confirm readings so you know the extent of the casualty. It is usually called out to confirm levels of radiation with a different radiac just to confirm the levels
In physics as well, many discoveries were first dismissed as equipment flukes, or errors in the math, until they were double- and triple-checked. Most peoples' first instinct is to doubt readings that seem "off".
When someone goes "oh, it's probably broken" means they're in denial, because if it's right someone's fucked
Yeah he’s unlucky as shit
My father was a nuke in the navy and told me this story when I was 9 and first learning about what he did. I had asked “is it dangerous?” And he told me this story. He said when he was training that it would be miles and miles of snow but our in the middle was a dome concrete the snow didn’t stick to. That is where they buried the materials. Thanks for the awesome video
damn, your father was a nuke? i'm glad they never fired him
😑😑😑😑@@SwordAndSiege
It only has to be above freezing for snow to not stick. Not hot.
Both SL-1 and The Demon Core incidents are prime examples of how sometimes absolutely horrible things happen to change protocols and improve safety designs. Both are clear examples of unacceptably unsafe testing and operating conditions that put operators within inches of particularly gruesome deaths
& THERAC-25 too
In 100 years things we do today will be viewed the same way we view blood letting with leeches.
But how do you know - till you know?
@@str8up598in a way - you don’t. That being said with the demon core both of the victims went outside of protocol which led to their deaths, and with SL 1 Training could have certainly been better, on top of designing the system to be a bit less risky adjusting the reactor. The latter was learned through this incident though. A good way to view basically any safety measures is that they are all written in blood. People either were injured or died as a result of not following that policy or simply not having that policy. The same goes for nuclear reactor safety.
That sounds entirely too much like the military.
I literally saw that body on the ceiling in that illustration and thought, “Is he not gonna address that?”
Then he did, and I instantly wished he didn’t
@ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀʟ ᴇᴄᴄʜɪ no
@ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀʟ ᴇᴄᴄʜɪ oh god why did I laugh
@ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀʟ ᴇᴄᴄʜɪ Body Got Low Low Low Low Low Low Low Low
@ɢᴇɴᴇʀᴀʟ ᴇᴄᴄʜɪ 🎶 Everybody do the flop 🎶
"Careful what you wish careful what you say careful what you wish you may regret it careful what you wish you just might get it!!!!" - Metallica
I was a Naval Reactor Operator/Technician 1975-82. We were taught about this incident and the lessons learned from it. We also had the 3 mile Island accident happen during my time in service. As a mental exercise, when we were bored, we wold talk about ways to melt down the reactor. With all the safety engineering designed into the reactor system, you could do it, but you would have to work at screwing a lot of things up to get there. TMI was a demonstration of the fact that you could screw enough things up to cause a melt down, but they really worked maintenance complacency, lack of supervision, lack of understanding of instrument readouts and situation, in order to get there.
Out of curiosity, once youd managed to work out a way to force the reactor to melt down, would you being your method to your superiors so safety measures could be brought it to mitigate he possibility? Or were the ways to reach that point so convoluted it wasnt worth bothering your superiors with?
@@dalegaskill7352 Hi! Yes to both. Sometimes, in these bull sessions, you can find problems with procedures or equipment that are correctable. Usually the problems are not catastrophic in nature. In just about all melt-down scenarios, you had to bypass or override some many safety system it was ridiculous. One time we were able to figure out, if the ship was in port with both plants shut down - but still hot - if the Captain walked in and told us the missiles were on the way, we could get a plant up and running in 20 minutes with only three guys, without breaking anything - except a million procedures, of course!
I noticed the CGN-41 emblem. You must have been stationed on the Arkansas around the time it was commissioned. I was a "nuke" electrician stationed on her when she was decommissioned in 1997 and 98.
Richard is not kidding about the emphasis the nuclear engineering program in the Navy put on on both understanding the analysis of these disasters - and the resultant safeguards. TMI wasn't great - but it was not this bad.
@@kenashworth7672 Yep. I'm a plank owner. Too bad the Ark didn't live as long as it could have.
@@rickslingerland1155 Regardless of the industry, it's the people running things on the bottom levels who have to handle everything that know best how things can go wrong, and have to find bypasses (often breaking rules) to get things done at the pace the disconnected people at the top want things done. I'm glad you had higher level people who listened.
Could you imagine being Byrnes' wife and getting the call that your husband died? Imagine how many people in the town blamed her for what happened. Or if she did care a little, how much guilt she must've felt for it. Like her one phone call killed her husband and two other men. Then the whole love triangle shit... She could have been completely innocent and the book/runors probably caused her so much unnecessary hate.
She wanted to delete the man from her life. She got it. I feel much more sorry for the men who *actually died* in the disaster. Poor McKinley had nothing to do with the utter bullshit of the love triangle yet died a horrible, gruesome death.
it boggles my mind that three men died from a nuclear accident and yet SOMEHOW you men manage to make it allll about a random woman who had nothing to do with that accident and blame her. the wife story was made up by the MILITARY so they wouldn't have been held responsible for not repairing the faulty rod. if you guys are so braindead that you can't even understand this basic level of manipulation, then please, don't procreate.
it's amazing the mental gymnastics men will go through to find some way to blame women in every single situation.
@@peterkiss1204 which would you rather experience- dying that way and then it's over, or having rumors and gossip and guilt (either internalized from others shaming her if the love triangle isnt true, or real visceral 'it's all my fault' shame if the love triangle was true) following you around for the rest of your natural life (unless you delete yourself from your own life) for years?
imo, both can be tragic and horrible, and i don't like the misery olympics. i personally don't envy the firefighters who had to carry the sight of the 3 mens bodies with them the rest of their lives, it had to have been traumatic. everyone suffers here :(
@@imepic4430 i would rather the rumors than being turned into radioactive human goo
@@imepic4430 Yeah i'll take rumors over horrific radiologic accident every day.
In my profession (Engineering), many of my classmates worked on nuclear reactor construction in the mid-late seventies before TMI shut all that down. The No.1 issue with long-tern reactor service was (and still is) corrosion. This makes me think that the corrosion problem was not well understood in the Fifties when SL-1 was designed.
Hats off to all who commented. Lots of intelligent discussion evident here, which is refreshing as TH-cam seems to be famous for idiots talking $hit in the comments.
Have advancements been made to combat corrosion?
@@adamhall4549 One would certainly hope.
So far...your comment made the most sense.
Corrosion is corrosion, does not matter on what material surface. It has been around since metals were invented.
@@jimclark6256 True, but it was less that corrosion wasn't as understood in the 50s, so much as it was likely believed to not be an issue. Given that SL-1 was temperamental at best and uncooperative and dangerous at worst, I'm pretty sure it ended up becoming an issue.
Occam's razor. The fact that the rod regularly got stuck, and that he probably yanked on it hard enough so when it released, it lifted too high, is the most likely scenario.
Hanlon’s razor also applies. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Doubles down on the yanked too hard theory.
Actually a good theory. Working with metal I have had metal bind and release suddenly so I could see how it could bind and break loose and if he had enough force he could have taken it up a foot or so and boom
a friend of mine was a nuke tech in the navy. he told me about this, all of the particulars about it, some choice words about army techs, and he said it was exactly this. the rod was stuck, he yanked on it, it became unstuck, he pulled it out 18 inches instead of 4 and that was it.
@@kayleescruggs6888 I wouldn't say it was all because of stupidity. They HAD to go with all that was provided to them; a worn-down nuclear facility that their superiors didn't even care about. The smarter alternative and maybe the only alternative that they had was to quit their jobs after seeing such lax protocols for a nuclear facility.
The fact that they were well aware of what would happen if lifted too far and that he had just gotten off the phone and had little sleep, coupled with him possibly thinking the other guy had been having an affair with his wife makes the more likely scenario to be murder suicide to me.
imagine being the one guy who survived for like 2 hours, just knowing you’re finished
I doubt he was conscious
@@scurvy135 I mean, one of the men moaned when the rescure team arrived. I think any kind of voice is somewhat concious, isn't it?
@@christophsiebert1213 that’s exactly what i was thinking
No thanks
@@scurvy135 I'm betting it was more of a shocked and stunned state. When you've experienced trauma of this magnitude, your mental state is reduced to a semi conscious form.
My dad lived in Rigby, Idaho many, many years after the accident. Many people who lived in the town (and other areas) called it ‘The Site’ and my grandfather worked nearby. So when my dad, his siblings, and any other kids visiting would visit and walk around the area. It’s quite interesting to see how it is even years later after the accident.
The worst thing for the fire fighters is they were continually getting false alarms from SL-1 so imagine expecting just another false alarm and arriving to that!
Probably just that one asshole playing a prank aga-OH MY GOD THAT MAN IS IMPALED TO THE CEILING!
Firefighters are the best, but they do get paid for false alarms. I can't count on my fingers and toes the "password" to call off a fire truck at my last location... it didn't matter - they still showed up. Fun fact, I was probably the only one to know the password years later and I was on 3rd shift...
I decided to ask my dad some questions about this. He lived in that Idaho Falls/ Arco area. Turns out; my grandpa, my dad’s father, was one of those health physicians that first saw “something” up in the rafters. My dad recounted that my grandpa was send home in a borrowed car, and overalls and shoes. Anything he had was taken due to the radiation. Before he left, they told him that he had had his lifetime dose of radiation. He can not do that again. I have to admit, I was not expecting that to be the story when I asked him about the personal impact of SL-1.
I can’t imagine how he must have felt seeing the body in such a condition. I hope your grandfather’s done OK since then.
Did he have any long term health effects?
"The basilisk won't be a problem if we all agree to just not talk about or make it" - Kyle, wearing a basilisk shirt
The basilisk won't be a problem if you love the basilisk and work to help it come to exist!
Some people just want to see the world burn.
@@Stonehawk The basilisk won't be a problem unless someone specifically builds an AGI with the basilisk's illogical value function. The vast majority of possible AGI's simply won't display the behavior of the theorized basilisk.
@@Stonehawk the basilisk is the solution.
@@josephburchanowski4636 well that's the thing it won't be made unless someone made a super AI with its flawed logic. But the thought experiment proposes that it will kill anyone who didn't help it come to existince. If no one makes it it will never come to reality. But if some does than everyone who didn't help dies. The reason the thought experiment scares so many people it that if you don't help it come to reality than it isn't an issue. Unless someone else or a group of people decide to build it in which case you are dead. If this was a world were the basilisk was to be real in order to survive you would have to help build it. Of course this will never happen because the idea isn't popular enough and no one is dumb enough to make an AI on perpose that has reasoning so flawed it thinks improve the human race means killing people (probably).
As someone with many ties to Idaho and a strong fascination with nuclear physics, this story was especially important to me. Thank you for sharing!
When we don’t learn from history, it tries to
make a more memorable lesson.
the lesson continues until you learn
Or a bigger boom 💥
@@explosivedude8295 yes that too
@@explosivedude8295 username checks out
Looks like TH-cam has a new comment thing where ai looks at the comments and creates topics from it. Yours was “History repeats itself”
" when we don't learn from history, it tends to repeat it self". this is why I find it so disturbing when ppl try so hard to remove parts of history from the world we live in. that history that was not a testament of greatness but a reminder of the history we wish not to repeat.
Perhaps this level of willful ignorance is somehow inherited.
Well in the case of statues CSA generals, it is not reminder of history we shouldn’t forget. It is a statue of admiration for their efforts in defending slavery. A true monument would show those who suffered the war and the evil that started it in order to avoid repeating history.
@@NandR it is how you take it. look at a painting of a sky and remember the day, or fear the night.
@@zednott except part of the reason why a lot of those statues went up was to change the perception of the Confederacy
@@DeosPraetorian so when you see them you think of good things they did? no, and thats my point.
It’s amazing that there were no fail safes to keep the rob from being pulled too far.. like, a simple device that could be set to a specified distance, preventing the rob from being pulled being on that distance. You could probably make something rudimentary but effective with less than $100 of material from a local hardware store
Just 1950's Army things :/
They went with the cheapest form of prevention possible.A little astrix in a training manual. *Do not move more than 4 inches
@@shawnsustrich7981 4 inches is like 80% of my penis, how is any1 able to eyeball such small distance WTF
a simple strap or lanyard would have done the job ,but then some one would forget to remove it . but theoretically it would be a fail safe solution
What surprised me was that such a powerful moving rod had it's movement done directly... I think that if such arrangement had to be done, it would be best if the rod was lifted through something like a screw and nut
...I have a sickening feeling that Byrns and Legg were sent to their death, or that this task was some sort of punishment for them (this is acknowledged with Bryns being "professionally stuck"), since nobody seemed to really like them and McKinley got caught in the middle hoping to be the cause of incident due to his inexperience or was just someone put there as an "extra".
If something went wrong, the army would consider them all expendable. Test subjects.
People in general usually have almost no problem wishing horrible things on other people they don't like, or have been told to hate. Commanders were aware that there were incidents of the rods getting stuck, and the scientists likely explained the issue at length of how it could mean the death of everyone in the room. Then the scientists were brushed off by cause of rank, or as I mentioned, the commanders knew and didn't care because these men were expendable.
This is some shit you’d read on a terminal in fallout
This story was a lot more horrific than I thought it would be. I can't imagine how the first responders felt seeing all of that first hand
They see much much worse. What do you think happens in high speed car accidents where theres a whole family involved and children.
Probably very disturbed and scared of getting irradiated
“When we don’t learn from history it tends to repeat itself. Until next time....”
Cmon Kyle, the video hits hard enough without the cryptic outro. /shudder
History doesn't repeat, it's more like poetry, it sort of- it rhymes.
that 'until next time' is a powerful inversion of its usual meaning. hubris is a dangerous thing...
That’s some beatnik bad level poetry right there :p
@@frostyguy1989 As discussed at length by Prof. William M. Joel in his thesis, "Pyrotechnics, Novel Ignition Sources, and Perpetual Thermal Reactions."
And the NRA/Qanon nutcases continue to cry foul when they are justifiably compared to nazis
my jaw was on the floor when i realized that legg's body was on the ceiling. what a brutal way to go.
@ConrailFan76 shiiiiet ill take the radiation poisoning thanks
he is probably the one that suffered the least. I would much prefer to be him and die instantly than be the guy that stayed alive for 2h.
@@prodfife To be honest I wouldn't. That level of radiation poisoning equals 2 weeks of suffering. They can't even give you pain meds because your veins don't have enough blood from them leaking out of your now diseased and rotten skin.
@@prodfife You'd regret that
@@grantm.5975 not to mention wouldn’t your organs start to liquify and you would start throwing them up?
I first learned about this accident in 1972 when I was attending Navy Nuclear Power School at Bainbridge, MD. There are some grizzly photos that no one seems to show anymore. Thanks for making that final statement. The stupidity of the design...
These Half-Life stories actually lessen my fear of nuclear power. It's horrible yes, but it'd be a hell of a lot scarier than it already is if it was something unpredictable.
Same. If we know exactly what's going on, and simply neglect to handle it correctly, then the solution is obvious. But if we didn't even know why this happened, well... maybe we shouldn't be doing it.
@Albert Fels Exactly.
@Albert Fels I mean, that's true for most people, period. And honestly, I can't blame people for distrusting an industry with such abysmal messaging. I'm pretty sure we now have the technology to build safe nuclear power plants but that obviously wasn't true in the past and yet, there wasn't a time when people weren't told that nuclear power was absolutely safe by the industry and by politicians and never was a reactor generation taken offline when it turned out that it wasn't safe. So really, can you blame people?
@@unvergebeneid I honestly didn’t understand a thing about how nuclear reactor meltdowns work until watching this- I didn’t understand how they work period, except that they somehow emit heat to turn water to steam. They sound even more terrifying when one realizes they operate on fairly simple principles…
@Nybbl er Actually, that's more than true. We have plenty of wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal energy production going on right now if we'd just Thanos-snap away half the population.
Yeah, the "He pulled too hard" theory sounds most plausible to me.
Can happen very easily with stuck things.
Conservation of momentum be damned!
Yeah, if something doesn't budge so you apply more force to it, and then it suddenly releases, you inevitably end up pulling too hard and losing balance.
Sounds like the most plausible explanation.
There was no system to remove hydrogen gas that accumulated during shut down.
( decay radiation splits water molecues )
When they wiggled the rod to break it free it caused a spark ,ignited the hydrogen and the rod shot up on its own.
The wrench attatched to the rod hit the Electricians Mate in the chest so hard it shattered his rib cage killing him instantly.
The problem with the investigation was the people that designed the plant ( and wrote the proceedures ) are the ones who did the investigation...so they pushed the blame off on a guy who couldnt defend himself.
@@glennchartrand5411 good point
100%
"They had to pull the remains of Legg's body down from the ceiling with hooks on poles"
Me: "Dont think it. Dont say it. Dont think it. Dont say it."
My brain: "Jeez you gotta be pulling my Legg."
You said it
That made me laugh harder than I probably should have.
this comment is Way underrated
Humor wins!
Ahahaha we're going to hell
I’m a junior in high school atm and for fun I wrote a research paper on the SL-1 accident and when I showed it to my physics teacher, he was shocked at the amount of detail I had added that he had never heard of. Thank you so much for your amazing videos Kyle!
Does anyone else get chills when he uses his somber tones during this series
The music aswell
He’s got a great voice.
Anyone else remember when he used to do cool science? Just make cbs documentaries if you want to do that stuff kyle
@@letthemcode7199 You know he still does mostly that here, right? If you don't like this series, just skip these videos. It's not hard.
@@scaper8 you didnt get my point. He doesnt either, he just talks about stupid theories and crunches very little science unless its about narru running. Im just saying i prefered when we got lots of data and he went through it. He just talks talk talks now...and 5 mins of the show is names on a board
Sexy is in the eye of the beholder... I worked in a factory with old machinery that would get stuck, and when someone behind schedule on a night shift lost a finger trying to manually force something to move, the higher-ups blamed him for not following procedure. It's actually super emotionally/politically relevant to me, to see this same pattern repeated in such a high stakes situation.
I've seen this kind of thing play out often enough. Guys hurts himself in order to maintain production, gets blamed for not following procedure.
Or gets in trouble because production fell behind as quotas are missed. Faulty equipment is not seen as a viable excuse as they should have worked harder.
@@TheNathfan yep. Worker reports "hey this equipment is in bad shape," and the higher ups not wanting to spend money to fix/replace it hold the "but it still works" mentality. Then thing breaks/hurts someone/blows up and they blame the person because how in the world could it be the company's fault?
What's that line about the seemingly obvious OSHA regulations? They were written in past worker's blood. Something like that, right? You'd hope common sense would win out, but clearly it still doesn't.
@@TheNathfan that's why we need to teach people to accept "failure " I've told younger kats b4, I'd rather be fired for not making quotas than die for making one. I ain't no 47 Ronin.
@@alext9779 A mantra I've often heard, but never seen in practice - "maintain your equipment or your equipment won't maintain a profit."
@@mildsoup8978 Unfortunately with so many of the people working living at or near paycheck to paycheck, they can't afford to take that route. They should, and they should be able; but they can't.
SL1 added excess fuel to the fuel modules to extend its operating life. This was done after the original design. To compensate for the added reactivity caused by the extra fuel, they covered the OUTSIDE of the fuel modules with boron coated plates (a neutron absorber). This significantly narrowed the channels that the control rods occupied leading to them sticking when these boron coated plates started to warp and deteriorate. This was one of the root causes identified by the report. This and the horrible five control rod design enabled the final disaster scenario. After the SL-1 incident, Adm. Rickover made sure the Army didn't get to play with any more nuclear reactors.
You are telling fairy tales. These boron plates where in the original design. A reactor core has enough fuel to go critical. These boron controls are for regulating the neutron flux. This has nothing to do with excess fuel. The reason that these plates startet to slide heavy is because the plates and boron where corroding and thus not sliding freely in the channels. There is nothing wrong with a five, six or whatever control rod system. The only imported design factor is that a nuc reactor never ever may become critical with only one rod. That is a matter of design. In those times they did not think carefully on normal safity.
Thank God for that. Love him or hate him, he had the right idea about safety being the highest priority when it comes to nuclear power.
From what I heard about Rickover in my time in the navy the guy was made of awesome.
The more I hear about this thing the more it reminds me of the absolutely batfracked repairs that you make as a shift worker. Which, obviously, given that it fuckin exploded, is almost certainly not the level of ingenuity that should be going into a nuclear reactor. Fixing a desk? Sure. Fixing the breaking freezer at work? Sure. Unclogging a drain? Maybe. Fixing a broken rolly-cart that you need to actually work? Absolutely. An aging nuclear reactor? No. Nope. Nuhuh. Nyet. Nein. That is a terrible idea.
I dunno but maybe we should have people with better risk-assesment skills working on this stuff, because every detail of this thing sounds like it was designed by an inattentive 22 year old and then modified by a 19 year old who's been repairing ancient cars and tractors with aluminum foil, coat hangers, and duck tape since he was 13
The Army should have never had them in the first place. Under what scenario would the Army need a nuclear reactor?
Power generation is usually done with portable diesel generators. How portable can a nuclear reactor be?
Glad to see Thor Odinson getting a new and interesting hobby. Great character development from Marvel's writers.
"When we don't learn from history, it tends to repeat itself."
Such true words.
well, at least we learned from Vietnam...
"cancel history" - Some people.....
@@lorenkittel9459 and Korea, and Iraq, and Afghanistan....
wait...
@@idon.t2156 Korea was a UN police action because North Korea trued to invade South Korea and the UN forces had even pushed the North Koreans back to the border between North Korea and China, then China sent and estimated 300,000 troops into Korea and pushed the UN Forces back into South Korea before the UN were able to eventually push them back again leading to a stalemate at the current border today
I love the implication that nuclear is a bad energy type
Growing up in idaho falls, I have heard this story hundreds of times, but no one has told it as beautifully as you did! Thank you Kyle for sharing it with the world!
Growing up outside of Idaho Falls, I have never heard of this story.
I grew up in Burley and we've heard many versions of this story. Every time I've taken the Arco highway to Idaho Falls over the years whenever I get close to that area I get the creeps. Every living thing kinda disappears for several miles out there.
@@Powermad-bu4em the test site is certainly a barren place. Aside from the fuel assembly building, EBR-1, and what's left of EBR-2, there's really not much to see on that road made by man. I wish they would have a marker on the highway where the gravel turn off is though.
@@foddersfollies7494
Yeah once you get through Arco it's a wasteland for sure. Breaking down out there would suuuuuck.
@@Powermad-bu4em it wouldn't be that bad. If you broke down all you'd have to do is step off the road and touch the fence. Security will be there to help very shortly. It would worse breaking down the other direction near Craters.
My guess is the control rod was stuck, leaving the operator to over-exert themselves to move the rod, when it came free a spring action likely took place moving the rod too far. There should have been some leverage device that could have been affixed to the control rod allowing for a slow controlled movement of the rod, a 10 to 1 leverage action such as this probably would have saved the lives of these men.
That's what happened probably
All modern reactors have servo motors to raise and lower control rods. No one is allowed In the reactor compartment when critical
Or even some mechanical limiter, an adjustable bumper, a certain length of chain connecting the rod to the ground, anything...
I was thinking the very same thing. Its almost infuriating there wasnt such a device required to be used on rods that were stuck, since it had a pretty clear history of stuck rods being a problem on this reactor.. And over exerting ones strength to try to manipulate an object... can easily and often does end in some sorta injury... i mean its just common sense thats probably been around since us humans first started manipulating objects w/ our strength =)
It was stuck, so he gave it a big yank! What a Three Stooges situation, because our government put boys in charge of something that was cutting edge yet lethal science at the time.
Something tells me that this is not the first nuclear accident in the USA, but merely the first reported.
Kyl, I'm at the 1 minute mark into this video and I want say thank you for the way you break down these incidents into a way that's easy to understand the history behind the why's of Nuclear Power mistakes when made.
I would argue that simple error made possible by a stack of other, preexisting errors, is much more human, and much, _much_ more haunting than a lover’s malice. I love how somber this series is
The problem is that by accepting that it was a 'simple error' "made possible by a stack of other, preexisting errors", we are accepting that there were preexisting errors in the first place.
For example, let's say the pole got stuck. Either no one reported that the pole was sticking, or people did report the pole's sticking and no one elected to investigate why it kept jamming. One of these is negligence, the other is apathy. Either way, people didn't do their job and were not punished for not doing their job.
If the person was maliciously suicidal as a result of his wife's divorcing him, then the people who made the reactor and refused to clean the reactor regularly can get away with doing the bare minimum. They don't need to replace all control-rod mechanisms to be more rust-resistant, or to not rely on being manually lifted by the imprecise means of human hands, or to perform regular cleaning of the control rods and tanks to remove the ever-accumulating rust. They can lazily replace any single 'massive' control-rod that could repeat this incident with as little as two control-rods of equivalent total power. Because this minimal "fix" is all it takes to prevent a single jilted lover from again attempting to suicide with a nuclear explosion.
@@onijester56 As Kyle mentioned, the sticking control rod was reported, and the army basically said "kick sand". That is why they were in there messing with the control rod, rather then fix it, higher ups determined that people need to go in there and periodically move it to prevent it sticking.
As for getting in and cleaning it, you couldnt. Due to its design, the complete removal or replacement of a rod would immediately cause criticality. Since it was an experimental reactor, it was not designed with the idea of refueling or replacing control rods. At the longest, that particular reactor would last a few years before being retired.
So while the idea of a murder suicide is very tantalizing, more then likely it was the militaries refusal to address issues with design. Even something as simple as installing a removable brace could have likely prevented this particular accident. (though the poor design of the reactor probably would have caused an accident eventually.)
@@tlpineapple1 Yes, anybody who's spent time in the military and read many of the NRC reports of the time, poor engineering and military mindsets resulted in many disasters.
The "lover's malice" was just a way to shift blame onto the men who died. People don't want to take responsibility when things go horribly wrong.
It can easily be a little bit of both, tbh.
I don't really see how the singular moment of "oh the army found no evidence of a lover's quarrel" is supposed to immediately kill the idea that this could've influenced him.
The US police NOWadays even still lies about their own wrongdoings. And if we are to believe they're 100% truthful, how the hell would information like that get into a scientific report on a nuclear meltdown?
Seems a bit too easy to go "not in the report, therefore not real", rather than accept that the guy just had this extra bit of shit to deal with on top of the pile of garbage and the terrible safety precautions around him.
Literally no report in the world can glimpse into the mind of a dead person to evaluate their very last moments.
And hard disagree on the "haunting" part. There's nothing haunting about human error creating a catastrophe in an already bad situation. Spilling your coffee on your keyboard would be just as "haunting". Personally the idea of a man deciding to not just kill a man AND himself, but also another bystander, just out of spite; that opens up much more horrifying depths of humanity than just "oopsy, pulled too hard".
"History will repeat the lesson until it is taught."
- 1st Sgt. Terrence Popp [Ret.]
I don’t know who Sgt. Popp is, but they have my respect for the intelligence of that statement.
Roger, that.
He was wrong. The word should be "learned"
@@ginnyjollykidd I'm not sure. From the point of view of the student, "learned" seems correct. But if you are personified History, and doing the teaching, "taught" looks okay.
1SG Popp is a smart man.
So, in the first 3 1/2 minutes of this video we know exactly why this tragic accident happened - a command and systems failure.
These men were not at fault, there was no conspiracy, it was simply the case that individually and as a group they should never have been selected for this kind of work. It's 'interesting' to consider that nearly every major accident has the same route cause but instead of lessons learned the individuals involved are blamed.
I’ve read all the reports in great detail: an extremely interesting accident. The surprising this, when I read this, is how much the health physicists knew. A fascinating (and sad) event.
My late grandfather did the sheet metal work on SL-1. He always said that though the official line was the love triangle, it was really just "stupid kids being stupid". I highly recommend William McKeown's 2003 book, "Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident". He had access to a LOT more information and internal military investigative reports and other declassified documents. Tucker's book is from 1968 and is, sadly, horribly out of date.
Also, the bodies were returned to the family. There's some real strangeness there. One family demanded to see the remains. A wish that was....kind of...granted. The most radioactive parts were removed, entirely, and put in lead caskets and interred in the trench with the rest of the bulldozed remains, as well as personal items, like watches and clothing. What was only very radioactive(or less) was given to the families in sealed lead coffins that were buried at double depth and encased in concrete. One of them is actually in Arlington. All three have special instructions that if anyone of them is exhumed, the DoE and DoD are to be notified immediately, and THEY have ultimate authority in approving or denying exhumation. And they WILL deny anyone the permission to disinter any of those three men.
You can't be from that area and be completely ignorant to the fact that in the middle of SE Idaho, is the largest concentration of nuclear reactors in the world. And no one ever forgets SL-1.
Not to mention how close to Yellowstone Idaho Falls is… I was raised in the area and wonder what kind of chaos will go down if Yellowstone pops off. It’s less than 200 miles apart… Gods only know what the death toll would be if a pyroclastic flow hit the site…
@@brodesson literally what I was thinking when watching this video. As tragic as all the "What if?" videos are on what if Yellowstone were to erupt, I have not heard one single one mention the consequences of SL-1's remains interacting with the disaster.
@@cruzgomes5660 I knew cause of Ricks college/ BYU-I… one of the buildings is built on a fault. I thought what if someone didn’t realize that, why couldn’t they oversee the issues with the Navy site N. of IF? Hell the entire Eastern side of Idaho is seismically active…
You and the channel get this wrong... it's not 1968. Tucker's book is the newest one out, 2009, and is the one with all the autopsy proof used in this video ... and the Wikipedia SL-1 article that I helped write.
@@uruiamnot what in the coldest abyss are you even blathering about?
Holy cow, Kyle covering one of my all time favorite pieces of nuclear history? Christmas came early. Always thought this accident would make for a really suspenseful Hollywood style movie.
You’re right, that would be an incredible movie!
@@maple22moose44 I should've mentioned there IS a fan film available on TH-cam called "Prompt Critical," but it isn't very good. Extremely low budget, but worth a watch if you want to see a short dramatization of the events. When I say "low budget"...I think they used a water treatment plant or something for the "reactor room." It's literally just a bunch of white pipes and fly wheels. Pretty funny, but if you squint a little and use your imagination, I guess it could be what someone would think a nuclear reactor would look like.
The movie would focus entirely on a fictional love triangle and get most of the details WRONG. Like they always do.
You right. I would watch that movie
I drive by the site of this on a regular basis. You wouldnt believe how close it is to the state highway. A few hundred yards i would guess. Ive been fascinated by this story for years. It amazes me how many people dont know about this nuclear disaster
The Army putting 3 joes in charge of a nuclear reactor without training them, then blaming THEM for its failure is 100% on brand.
The Three Stooges In: “The Only Fatal Nuclear Reactor Meltdown In United States History.”
The ultimate definition of leadership in the Army. Somethings never changes
Given the unacceptable behavior of Legg, it seems unconscionable that they allowed him to work with someone he hated and also to work with something so dangerous.
I read the SL-1 story on Wiki , honestly one of the most grusome deaths ever recorded , the rod went in through his groin and out through his shoulder , piercing him to the ceiling. In terms of gorey deaths this gotta be up there !
He would have been dead before he could process it
"When we don't learn from history, it tends to repeat itself"
I thought I was prepared to hear this phrase but by god did it hit me hard.
"...until next time"
At least we have learned from this particular accident.
Sadly the only thing we lern from history is that we don’t lern from history. 😢
About half way through, the fact that unlike your other videos you haven't made an onscreen appearance conveys to me a great sense of respect to the people who died. I have to tip my hat, sir.
Here here
Came here from Patreon, an Assoc. Prof.
This was a serious, but very educational video. Loved sitting down and listening, thank you Kyle.
17:38 GALVANIZED SQUARE STEEL
Ran to the comments lol
Whenever I see these, I'm split in my reaction. On the one hand, the stories capture my attention and imagination in a way I kind of enjoy? On the other hand, I'm horrified that there is yet another story.
Growing up within an hour of the site, we’d learn about it in high school but they only discussed the event, not the personality clashes of the crew or any of the theories. But the idea of a man getting impaled to the ceiling even as a kid gave me chills.
What gives me the chills is not only that, but the fact in a flash a person could absorb enough radiation to kill him in an hour or less. That is thousands or tens of thousands of Rads, 600 rads kills everyone and most die of much less than that.
I believe what happened was the rod got stuck and maybe after a minute or two of trying to gently work it free he got frustrated a bit and gave the control rod a yank. And perhaps with him not being in the best state of mind for work he yanked it a bit harder than he probably should have and the rod moved more than he anticipated. I bet he instantly realized his mistake but there was just no time to fix it.
There’s just something about Kyle’s voice that’s easy to listen to.
His voice is like my english teacher's. Her voice can put me to sleep and so can Kyle's.
I highly agree. He has an excellent voice for this sort of work - the inflections are right where they need to be, and the scripts are top-notch!
It's just sad to know that more than likely their last moments on Earth they were all very angry frustrated depressed or feeling some other negative emotions
These kinds of incidents are scarier than any horror film.
Exactly. Because they are real.
@Arna Cook Antarctica is everything but safe
Pretty much ANY "incident" that is an industrial accident is scary but often nuclear power accidents seem just a little scarier for people that don't understand radiation because it is something that seems completely unknown but can still kill you. However the chances you will sick and/or die from it are so low (unless you hang out in a basement that has radioactive particles floating around) that it is "almost" a moot issue unless your job involves dealing with radioactive substances. Each year thousand die horrible deaths by automobile accidents which is also a scary way to die but because we are use to it, we really don't think about it. While you can't see radiation, at lethal levels people report there is a metallic taste to the air and your skin feels like it is being pricked by needles. Also people often soon experience fatigue, nausea, and/or headaches if they remain in such areas If you are ever in an area that you are experiencing one or more symptoms it would best to relocate to an safer area before you get a dose that will cause radiation sickness or even death.
Yuppppppp
And to imagine there are so many nuclear weapons sitting around 😂😂😂
I have to admit, this is the best video on youtube that explains why things went so wrong in this disaster, and Ive watched several videos on this one.
"Hit with pipe wrenches."
I know not to use the right tool for the job, working in the oil and gas industry. You're telling me that these guys used pipe wrenches as hammers in a nuclear facility? I'd nope out of there real quick. I can risk losing a job, versus millions / billions of damage to property. That isn't even including the priceless lives of my coworkers.
It's the military; You can't "quit"...Well, you CAN, but you spend some time in Leavenworth...They USED TO...
I use anything i can find as a hamer if i Dont have a real hamer close but in somthing this dangerous nope
@George Thomas 1 word, corruption.
You don't understand army do you? Lol
I don't think a real Hammer is the right tool for the job either... Some sort of controllable jack seems far more suitable.
I think it's sad that the men never got a proper burial and that their families never got their bodies back. Imagine not even being able to visit your dead relatives grave, especially when they had died in such a horrific manner. Heartbreaking.
The families can visit the grave sites, it's just that the bodies are buried around 18' down in lead-lined caskets surrounded by and covered with cement. The bodies are apparently so radioactive that opening the casket would give you a lethal dose of radiation. I believe at least one of them is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
It's not sad at all. The millions of people who cremate their loved ones seem to manage...
@@koitorob Yep. Their loved ones could manage.
Not to be mean, but asking someone to take a significant radiation dose for a corpse... uh, just no. The fact that they got an autopsy and weren't just dumped in with the other high-level waste was already going above and beyond.
@@nicholasconder4703 they are all buried in proper places. At least, part of them
@@travcollier Although for at least one of the families the funeral service lasted at most 5 minutes because of the potential for receiving a lethal dose of radiation. Scary stuff.
“When we don’t learn from history, it tends to repeat itself…until next time.”
Ominous from start to finish
My great grandfather was involved in part of the clean up in Idaho falls and knew one of the men involved in accident. I showed this video to my grandma who showed me the photos and videos used in this video. I am amazed at the level of love and devotion to this subject. Keep doing amazing work Kyle!!
So in other words, this happened bc we treated the nuclear reactor like we do our infrastructure.
Which is why I will never support nuclear power in America. We treat our infrastructure like shit and our workforce like shit, it's only a matter of time before we push our luck and get stuck with our own Yee-Haw Chernobyl
yes
@@taterthepenguin if you think the US is bad then move to a third world country and tell me how that is. People don't know how good they have it lmao.
@@CodeineAbdulJabbar If you have to move to a third world country to compare the badness of US infrastructure that's more damning of the US than anything.
@@CodeineAbdulJabbar most third world countries are like that because of the US. It's not a vacuum.
Worse still we shouldn't be pointing at said countries to have an example of something worse. That shows we're in the bottom of the barrel, which is a terrible realization to be ok with.
Edited: I honestly don't know how i goofed up the name of the literal channel, my bad lol.
I'm distantly related to Richard Legg. My grandfather would've been his first cousin once removed. There's another book I believe called "The SL-1 Incident" which details far more, my mom has read it and I intend to read the rest of it when I come back to my hometown next year. This book had information that wasn't declassified by the gov until like 2003.
I wanted to thank the heck out of Kyle Hill who took the time to make a vid on this event. You hit it right on the dot on how this could've been prevented if the government didn't neglect the needed maintenance. I was also never able to find an actual picture of him online anywhere, but I'm so glad someone could find this. I'm really thankful because I never knew what he looked like. 🙏🏻
I also wanted to clear up a few important factors regarding the drama the media portrayed on the incident to distract the severe government neglect on the facility at hand. There was no murder/suicide. This was an act of carelessness and leaving dangerous responsibilities on people with limited experience. Like Kyle described in the video, Chernobyl happened in the same fashion.
The reason Legg headbutted with Byrnes (sorry if I used the wrong name, couldn't remember which one was the one w/ marriage probs) at that party was because Byrnes was sneaking off with prostitutes when Legg knew he was married. The men drank and partied at the same places. Even if there was a love triangle, which I highly doubt, Byrnes already screwed it up. Family have always said Richard and his brothers were troublesome and downright cocky, but he really was sick of the way Byrnes acted.
Also a portion of Legg's remains did get sent back to be buried in my hometown in MI. It was put into a lead capsule and buried in so many feet of concrete. The government used to have to come out to the gravesite yearly to check radiation levels but I'm not sure if they do anymore.
The burial was a bit creepy on its own bc apparently they didn't mix the concrete right and the capsule sarcophagus just popped back up, scared the hell out of the town.
Interesting to know, thank you!
You wrote "John", but they're addressed as "Kyle".
Tell me you don't watch this channel without telling me you don't watch this channel. 💀
Edit: Also, there's pictures of Richard Legg on Google... Nice try.
@Runavala No, I don't watch this channel relatively often. This video was suggested to me and i subscribed not long after. Yes, I confused the names from one of the men mentioned in this event. My deepest apologies.
If you know of any other existing photo online besides the one this video showed, it'd be kinda greatly appreciated if you dropped a link? I don't personally know who his direct descendants are, as I said they're distant cousins of my maternal grandfather or somewhere on my mother's side anyway. My mother seldom visited his close family as they were very private. She met his mother a couple of times and apparently showed her a photo of him but that was like, close to 45 years ago now. She'd be more enthused to see other photos than I would!
Feel free to be a jerk and disregard my comments as a big fabricated lie but at least drop a link to the other photos you claim to see? If I really have to, I'll figure out how to link a personal photo of my Kingston school card I still have in my wallet lol. I have like dozens of photos of Legg family closer to my side (edit: possibly one of his brothers as well) at my moms place but ya won't get that for another 6 months lol. Quite sure my mom has Legg family tree copies from Ancestry as well, it's literally my grandfather's mother's maiden name...
@Runavala yooo, you got a link pls? Like I said ik that the one pic this video mentioned is online but if you know of any other existing photo on here that'd be, well, nice?
History teacher in New Mexico here. Thanks for giving me so many ideas for New Mexico history, as well as just world history. You really are an amazing storyteller. Keep it up!
I walked this site in early 1992. In addition, I snapped a picture of a prototype nuclear aircraft engine in front of what I assume was the former offsite hot shop.
Love the videos, Kyle.
Pleeeeeeeease, pleeeeeease keep making these videos! I'm really enjoying the Half Life Histories series you're doing! You always thank us for watching, I wanna say thank you, and the whole facility staff (yes, including Kevin(s) lol) for all this content!
Can't wait for the next one :D
I was a nuclear electrician in the navy , we had to learn about this accident .
When I joined, you score above 90 on the ASVAB, they were practically begging you to go nuke.
@@nathaniel3102 I didnt end up joining, but i was working with the navy for 3 years because of asvab scores and they were really trying to get me to go nuke.
@@faithrider94 Too bad you didn't sign, but at least you were NAVY adjacent, so thanks for your support 🤜🤛 ...but yeah, I kept thinking "wow, should I be worried? Is there some big nuclear program in the works or something?" ...so instead I went AECF (which now has a different designation) instead of nuke, but my cousin went nuke and ended up just polishing warheads in [redacted] 😜.
@@nathaniel3102 Navy nukes don't polish warheads, they only work on reactors.
@@wasd____ Didn't say my cousin was NAVY. He's AF, and that is what he told me. But thanks for calling me out. Want my DD214?
These videos are my favorites. This is like a tv series, very engaging, doesn't even feel like 25 minutes
Like TV except without commercials and this is factual without any agenda to push. So, nothing like cable TV lol
I left Oregon 2 days ago to move to Montana. stayed at a really cool donation based private campground in Arco. REALLY cool little town with super nice people. I got to talk to a nice old lady who's husband was one of the people who died. Her son, went back to help clean up the site.
A lot of military fatalities have to do with something becoming a projectile when somebody is standing nearby and not expecting it. Personally, I never bought the "love triangle" story. Just some guys who made a fatal error. It wasn't the first time it would happen and nuclear energy was still in its infancy back then.
There was an explosion in one of the turrets of the battleship Iowa in the 80s. One of the theories was that one of the men killed was gay and suicidal:
"The first investigation into the explosion, conducted by the U.S. Navy, concluded that one of the gun turret crew members, Clayton Hartwig, who died in the explosion, had deliberately caused it. During the investigation, numerous leaks to the media, later attributed to U.S. Navy officers and investigators, implied that Hartwig and another sailor, Kendall Truitt, had engaged in a romantic relationship and that Hartwig had caused the explosion after their relationship had soured. However, in its report, the U.S. Navy concluded that the evidence did not show that Hartwig was homosexual but that he was suicidal and had caused the explosion with either an electronic or chemical detonator."
@@dongquixote7138 Captain Fred Moosally infamously threw his crew under the bus:
"Moosally testified that the Navy had assigned personnel of inferior quality to the Iowa. The investigation found that Iowa had been operating with severe deficiencies in safety and training procedures, for which Moosally was disciplined."
The Navy concluded that the cause of the explosion could not be known. The Captain made up the story about Hartwig to avoid blame. A real scumbag that guy. He even ordered the men to repaint the ship on their way back to port after the explosion. Had the outside painted so the families couldn't see the damage, and had the inside painted to cover up all the blood and burns and tossed most of the bodies over board. There wasn't much left for NCIS to investigate which added to the confusion.
I am unable to comprehend that there wasn't an NCO on duty at the same time as these three enlisted. As an Army Vet that held the rank of Specialist... 1961 I cannot believe that a facility as such wouldn't have a Sargent or even a Staff Sargent on duty with them.
The navy electician had a NCO rank
SL1 was designed and controlled by civilians under army contract. J
The whole point of SL-1 was to show reactors were safe enough for civilians to have them in power plants at remote research stations in the Antarctic, listening posts in “neutral countries” that sort of thing - places where you couldn’t just drop in a bunch of Army specialists like my dad unnoticed if something went sideways. My dad was a nuclear ordinance officer, and he told us in later years he saw things that would curl your hair, just because everybody was so scared to tell people working on the things stuff like, “if you pick this up with a forklift, and the thing gets pierced or cracks open if you drop it, you will all die.” Just in case they were a “Red.” Dad said you do see your life flash before your eyes when you see “something” out of the transport crate, rolling back and forth on the forklift because the guys that worked for him all wanted to go party after work and wanted to hurry and get uthe thing onto the truck. Shortly before dad’s death from cancer, he told me to go look in his old footlocker after he passed. When I looked, there were two Geiger counters, and two notebooks. Mom never knew but dad tested my sister and I when we were babies to make sure he wasn’t contaminating us. There was a list of dates and readings, with the occasional note like “fussy, but no signs of rad.” Miss you, daddy, every dang day.
@@bwktlcnAnd then there was a treaty banning nukes from Antartica.
Kyle, this was excellent. I worked in the nuclear power field for 20 years and taught SL-1, Chernobyl, and TMI scenarios. You simplified some of the facts, but did an excellent job!!! Well done good sir.
I've watched several of your videos, and I like your style. Very simple, straight forward, not exaggerated or overblown, just letting the facts speak for themselves, and I like that. It's very refreshing amongst click bait and irritatingly, excessively dramatic videos
Glad you covered this. It's not as well known, but it deserves to be remembered.
Please, PLEASE keep doing these. This is seriously one of the greatest docu-series-esc things I've ever seen, and it's been absolutely mind blowing, and i can only hope you continue doing things like this.
I love your other content, but this is just.... this is good.
Working in the nuclear engineering field for years out there at that location it was a sobering drive past that big dirt pile that now covers the remains of this tragic event. The original interior pictures from investigators are etched indelibly in my mind.
Love your name
@@JohnSmith-fl6qd Yikes and yikes again.
@@zenmello7616 Anyone that uses the word "Yikes" is a bundle of sticks.
@@eclipsegfxable Real creative, makes sense from the "Let's Go Brandon" crowd. Just say what you mean, you aren't clever.
@@zenmello7616 How's that voter remorse going? lol Biden can't even string a sentence together. Cope.
As a maintenance electrician around the same age as these guys, I'm really glad we have strict safety procedures and my work can't cause a massive radioactive explosion. I can't imagine the stakes being this high, a lot of people get comfortable with danger in a maintenance setting but luckily I'm just as cautious of electricity as I was in the beginning, if not more after seeing some arc flashes that vaporize copper lol