The fact the guy thought it’d be safe due to the fact the power was off is both funny and surprisingly understandable. Without proper training, radiation sources seem no different from other dangerous machinery, as in on = dangerous, and off = safe.
@@GreenNeonLine If you're not aware that the contents of the room are radioactive as a result of poor training, the only clue that you would get if something was radioactive, was if it would glow. This was entirely preventable.
I've made that mistake. I was replacing an electric heating element on a test machine I operate at work. Programmable logic controller was not running, master control relay was open, though the main breaker was closed. I was about to connect the wiring for the heater into the terminal block when one lead brushed my left palm and I felt a sharp sting. Turns out that, even with the controller stopped and control power off, there was still current to the heater. It turned out that the heater failed because the solid-state relay (basically a high-power transistor) had also failed, and it shorted out when it failed. Some of the other equipment using solid-state relays also had an interposing relay, controlled by the heater limit controller. This one didn't, so the heater was shorted right to the 480V main. Not a bad jolt, but still a near miss.
It's about poor education in schools. It must be a common knowledge, radiation source have no external power. Seems like workers confused radiation source with x-ray source.
well, except if you are working with radiation on a daily basis, in a company that core busines is radiation, then you must be extremely dumb to think that, even if you are the janitor.
Having a civil war made things worse, but even with that happening they still went above and beyond. "We've overriden all the safety systems we can from outside the door, so now it's time to go to the roof."
Boy, wait until you hear about the case behind the most radioactive human in history 💀 used literal common buckets with no protection to manually pour a radioactive substance into an open vat
@@SangheiliSpecOp BRO it was ridiculous! His name was Hisashi Ouchi, and if I remember correctly, he got (at least) 15 TIMES of what's considered a lethal dose of radiation to a human being because of it.
It's terrifying how run down all these facilities look. I'm not expecting guilded wall paper or anything but these always look like unfinished basements, in abandoned houses, of a ghost town, on the outskirts of a long forgotten wasteland, haphazardly buried 5-9 inches underground, just below the landfill that was safely burnt to a pulp, after a tornado ripped through the town, killing everyone. It's a horror show man!
As a person that has lived in El Salvador for many years, it’s still occurring in modern day San Salvador and throughout the country. The war was devastating and still to this day the country is very poor. Even hospitals there tend to look like this. And sadly events like this happen all the time due to lack of knowledge and training
I was going to make a comment about how it’s these types of buildings that would be the ones you expect to find radiological incidents in, so the data pool is skewed, but Chang above me mentioned that’s just typical of San Salvador. damn..
imagine the horror felt by those supplier-sent experts, being escorted by the employees when they walked up to the door and then the employees did the rad. probe button trick and then shimmied the lock.
ikr I love how they disabled the machine after securing the pencils. Clearly these guys were not equipped to operate this machine kind of like a toddler with daddys gun
Radiation incident ✔ Shift change ✔ Deteriorated checks and balances ✔ A quintessential Plainly Difficult video. Most excellent. A solid return to form.
As a retired Radiographer, I was amazed that the first fellow thought you could turn off the radiation source. Cobalt60 don’t work that way☢️ Love your work; devour them all; Many thanks!!
One would wonder what kind of facility dealing with radioactive matter hires operators that weren't conversant with basic knowledge about radiation and radioactivity. Granted there was a civil war, and no modern way to access manuals, instructions or help from the OEM. But that was still shockingly, painfully ignorant of the guy working with this sign ☢️ day in, day out.
I’m what would be considered a *child* and even I knew that radiation can’t just be turned off that’s- not how it works, I believe electromagnetic radiation can be manipulated like that but not an actual radioactive source like cobalt 60 or uranium, you’d have to block that with something (like their little water pool) to “stop” it and not “cut the power”
@@SnakeDude. That word covers a broad range of ages, lol. I would indeed expect a high schooler to understand that radiation can’t just be turned off. At least, a decently educated high schooler.
It's pretty rife in most industries, it's limited industries with the potential to directly affect more than those on scene that get more attention (for obvious reasons). If you're in the area you might catch random news items about industrial deaths or heavy injury (like corn silo accidents, or a car wash incident), but it's common in workplaces with fast paces and low pay, like any factory, warehouse, restaurant (high numbers of cuts and burns, mostly minor), meat processing plants (enough for several videos), farming (animals and machines), convenience stores (especially in regards to lack of employee safety in preventing robberies as well as employees ignoring or not having time to follow procedures), etc. Most of us even ignore a lot of safety precautions at home, because they're generally about lowering risk vs a potential harm, and since we get used to that with only occasional bad results, those habits can carry over. How many of you actually carry a pair of scissors at your side with the blades down? Or pass a knife to someone by holding the blade so they can easily grip the handle? Or always use glue in only a well ventilated area? Unplugged an appliance using the cord instead of the plug? Touched a pet while it was eating (individual results will vary)? How many times have you barked a shin or stubbed a toe because you didn't turn on a light? We remember oven mitts (usually) because that's protection vs guaranteed harm, but we get lax against potential harm all the time (think drivers and phones).
It depends on the facility, if you have a good safety culture and a healthy respect for radiation, these units can operate for decades with nary an incident. I used to work in a facility with gamma irradiators and let me tell you, we took the responsibility seriously. Fun aside, we also had potted trees outside the chamber to show how safe it was but still a lot of people noped out of going to that side of the building. With my job I had no choice, so I got to know the chamber operators really well. Standup guys, I miss working with them.
I've never heard of this event and both my parents are from El Salvador. I'm glad you've covered this topic. I have learned something new about my parents' home. I think they were probably pre-occupied with the Salvadoran Civil War.
The Cherenkov radiation glow would have been really cool to see, but completely terrifying at the same time, knowing it's going to be one of the last things you witness in your now very short life.
If you want to see it without being exposed you could probably get a job working with a nuclear research reactor, they often have a blue glow hidden beneath a lot of water which keeps it safe as long as you don’t go swimming.
@@justanotheryoutubechannel Apologies in advance for being 'that guy'. You can actually swim in the forbidden pools of your average nuclear power plant, even while the reactor is running. Water is surprisingly effective at blocking radiation, so you would be fine, so long as you stay at the surface and don't swallow the water. Don't forget all the decon procedures you'd have to go through afterwards, because its better to be safe than sorry.
@@hauntedshadowslegacy2826 Hey, nukes are great for taking edges off. As well as creating a bunch of other edges... really it depends on the material and how close it is to the weapon.
Here's to hoping current affairs will not contribute to more PD video's. But missiles being fired at an active nuclear power plant is not the definition of sound judgment.
@@zorktxandnand3774 please keep the arguments fact based. 1: There was a shelling not an missile strike... Those are 2 *very* *very* different things . 2 : They precisely damaged the power output section that has nothing to do with the reactor itself and makes sense from a strategic standpoint. 3 : The reactor in question is dubble layered so to say. Meaning even if you would damage it beyond repair it would not release any radioactive material.
I love your depiction of the humanoid form, particularly the guy with his hands in his pockets. Don't ever change that. And as always, the content is great, interesting and well delivered.
A nasty inevitability, unfortunately. IIRC, at least one of the three men believed (due to lack of training/education) that the irradiator functioned like an x-ray machine, and that cutting power to it would eliminate any danger. That there is no shortage of such stories simply proves how inadequate regulation of radiological sources/equipment has been (and still is, to a certain extent).
@@mikeselectricstuff it’s the same basic mechanism that causes damage, ionizing radiation. It’s like putting a “hot” warning on both a stove and an eternally burning tire fire but more needed for both because it´s not obvious (best analogy I could give but yea the fact that you can turn one off and not the other is not a reason to use a completely different symbol. It is a reason to make sure it’s known which you can/can’t turn off, and there are also some XRay designs which you can’t turn off, with radiation assume there is no turn off unless you know for sure otherwise)
You are dangerously misinformed if you really think X-ray machines contain no radiation when they are turned off. X-ray machines, too, contain a radiation source that emits radiation at all times. It is placed within a chamber with a mechanical shutter that is opened when the radiation is used to expose x-ray film and supposed to be closed at all other times so no radiation escapes. There have been very unfortunate accidents with X-ray machines that had somehow found their way into of the hands of unsuspecting lays, for example scrap metal peddlers etc.
@@TDCflyer Sorry, but you’re suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. What you’re describing is a gamma-ray sourced radiotherapy machine (minus the nonsense about x-ray film). X-rays are generated electrically by directing electrons at a target which then emits x-rays. There is no residual radiation once power is disengaged from the x-ray tube. It’s always worthwhile fact-checking yourself.
The typical Schrödinger irradiation rack in a room: harmless and deadly at the same time. Utterly horrible and fascinating, as all your radiological event videos !
What's really creepy is that you can see distortion in the photos of the source pencils, and it isn't from age or low quality. Radiation can cause distortion on photos.
The mention of the plant withholding information about the dangers of the materials being handled to the staff reminds me of the Radium Girls. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
You could drive yourself mad trying to understand the thought process that went: "A team of designers and engineers created an elaborate safety system, let's circumvent it". Then along comes another genius who just jams a knife in it.
You have to remember that radiation is invisible to the human eye. While specially educated people knew of the dangers of radiation, your average person didn't. Especially in those days. They likely saw all the safety precautions as just being silly.
@@EBTwitts Yup. I think radiation warning signs should be in terms of a radiation exposure event most people are familiar with - a sunburn. There are lots of numerical problems with this, but you can fudge them away. The point is to give people a rough number that they can relate to. Tell the average person 1 Gray/hr and you'll get a blank stare. But tell them 10 sunburns per second and they immediately know they do NOT want to bypass the safety measures, nor walk into the room without triple-checking to make absolutely sure the radiation source is retracted.
@@EBTwitts Yet if you're being hired for a job you could literally give someone a page of paper that explains this is dangerous and the gist of it. As far as it goes it is like CO2 poisoning but 100000x worse. There is 1000s of invisible but deadly things that people know of, even a fart joke. Legitimately there is millions of things you can reference and point to explaining with minimal effort.
@@EBTwitts On the other hand people will sidestep safety features for things that are blatantly dangerous for the sake of time, like removing panels to clear blockages without having to stop a machine. Fortunately, although the person from that story (heard from my uncle's work) was caught in the machine and crushed a bit they did just about survive.
The thought process is easy to understand: "We can't get it serviced properly or get new parts or anything because of the goddamn war (which also has us paranoid so we're being tight-lipped to employees), but we can't afford to shut down so we'll bodge and hack if we have to to keep things going". Disappointing? Yes. A show of somewhat skewed priorities? Yes. But hardly incomprehensible, sadly enough.
I used to work in a facility that had a similar gamma sterilizer and luckily 1) all of our interlocks worked as intended and 2) everyone was trained to respect the fact that radiation is not to be taken lightly! Great video! And best pizza? Thin crust pepperoni, green peppers, and red onion.
Complacency is something that continually seems to happen with these radiation events. People get used to working with it and they think they have all the bases covered. Except they don’t and the suffering will either be tragic or horrific.
@@robinwells8879 The guy thinking the machine was safe as long as the power was off is especially chilling. It's completely wrong, but also perfectly logical if you don't know how this kind of setup really works. I mean, I don't know how widespread microwave ovens and medical X-ray machines were in El Salvador in the 1980s, but they're the most commonplace radiation* sources I can think of that most people in Western socities will have seen, and _they_ work like that. * I know microwave ovens don't generate _ionizing_ radiation, but they still work on a similar principle, with a magnetron and whatnot
A more apt video that comes to mind when it comes to complacency is the demon core video(s). It was a leading physicist in the field that got so complacent as to use a screwdriver as a lever to prevent criticality. And then one day the screwdriver slipped. Oops!
That’s great that you guys are taught this in school, disasters like this really should be taught so people remember these disasters and they can’t be repeated. I grew up in England and I was taught that nuclear disasters were something *other* countries had, and they never mentioned any of our events, it wasn’t until years later that I discovered Windscale or the awful circumstances at Dournray and Sellafield which include rested out pools full of loose radioactive sludge with seabirds swimming in them, and waste being dumped into drilling shafts full of seawater.
When I was taking flying lessons and was obsessed by all things aviation, I used to read flying magazines and always skip ahead to the accident and incident report articles. Weird maybe, but I always thought that a key part of not making mistakes is learning how not to repeat others' mistakes, and also to imagine yourself in their position to think what could or should have been done differently. I think that's true of any risky undertaking, including operating a facility that handles nuclear power or material. It's also worth noting that while nuclear reactors get all the attention, it's these smaller facilities like the one in this video, as well as medical devices, which are more likely to be near your home, in nondescript buildings that do not look scary, and which may have knucklehead operators attending them. It's worth educating the general public to be cautious and know what to look out for. Think of the two untrained fellows in this vid, or the scrap metal collectors we've heard about who accidentally hurt their own children.
Nah, you're fine. My former boss called channels like PD "porn for problem solvers." Meaning, we like to see how disasters happen so we can figure out how best to find both the cause and the solution. It's great brain training!
I do too. I am often interested in knowing whether an accident is due to negligence, neglect, ignorance or just plain stupidity. With, on a sliding scale, ignorance being a little more forgivable. Stupidity not so much.
Having previously worked in a facility that used Cobalt 60 pucks as test samples, I felt myself puckering up and cringing multiple times during this episode. I felt like a stereotypical movie crowd in an '80s slasher film screaming "no don't go in there!"
All I can muster is contempt. How could they _possibly_ not have understood irradiation? _It was their job._ Yes, this thing that kills bugs on dead tomatoes _will make you dead too._
@@JoshSweetvale The staff was kept in the dark and only trained verbally. The trained staff was fired when an American company purchased the place. Qualified is to expensive.
Hey PD. Just wanted to thank you for the thorough research you do in each video and the clear way you present stuff. Hope you keep the channel going for a long time mate. Cheers
3 men walk into a room to clear an industrial blockage. First guy says " Do you taste that? The air tastes like metal." The second guy says "Quite and hurry up. I want to get home." Third guy looks around and back to the other two then says "Oh shit", with a steadily growing look of panic on his face, "this is a Plainly Difficult video."
My mom's ex boyfriend was the director of a food irradiation plant, I'll never forget the racks of cobalt 60 submerged in water. It was beautiful, the concrete maze is how it was set up. I asked him what would happen if someone was standing in the room when the racks were raised? He said it would liquefy the person. What he didn't say was it would be relatively slowly. Granted this was I think 1988 so I don't think they would allow kids in places like that now even if It was completely safe at the time. It helped fuel my fascination with ionizing radiation.
I've watched every video on your channel, despite never having much interest some of the subjects, but your story telling and humour makes me keep coming back and enjoying learning !
I honestly believe I can design a dam. I definitely know enough to be a dam inspector. I mean, granted, the bar is pretty low- but screw it, I'm ready to put my Plainly Difficult education to the test!
@@PlainlyDifficult I'm the same I love your vids. Can't believe there has been so many accidents that just don't get talked about. Glad you are educating us
I was wondering if you could do an explanation video of what all the different radiation units mean? There's becquerel, curies, roentgen, gray, sieverts, rads, rem, as well as dosimeters and geiger counters, and I have no idea what the differences between any of them are. Love your videos!
Rad and Roentgen are units of radiation levels and are interchangable and is the amount of radiation that deposits 100 ergs of energy per gram of any given mass. A REM (Roentgen Equivalent Man) is a unit of biological damage and is the amount of biological damage done by depositing the equivalent of a Rad of x-rays into 100 grams of soft body tissue. A Dose Rate is the the accumulation of biological damage over time and is often expressed in REM/hr (though milli-REM/hr or mR/hr is more common) A Curie is a unit of activity. A 1 Curie cobalt-60 point source will emit 1 Rad of gamma radiation at 1 meter. A quality Factor is the difference that a Rad of different radiation (gamma, beta and neutron radiation of various energy levels) will do to produce damage (REM) such that the quality factor from a Cobalt-60 source is "1" meaning it will produce 1 REM/hr from a point source 1 meter away. And finally, grays and seiverts exists because people in the medical field don't want to be like the rest of the article 104 trained community so they invented their own units just to confuse things. (They actually use them to define dose and level without having to define the dose rate and quality factor by including them in the definition, which is fine if you don't need to be specific, but actual radiation workers, scientists and engineers use the legacy units because of the need to analyze source and type of radiation to determine nuclides of concern and shielding needed among other things so REM, rad, Roetgen, Cu and QF are never going away.)
A lot of them are basically the same. Some are used to discuss background radiation, others discuss actual dose absorbed, others discuss radiation emitted. They are used interchangeably all the time to express in somewhat vague terms the severity of radiation exposure. It is not uncommon to have the same machine expressing things in 2 or 3 units. I agree it’s confusing and dumb.
My gosh... it's simply astounding how it can get to the point that the operators didn't even know they were working with a radiation machine nor were trained in radioactivity...
I appreciate you using the same unit of measure for radiation exposure in these videos, I've noticed most other people's videos vacillate between multiple units of measure!
There is no one single "correct" unit for radiation. The multiple units are because they are measuring different things. - Amount of dangerous (ionizing) radioactive particles emitted by the source each second (becquerel or curie) - Amount of radioactive particles absorbed by the target (like food) or person (gray or rad) - And estimated cumulative effect of the absorbed radiation after factoring type and energy level of the particles, and their effect on biology (sievert or rem). e.g. Alpha particles sources are usually low-risk because they can be shielded by a sheet of paper or a layer of dead skin (you can buy them on Amazon - tritium vials). But if they're ingested or inhaled and lodge inside healthy tissue, they're the most deadly. Becquerel (Bq) is used to describe the source. Gray (Gy) is usually the most relevant unit for quantifying a person's exposure. Sievert (Sv) for quantifying the health effect of that exposure.
i love how so many of these radiation incidents are just because people are just collectively ignoring, being unaware of, or actively disabling the safety features installed to prevent the exact incident that occurred.
This video and indeed this whole series has proven to me that any major radiation disaster starts with one technician standing on his fellow tech's foot.
Interesting video! As a salvadoran, I had no idea this happened. I was born the year prior to this. I believe this accident might not have been that "important" on the news, since on 89 we had the worst and the last of the civil war between the government and the guerilla. PD. The way you describe how the people accessed the operating room sounds precisely how a lot of salvadorans would behave in situations like this, trying to "think of a solution", specially opening the door with a knife... my god, is so embarrassing.
salavadoran here, i agree with your point on how a salva would deal with the situation. i found it funny when he mentioned jamming a knife in it because having done manual labor with salvas before, i could see them doing that lmao
When I found your channel I fell in love with your content, I was really shocked to find this video because this incident took place in my motherland country. I didn’t know this happened there, thanks for the info and great content you upload.
Ugh, what a tragedy. Especially for those guys who were just helping out with zero training. And that hospital... I mean, food poisoning? All three guys? Did they even eat the same thing? You'd think they'd ask enough questions about when it started to where at least one of them would mention "It happened after we stood next to the nuclear source at work".
Exactly. The amount of negligence in cases like this is mind-boggling. You'd expect hospital staff to know better than this. But also the poor bastards that were exposed, you d think that's the first thing they make sure doctors know after getting to the hospital feeling this ill this sudden. Look, this and this happened at work... People never cease to amaze me 🙄
@@proudHughesfan yea they were probably like we moved a few boxes at work and felt sick after dinner time. the hospital had a room full of other people needing assistance and just shoveled em in and out out as fast as possible.
I would say "its probably just that they supplied a lot of equipment to third world countries with sketchy operations practices," except they also supplied the infamous Therac 25 machines to the US, and those caused deaths that had nothing to do with maintenance...
Context for amount of Grays: If your radiation dose is being told to you in Grays, you're probably going to die soon. If you live prepare for probable amputations.
@@dazednconfused31337 I don't know how they actually did it, but it was probably an estimate, calculated from the activity the source had at that day, the lenght of exposure and possibly the distance the workers had to the source.
Wow. I'm Salvadoran and I didn't know about this. But then again, I was born in the early eighties, so I wouldn't remember seeing this in the news. Great info!
@@katya_fhs there's more radioactive equipment near "La Primero de Mayo" right in Díaz Bazan Instituto del Cáncer. I guess another incident happened there.
I never thought I would be able to understand any of the nuclear matter but you make it understandable and interesting. I've been diving into more on this subject now. Thanks!
As someone from El Salvador, everything sounded as something that would happen. People here follow extremely poor safety procedures in an attempt to save some money. Never heard about the accident before and it was really informative as well
I absolutly love your atomic excursion and radiation research. I have a better than public average understanding of the subject myself. Your plane language and simple, matter of fact presentation style are fantastic. You bring nuclear physics and ionizing radiation from a highly professional level of understanding, to a tea time layman's consumable standard without insulting anyone's intelligence. This is the hallmark of a person with a genuine understanding of the base material and not merely an academic or professional understanding. This is what makes the difference between professionals and experts, or instructors and teachers. Information, education and most of all understanding, lead to controlling fear. Fear is not respect and in industry, fear is often more dangerous than ignorance. Awareness of risk limits hazard, control of risk is critical. With that being said, with proper risk management and procedures an ignorant person can very effectively and safely do a dangerous task that a fearful person will hesitate to take when needed or will not take at all. Though I found that the more I understood the devil I was dealing with and the more I respected it, the more I understood its limits and the less fear it held. Over time, experience and understanding, it became less and less of a boogie man and more of a dangerous animal that while potentially lethal, it was by far more predictable and controllable than nearly any other hazard in my daily life. In fact, once realized I had the rest of my life to get it right, working in the hot zone was one of the most comfortable places in my daily life. No one dictated what happened in there but me, no one was responsible for any part of it but me and my team, no outside influences hindered my thought processes. So many people are scared of that line on the floor that there is no pressure but what you put on your self and what the situation dictates. I have more concern for my safety and well being going to get groceries or to the dr than I did working with glow in the dark goodies! Well done mate! Excellent work! And keep up the good work! Information is ammunition and you are a provider of some of the finest in your field. Keep up the great work.
@@vincent67239 thank you sir. Free the mind and the ass will follow lol. The rule of P is valuable with atomic material. That is "don't stick anything where you won't stick your pecker" lol glad you enjoyed and stay frosty.
@@paulhuston9991 The undergrad physics series (that broadly covered classical Newtonian physics and relativity and quantum mechanics) was one of my favorite series of courses in college. Although it was required for my degree, I’m not using any of it now (software engineer). I just signed up for an intro to quantum physics online course to scratch that itch again.
Yes he does.. I'm not insulted that he has to break it down to layman's terms...it makes for a no confusion understanding of all the factors that one by one caused an accident
A very interesting episode! I would've never have heard of such a blunder were not for you. You kept engaged without being overly-dramatic and sticking to solid facts from long hours of reseach.
6:18 - Should have kept the originally trained staff and had them train newer staff with approval by the manufacturers! This is why I think there should be laws on how training is conducted to ensure workers can operate these machines as safely as possible! Better to be safe than to have an accident otherwise you end up with lives lost, health issues, lawsuits, and investigations by authorities!
I love that they just went right back to mishandling the hell out of the radioactive source after the first accident. This is why we can't have nice things.
In addition to.. well, everything, I do wonder why the workers didn’t explain about the radiation exposure on their first trip to the hospital. You’d think it’s an Important Detail to mention... blows my mind they were sent home in the first place.
Yeah it's a big deal. That being said, if they really understood how big, I imagine they wouldn't have been so cavalier to begin with. They probably had little to no education and had no idea radiation sickness was even a thing. Wasn't no Plainly Difficult back then, and the dangers or even the presence of nuclear-powered stuff was not openly shared with the public. Add to that the confusion of a civil war. There was no real oversight by any qualified entity by this time I'm guessing, and they just paid a few random laborers to go in there long after the dangerous contents of the room was no longer on anyone's mind. That's what I suppose anyway. I don't mean to sound like I actually know.
@@poutinedream5066 or denial, maybe... ”the doctors told me it was food poisoning, surely it must mean that it wasn’t radiation that made me sick after all” - because no one wants to learn that they have messed up so much that they might be already dead, and thus welcome any other explanation.
"This warning is telling me that a source of deadly radiation isn't positioned safely. Let's see if I can game it enough to turn the alarm off." Like slapping a bandaid on a gaping axe wound and thinking 'that should do the trick'
The facility represented in the game Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is somewhat similar. I killed a character in much the same way as this operator goofing around trying to preserve food... even in a horror game it was jarring to go from "you have a splitting headache" to "you die" over the span of days after thinking an exposure was brief enough to ignore.
If you want a fast end to a run, it's possible to directly handle the game's cobalt-60 source. You might even get out of the building carrying your treasure...
small clarification: petabecquerels would be PBq not pBQ. little p is for pico which is 10^-12 not 10^12. Units which are represented by two letters like Bq typically take the second letter as a lower-case. Always enjoy your videos :)
I really like the style of these documentaries. It's surprising how many times safeties are disabled as part of short cuts, lack of maintenance, and training.
1:51 Ah yes there's our familiar friend! Atomic Energy of Canada Limited... proudly irradiating people across the world since 1952. 15:4716:54 Damn, these boys losing legs like they're going out of style 😳
Since power was off to the room, there would be no radiation hazard. They had no idea what the cobalt was even there for, it was just this thing that moved around and broke sometimes.
This is 100% false. The operator KNEW that the cobalt was dangerous as mentioned at 13:12 when the operator saw the Cherenkov glow, he immediately started panicking.
I recently watched a vid of some urban explorers going through the abandoned prison in New Orleans and one of the first things I noticed was that it looked like all the x-ray equipment had just be left there. Is it possible to find out if the sheriff department/police department properly secured and removed the x-ray equipment before abandoning the building? They came across several scrappers as they made their way through the place and it's basically open to the public. I figured this would be a topic of interest on this channel - especially as so many of the orphan source events seem to be the result of abandoned medical equipment.
@@samarnadra Not high. Old x-ray machines aren't woth much more than scrap value, if that. They also pose no danger to the public. Radiation machines that contain radioactive materials are a danger to the public, legally a liability, and potentially worth money.
Very very disappointed that the blurb at 5:38 didn’t say “it’s our time to glow!” Come on, John, you can do better. (Nah but really, thank you for all the work you do. It’s always a little treat to get a notification!)
love that the door could be opened by mashing buttons. absolutely sounds like something that would happen at my job (luckily not radiation related) where everything is handmade of tape and superglue.
I physically recoiled when you explained how they just casually went into the radiotion room. Obviously I don't want to make fun of these people and it's pretty clear they haven't received proper training, but this is just painful to listen to.
Even if your are Joe Schmoe off the street, you know radiation = bad. I don’t understand where they are finding these people to work with radioactive material who have this “fuck it” mentality.
By the time this happened, even the best trained worker had only a vague understanding of how it worked. He seemed to think if the power was off then it was safe.
@@WouldntULikeToKnow. so no one told them it was radioactive? I just find that hard to believe that the lack of training was so severe that no one told them there was radioactive material, and there were no warning signs on the wall or anything.
Saw the top comment at time, and just wanted to do my very small part and add a comment for help with the algorithm, as it's what I can do for this channel at the moment. I really appreciate that you cover these seemingly unknown events and tragedies. If not personally remembered, I dearly hope they are 'remembered' by the new SOPs and guidelines to which we all must strictly adhere and suffer through. There's a reason they say 'SOPs are written in blood', but the annoyance of keeping strict logs, procedures and checks is nothing compared to the trauma felt by many that created the new rules. Over regulation, or applying regulations where they are not needed can be a problem, but the lack of some protection against bad procedure can be heartbreaking and a situation will inevitably happen. It'd be nice to see a video about the changes that were made sure to events covered. I know they are often discussed at the end of videos, but a general overview and rating the effectiveness of changes would be cool to digest. Especially difficult problems, like those seen with scrappers in hospitals that have no money, or companies going bankrupt that lack digital options, many other things I can't think of. Your videos also show the importance of good training and education. Good general education may make a 'technician' aware of danger, even without proper training. Good training can prevent encountering danger even with a lack of general subject knowledge. I remember when I was first told my job would involve working with radioactive isotopes and contaminated materials. I had a basic BA biology level of radiation understanding, but I imagined multiple gowns, lead lined clothes, special glove hoods, and intense cleanup and garbage disposable. I was shocked to find that no extra PPE was required for the amount and your of radioactive isotopes we would be working with, but a second set of gloves, N95 mask (more for unknown dangers of newly designed, chemicals of interest), hair net, wrist guards, Teva suit, and booties were available for free if requested. Sometimes these small extra guards were required, with extra checks of course, but not going there) with certain amounts or types radioactive isotopes. This was nothing compared to what I imagined (to be clear, there was much tracking, testing, triple checking, cleaning l, logging, training, extra checks, etc. that I'm not discussing) and it is so easy to see how someone with no knowledge, or only a Western, Hollywood idea of radiation would not realize the danger they may be encountering. Something could be super radioactive, but require minimal shielding (nothing like what is portrayed in movies many times) or very dilute and easily cleanable. The scale of danger and scale of necessary protection is so vast. Someone who imagines radiactive material and it's appearance and storage like I used to would never guess the neat metal or substance that might sell for a few bucks as scrap is incredibly dangerous, killing and maiming many and contaminating cities if only removed from one small shield/tube/device. I guess that last one applies to other videos. It's amazing you can be protected from many dangerous radioactive materials by simple lab gear that is worn everyday anyway just as protection from regular, non-radiolabeled Lab chemicals. On the other side is the poor safety culture that developed in this specific case. As a last measure, the guy just needed an understanding that radioactive cobalt is it's own power source (maybe he knew this, but mistranslation/bad explanation of built-in machine safety devices led to this expansion) to understand that such a long exposure was very bad. Understanding how to stay safe, ensure safety, test safety, who to ask, and understanding how equipment is designed to keep you safe is so important. I feel it is lacking at major, mondern companies at times and I can't imagine all the holes and errors that developed over the years with those working around this particularly cursed machine. Radiation education is so important for many different reasons, but the extra cost and time involved with managing it sometimes ensures it gets lost or forgotten due to the easiness of forgetting about it compared to the time and cost of the alternative of proper management. Plus all the other million internal/external factors and motivations over decades leading to these employees deciding to use the fix that killed them. Others taking as little time, or explaining they actually cared about safety and taught them correctly wood have saved lives. But there was a lot more than this that liked them I think. Side note/poor transition: I also enjoy the bit of dark humor that you sometimes add to the videos. Evil may not be one person trying to do bad things, but a collection of mostly good people, well-intentioned, but lacking the power or incentives to represent safety over profit, etc. Does anyone ever complain to you about your dark humor? I've found some people think I don't take something seriously or that I'm a sadist or something when I use dark humor at times. Don't know if it's poor judgment on my part or the person literally not understanding what dark humor is and that it can be very helpful/therapeutic. I've learned I need to be careful with that, just wondering if this is a common complaint for your videos.
Just when I think there can't possibly be any more unpredictable & insanely reckless ways people have handled a radioactive source you find another one! ☢ I can just imagine the worker standing at the door & mashing all the buttons in frustration, when suddenly the door unlocks... to think the door ended up so damaged that they could jimmy it open with a knife is terrifying. It never seems to occur to people that when you make it _that_ hard to access something it's for a very good reason!
I like how you put "not to scale" on a video lmao, like I could be watching this on my phone, yep that's to scale. That room which people enter and exit is smaller than my phone screen, wow, amazing
The fact the guy thought it’d be safe due to the fact the power was off is both funny and surprisingly understandable. Without proper training, radiation sources seem no different from other dangerous machinery, as in on = dangerous, and off = safe.
I mean I am by far not an expert but even I know radiation is bad news you would think someone who works in these field would be weary.
@@GreenNeonLine If you're not aware that the contents of the room are radioactive as a result of poor training, the only clue that you would get if something was radioactive, was if it would glow.
This was entirely preventable.
I've made that mistake. I was replacing an electric heating element on a test machine I operate at work. Programmable logic controller was not running, master control relay was open, though the main breaker was closed. I was about to connect the wiring for the heater into the terminal block when one lead brushed my left palm and I felt a sharp sting. Turns out that, even with the controller stopped and control power off, there was still current to the heater. It turned out that the heater failed because the solid-state relay (basically a high-power transistor) had also failed, and it shorted out when it failed. Some of the other equipment using solid-state relays also had an interposing relay, controlled by the heater limit controller. This one didn't, so the heater was shorted right to the 480V main. Not a bad jolt, but still a near miss.
It's about poor education in schools. It must be a common knowledge, radiation source have no external power. Seems like workers confused radiation source with x-ray source.
well, except if you are working with radiation on a daily basis, in a company that core busines is radiation, then you must be extremely dumb to think that, even if you are the janitor.
A genuinely impressive display of bypassing as many safeguards as you can
Having a civil war made things worse, but even with that happening they still went above and beyond. "We've overriden all the safety systems we can from outside the door, so now it's time to go to the roof."
Speedrunners at heart
Boy, wait until you hear about the case behind the most radioactive human in history 💀 used literal common buckets with no protection to manually pour a radioactive substance into an open vat
@@SangheiliSpecOp BRO it was ridiculous! His name was Hisashi Ouchi, and if I remember correctly, he got (at least) 15 TIMES of what's considered a lethal dose of radiation to a human being because of it.
@@foxylovelace2679 radiation sickness% glitchless
It's terrifying how run down all these facilities look. I'm not expecting guilded wall paper or anything but these always look like unfinished basements, in abandoned houses, of a ghost town, on the outskirts of a long forgotten wasteland, haphazardly buried 5-9 inches underground, just below the landfill that was safely burnt to a pulp, after a tornado ripped through the town, killing everyone. It's a horror show man!
As a person that has lived in El Salvador for many years, it’s still occurring in modern day San Salvador and throughout the country. The war was devastating and still to this day the country is very poor. Even hospitals there tend to look like this. And sadly events like this happen all the time due to lack of knowledge and training
Utterly disgusting how run down it looked
I was going to make a comment about how it’s these types of buildings that would be the ones you expect to find radiological incidents in, so the data pool is skewed, but Chang above me mentioned that’s just typical of San Salvador. damn..
Be thankful you live in a first world country
Because the rich west make the poor people do their dirty work
imagine the horror felt by those supplier-sent experts, being escorted by the employees when they walked up to the door and then the employees did the rad. probe button trick and then shimmied the lock.
ikr I love how they disabled the machine after securing the pencils. Clearly these guys were not equipped to operate this machine kind of like a toddler with daddys gun
Kinda like if this was the same plant that Homer Simpson worked in! Was the owners name Montgomery Burns? Lmfao!
@@sueparras6028 it was Montecristo Burnaise
@@jstdrv ‘tis a joke
@@arcticfox037 Did you not see the joke of his response? It’s a play on Mr. Burns’ name. Whoosh.
Radiation incident ✔
Shift change ✔
Deteriorated checks and balances ✔
A quintessential Plainly Difficult video. Most excellent. A solid return to form.
Thank you
No training on the processes and procedures used .. or they wouldmhave known radiation was being used, how, and what it was doing.. killing stuff.
It's always Delta shift...
porfin tenemos un cuento que contar aca ademas de las playas
finally we have a tale to tell here other than beaches
Shift changes IS where Most Shit happens in Production too
Wrong settings or material and a machine busts. Being a safety officer gotta suck
As a retired Radiographer, I was amazed that the first fellow thought you could turn off the radiation source.
Cobalt60 don’t work that way☢️
Love your work; devour them all; Many thanks!!
One would wonder what kind of facility dealing with radioactive matter hires operators that weren't conversant with basic knowledge about radiation and radioactivity. Granted there was a civil war, and no modern way to access manuals, instructions or help from the OEM. But that was still shockingly, painfully ignorant of the guy working with this sign ☢️ day in, day out.
I’m what would be considered a *child* and even I knew that radiation can’t just be turned off that’s- not how it works, I believe electromagnetic radiation can be manipulated like that but not an actual radioactive source like cobalt 60 or uranium, you’d have to block that with something (like their little water pool) to “stop” it and not “cut the power”
@@SnakeDude. That word covers a broad range of ages, lol. I would indeed expect a high schooler to understand that radiation can’t just be turned off. At least, a decently educated high schooler.
@@vincent67239 Yeah you’re right, I’m not comfortable saying my age exactly, but I am just slightly younger than a high schooler
@@SnakeDude. _Mother of god_ what have you done… You had *ONE* job!
It surprises me everytime how casually people ignore safety procedures around radiation.
Its usually down to improper training I think
Everyone thinks they are the only Homer Simpson at the plant. 😂
It's pretty rife in most industries, it's limited industries with the potential to directly affect more than those on scene that get more attention (for obvious reasons). If you're in the area you might catch random news items about industrial deaths or heavy injury (like corn silo accidents, or a car wash incident), but it's common in workplaces with fast paces and low pay, like any factory, warehouse, restaurant (high numbers of cuts and burns, mostly minor), meat processing plants (enough for several videos), farming (animals and machines), convenience stores (especially in regards to lack of employee safety in preventing robberies as well as employees ignoring or not having time to follow procedures), etc.
Most of us even ignore a lot of safety precautions at home, because they're generally about lowering risk vs a potential harm, and since we get used to that with only occasional bad results, those habits can carry over. How many of you actually carry a pair of scissors at your side with the blades down? Or pass a knife to someone by holding the blade so they can easily grip the handle? Or always use glue in only a well ventilated area? Unplugged an appliance using the cord instead of the plug? Touched a pet while it was eating (individual results will vary)? How many times have you barked a shin or stubbed a toe because you didn't turn on a light?
We remember oven mitts (usually) because that's protection vs guaranteed harm, but we get lax against potential harm all the time (think drivers and phones).
People will ignore procedure about everything and anything if there is no one to keep enforcing it, I think.
It depends on the facility, if you have a good safety culture and a healthy respect for radiation, these units can operate for decades with nary an incident. I used to work in a facility with gamma irradiators and let me tell you, we took the responsibility seriously. Fun aside, we also had potted trees outside the chamber to show how safe it was but still a lot of people noped out of going to that side of the building. With my job I had no choice, so I got to know the chamber operators really well. Standup guys, I miss working with them.
I've never heard of this event and both my parents are from El Salvador. I'm glad you've covered this topic. I have learned something new about my parents' home. I think they were probably pre-occupied with the Salvadoran Civil War.
Same boat!
What's wrong with El Salvador ?
@@MonTube2006 you're joking right?
Same
My dad was actually a refugee from that war, I lived there for some time and even hospitals there look like scary dungeons. It’s really sad to see
Yay! It's back to everyone's favorite content; horrific radiation accidents! 👍
Thank you!
I am an engaged viewer, this video is advertiser friendly!
Hi it’s me, everyone :3
@@PlainlyDifficult Maybe unrelated, but will you cover the 1991 Chernobyl Reactor 2 Turbine Fire in the future?
If only they happened more often.
The Cherenkov radiation glow would have been really cool to see, but completely terrifying at the same time, knowing it's going to be one of the last things you witness in your now very short life.
If you want to see it without being exposed you could probably get a job working with a nuclear research reactor, they often have a blue glow hidden beneath a lot of water which keeps it safe as long as you don’t go swimming.
@@justanotheryoutubechannel Apologies in advance for being 'that guy'.
You can actually swim in the forbidden pools of your average nuclear power plant, even while the reactor is running. Water is surprisingly effective at blocking radiation, so you would be fine, so long as you stay at the surface and don't swallow the water. Don't forget all the decon procedures you'd have to go through afterwards, because its better to be safe than sorry.
Cherenkov radiation is the definition of beautiful but deadly.
@@det.halligan It’s true, but I wouldn’t do it nonetheless. I was mainly saying it to be funny. 😅
@@ElliLavender especially when it occurs as a flash due to a mass having gone supercritical.
Ahh horrific radiation events. Just what I need to take the edge off of current events. Thank you for the time and love you put into your videos!
Are ya sure it's taking the edge off? I mean... Putin does have nukes...
@@hauntedshadowslegacy2826 Hey, nukes are great for taking edges off. As well as creating a bunch of other edges... really it depends on the material and how close it is to the weapon.
@@hauntedshadowslegacy2826 nah there are far worse countries having nukes .....
Here's to hoping current affairs will not contribute to more PD video's. But missiles being fired at an active nuclear power plant is not the definition of sound judgment.
@@zorktxandnand3774 please keep the arguments fact based.
1: There was a shelling not an missile strike... Those are 2 *very* *very* different things .
2 : They precisely damaged the power output section that has nothing to do with the reactor itself and makes sense from a strategic standpoint.
3 : The reactor in question is dubble layered so to say.
Meaning even if you would damage it beyond repair it would not release any radioactive material.
I love your depiction of the humanoid form, particularly the guy with his hands in his pockets. Don't ever change that. And as always, the content is great, interesting and well delivered.
The bent over dude is iconic for this channel at this point, imo.
"Balls" 😂
Lab coat guy: check. Hazmat suit guy: check. Doctor: check. Soldiers: check. Rectangular flag people: check
@@vincent67239
Three cheers for the rectangular flag people! 🎺🎺🎺
@@katiekane5247
That's the guy! 🙃
A nasty inevitability, unfortunately. IIRC, at least one of the three men believed (due to lack of training/education) that the irradiator functioned like an x-ray machine, and that cutting power to it would eliminate any danger. That there is no shortage of such stories simply proves how inadequate regulation of radiological sources/equipment has been (and still is, to a certain extent).
IMO it is really dumb for the same symbol ☢️ to have been chosen for both radioactive sources and X-rays, as the risks are so different.
@@mikeselectricstuff it’s the same basic mechanism that causes damage, ionizing radiation. It’s like putting a “hot” warning on both a stove and an eternally burning tire fire but more needed for both because it´s not obvious (best analogy I could give but yea the fact that you can turn one off and not the other is not a reason to use a completely different symbol. It is a reason to make sure it’s known which you can/can’t turn off, and there are also some XRay designs which you can’t turn off, with radiation assume there is no turn off unless you know for sure otherwise)
You are dangerously misinformed if you really think X-ray machines contain no radiation when they are turned off.
X-ray machines, too, contain a radiation source that emits radiation at all times. It is placed within a chamber with a mechanical shutter that is opened when the radiation is used to expose x-ray film and supposed to be closed at all other times so no radiation escapes.
There have been very unfortunate accidents with X-ray machines that had somehow found their way into of the hands of unsuspecting lays, for example scrap metal peddlers etc.
@@TDCflyer Sorry, but you’re suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect. What you’re describing is a gamma-ray sourced radiotherapy machine (minus the nonsense about x-ray film). X-rays are generated electrically by directing electrons at a target which then emits x-rays. There is no residual radiation once power is disengaged from the x-ray tube. It’s always worthwhile fact-checking yourself.
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 Do you actually suffer from anhedonia?
The typical Schrödinger irradiation rack in a room: harmless and deadly at the same time. Utterly horrible and fascinating, as all your radiological event videos !
its a scary way to go...
What's really creepy is that you can see distortion in the photos of the source pencils, and it isn't from age or low quality. Radiation can cause distortion on photos.
Indeed, really scary. Its a miracle radiaton didn't affected anyone else beyond those 3 dudes.
Radiation can cause glowing too, just sayin
It does that to your DNA too.
@@billyccall5774 not true, radiation does not glow green like in movies or fiction
@@Alpacaluffythe glow they're referring to is an electron beam glow as it ionizes air particles
The mention of the plant withholding information about the dangers of the materials being handled to the staff reminds me of the Radium Girls. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
You could drive yourself mad trying to understand the thought process that went: "A team of designers and engineers created an elaborate safety system, let's circumvent it". Then along comes another genius who just jams a knife in it.
You have to remember that radiation is invisible to the human eye. While specially educated people knew of the dangers of radiation, your average person didn't. Especially in those days. They likely saw all the safety precautions as just being silly.
@@EBTwitts Yup. I think radiation warning signs should be in terms of a radiation exposure event most people are familiar with - a sunburn. There are lots of numerical problems with this, but you can fudge them away. The point is to give people a rough number that they can relate to. Tell the average person 1 Gray/hr and you'll get a blank stare. But tell them 10 sunburns per second and they immediately know they do NOT want to bypass the safety measures, nor walk into the room without triple-checking to make absolutely sure the radiation source is retracted.
@@EBTwitts Yet if you're being hired for a job you could literally give someone a page of paper that explains this is dangerous and the gist of it.
As far as it goes it is like CO2 poisoning but 100000x worse.
There is 1000s of invisible but deadly things that people know of, even a fart joke. Legitimately there is millions of things you can reference and point to explaining with minimal effort.
@@EBTwitts On the other hand people will sidestep safety features for things that are blatantly dangerous for the sake of time, like removing panels to clear blockages without having to stop a machine. Fortunately, although the person from that story (heard from my uncle's work) was caught in the machine and crushed a bit they did just about survive.
The thought process is easy to understand:
"We can't get it serviced properly or get new parts or anything because of the goddamn war (which also has us paranoid so we're being tight-lipped to employees), but we can't afford to shut down so we'll bodge and hack if we have to to keep things going".
Disappointing? Yes.
A show of somewhat skewed priorities? Yes.
But hardly incomprehensible, sadly enough.
I used to work in a facility that had a similar gamma sterilizer and luckily 1) all of our interlocks worked as intended and 2) everyone was trained to respect the fact that radiation is not to be taken lightly! Great video!
And best pizza? Thin crust pepperoni, green peppers, and red onion.
That pizza sounds delicious
Pineapple. Needs more pineapple.
@@kenosabi Pineapple and pepperoni is the match made in Heaven, sweet and salty tastes that complement each other perfectly.
Best type of pizza? I live in Brooklyn., so the answer is all of it.
@@NephilBlade Literally just ate a few slices with that combo while watching this video! It's how I order almost all pizza I eat!
Complacency is something that continually seems to happen with these radiation events. People get used to working with it and they think they have all the bases covered. Except they don’t and the suffering will either be tragic or horrific.
Hard to be other than complacent when you are not given the facts.
When you don't train people correctly or not at all. It's not complacency. It's called negligence.
that's not complacency that's exploiting people who will work in dangerous conditions for lower pay.
@@robinwells8879 The guy thinking the machine was safe as long as the power was off is especially chilling. It's completely wrong, but also perfectly logical if you don't know how this kind of setup really works. I mean, I don't know how widespread microwave ovens and medical X-ray machines were in El Salvador in the 1980s, but they're the most commonplace radiation* sources I can think of that most people in Western socities will have seen, and _they_ work like that.
* I know microwave ovens don't generate _ionizing_ radiation, but they still work on a similar principle, with a magnetron and whatnot
A more apt video that comes to mind when it comes to complacency is the demon core video(s). It was a leading physicist in the field that got so complacent as to use a screwdriver as a lever to prevent criticality. And then one day the screwdriver slipped. Oops!
I’m from El Salvador and I’m glad to see that someone is covering this story, we even study this case on our schools as part of our history
AYYYYY VIVA LA SELECTA
Viva LA Selecta
That’s great that you guys are taught this in school, disasters like this really should be taught so people remember these disasters and they can’t be repeated. I grew up in England and I was taught that nuclear disasters were something *other* countries had, and they never mentioned any of our events, it wasn’t until years later that I discovered Windscale or the awful circumstances at Dournray and Sellafield which include rested out pools full of loose radioactive sludge with seabirds swimming in them, and waste being dumped into drilling shafts full of seawater.
Pinches guancos, cagandola como siempre...😂
I find it odd that I always look forward to a PD upload about a terrible radiation accident
Maybe you need to seek medical help?
yeah, why don't you wait for videos about horrible non-radiation accidents too?
When I was taking flying lessons and was obsessed by all things aviation, I used to read flying magazines and always skip ahead to the accident and incident report articles. Weird maybe, but I always thought that a key part of not making mistakes is learning how not to repeat others' mistakes, and also to imagine yourself in their position to think what could or should have been done differently. I think that's true of any risky undertaking, including operating a facility that handles nuclear power or material.
It's also worth noting that while nuclear reactors get all the attention, it's these smaller facilities like the one in this video, as well as medical devices, which are more likely to be near your home, in nondescript buildings that do not look scary, and which may have knucklehead operators attending them. It's worth educating the general public to be cautious and know what to look out for. Think of the two untrained fellows in this vid, or the scrap metal collectors we've heard about who accidentally hurt their own children.
Nah, you're fine. My former boss called channels like PD "porn for problem solvers." Meaning, we like to see how disasters happen so we can figure out how best to find both the cause and the solution. It's great brain training!
I do too. I am often interested in knowing whether an accident is due to negligence, neglect, ignorance or just plain stupidity. With, on a sliding scale, ignorance being a little more forgivable. Stupidity not so much.
Having previously worked in a facility that used Cobalt 60 pucks as test samples, I felt myself puckering up and cringing multiple times during this episode.
I felt like a stereotypical movie crowd in an '80s slasher film screaming "no don't go in there!"
They should use these videos as a mandatory weekly/monthly training and reminder of what happens if correct procedures are not followed.
All I can muster is contempt.
How could they _possibly_ not have understood irradiation? _It was their job._ Yes, this thing that kills bugs on dead tomatoes _will make you dead too._
@@JoshSweetvale The staff was kept in the dark and only trained verbally. The trained staff was fired when an American company purchased the place. Qualified is to expensive.
@@erik_dk842 They put the things in.
When they come out, they don't rot and bugs are dead.
@@JoshSweetvale Yes, but the workers thought it ran on electricity
Hey PD. Just wanted to thank you for the thorough research you do in each video and the clear way you present stuff. Hope you keep the channel going for a long time mate. Cheers
Thank you!
@@PlainlyDifficult :D. Also, love the small fun edits you do like the flags shaking or the scientists saying "oh no". Haha
@@PlainlyDifficult you earned my subscription
@Bruce What’s the meaning of this nonsense ? 😂
@Bruce saved from a Rickroll by commercials. You can see a pic of Rick Astley in the background as the commercials load
3 men walk into a room to clear an industrial blockage. First guy says " Do you taste that? The air tastes like metal."
The second guy says "Quite and hurry up. I want to get home."
Third guy looks around and back to the other two then says "Oh shit", with a steadily growing look of panic on his face, "this is a Plainly Difficult video."
"Why are you glowing?"
"No!"
I don't know why I find it this funny.
Balls
@@Mr.Maus.Thunderdirty little biy
Yes, Balls
My mom's ex boyfriend was the director of a food irradiation plant, I'll never forget the racks of cobalt 60 submerged in water. It was beautiful, the concrete maze is how it was set up. I asked him what would happen if someone was standing in the room when the racks were raised? He said it would liquefy the person. What he didn't say was it would be relatively slowly. Granted this was I think 1988 so I don't think they would allow kids in places like that now even if It was completely safe at the time. It helped fuel my fascination with ionizing radiation.
Ok now i kinda understand what the purpose of this room was
I've watched every video on your channel, despite never having much interest some of the subjects, but your story telling and humour makes me keep coming back and enjoying learning !
Glad you like them!
I honestly believe I can design a dam. I definitely know enough to be a dam inspector. I mean, granted, the bar is pretty low- but screw it, I'm ready to put my Plainly Difficult education to the test!
@@PlainlyDifficult I'm the same I love your vids. Can't believe there has been so many accidents that just don't get talked about. Glad you are educating us
@@poutinedream5066 After all, what could possibly go wrong, right? 😁
I’m the same! Sometimes I don’t exactly understand either, but the editing and commentary gets the point across. I love this channel.
I live about 10 km away from the facilities. Thank you for covering this tragical incident.
phood foisoning
The moment you hear the theme music after the words “radiation event” you know it’s going to be another brilliant video. I love this channel.
I was wondering if you could do an explanation video of what all the different radiation units mean? There's becquerel, curies, roentgen, gray, sieverts, rads, rem, as well as dosimeters and geiger counters, and I have no idea what the differences between any of them are.
Love your videos!
I would love an explanation too. Makes it difficult to know if it is not great but not terrible...
Google it
@@Titan604 I see what you did there! 😏
Rad and Roentgen are units of radiation levels and are interchangable and is the amount of radiation that deposits 100 ergs of energy per gram of any given mass.
A REM (Roentgen Equivalent Man) is a unit of biological damage and is the amount of biological damage done by depositing the equivalent of a Rad of x-rays into 100 grams of soft body tissue.
A Dose Rate is the the accumulation of biological damage over time and is often expressed in REM/hr (though milli-REM/hr or mR/hr is more common)
A Curie is a unit of activity. A 1 Curie cobalt-60 point source will emit 1 Rad of gamma radiation at 1 meter.
A quality Factor is the difference that a Rad of different radiation (gamma, beta and neutron radiation of various energy levels) will do to produce damage (REM) such that the quality factor from a Cobalt-60 source is "1" meaning it will produce 1 REM/hr from a point source 1 meter away.
And finally, grays and seiverts exists because people in the medical field don't want to be like the rest of the article 104 trained community so they invented their own units just to confuse things. (They actually use them to define dose and level without having to define the dose rate and quality factor by including them in the definition, which is fine if you don't need to be specific, but actual radiation workers, scientists and engineers use the legacy units because of the need to analyze source and type of radiation to determine nuclides of concern and shielding needed among other things so REM, rad, Roetgen, Cu and QF are never going away.)
A lot of them are basically the same.
Some are used to discuss background radiation, others discuss actual dose absorbed, others discuss radiation emitted.
They are used interchangeably all the time to express in somewhat vague terms the severity of radiation exposure. It is not uncommon to have the same machine expressing things in 2 or 3 units.
I agree it’s confusing and dumb.
My gosh... it's simply astounding how it can get to the point that the operators didn't even know they were working with a radiation machine nor were trained in radioactivity...
I appreciate you using the same unit of measure for radiation exposure in these videos, I've noticed most other people's videos vacillate between multiple units of measure!
There is no one single "correct" unit for radiation. The multiple units are because they are measuring different things.
- Amount of dangerous (ionizing) radioactive particles emitted by the source each second (becquerel or curie)
- Amount of radioactive particles absorbed by the target (like food) or person (gray or rad)
- And estimated cumulative effect of the absorbed radiation after factoring type and energy level of the particles, and their effect on biology (sievert or rem). e.g. Alpha particles sources are usually low-risk because they can be shielded by a sheet of paper or a layer of dead skin (you can buy them on Amazon - tritium vials). But if they're ingested or inhaled and lodge inside healthy tissue, they're the most deadly.
Becquerel (Bq) is used to describe the source. Gray (Gy) is usually the most relevant unit for quantifying a person's exposure. Sievert (Sv) for quantifying the health effect of that exposure.
i love how so many of these radiation incidents are just because people are just collectively ignoring, being unaware of, or actively disabling the safety features installed to prevent the exact incident that occurred.
This video and indeed this whole series has proven to me that any major radiation disaster starts with one technician standing on his fellow tech's foot.
As a salvadorian, I never ever heard about this !?! thank u very much for doing all this great and informative content
Interesting video! As a salvadoran, I had no idea this happened. I was born the year prior to this. I believe this accident might not have been that "important" on the news, since on 89 we had the worst and the last of the civil war between the government and the guerilla.
PD. The way you describe how the people accessed the operating room sounds precisely how a lot of salvadorans would behave in situations like this, trying to "think of a solution", specially opening the door with a knife... my god, is so embarrassing.
Don't be too embarrassed mate, idiots are everywhere.
salavadoran here, i agree with your point on how a salva would deal with the situation. i found it funny when he mentioned jamming a knife in it because having done manual labor with salvas before, i could see them doing that lmao
Not embarrassing as much as tragic that they weren't trained in the dangers of Cobalt 60. I bet their family's were never compensated, either.
@@Fuzzamajumulano. Its far more embarrassing.
Christ, imagine deliberately brute-forcing your way past security controls into a radiological hazard.
But as long as the machine is turned off, there's no danger 😃👍
Nah it's fine. You only die if it kills you. Perfectly safe.
This reminds me of a saying my dad used to tell me:
"The only thing on a worksite more dangerous than an idiot, is an idiot with a toolbox."
"I resemble that remark."
On the other hand, we are all idiots, just on different subjects.
99% of people in my country, El Salvador 🇸🇻, have no idea this ever happened, thanks for covering this event!
When I found your channel I fell in love with your content, I was really shocked to find this video because this incident took place in my motherland country.
I didn’t know this happened there, thanks for the info and great content you upload.
Thank you
Aww, no disaster scale this time. Also, would still love to see a video explaining the various units of radiation measurement.
Ugh, what a tragedy. Especially for those guys who were just helping out with zero training. And that hospital... I mean, food poisoning? All three guys? Did they even eat the same thing? You'd think they'd ask enough questions about when it started to where at least one of them would mention "It happened after we stood next to the nuclear source at work".
Exactly. The amount of negligence in cases like this is mind-boggling. You'd expect hospital staff to know better than this. But also the poor bastards that were exposed, you d think that's the first thing they make sure doctors know after getting to the hospital feeling this ill this sudden. Look, this and this happened at work... People never cease to amaze me 🙄
@@proudHughesfan yea they were probably like we moved a few boxes at work and felt sick after dinner time. the hospital had a room full of other people needing assistance and just shoveled em in and out out as fast as possible.
once again a door, a radiation sign, an industrial irradiation source, and night shift
Sadly this event has unfolded several times!
I can't figure out why this stuff is so fascinating, but I'm obsessed. Thanks for all the great videos.
It's kinda surprising how many times a rig from AECL has been involved with disaster.
I would say "its probably just that they supplied a lot of equipment to third world countries with sketchy operations practices," except they also supplied the infamous Therac 25 machines to the US, and those caused deaths that had nothing to do with maintenance...
The main reason they don't pop up more is due to the lack of other companies making these things, Canada is the number one producer of cobalt60
Thanks for putting the amount of Grays of radiation exposure into context!
Context for amount of Grays: If your radiation dose is being told to you in Grays, you're probably going to die soon. If you live prepare for probable amputations.
How do they know how many Grays each man was exposed to? Is it from medical testing, or do they guess by how long they stood in a particular area?
@@dazednconfused31337 I don't know how they actually did it, but it was probably an estimate, calculated from the activity the source had at that day, the lenght of exposure and possibly the distance the workers had to the source.
Wow. I'm Salvadoran and I didn't know about this. But then again, I was born in the early eighties, so I wouldn't remember seeing this in the news. Great info!
There's a complete report on the incident somewhere on the internet. Very tragical
@@jacobyalfa I will look into it. I didn't even know we had these sorts of facilities in the country.
@@katya_fhs there's more radioactive equipment near "La Primero de Mayo" right in Díaz Bazan Instituto del Cáncer. I guess another incident happened there.
I never thought I would be able to understand any of the nuclear matter but you make it understandable and interesting. I've been diving into more on this subject now. Thanks!
But he didn’t say anything about nuclear physics. Only that they used a cobalt gamma emitter
"That's the safety systems ... Now back to reality..." Man, Murphy himself couldn't have said it better!
As someone from El Salvador, everything sounded as something that would happen. People here follow extremely poor safety procedures in an attempt to save some money. Never heard about the accident before and it was really informative as well
I can always rely on these videos for my weekly update on the weather in the UK!!!
I absolutly love your atomic excursion and radiation research. I have a better than public average understanding of the subject myself. Your plane language and simple, matter of fact presentation style are fantastic. You bring nuclear physics and ionizing radiation from a highly professional level of understanding, to a tea time layman's consumable standard without insulting anyone's intelligence. This is the hallmark of a person with a genuine understanding of the base material and not merely an academic or professional understanding. This is what makes the difference between professionals and experts, or instructors and teachers. Information, education and most of all understanding, lead to controlling fear. Fear is not respect and in industry, fear is often more dangerous than ignorance. Awareness of risk limits hazard, control of risk is critical. With that being said, with proper risk management and procedures an ignorant person can very effectively and safely do a dangerous task that a fearful person will hesitate to take when needed or will not take at all. Though I found that the more I understood the devil I was dealing with and the more I respected it, the more I understood its limits and the less fear it held. Over time, experience and understanding, it became less and less of a boogie man and more of a dangerous animal that while potentially lethal, it was by far more predictable and controllable than nearly any other hazard in my daily life. In fact, once realized I had the rest of my life to get it right, working in the hot zone was one of the most comfortable places in my daily life. No one dictated what happened in there but me, no one was responsible for any part of it but me and my team, no outside influences hindered my thought processes. So many people are scared of that line on the floor that there is no pressure but what you put on your self and what the situation dictates. I have more concern for my safety and well being going to get groceries or to the dr than I did working with glow in the dark goodies! Well done mate! Excellent work! And keep up the good work! Information is ammunition and you are a provider of some of the finest in your field. Keep up the great work.
I enjoyed reading your comment.
@@vincent67239 thank you sir. Free the mind and the ass will follow lol. The rule of P is valuable with atomic material. That is "don't stick anything where you won't stick your pecker" lol glad you enjoyed and stay frosty.
@@paulhuston9991 The undergrad physics series (that broadly covered classical Newtonian physics and relativity and quantum mechanics) was one of my favorite series of courses in college. Although it was required for my degree, I’m not using any of it now (software engineer). I just signed up for an intro to quantum physics online course to scratch that itch again.
Yes he does.. I'm not insulted that he has to break it down to layman's terms...it makes for a no confusion understanding of all the factors that one by one caused an accident
Great video, I love your coverage of radiation accidents. Top notch
The amount of time and research that went into this video has to be recognized. Thank you, this was so interesting.
A very interesting episode! I would've never have heard of such a blunder were not for you. You kept engaged without being overly-dramatic and sticking to solid facts from long hours of reseach.
4:04
"Balls" is exactly the word I'd be saying if I was in a radioactive room.
Thanks for another great video! I really appreciate all the work you do to make this stuff easier for a layperson to understand
6:18 - Should have kept the originally trained staff and had them train newer staff with approval by the manufacturers! This is why I think there should be laws on how training is conducted to ensure workers can operate these machines as safely as possible! Better to be safe than to have an accident otherwise you end up with lives lost, health issues, lawsuits, and investigations by authorities!
It is going to be a great day! Thank you for making this video! I love starting off my day with new knowledge!
You are so welcome!
I love that they just went right back to mishandling the hell out of the radioactive source after the first accident. This is why we can't have nice things.
note to self - if pretty blue glow emanates from mystery substance, run like hell.
Again, with the standing on the foot. I just love this! Thank you so much, PD, for all of your amazing content.
In addition to.. well, everything, I do wonder why the workers didn’t explain about the radiation exposure on their first trip to the hospital. You’d think it’s an Important Detail to mention... blows my mind they were sent home in the first place.
That is normal. Most people expect doctors to be psychic. Or would rather death before dishonor.
Yeah it's a big deal. That being said, if they really understood how big, I imagine they wouldn't have been so cavalier to begin with. They probably had little to no education and had no idea radiation sickness was even a thing. Wasn't no Plainly Difficult back then, and the dangers or even the presence of nuclear-powered stuff was not openly shared with the public. Add to that the confusion of a civil war. There was no real oversight by any qualified entity by this time I'm guessing, and they just paid a few random laborers to go in there long after the dangerous contents of the room was no longer on anyone's mind. That's what I suppose anyway. I don't mean to sound like I actually know.
@@poutinedream5066 or denial, maybe... ”the doctors told me it was food poisoning, surely it must mean that it wasn’t radiation that made me sick after all” - because no one wants to learn that they have messed up so much that they might be already dead, and thus welcome any other explanation.
"This warning is telling me that a source of deadly radiation isn't positioned safely.
Let's see if I can game it enough to turn the alarm off."
Like slapping a bandaid on a gaping axe wound and thinking 'that should do the trick'
The facility represented in the game Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is somewhat similar. I killed a character in much the same way as this operator goofing around trying to preserve food... even in a horror game it was jarring to go from "you have a splitting headache" to "you die" over the span of days after thinking an exposure was brief enough to ignore.
If you want a fast end to a run, it's possible to directly handle the game's cobalt-60 source. You might even get out of the building carrying your treasure...
@@jercos Replying because I didn't expect to find someone who plays a game as niche as C:DDA or really any roguelike.
I'm Salvadoran, born in 82 , and lived in the capital city. I've never heard of this story, thanks for posting.
small clarification: petabecquerels would be PBq not pBQ. little p is for pico which is 10^-12 not 10^12. Units which are represented by two letters like Bq typically take the second letter as a lower-case. Always enjoy your videos :)
Oh shoot, they actually touched the source. Omg, people really didn't realize how dangerous radiation is.
Radiation like Microwave and x-ray is generate by electricity but nuclear radiation can only be controlled by shields.
The "Balls" thought bubbles always get me 😅
I really like the style of these documentaries. It's surprising how many times safeties are disabled as part of short cuts, lack of maintenance, and training.
And civil war :-)
yooo I'm from EL Salvador and I had no idea about this, great video
Plainly Difficult's radiation event videos ALWAYS get glowing reviews
Your videos are getting better and better. Keep it up
1:51 Ah yes there's our familiar friend! Atomic Energy of Canada Limited... proudly irradiating people across the world since 1952.
15:47 16:54 Damn, these boys losing legs like they're going out of style 😳
"Why are you glowing?" "NO!" Haha.
Since power was off to the room, there would be no radiation hazard. They had no idea what the cobalt was even there for, it was just this thing that moved around and broke sometimes.
They THOUGHT that turning off the power would stop the radiation. But that was wrong.
This is 100% false. The operator KNEW that the cobalt was dangerous as mentioned at 13:12 when the operator saw the Cherenkov glow, he immediately started panicking.
@@SergeantExtreme If you see water glowing with alien-blue light after you trow some stuff in it, you will say the same.
Bice documentary. Great work! Thank you for raising our awareness and for the great channel.
Cheers,
Mark
Thanks for making these videos, bringing awareness. Its shocking that employees would not know the hazards of their work environment.
13:29 „there was indeed some kind of hazard“ is a hilarious way to put it
Quality content as always, hope the family is doing well!
Horrific radiation events, are the best content on this channel. Because nobody in the world, didn't know about this events.
Good content, as always. 👍🏻
Much appreciated!
As always, great narration
Thank you
I recently watched a vid of some urban explorers going through the abandoned prison in New Orleans and one of the first things I noticed was that it looked like all the x-ray equipment had just be left there. Is it possible to find out if the sheriff department/police department properly secured and removed the x-ray equipment before abandoning the building? They came across several scrappers as they made their way through the place and it's basically open to the public.
I figured this would be a topic of interest on this channel - especially as so many of the orphan source events seem to be the result of abandoned medical equipment.
What's it called? It's an acronym, something something Atomic Agency. I would report it to those guys.
x-ray machines do not contain radioactive substances, they use vacuum lamps that only produce radiation when powered.
@@poutinedream5066 AEC - Atomic Energy Commission.
@@samarnadra Not high. Old x-ray machines aren't woth much more than scrap value, if that. They also pose no danger to the public. Radiation machines that contain radioactive materials are a danger to the public, legally a liability, and potentially worth money.
Is it weird that when you said "Three men walk into...", at the beginning, my brain immediately braced for a cheesy joke?
Very very disappointed that the blurb at 5:38 didn’t say “it’s our time to glow!” Come on, John, you can do better.
(Nah but really, thank you for all the work you do. It’s always a little treat to get a notification!)
It's incredible what a casual attitude can develop regarding hazardous materials.
love that the door could be opened by mashing buttons. absolutely sounds like something that would happen at my job (luckily not radiation related) where everything is handmade of tape and superglue.
Thank you for covering this. I'm from El Salvador and was unaware of this event
Glad you called it an event and not an accident.
Moral of the story: never let a coworker talk you in to some shit you shouldn't be doing or haven't been briefed on.
I physically recoiled when you explained how they just casually went into the radiotion room. Obviously I don't want to make fun of these people and it's pretty clear they haven't received proper training, but this is just painful to listen to.
Even if your are Joe Schmoe off the street, you know radiation = bad. I don’t understand where they are finding these people to work with radioactive material who have this “fuck it” mentality.
Don't forget, danger = fun 😲
That’s because there are people that think the earth is flat…
They feel because they can’t see it that it doesn’t exist (radiation).
By the time this happened, even the best trained worker had only a vague understanding of how it worked. He seemed to think if the power was off then it was safe.
Go back and watch the video again. They thought they were safe due to a severe lack of training.
@@WouldntULikeToKnow. so no one told them it was radioactive? I just find that hard to believe that the lack of training was so severe that no one told them there was radioactive material, and there were no warning signs on the wall or anything.
Saw the top comment at time, and just wanted to do my very small part and add a comment for help with the algorithm, as it's what I can do for this channel at the moment.
I really appreciate that you cover these seemingly unknown events and tragedies. If not personally remembered, I dearly hope they are 'remembered' by the new SOPs and guidelines to which we all must strictly adhere and suffer through. There's a reason they say 'SOPs are written in blood', but the annoyance of keeping strict logs, procedures and checks is nothing compared to the trauma felt by many that created the new rules. Over regulation, or applying regulations where they are not needed can be a problem, but the lack of some protection against bad procedure can be heartbreaking and a situation will inevitably happen.
It'd be nice to see a video about the changes that were made sure to events covered. I know they are often discussed at the end of videos, but a general overview and rating the effectiveness of changes would be cool to digest. Especially difficult problems, like those seen with scrappers in hospitals that have no money, or companies going bankrupt that lack digital options, many other things I can't think of.
Your videos also show the importance of good training and education. Good general education may make a 'technician' aware of danger, even without proper training. Good training can prevent encountering danger even with a lack of general subject knowledge.
I remember when I was first told my job would involve working with radioactive isotopes and contaminated materials. I had a basic BA biology level of radiation understanding, but I imagined multiple gowns, lead lined clothes, special glove hoods, and intense cleanup and garbage disposable. I was shocked to find that no extra PPE was required for the amount and your of radioactive isotopes we would be working with, but a second set of gloves, N95 mask (more for unknown dangers of newly designed, chemicals of interest), hair net, wrist guards, Teva suit, and booties were available for free if requested. Sometimes these small extra guards were required, with extra checks of course, but not going there) with certain amounts or types radioactive isotopes. This was nothing compared to what I imagined (to be clear, there was much tracking, testing, triple checking, cleaning l, logging, training, extra checks, etc. that I'm not discussing) and it is so easy to see how someone with no knowledge, or only a Western, Hollywood idea of radiation would not realize the danger they may be encountering. Something could be super radioactive, but require minimal shielding (nothing like what is portrayed in movies many times) or very dilute and easily cleanable. The scale of danger and scale of necessary protection is so vast. Someone who imagines radiactive material and it's appearance and storage like I used to would never guess the neat metal or substance that might sell for a few bucks as scrap is incredibly dangerous, killing and maiming many and contaminating cities if only removed from one small shield/tube/device. I guess that last one applies to other videos.
It's amazing you can be protected from many dangerous radioactive materials by simple lab gear that is worn everyday anyway just as protection from regular, non-radiolabeled Lab chemicals.
On the other side is the poor safety culture that developed in this specific case. As a last measure, the guy just needed an understanding that radioactive cobalt is it's own power source (maybe he knew this, but mistranslation/bad explanation of built-in machine safety devices led to this expansion) to understand that such a long exposure was very bad.
Understanding how to stay safe, ensure safety, test safety, who to ask, and understanding how equipment is designed to keep you safe is so important. I feel it is lacking at major, mondern companies at times and I can't imagine all the holes and errors that developed over the years with those working around this particularly cursed machine.
Radiation education is so important for many different reasons, but the extra cost and time involved with managing it sometimes ensures it gets lost or forgotten due to the easiness of forgetting about it compared to the time and cost of the alternative of proper management. Plus all the other million internal/external factors and motivations over decades leading to these employees deciding to use the fix that killed them. Others taking as little time, or explaining they actually cared about safety and taught them correctly wood have saved lives. But there was a lot more than this that liked them I think.
Side note/poor transition:
I also enjoy the bit of dark humor that you sometimes add to the videos. Evil may not be one person trying to do bad things, but a collection of mostly good people, well-intentioned, but lacking the power or incentives to represent safety over profit, etc. Does anyone ever complain to you about your dark humor? I've found some people think I don't take something seriously or that I'm a sadist or something when I use dark humor at times. Don't know if it's poor judgment on my part or the person literally not understanding what dark humor is and that it can be very helpful/therapeutic. I've learned I need to be careful with that, just wondering if this is a common complaint for your videos.
No complaints on dark humor because he is smart and has earned it .
Just when I think there can't possibly be any more unpredictable & insanely reckless ways people have handled a radioactive source you find another one! ☢ I can just imagine the worker standing at the door & mashing all the buttons in frustration, when suddenly the door unlocks... to think the door ended up so damaged that they could jimmy it open with a knife is terrifying. It never seems to occur to people that when you make it _that_ hard to access something it's for a very good reason!
I like how you put "not to scale" on a video lmao, like I could be watching this on my phone, yep that's to scale. That room which people enter and exit is smaller than my phone screen, wow, amazing
That's not what to scale means
My parents survived this war, i find ur video very respectful to my people. Its great hearing history from my culture! Even if it is tragic
Agreed! :-)
@ 12:40 "The radiation can't hurt you if you turn off the lights because it can't see you!"
@ 13:17 "Oh no! It's making its own light! It can see us! We're doomed!"
PD explains everything soooo well