Interesting thing about the guy that drove the dosimeter right up the the building, General Pikalov. He volunteered not only because he wouldn't send his men to do something he wouldn't, but he also knew that the bureaucrats might question the reading if one of his men took it but would not dare question HIS reading, a Russian war hero from WWII who survived fighting Nazis in Stalingrad, amongst other brushes with death.
@@catherinelw9365 we can't have people that expose the weakness of the state think they did the right thing, can't we know? That's how the ruling "class" mentality worked during the Soviets. That's how it still works with some people....
"The wind has been blowing toward Germany. They're not letting children play outside... in Frankfurt." I was a very young child in Germany at the time - lived about an hour away from Frankfurt. My mother telling me not to step on the grass and that I wouldn't be allowed to play outside for a while is a very vivid memory from my childhood. It was one of those moments where you could, even as a small kid, tell that something was extremely wrong by how the adults (who usually seem to be in control of everything) reacted. I will never forget that moment and that scene in this show is... weird every time I see it.
I was in Germany as well. I was about an hour south of Frankfort in the Army. We had to get into MOPP level 4 when the alarms sounded. It was surreal for a few days
I remember when the cloud reached my country. I could be no more then 8 at the time. We were all out on picnic for Labor's day. Millions. It was a national holiday. And then the warning came over the radio for everyone to pack and leave. Being out in the open was to be avoided. Fruits and vegetables not to be peaked. Any food that originated from open fields was to be washed over several times before consumption. We all got our little taste of a Nuclear war that spring. Let's hope it was for the last time....
And while the German children had to stay inside and people didn't buy vegetables or any other food grown outside of greenhouses or closed stables, the French decided the pollution clouds miraculously stopped at the river Rhine and kept buying their food grown outside on the market. It took weeks before the French government warned their people.
It should be noted, though, that Boris became far more effective when he started actually listening and working with Legasov. When he was treatening murder to anyone who didn't immediately obey him, he ended up nearly causing himself a painful agonizing death (ie: what would have happened if the pilot had flown them directly over the reactor). Plus, I won't go into detail since Cassie hasn't seen the future episodes yet, but everyone who has knows that it's not actually Boris who ends up making the most difficult decisions.
The best description from the writer was that he was "the kind of man who would shout things into existence," and that really comes through in episodes 3 and 4
I'm from Belarus (or Byelorussia, as they call it here). When my Mom watched this series she mentioned her half cousin was among the firefighters who were the first responders to the fire. He died shortly after, so she took this series more personal than any other.
Nuclear power generates FAR more power than other forms. heres an illustration: currently, the smallest reactors are on naval warships in the U.S. they can travel about 20 years without refueling. with normal engines, refueling needs to occur regularly. the enrgy produced is powerful enough to propel what is in effect a small city for 20 years nonstop. that is the reason.
Exactly. I support clean energy like solar and wind, but to provide enough, consistent energy, nuclear is the only way. That is until we achieve successful fusion ractors.
@@johnannonymous1469 Nonsense. Come on back when nuclear energy doesn't require legislative caps on liability insurance in order to deal with the massive severity of the risk of failure, and when you have a reasonable solution for dealing with waste that's inherently a dirty bomb and fairly-easily enriched into the most devastating weapons known to humanity.
@@michaelccozens "Nonsense. Come on back when nuclear energy doesn't require legislative caps on liability insurance in order to deal with the massive severity of the risk of failure, and when you have a reasonable solution for dealing with waste that's inherently a dirty bomb and fairly-easily enriched into the most devastating weapons known to humanity." Come back when the waste from renewables or other forms of power generation are treated properly such as nuclear waste would be. EDIT: As opposed to buried or shipped to the third world as it is today.
"You are dealing with something that has never occured on this planet before" - I don't know if he really said that but it is exactly correct and is one of the scariest lines I've ever heard spoken on screen
It’s not 100% correct. Google natural nuclear reactors in Gabon. Of course this was millions of years ago, but still. Nevertheless it was a good dramatic point, and true to all intents and purposes - certainly in human history.
"Gurkha, flying a swift and powerful vimana hurled a single projectile charged with the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame, as bright as ten thousand suns, rose with all its splendor. It was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas. The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Hair and nails fell out; Pottery broke without apparent cause, and the birds turned white. After a few hours all foodstuffs were infected to escape from this fire the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment.” -The Mahabharata, at least 6.000 years old.
@@langdalepaul Even then, that reactor wasn't quite completely exposed like Chernobyl's, it was deep underground. Chernoby's reactor was continuing to undergo fission while in direct contact with the atmosphere. The only other times that has happened are nuclear bombs and extremely high-energy meteors, both of which functioned differently. I don't think there has ever been a sustained nuclear fusion reaction exposed to the open air, before or since.
@@StarkRG maybe the script writers were this nuanced, but I doubt it. Not sure what you mean in your last sentence. I think you’re confusing fission with fusion.
Incidents like this are what happens when you assign people positions based on their loyalty to the state rather than their expertise. It's amazing that this sort of thing is still happening all over the world.
@@MJKeenan30 the thing that enrages me the most is that half the country supports it. No one uses common sense or logic anymore. No one even looks into the issues they allegedly feel so passionate about. Every major “issue” in the US right now is blown out of proportion by the way of propaganda and fear-mongering. Every form of media is being used as propaganda unfortunately, paving the way for history to repeat itself. This country will be unrecognizable at this rate in 30-40 years, maybe even sooner than that. Just look at our current political situation where the politicians are only in it for their personal interests. Us peasants don’t matter one bit to them. Just look at the price of gas and everyday commodities right now where everything is up 30%. Is that reflective of a government that cares for its people? Most people remain oblivious and just don’t care because they’re too busy with their own lives. That is until it starts affecting their day to day lives, but by then it’s too late. We’re watching history unfold before our eyes people. Enjoy.
you could easily replace the soviet committees with corporate boardrooms. all the disasters they downplay/ cover up because it would hurt their profit margins/stock price
@@3ggh3ad That's what happed with the 3 Mile Island incident, President Carter had to get directly involved to get the company to tell people what was happening
@@rivercitymud She makes the cynic in me smile with hope. There is some purity and good left in humanity. And we're having her watch horrible things for our entertainment. smh.
I remember this, growing up in the 80's Sweden. We weren't allowed to play in the playgrounds anymore, we had to shower if we played in the sand. We had iodine pills in our fridge. Farmers had to abandon crops, we read the newspaper every day to see becquerel counts to see if we could fish or pick mushrooms. They started digging out the top layer of every playground. It was all pretty surreal.
I don't think we did any of that in Norway. Don't know why. All I can remember, we were warned against eating reindeer, because reindeer food (lav, lichen?) process radioactivity really slow. Sweden is a bit closer, but still, i dunno.
@@vidarvaggen Yeah, Sweden got the majority of it, due to some rainy period bringning it over here. My dad was always fishing, and I remember him reading the bequerell count and be like "meh, it'll probably be alright..." every single morning.
The piles of clothing you see dropped by the hospital staff still exist today in Pripyat, and are among the most radioactive areas on the planet. They give off an amount of radiation per hour just shy of a chest x-ray at around 95µSv/hr.
"The piles of clothing you see dropped by the hospital staff still exist today in Pripyat, and are among the most radioactive areas on the planet. They give off an amount of radiation per hour just shy of a chest x-ray at around 95µSv/hr." Which is like eating 95 bananas.... :D
@@ThatDamnPandaKai Most fission products do have a short half-life and stop being radioactive in less than a decade. The big trouble is with the longer-lived isotopes like strontium-90 and cesium-137, which are chemically similar to calcium and potassium respectively. As such, the body can absorb them and use them like calcium and potassium. Strontium can get incorporated into your bones, and once there is hard to get rid of.
It's actually 999 millisievert/hour, even after decades. 1 millisievert/year is normal for a human to absorb. Eating a banana will expose you to about 0,1 mikrosievert. So you have to eat roundabout 10.000 bananas to reach the effekt of standing near those clothes for about one hour. 1 Sievert is none the less is a mark where the human body become to get radioactive burns and you will become defintely severe radiation sickness.
They say the general who went himself to go get an accurate reading of the radiation that night was protected by his massive brass balls as they soaked up all the radiation. The bravest man.
@@redcardinalist Depends - for most types of radiation, sure, but if it's neutrons you want to shield against, you actually want light elements for shielding - water's pretty good because of the hydrogen (see episode 5), but presumably you'd get some secondary beta emission through neutron activation of the oxygen in the water - of course that can be stopped by a fairly thin metal shielding. I guess what I'm saying here is that his balls only need to be *plated* with brass, which I'm sure would be a great comfort to Gen. Pikalov.
I can't take credit for this: The lead wasn't to protect General Pikalov from the radiation, the lead was there to protect the radiation from General Pikalov. General Vladimir Karpovich Pikalov commanded the Chemical Troops of the USSR from 1968 to 1988. He fought in World War II and he was wounded several times. He took part in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk.
About the nuclear power question: most reactors are relatively safe when properly regulated. Chernobyl and Fukushima have been the only major accidents that released a lot of radiation. Coal plants are more dangerous than nuclear plants over a period of time in that they cause more death.
A thing to clarify here is that coal power plants cause death even when working correctly, because of the significant polution they cause. Even wind power casuses more deaths yearly than nuclear does (falling technicians etc during maintenance).
When a nuclear plant is working correctly, it produces basically no pollution, with the exception of the spent fuel of course. While that is extremely dangerous for a LONG time, it's a contained small amount of material that can be controlled way more easily than the millions of tons of smoke created by burning coal.
I wouldn't say NPPs are relatively safe when properly designed, regulated and managed, I would they they are one of the safest forms of power generation, for the sheer amount of power they produce, that we have available at our disposal. Even wind turbines damage more property and kill more living beings per year than nuclear powerplants.
Jarred Harris, has stated that the bullet speech was a way for Legosav to help the other men in the room understand the danger, since he knew that if he used scientific terms he would lose them, but as military men, they understood the word bullet.
Having spent a large part of my career working in power plants, both nuclear and fossil fuel, I have always found it interesting that most of our electricity is actually produced by... steam. Yes, the nuclear reactions and burning of fossil fuels is all to produce heat which produces steam which in turn drives the turbines that drive the generators that produce electricity. So, although few realize it, we are still living in the steampunk days.
And, oddly enough, train engines are actually run by electricity produced by diesel generators. Almost feels like they are more advanced in a way. Though generating power using steam is actually pretty convenient since air and water are abundant on earth. It's just the method we use that can be a challenge.
Kind of surprising no one has thought to build an epic powerplant on top of or adjacent to a volcano. That is a near perpetual source of heat. If the volcano eventually erupts, no environmental disaster beyond what there already would be, sans powerplant.
@@spartanical That's essentially what geothermal power plants are. Iceland has quite a few of them. There are a couple of big obstacles to the use of geothermal energy, though, most notably that volcanoes tend to be in places that aren't ideal for power plants. You want to generate electricity as close to where it will be used (heavily industrialized or densely populated areas) because transporting electricity over large distances means you lose much of it, and for much of human history, people had few reasons to want to live close to a volcano, and a couple rather compelling reasons not to want to live close to a volcano.
@@spartanical Iceland uses a lot of geothermal, but it can't be easily exported. So Iceland instead uses it for electricity intensive production, mainly aluminum and now crypto mining.
I was only 6 years when this happened, but I still remember it. Despite being over 2000 kilometers away, radioactive fallout rained down on our northernmost territories, poisoning reindeer. Were a couple of years when livestock from those areas could not be safely eaten.
until this series very few people only knew how close Europe was to devastation. literally a razor's edge from complete apocalypse. in the next episode or two you realize that and it will blow your mind. it's going to get heartbreaking buckle up. Love you popcorn You're awesome. seriously buckle up. ❤️💚☘️
Very few people? I'm not sure that this is the case. In the West, in Europe itself, maybe. In Russia, many people knew and understood the scale of the disaster long before this series. But this is understandable, it happened here, in Russia. To be more precise, in the USSR. But the fact that after the series a lot more people learned about this disaster is a fact! Greetings from Russia!
It's too bad this series chose to run with the most inaccurate, but most sensational case here. What is true: in the chaos right after the accident, some early numbers were run on the possibility of a steam explosion from the core material reaching the water tanks. A few scientists made wild predictions about the result, such as Europe becoming uninhabitable, etc. However, these predictions were quickly found to be badly wrong by actual physicists. There was never any danger of such a massive event. The reason is simple: the calculations were based on every last molecule of water flashing to steam. This would not have happened. If you set off a stick of dynamite, a brick of C4, etc, only about 3 to 4% of the actual material explodes. The shockwave from the initial microseconds of the explosion throws the rest of the explosive clear before it can itself react. In the same way, a violent steam explosion would quickly rupture the entire building, throwing clear the vast majority of the liquid water and leaving most of the rest to simply run out along the ground. There was literally no danger of a 30-kilometer explosion (which is absurd anyway on its face - nuclear reactors are not nuclear bombs), and Europe would not have been "poisoned" to any further extent (other than the amount of radionuclide dust carried by the steam cloud itself). However, such a steam explosion would have greatly complicated matters at the actual site - because, although there wouldn't be another fire and smoke element, the explosion would most likely crack open the remaining three reactors, compounding the radionuclide problem by a factor of 4. Cleanup in the region would have become much more dangerous and problematic. Unfortunately, while the show is gripping and well acted, it always leans toward sensationalism any time it specifically tackles the subject of radiation. The initial calculations on the steam explosion could have been shown later in the series to be wrong; unfortunately, the show runners let this misconception linger because it was more dramatic and dangerous that way. It's one of the reasons that, as electrifying as the show is, it is a drama rather than a documentary and should be taken as such.
@@channelwacke interesting take, and your expertise, knowledge and basis of this information comes from, what. are you a nuclear physicist are you a biologist, are you a botanist, do you have a master's degree in history. are you from Russia. I mean that was a long thesis with some valid points. I understand dramatic license. but you make it sound like all of this was made up. there's one thing I give credit to HBO and how they do a show they do their f****** research. You stated a lot of facts but no sources. so, back your theory. in a nutshell it's dramatic representation of what happened but the basic facts are true. there was explosion, the Soviet Union tried to hide it. there was an extreme threat to contamination of the groundwater, there was an extreme threat to a thermal explosion. And what was well covered was the sacrifices that many men and women made to keep this from literally destroying most of Europe, and Ukraine.
@@tadmurphy7436 I can't claim to be an expert myself. I did, however, grow up with one. My dad worked in the nuclear industry for over 35 years (at a plant, and then at a Superfund nuclear cleanup site) - right through the 80s when this disaster happened, and the 90s when the truth started coming out of Ukraine. We talked about this stuff all the time, and he knew every aspect of it - even down to minor differences in construction and safety procedures between the NRC and its Soviet counterpart, or the inner workings of the RBMK light water graphite reactor versus the Western POW or AGR models. He can still bore you senseless talking about the difference between positive and negative void coefficients if you let him. :) Basically, I grew up around this stuff and had daily access to a bona fide expert on the subject. And I was very curious about it all.
I was raised in Germany and a teen when this went down. The stay indoors thing was real. Produce and livestock were also scarce in central Europe, after. It was a very scary time for everyone.
When this happened, I was 9 years old. On Sunday 27th we were on a hike in the south of Germany. We were collecting berries and stuff. Nobody knew anything about the events. Next day in the evening it came in the news. I can still remember how shocked everyone was back then in West Germany.
17:15 "Why do we need nuclear power?" Hey, that's not a stupid question at all. I took an course on the energy sector for my Environmental Science degree last year. The simplest answer is that it's very reliable and efficient; the amount of power that we glean from it is far better than the other options. Coal - aside from the obvious effects it has on the atmosphere, is pretty inefficient in comparison. Much like oil, it's also a non-renewable resource. When it runs out - and it _will_ run out - there needs to be a way to replace the demand, or the oh-so comfortable ways we live now will disappear. There's a lot of talk in politics about the Green New Deal, but it's not going to work _exactly_ as they say it will. Solar panels are absolutely going to be a huge player in the future, but the technology for better efficiency and battery storage just aren't there yet. There's also the issue of maximizing the amount of energy depending on the tilt of the Earth in a given season of a year. Wind will also be huge, but those can only be built in relatively specific areas, and have a limited peak efficiency because of the energy needed to keep the turbines moving. Hydroelectric plants will also be extremely important, but most of the major rivers in the world are already in use. And that's not even getting into stuff like the infrastructure for electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. As a result, the energy grid of the future will have to be a combination of everything in order to keep up with demand, and nuclear power _will_ have to be a part of it. That all being said, nuclear energy gets a bad rap. People are scared of it, especially because of incidents like Chernobyl. But there are actually several nuclear plants in use, but you never hear about them because they're working perfectly fine. And yeah, there are still major issues when it comes to the impacts of uranium mining and nuclear waste disposal. But if you want to read something heartening, look up the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), which a fusion reactor currently being built in France and slated for operation within the next 15 years. It's supposed to utilize Deuterium and Tritium reactions. Deuterium is actually really common; it exists in about 0.015% of naturally occurring hydrogen. A D-D reaction creates 3.3 MeV of energy, which basically means that there's enough to power mankind's energy demand until we go extinct. The problem is that D-D reactions usually just occur naturally in stars. For example, remember how Thor got his Stormbreaker axe in _Infinity War?_ It required the heat of a star. D-D is kinda like that, except there's no machinery or superheroes. Instead, it requires temperatures of at least 1,000,000 K, which our current nuclear reactors are nowhere close to reaching. Meanwhile, a D-T reaction nets a whopping 17.6 MeV. The problem is that Tritium only has a half life of 12.3 years, and not much of it exists in nature. We can get around that by exposing lithium to neutron bombardment, but there isn't that much lithium around, either. That means more mining. If the ITER works correctly, they'll be up to temperatures of 100,000,000 K. When that happens, the nuclear energy sector is going to get far more interesting. TLDR: We need nuclear energy because it's more reliable and efficient than other sources. In order to keep up with energy demands, nuclear energy _will_ absolutely be necessary in the future, even if no one likes talking about it. Also, nuclear fusion is on the way.
To elaborate: environmental activists are pushing to stop using coal, oil and gas because of their carbon emissions. Wind, solar and water each have their own problems (and environmental impacts), and none are sufficient to replace carbon fuels. So the only real alternative is nuclear power. Hopefully someday we'll master fusion, but until then, fission reactors are all we have. Fusion may be 15 years away, but they've been saying that for 50 years. The RBMK reactors were particularly unsafe; for one, they didn't have containment buildings like those in Western plants (including Three Mile Island and Fukushima). The Western accidents have resulted in a small release of radiation, but at Chernobyl the core of the reactor was wide open.
Uranium is not a renewable resource either. The storage needed for renewable energy is best realized with power-to-gas, not batteries. This can easily store enough energy for any period of time. Yes nuclear power has a bad reputation - and quite rightly so. Even economically, it no longer makes sense, since nuclear power is already more expensive than solar and wind power. Whether nuclear fusion reactors will ever work is completely unclear. We also don't have decades to wait for an experimental technology. We already have all the technology needed for 100% renewables, and we have an energy source that will provide enough energy until humanity ceases to exist - the sun. Nuclear power makes no sense and we don't need it.
@@jeremywalters4133 it depends on the type of reactor as for the danger. Given CO2 emissions or nuclear waste storage, I'll take nuclear waste storage. The fact is, if we're looking at a stop-gap until we can be 100% renewable, nuclear makes a lot more sense.
Nuclear power is actually quite safe when used properly; essentially like how planes have revolutionized all travel and is essentially unimaginable today without them. But like planes, having a 'perfectly safe' accident is about as 'perfectly safe' as being in a plane crash: Its very unlikely but it can be very, very dangerous if it happens. Id argue something like Fukushima was handled about as well as it could be, it was controlled obviously alot better, and even it had mistakes made that we've learned from. Also your channel is awesome!
Fukushima wouldn't even had happened if the Tokyo Power Company had listened to their own engineers telling them *time and again* that the emergency generators were placed far too low for safety. Its sister plan further north got hit even harder and there wasn't a single breach of containment simply because the company that managed *that* plant LISTENED TO THEIR OWN ENGINEERS.
nuclear power is the only realistic way forward to maintain a reliable power grid while moving away from fossil fuels. current renewables simply cannot get the job done. it's a shame the left has demonized it.
@@asdfasdf7199 It us a shame that risks and incidents like that are talked down. There is nothing worth taking these risks. How can you be so ignorant?
If we want affordable electricity over the next century, we need nuclear power. Beyond that, we could almost certainly replace it with space-based solar power (in space, solar collectors need not worry about clouds or snowcover or nightfall).
Love the blocking when the four are waiting for General Pikalov and the true roentgen readings; Legasov sitting on one side, the two idiots sitting on the other, and Shcherbina pacing between them in the middle, waiting to be swayed into one camp or other other.
13:50 there is a reason why they seemed calm, most of them were just given 5 minutes notice, they were told to pack lightly, as you can see most of them carrying 1 suitcase per person, no pets to be taken, because to prevent panic, the people of pripyat were told they would only be leaving for 3-4 days. What they didn't know, their absence from Pripyat would be permanent
@@alasdairmacleod7769 No, it really hasn't. my tour through the exclusionary zone highlighted how it is a shell of being reclaimed by nature and wildlife. The leaves were not decomposing from the previous fall and the animals were all young because the older ones constantly die from disease. Nature is still not welcome there.
Each cracking noise on those Geiger Muller detectors means that one "bullet" which is a neutron, or alpha particle, or a gamma particle hit that detector.
The final scene of this episode is one of the most intense things I've ever watched. Instant stress headache. However, happily, the three guys who went into the water all survived the incident, and two of them are still alive (or were, as of 2019.) The third died in 2005.
@17:15 -- bear in mind there are all sorts of different reactor designs. The RBMK reactor used at Chernobyl was both flawed *and* operated ineptly. But we've had our own accidents in this country (not nearly as bad as Chernobyl but not good either) such as the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania back in 1979 (before the Chernobyl accident happened). There are reactor designs which *cannot* suffer meltdown no matter how ineptly they are operated (namely molten thorium salt reactors). Right now scientists the world over are trying to find a way to create nuclear fusion reactors -- which would produce power without radioactive waste. That has been a hard nut to crack, but we will get there. If anything the Chernobyl accident is not so much a condemnation of nuclear power as it is of abuse of power -- of societies built on an inability to admit mistakes, on propaganda, on lies, on a lack of respect for the natural world and the scientific method which remains our best tool for understanding reality. Physics and the universe don't care about what lies we choose to tell ourselves or parade before the world, as always we can either respect the truth and live, or ignore it and die. Sadly this is a lesson we have not learned -- it never ceases to amaze me how people refuse to accept that basic reality -- whether we are talking about reactor design, or pandemics, or climate change and sea level rise. Physics and reality will assert themselves. The truth *will* out. Trying to pretend they won't can be lethal. That is the lesson of Chernobyl.
the guy at 9:09 is Col. Gen. Vladimir Pikalov, commander of the Chemical Troops of the USSR, veteran of the Battle of Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk, he was 62 years old at the time of the Chernobyl Disaster, he died in 2003 at the age of 78.
@@dracolithtitan2372 War hero is an understatement. This man is a veteran, a personal witness to two of the largest and bloodiest battles in the entire history of humanity. A million men died at Stalingrad and that's only military deaths. Kursk was the largest tank battle in the history of mankind and probably will never be topped. The sheer numbers of men in that battle is staggering to even think about. We in the west talk alot and glorify a lot about our part in World War 2. But the Eastern Front, the USSR vs Nazi Germany. That war, was nothing short of absolute insanity. It's almost impossible to think about the scale of it and the brutality of it. So consider for a moment a man that has seen that, and survived that. That's a man who isn't afraid of anything.
The worst part of the evacuation, was that the people that lived there was told that they were only going to leave for 3 days, so almost all of their belongings were left behind
My father was stationed in Germany during this event. I was in high school with 3 sisters.. We were never told to be concerned. My sister was pregnant at the time and my niece was born with a thyroid issue. My sisters and high school friends are suffering from other similar ailments. The world health organization will not acknowledge this affected Germany or the ailments people are suffering.
the only bright spot is the people who stepped up and made the sacrifice , knowing the dangers and what it would cost. the general who took the readings, the 3 men who emptied the water tanks, the coal workers etc.
@@keithsj10 There’s always someone who has to be an utter dick for no reason. Congrats on disregarding all the female scientists, medical staff, etc etc, just to try and score a cheap, meanspirited point. Clap. Clap. Clap. What are you even Doing here?
Cassie has said she couldn't volunteer, and you know what, I don't blame her, it's a potentially horrible death and even if you survive the long term health problems are disturbing. Plus as mentioned there will have been female doctors, nurses, scientists, probably military personnel as well.
In actuality, nuclear power is *very* safe, clean, and renewable (just don't build them in areas that can flood or near fault lines lol). The only thing they emit is water vapor. However, what you are seeing with Chernobyl is a disastrous toxic combination between gross negligence and arrogant short-shortsightedness. Episode 5 will lay that out magnificently.
@@jeffrogers2180 Statistics say otherwise. More people have died from coal-related pollution than nuclear. Its just from nuclear, it happens in a very visible high profile way in a short period of time in a way that is easy to trace to the source, vs particulates in the air causing all sorts of health effects over a lifetime.
@@dguisinger Right. The positive void coefficient of RBMK is not present in other reactor types. Episode 4 does detail most of it, though it kind of leaves out that even for RBMK, Dyatlov had to manually override a lot of safeties to have the control rods in that configuration.
@@jeffrogers2180 Take both western style reactor meltdowns. Three Mile Island and Fukushima neither caused anywhere near the contamination or explosion when compared to Chernobyl. Also this is only 3 nuclear reactor meltdowns over how many years and millions of operating hours of dozens of nuclear reactors around the world. Each of which gives extremely clean and reliable energy to a massive demand. Look at USA and Germany now as they shut down reactors their pollution goes up as coal and gas or even diesel generators try to make up the short fall.
I already watched this show and the history, the events, everything is incredible and terrifying. But reading the comments of people that were actually nearby living that craziness just added a huge depth to this show and makes it wayy more real.
I live in the Netherlands, I remember a story my parents told me that my grandparents had a little vegetable garden across the street from the house where my mom grew up. You here him saying the wind turned towards Germany. They couldn't eat from there vegetable garden for years because of this.
@@MrRidged Actually, not only East Germany but also most of Western Europe. But they didn't give a shit about those as the Soviet Union ended at East Germany and everything beyond was the enemy.
Those fireman's clothes are still there to this day and are extremely radioactive. The tourists that go there have video taped and put it here on youtube showing how radioactive it still is! Not to mention you might be interested to know they just recently completed the new confinement structure around the reactor.
@@tfdanielxd1 Like a movie that has existed for years, history has also existed for years. However, it is new to every generation and each experiences it as though it has just happened anew. So yes, you can spoil history.
17:33 Remember, this was a rather dangerous design for a reactor, known to be unstable in certain configurations... and was driven into that unstable configuration by people who didn't understand what they were doing. Western power reactors are of a completely different design, and are inherently much safer to begin with. Plus, there are multiple safety systems (that Chernobyl didn't have) to prevent unsafe conditions, and a containment vessel (the big concrete domes) if things still go wrong. The worst accident we've had here in the US was Three Mile Island Unit 2, where the core partially melted down. Only a small amount of radioactive contamination escaped the containment building, though. Realistically, though, nuclear power is the only way to generate reliable and constantly available electrical power without producing carbon dioxide - the wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine, and there's no way to build a battery big enough to compensate. If you always want your lights to go on when you flip the switch, nuclear power is the only real option.
Excellent points. The first episode made a point to stress how they are RBMK reactors several times. Nuclear power is reasonably safe as long as constant vigilance is maintained. Man-made disasters like this don't happen as a result of one mistake, but a series of mistakes or problems or circumstance. There is always risk in life, so it isn't possible to say there is zero risk from any nuclear power plant, no matter how safely designed it is. Every disaster, every train collision, ever airplane crash, every ship capsize is an opportunity to learn how to prevent those mistakes/problems/circumstances from aligning in the future.
Those firefighters uniforms are still in that basement. There’s a TH-cam channel called exploring with Josh. He goes to Chernobyl and puts a gauge through the doorway of the room they dumped the uniforms. It’s absolutely still lethal.
I've been trained to react to CBRN situations (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear), and water is extremely effective in reducing the amounts of radiation spread. You can effectively use water to wash the radiation off an exposed subject to greatly minimize damage. Current day reactors are usually submerged in water and to an extent are safe to even swim in directly above the reactor. ( there are some obvious exceptions to Chernobyl because that's an exposed core). I've also used Geiger counters (the ones they used at the end of the episode) and they really do make that horrific sound. It's bone-chilling to hear in person.
20:00 It wasn't just cities. Whole COUNTRIES. Ukraine alone is the second largest country in Europe by landsize, second only to Russia. Wholly uninhabitable. And add the whole of Belarus to that. Tens of millions of people. Let that sink in.
@@ronaldckrausejr7762 Nope, the Japanese water tanks and the destroyed reactors cannot interact to produce a thermal explosion. Fukushima reactors were different than Soviet and had more layers to secure the core reactor. The 2011 earthquake made fail the primary power for the cooling system and the tsunami made to fail the Diesel generators, so the reactors melted. Nowadays in fact they're still cooling the reactors after they melted inside its concrete armor.
Nuclear reactors are extremely safe,, especially the ones like here in the west and the newer reactors used in the world today which uses water as a moderator and for steam turbines. Chernobyl was a rbmk reactor with boron rods as a moderator but also had tips that was graphite. This was done to save money in the Soviet Union and Baltic states. When a spike is detected and the reactor needs to be shut down 'scrammed' the shut down switch is used which lowers the control rods and it's those rods that are supposed to shut down the reaction within the reactors....however...the graphite tips used on rbmk reactors increase reaction for just a moment as the control rods are lowered then as the boron is continually lowered after the tips, reactions are stopped. Another problem with chernobyl that they do not cover here is the test they were performing. They wanted to see if turbine coast down would power pumps long enough for the generators to spin up fast enough to keep the pumps running. Sadly this test SHOULD have been done by the turbine manufacturer while it was being designed and built..but it wasn't. Even more tragic is the fact that there were generators in the soviet union that powers up 3 times faster than the ones installed at chernobyl. Either of these would have made the test that night unnecessary in the first place. There are major differences between soviet reactors and those here in the west where we use water moderated reactors if a reaction starts to spike all it does is boil water out of the reactor then reaction stops...water IS the reason for Nuclear reaction AND the moderator...so it's extremely safe...so safe that when it gets out of control it shuts itself down. Think of a car speeding down a deserted road...gas makes it go, run out of gas though, and it stops. Another is mandatory containment buildings...this also would have saved chernobyl. Buy I think and so did the scientist at chernobyl that if the generators were updated and the turbine manufacturer had ran turbine coasting test....this would never had happened. Note...if you're one of those that think of green goo when thinking Nuclear waste...that's also not correct. It's a solid that is encased in another solid...you can stand and lean against it and not be harmed. I know activists will tell you differently...but only because that is what they want you to believe. But it's not true. Nuclear energy is safe, safer for the environment, and cheaper than coal or natural gas.
I was 6 years old living in Manheim Germany on the US military base there. When this happened we weren't allowed outside for what seemed like weeks. This was 35 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
This was my favorite episode of the series. I loved the acting from Jared Harris, who I first discovered in "The Terror" and who, since that point forward, I will watch in anything. This episode also hit my personal perfect balance of information, reactions, twists, complications, and great individual scenes ("It's not 3 roentgen. It's 15,000").
What an episode! The Geiger Counter Sounds are definitely unnerving - gives chills every time it crackles faster and faster - Anyway, great reaction as usual! On to Episode 3!
As an engineer, I am a wholehearted supporters of nuclear. By far the safest atleast now that we have gen 4 reactors and have made mistakes to learn from. Chernobyl is the only nuclear disaster of its scale. Nothing else comes close. Bupal was way worse and noone talks about it because it's a run of the mill chemical plant.
"Why do we need nuclear power plants?" Nuclear power is actually one of the safest and most reliable sources of power. We should actually be using more nuclear power plants.
@@bitbyterjr Yeah putting the diesel backup generators in the basement at Fukushima was a choice that must have made sense for some reason, but it was a bad idea.
@@Thoughmuchistaken in my opinion, thinking that you can design something as potentially dangerous and environmentally damaging as a nuclear power plant to survive some of nature's most powerful forces is pretty damn arrogant not to mention foolish.
I'm going to have to re-watch this series, and that's all there is to it. Also, I cannot recommend the The Chernobyl Podcast highly enough. It was produced by HBO as a companion-piece to the series, and in it, they cover a lot of ground, both in regards to the series and the actual accident itself, and there's an installment for each episode of the series. It's available right here on TH-cam, or anywhere you get your podcasts.
So glad you stuck with the show. It is worth it. I agree with the person that said Boris Scherbina’s arc is great. I also love the way they portrayed Gorbachev. He was very different from any of the other leaders they had. He listened and tried to be reasonable, and responsible to his position. I shudder to think if this had happened under any of the others. Khrushchev, Brezhnev, hell even Andropov probably wouldn’t have listened. I don’t really know much about Chernenko his tenure was really brief.
19:54 just to clarify. The places he was naming were not cities. They were countries. I say this so you can understand the magnitude of how dangerous & severe it was. Multiple countries would be inhabitable for hundreds of years. The water that goes through was one of the main water supplies for most of Eurasia.
Nuclear Energy is actually pretty safe and much clear than coal as you mentioned. The design flaw lays with the he RBMK reactors in the way they were designed.
Nuclear power plants are one of the cleanest forms of energy production we have. The byproduct of it is mostly spent uranium which is stored in barrels a number of miles underground until it becomes inert (no longer radioactive). It is renewable, generates more and causes less issues than any other form of energy production. Only issue is when people dump radioactive waste where they shouldn't to cut costs on those underground bunkers. The fumes from coal are super toxic and causes a lot of the global warming. It's burning alternative is wood, which leads to deforestation. Solar is hard to store and generetes fewer amounts of energy. The byproduct of the spent materials in solar panels is also very toxic and can't quite be treated yet. Hydroelectric is fairly clean but can cause issues for the fauna living in those waters. Wind power causes massive issues for bird migrations and other fauna, causing severe environmental issues that haven't been properly studied in their entirety yet. Oil is very finite and has a lot of waste that is toxic and polluting. Nuclear is the future and what is going to get mankind the farthest in the safest way. The only reasons it's not more popular is because of Chernobyl, and because big influential people own oil fields, coal mines, etc and because shutting down a coal mine or powerplant etc can essentially kill a small town's economy.
Nuclear is non-renewable. You have a fuel, U-235, that’s used and then it’s useless. Then you need new U-235 to replace it, from the refinement of raw Uranium ore into the fissile isotope. Also, it’s not just alpha-emitting Uranium in the spent rods, but the byproducts of fission, which includes Kr-85, which decays into Rb-85, and Ba-141, which also decays ... they are all beta and gamma emitters. It’s pretty bad stuff.
@@MP197742 You're forgetting one thing If you reprocess the rods you can get more life out of them. but if you look at the overall carbon footprint solar and wind their initial construction has such a high carbon footprint not to mention mining for the rare earth elements necessary for them it's terrible. but the number one thing that a lot of people don't realize is an explosion like the one in Chernobyl is impossible in any other country. Just because Western designed nuclear reactors have what's known as a negative void coefficient. I'm not going to explain it go to Wikipedia and look it up educate yourself
"The byproduct of it is mostly spent uranium which is stored in barrels a number of miles underground until it becomes inert (no longer radioactive)." You skipped the part where it takes thousands of years for this to happen. The industry still doesn't know how to do any of this safely. Kind of the key point which you glossed over.
@@adamndirtyape he also skipped a part that as a technology progresses there will be less waste produced. he also skipped over the part that there are prototype reactors that actually utilize this waste to create low amounts of energy.... So yes you are in fact correct he did skip over a lot of parts
17:20 yes, we do. What we don't need are RBMK reactors, which were used to produce weapon-grade plutonium other than electric energy. Also, having a containment building would have helped. Like, A LOT.
The 3 divers actually survived years after this! Due to the rubber suits that they were wearing actually protected them better than any lead suits that was available. I think one of the divers died in 2002 or 2005 I can't remember. The other 2 are still alive? I never saw an update.
Coal is an extremely toxic fuel source, when you consider the long-term effects it has had on our planet. Nuclear energy is the safest and most powerful form of clean energy in the world, but unfortunately people prioritized money over safety and this led to events like Chernobyl. Nuclear energy is a beautiful and amazing innovation, if you respect it. If you don't, you die.
I’m living in Sweden and was 20 when the accident occurred. I remember when they first detected the radiation outside a nuclear reactor here. They were very puzzled about the levels because they couldn’t figure out where it came from. As I remember it they did some kind of emergency shutdown. It was all over the news. Then the next morning we learnt about Chernobyl. Experts were like “If this is the levels we are experiencing here, we can only imagine what it is like in Pripjat.” It was a chilling experience and it affected us for years after.
Boris Shcherbina was in charge of Soviet crisis management of two major catastrophes: the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the 1988 Armenian earthquake. Shcherbina served in a similar role after the catastrophic 1988 Armenian earthquake. He proposed inviting international rescuers - from Austria and Czechoslovakia - who had thermal imagers and specially trained dogs at their disposal to search for living people.
To answer your question. As far as I understand is that the amount of energy produced by nuclear power plants is far more than what coal could produce. There’s of course solar power, and is just now becoming increasingly popular and safer, but nuclear power also allowed the production of weapons manufacturing, as well as instantaneously providing larger populations with electricity.
The man with the birthmark on his head was Mikhail Gorbachev. He is responsible for dismantling the former Soviet Union and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. He was a great statesman for his people, I genuinely liked him.
A lot of people don't like him cause he presided over economic failures, but I think that's a little unfair as the Soviet Union was already stagnating at that point from Brezhnev's policies, Gorbachev gets the blame for it but it probably would have been far worse had he not instigated his reforms. And he gets big points in my book for his efforts to bring more freedom of speech and freedom of the press to Soviet society.
@@G1NZOU yeah no argument there, the Soviet Union was already in decline at that point. Due to all the money that they were spending on their military, in particular their nuclear arms, that was crushing their country. They just couldn't outspend us, that's all
Not fully correct. Yeltzin and his friends dismantled the Union, but Gorbachev, having never wanted this, still gave power away and conceded to the will of the people.
@@FEARoperative True he wanted reform to save the Soviet state and it may have gone a lot better there not been pushback against it and a coup attempt.
The end of the episode never ceases to almost give me a panic attack!! 😂🤣😂🤣 Nuclear power, even taking the three worst accidents into account (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima), is still the safest and most efficient source of energy we've discovered. Hopefully you'll react too DeepWater Horizon after this series!!! 😊
reactors are pretty safe and very green and efficient when no accidents occur, especially western ones, there was a design flaw in Chernobyl, and the other two significant events was the 3 Miles island event in the USA and Fukushima in Japan
I love your reactions so much, I may have to watch this show so I can enjoy them with you. This is actually the first show/movie you have reacted to that I haven’t seen, so I may give it a shot.
My take on your "Why nuclear power?" question which, by the by, is not stupid at all and the subject of intense debate these days- We currently use nuclear power today because of its high efficiency vs other forms of power generation. In terms of the amount of fuel you put in, you get a massive amount of power in return compared to a coal or oil based plant (Which themselves come with their own sets of problems, mainly to do with air pollution and, as you said, their non-renewable nature). And in terms of physical space required vs solar and wind based generation, where a nuclear plant will take up a fraction of the space that a solar or wind turbine farm would for the amount of power generated. Nuclear plants, however, are quite expensive to construct so it's a "High cost of entry but low cost of fuel" sort of thing. On the flipside, about its safety- think of mankind's earliest discovery of fire, it being an important source of heat, energy and light when properly handled with the care that it demands, but a source of immensely destructive power when not. Nuclear power, similarly, is incredibly dangerous when mishandled and care is not taken to construct a plant where the #1 concern is safety. To date, all three current major nuclear plant accidents have occurred due to poor design decisions where the bottom line was more important than overall safety, coupled with insufficiently trained staff. With that said, when things go wrong in a nuclear plant, they can go REALLY wrong REALLY quickly. Beyond these dangers, even though a nuclear plant has a low greenhouse gas emission footprint compared to coal and gas, there is also the concern that a nuclear plant generates a lot of physical nuclear waste, where spent fuel rods and various other byproducts remain highly radioactive for many, many years afterwards and this waste has to go *somewhere*. So to answer the general question: Because it's what we have now, to cover the insanely heavy energy requirements that mankind has imposed upon itself in the 21st century. Lately, a number of countries are now starting to move away from nuclear power and towards solar/wind turbine/fossil fuels plus hydroelectric where applicable, and are slowly decommissioning existing nuclear plants (As you can't just "turn off" a nuclear plant, there are many steps that must be completed before and after the fact). There is also research being done on the use of alternative fuels for nuclear power, which will hopefully be safer compared to the types of fuel in current use.
17:20. “Why do we need nuclear power?” It’s not just the nuclear power; we need the additional steps of safety, research, and understanding to ensure this doesn’t happen. Western reactors have multiple layers of safety to ensure this doesn’t happen. The soviets built their reactors to cheapest way possible. Three Mile Island was a disaster, but was contained because we stressed safety.
Nuke power has zero emissions and barely any waste and last for an extremely long time.its quite safe when regulated like we do it over here.france is completely powered of nuke power so is a part of the us.most our submarines are nuke powered also
France is not completely nuclear powered, though a majority of it is, however France is seeking to reduce its use of nuclear power in the coming decades. About 1/5 of the electricity generated in the US is from nuclear power, which represents about 1/3 of all nuclear power in the world. Nuclear power is not "zero emissions". Not surprisingly, nuclear radiation is one such emission, though this amount is rather low. Nuclear is carbon-free, though, which is a strong focus when it comes to energy right now. Just adding some clarity to your statements.
France electrical mix is about 72% nuclear, then 12% hydro, 9% fossil and the rest various renewables. Also, let's not gloss over the "barely any waste". I'm a big proponent of (late gen) nuclear power, but it also has its problems, and brushing them under the rug is not the way to go. The correct procedure is to acknowledge the issues, first for the sake of transparency and improving public image, and second because you can only tackle a broblem if you properly acknowledge and identify it. Nuclear has mostly three big issues : 1) safety - This applies mostly to older gen plants, so the solution is to replace/upgrade them with modern ones 2) economics - Nuclear has a huge upfront cost and only pays off in the very long term, so private investments are rare. Only governments have the means, the incentive and the long term planning for such andeavours. And I should say "had" since more and more politicians tend to have short term visions, and public opinions (=votes) are straying away from the nuclear option. The solutions are mostly better education of the public about energy sources to sway the opinion, and developping new technologies for smaller scale units that would not restrict the investment to governments only (like LFTRs) 3) last but not least : long term waste. This is the big one. Nuclear waste might be small in volume, but it's very dangerous and the timescale over which it needs to be stored poses many engineering and planning issues. We're noy without solutions, but we've yet to find satisfactory ones, be it in termes of efficiency, feasability or cost. It's a yet unsolved problem, but not an unsolvable one. We just need to invest time and resources solving it, but again, you can't do a good job at it if you're hiding the issue.
The pile of firefighters clothes still sit in a pile on the floor in that hospital...recently it was sealed off because too many TH-cam's were going there filming and its still radioactive
There's a documentary "Uranium twisting the dragons tail" where they go to Pripyat the abandoned town and the presenter Dr. Derrick muller goes down to the basement where the fireman's uniforms are still dumped the guiger counter goes off the scale. Very sobering. Worth reacting to. Also very informative regarding atomic power and its affects.
Nuclear power is actually the most efficient clean energy source there is currently. Its actually *incredibly* safe, but *if* it goes wrong, it can be very bad. Its like flying in a plane, its statistically the safest form of travel, but if it ever goes wrong the situation is dire. A properly designed nuclear reactor is perfectly safe to operate and the waste it produces is minimal when compared to coal or natural gas. Nuclear is really the only realistic method of mass energy generation we have until nuclear fusion is achieved. You just cant cut corners.
As much as I love this series, I fear it will scare new generations away from nuclear power despite the huge advancements we’ve made since the events of Chernobyl.
@@Acekorv You mean fusion. Fission is what we already have. The trouble with fusion is that we have yet to have a safe method of generating enough heat to maintain an energy positive reaction. The only way we've be able to do so thus far is in a hydrogen bomb, where we use a fission (atom) bomb to start the fusion reaction. Obviously that is not a sustainable process lol.
It is not incredibly safe because every 18 months you are producing spent fuel which has to be contained for thousands of years. How can we possibly maintain that kind of vigilance?
2:52 Yes. With all of the tiny radioactive material in the air, people's clothing becomes like a big air filter. The clothing collects material from the air and continues to give off radiation.
9:11 the general that drove the truck to the reactor was General Vladimir Pikalov, a highly decorated WW2 hero IRL. He fought in Stalingrad, Minsk and Kursk as well as the Siege of Berlin. He was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union award for being in charge of the cleanup operation at Chernobyl. Despite driving the dosimeter to the reactor, he survived and died at the age of 73. Legend.
I'm sure you've read this a few times now, but nuclear power is the most efficient, cleanest power supply yet developed. People understandably are scared of it, but having learned from Chernobyl, nuclear reactors have never been safer.
@@lalalarose8197 exclusively human error as well. They built it on the coast in a high tsunami risk area, and they placed the back up emergency generators too low, so when the tsunami hit, they were flooded and made inoperable. So much of what happened at both Chernobyl and Fukushima was preventable human error.
the thing is, though human error will always continue to be a factor. there will always be that small percentage of cases where stuff goes horribly wrong.
@@lalalarose8197 human fault again, this time was indirect human stupidity. Fukushima disaster wasn't an accident, was the consequence of a natural disaster very frequent in that area. If you build a nuclear power plant in japan, indonesia, florida, california, croatia, central italy (man I'm not a geologist but even I can basically say which places are not secure) you're just stupid. Those places are frequently hit by earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, monsones, there are vulcanoes, if you build there, it's definitely your fault.
Thus Soviet RBMK reactor were very old tech, from the very beginning of Nuclear Science. Modern Reactors, like a Thorium-Salt Reactor, are extremely safe, and protect themselves against meltdown, and produce very little Waste. Nuclear Power is really the only truly sustainable way out of Fossil Fuel use.
@Gerald H for sure Fusion is the ultimate future, it will be interesting to see which design ultimately ends up being the most successful. But there are definitely very advanced and safe Fission options to fill the gap. I never take seriously any discussion about eliminating Fossil Fuels, that doesn’t include mass construction of Modern Nuclear Power Plants
@Por Qué? Since Voyager, there has been backlash against the launching of low radiation radioisotope thermoelectric generators, (powering deep space probes and rovers). Launching highly radioactive waste would receive tremendous resistance. There have actually been studies into dumping some Nuclear Waste into certain Volcanoes that match very specific criteria, but at this point it’s only a proposal
@Por Qué? Rockets are even now not 100% reliable if they blow up in the upper atmosphere then it can irradiate a very large area. There are better and cheaper options on earth for disposal.
Imagine that those firemen's clothes are covered in glitter, and try to handle them without getting any glitter on yourself. Now replace glitter with radioactive dust which you also saw in the previous episode where people were watching from the railroad bridge.
As a few years back people would get into the old hospital and their Geiger counters still went bonkers when they put them near those clothes. Far as I know the basement was finally filled with sand recently so it can no longer be reached.
Not really a good comparison. You could easily handle the clothes without getting glitter on you, you wouldn't however be able to avoid exposure to the radiation.
Don’t forget physics, those clothes are sending out radiation as well.. you wouldn’t want to be close to anything exposed because you’ll be exposed to radiation as well
"Do we need Nuclear Energy?" Yes, yes we do and more than ever. Nuclear power plants do not produce Greenhouse Gases which are causing the Climate Change and will have disastrous impacts in the medium and long term climate outlook. Coal and Gas plants are major sources of this pollution, plus they produce other chemicals that can lead to smog and a variety of health issues. Nuclear plants are incredibly clean and the radioactive waste they produce can now be recycled and be stored for as little as 200 years. Plus the waste produced is basically nothing compared to the Greenhouse gases produced by coal and natural gas plants. A well designed and well run nuclear power plant is one of the safest and cleaneet forms of generating electricity. Only wind and hydroelectric are cleaner. Plus nuclear energy does something that wind and solar cannot do and that is provide constant clean energy 24/7, rain or shine, day or night. You need wind to turn windmills and you need sunlight to power solar panels. Nuclear energy + renewable (solar & wind) is the only way we have to cutting down on the destructive pollution from coal and gas power plants. Oh and the latest, most advanced generation of nuclear reactors are not even comparable to the ones in Chernobyl. They are extremely safe and are physically incapable of exploding. They shut themselves down automatically whenever they exceed their safety tolerance, even if there is a power outage or a leak in the coolant. Keep watching the show and you'll find out why the RBMK reactors failed. And keep in mind the theme of the show. It's not an issue about nuclear energy. The real danger is about a system of corruption and denial of reality. This can be applied to so many other things in our society.
You asked why we need nuclear power plants... well... for starters, if we manage the plant correctly, we use them to produce an insane amount of electricity with 0 impact to the environment. Save for the small problem of nuclear waste disposal, nuclear power is 100% clean. Not only is it clean, it's the least expensive way to produce electricity. Right now in 2021 there is no better way of generating electricity than nuclear power... until we figure fusion out. Accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima are very VERY rare. As it stands, right now, using coal for energy has killed way more people than nuclear has. Edit: don't worry about the divers. They lived... but they lived because of the diving suits... at the time we had no idea that the rubber in those specific suits was the best thing to shield from nuclear radiation... they went in there thinking they were doomed, but the suits saved them.
I won't spoil the end of the show, but Chernobyl happened for a reason. Fukushima happened because of an earthquake. There are hundreds of reactors around the world that operate with no problems. That's not even counting the reactors that power several dozen of our Navy ships.
Nuclear power has not the lowest production price compared to other forms of energy even if you leave out decommissioning cost and waste disposal. The nucelar power industy was very clever to achieve contracts where they don't have to pay for that, but the state (-> the tax payer) does. And the building of nuclear power plants was highly subsidized by the states all over the world. That money is also never included in the calculation of the production price for energy. If you included all that cost, nuclear power production is a quite expensive way to produce energy. Most countries did not even solve the nuclear waste problem until now.
Nuclear is by far the best combination of "clean" and output we have. The rest of the world uses MUCH safer reactors that don't have the deadly flaws of Chernobyl. Fukushima in Japan had major damage from the tsunami in 2011 but thats about as bad as it can get nowadays.
the clicking sound that was from the Geiger radiation counter machine, the sound of it gives the users nightmares because if it started clicking too much that's it turns to a rapid sound means you're about to be dead in hours or even minutes even after being able get out of the contaminated zone
Colonel General Pikalov who drove the truck with the high range dosimeter was a real person. Prior to Chernobyl he had served in WWII and been wounded several times in battles like Stalingrad and Kursk. The guy was a real hero not sending a subordinate and doing the job himself. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Pikalov The radiation didnt kill the helicopter crew (though it didn't help), but when they flew into the smoke the helicopter rotor hit a cable from a crane. You can see the rotor cutting the crane cable in the film.
Even crazier. They kept the other reactors going for quite a few decades. So plant workers were still working there ! I think the last reactor was shut down and decommissioned in like 2009
Yeah a lot of the power plant scenes were filmed at Ignalina which was a plant of the same type in Lithuania and decommissioned in 2009, they got EU funding to be able to finally decommission it, one reason they kept that last reactor going so long is cause Ignalina's Unit 2 reactor amounted to like 70% of Lithuania's whole electricity demand.
17:17 Yes the risk if a significant problem occurs can be great but nuclear energy is actually one of the safest (and most efficient) forms of energy production even when taking Chernobyl into account. By contrast coal energy is both the dirtiest and deadliest having directly sickened, injured and killed millions of people.....not to mention It is literally changing the chemistry of the planet's atmosphere.
The US did have a somewhat similar issue but luckily nowhere near as severe at Three Mile Island just outside Harrisburg, PA in 1979. There's a good documentary on Netflicx about it called "Meltdown".
Interesting thing about the guy that drove the dosimeter right up the the building, General Pikalov. He volunteered not only because he wouldn't send his men to do something he wouldn't, but he also knew that the bureaucrats might question the reading if one of his men took it but would not dare question HIS reading, a Russian war hero from WWII who survived fighting Nazis in Stalingrad, amongst other brushes with death.
@Gerald H That's terrible! Poor man!
Jesus Christ. Surviving Stalingrad. What would you even have to fear after experiencing that?
@@catherinelw9365 we can't have people that expose the weakness of the state think they did the right thing, can't we know? That's how the ruling "class" mentality worked during the Soviets. That's how it still works with some people....
@Gerald H maybe people should start a go fund me page for him. He is part of a team that saved millions of lives.
@@joerhea9340 General Pikalov died in 2003.
"The wind has been blowing toward Germany. They're not letting children play outside... in Frankfurt." I was a very young child in Germany at the time - lived about an hour away from Frankfurt. My mother telling me not to step on the grass and that I wouldn't be allowed to play outside for a while is a very vivid memory from my childhood. It was one of those moments where you could, even as a small kid, tell that something was extremely wrong by how the adults (who usually seem to be in control of everything) reacted. I will never forget that moment and that scene in this show is... weird every time I see it.
I was in Germany as well. I was about an hour south of Frankfort in the Army. We had to get into MOPP level 4 when the alarms sounded. It was surreal for a few days
Meanwhile in Alsace, we were told that the radioactive cloud stopped at the border with Germany 🤦♂️
I remember when the cloud reached my country. I could be no more then 8 at the time. We were all out on picnic for Labor's day. Millions. It was a national holiday. And then the warning came over the radio for everyone to pack and leave. Being out in the open was to be avoided. Fruits and vegetables not to be peaked. Any food that originated from open fields was to be washed over several times before consumption. We all got our little taste of a Nuclear war that spring. Let's hope it was for the last time....
And while the German children had to stay inside and people didn't buy vegetables or any other food grown outside of greenhouses or closed stables, the French decided the pollution clouds miraculously stopped at the river Rhine and kept buying their food grown outside on the market. It took weeks before the French government warned their people.
With you on that. Grew up south of Munich and was in 3rd grade that time. For weeks we were not allowed outside during the breaks at school.
Boris is one of those "hard" men that are absolutely necessary in crises like this. His character arc in this series is one of the best.
It should be noted, though, that Boris became far more effective when he started actually listening and working with Legasov.
When he was treatening murder to anyone who didn't immediately obey him, he ended up nearly causing himself a painful agonizing death (ie: what would have happened if the pilot had flown them directly over the reactor).
Plus, I won't go into detail since Cassie hasn't seen the future episodes yet, but everyone who has knows that it's not actually Boris who ends up making the most difficult decisions.
The best description from the writer was that he was "the kind of man who would shout things into existence," and that really comes through in episodes 3 and 4
Imagine if Brezhnev had still been in charge when this happened...
I shouldn't be laughing. But I am.
@@localroger Who...is...stonewobble?
I don't see any posts from anybody by that name...am I missing something?
true
Cassie "I'm feeling Ill again."
She's Delusional again! Get her back to the Infirmary!
You didn’t see graphite...
53 likes. Not great, not terrible.
@@kris5465 i'm told it's the equivalent to a chest x-ray
@@kris5465 The previous like-o-meter was maxed out at 53... They're increasing!
It's the feed water. I've seen worse.
I'm from Belarus (or Byelorussia, as they call it here). When my Mom watched this series she mentioned her half cousin was among the firefighters who were the first responders to the fire. He died shortly after, so she took this series more personal than any other.
It’s clear to me that the only she watched this was because she needed the truth. Otherwise, it would have been too painful. 😢
Nuclear power generates FAR more power than other forms. heres an illustration: currently, the smallest reactors are on naval warships in the U.S. they can travel about 20 years without refueling. with normal engines, refueling needs to occur regularly. the enrgy produced is powerful enough to propel what is in effect a small city for 20 years nonstop. that is the reason.
Exactly. I support clean energy like solar and wind, but to provide enough, consistent energy, nuclear is the only way. That is until we achieve successful fusion ractors.
@@johnannonymous1469 Nonsense. Come on back when nuclear energy doesn't require legislative caps on liability insurance in order to deal with the massive severity of the risk of failure, and when you have a reasonable solution for dealing with waste that's inherently a dirty bomb and fairly-easily enriched into the most devastating weapons known to humanity.
@@michaelccozens "Nonsense. Come on back when nuclear energy doesn't require legislative caps on liability insurance in order to deal with the massive severity of the risk of failure, and when you have a reasonable solution for dealing with waste that's inherently a dirty bomb and fairly-easily enriched into the most devastating weapons known to humanity."
Come back when the waste from renewables or other forms of power generation are treated properly such as nuclear waste would be.
EDIT: As opposed to buried or shipped to the third world as it is today.
namely U. S. Aircraft carriers and and submarines
"that is the reason"...??? LOL!
"You are dealing with something that has never occured on this planet before" - I don't know if he really said that but it is exactly correct and is one of the scariest lines I've ever heard spoken on screen
It’s not 100% correct. Google natural nuclear reactors in Gabon. Of course this was millions of years ago, but still. Nevertheless it was a good dramatic point, and true to all intents and purposes - certainly in human history.
"Gurkha, flying a swift and powerful vimana hurled a single projectile charged with the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame, as bright as ten thousand suns, rose with all its splendor. It was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and the Andhakas.
The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Hair and nails fell out; Pottery broke without apparent cause, and the birds turned white. After a few hours all foodstuffs were infected to escape from this fire the soldiers threw themselves in streams to wash themselves and their equipment.”
-The Mahabharata, at least 6.000 years old.
@@langdalepaul Didn't notice any when I was there ;). Hot enough without one.
@@langdalepaul Even then, that reactor wasn't quite completely exposed like Chernobyl's, it was deep underground. Chernoby's reactor was continuing to undergo fission while in direct contact with the atmosphere. The only other times that has happened are nuclear bombs and extremely high-energy meteors, both of which functioned differently. I don't think there has ever been a sustained nuclear fusion reaction exposed to the open air, before or since.
@@StarkRG maybe the script writers were this nuanced, but I doubt it.
Not sure what you mean in your last sentence. I think you’re confusing fission with fusion.
Incidents like this are what happens when you assign people positions based on their loyalty to the state rather than their expertise. It's amazing that this sort of thing is still happening all over the world.
It's every president/"world leader" ever. Politics is the most dangerous cult in history.
@@justarando8290
Nail on the head. It's mind boggling how so many people can't see the parallels between the U.S.S.R. and today's USA.
@@MJKeenan30 the thing that enrages me the most is that half the country supports it. No one uses common sense or logic anymore. No one even looks into the issues they allegedly feel so passionate about. Every major “issue” in the US right now is blown out of proportion by the way of propaganda and fear-mongering. Every form of media is being used as propaganda unfortunately, paving the way for history to repeat itself.
This country will be unrecognizable at this rate in 30-40 years, maybe even sooner than that. Just look at our current political situation where the politicians are only in it for their personal interests. Us peasants don’t matter one bit to them. Just look at the price of gas and everyday commodities right now where everything is up 30%. Is that reflective of a government that cares for its people? Most people remain oblivious and just don’t care because they’re too busy with their own lives. That is until it starts affecting their day to day lives, but by then it’s too late. We’re watching history unfold before our eyes people. Enjoy.
you could easily replace the soviet committees with corporate boardrooms.
all the disasters they downplay/ cover up because it would hurt their profit margins/stock price
@@3ggh3ad That's what happed with the 3 Mile Island incident, President Carter had to get directly involved to get the company to tell people what was happening
"I want to give him a hug." This is why we watch you, Cassie. Never lose that.
I'm addicted to this channel because Cassie is a glowing campfire of a person around whom we can all huddle for warmth in these difficult times.
@rivercitymud Perfectly put 👏
@@rivercitymud She makes the cynic in me smile with hope. There is some purity and good left in humanity. And we're having her watch horrible things for our entertainment. smh.
Unfortunately he probably was radioactive so a hug would not be advised imo
because she is physically attractive. If she was ugly, nobody would watch her
I remember this, growing up in the 80's Sweden. We weren't allowed to play in the playgrounds anymore, we had to shower if we played in the sand. We had iodine pills in our fridge. Farmers had to abandon crops, we read the newspaper every day to see becquerel counts to see if we could fish or pick mushrooms. They started digging out the top layer of every playground. It was all pretty surreal.
I don't think we did any of that in Norway. Don't know why. All I can remember, we were warned against eating reindeer, because reindeer food (lav, lichen?) process radioactivity really slow. Sweden is a bit closer, but still, i dunno.
@@vidarvaggen Yeah, Sweden got the majority of it, due to some rainy period bringning it over here. My dad was always fishing, and I remember him reading the bequerell count and be like "meh, it'll probably be alright..." every single morning.
@@Ethrax2 just another thing to keep track of, like the weather:)
Didn't see a whole lot of earth turning or cleaning projects in central Finland. I remember it was on the news but that was it.
@@vidarvaggen I think the scandes (the mountain range) protected you from the most. the rain fell in sweden.
After first episode: I don't know if I can continue, it's too much
After second episode: I have to binge this.
It’s the best thing I’ve seen in easily 10 years. Watched it 3-4 times now.
She’s in shock get her out of here.
@@CrackerJack06 I can't watch it more than once. I was born in Eastern Europe one year after the incident- this sh*t is too real for us here.
The piles of clothing you see dropped by the hospital staff still exist today in Pripyat, and are among the most radioactive areas on the planet. They give off an amount of radiation per hour just shy of a chest x-ray at around 95µSv/hr.
"The piles of clothing you see dropped by the hospital staff still exist today in Pripyat, and are among the most radioactive areas on the planet. They give off an amount of radiation per hour just shy of a chest x-ray at around 95µSv/hr."
Which is like eating 95 bananas.... :D
I'm surprised it's that low :|a I guess whatever they were contaminated with had a somewhat short half-life
@@ThatDamnPandaKai Most fission products do have a short half-life and stop being radioactive in less than a decade. The big trouble is with the longer-lived isotopes like strontium-90 and cesium-137, which are chemically similar to calcium and potassium respectively. As such, the body can absorb them and use them like calcium and potassium. Strontium can get incorporated into your bones, and once there is hard to get rid of.
It's actually 999 millisievert/hour, even after decades. 1 millisievert/year is normal for a human to absorb. Eating a banana will expose you to about 0,1 mikrosievert. So you have to eat roundabout 10.000 bananas to reach the effekt of standing near those clothes for about one hour. 1 Sievert is none the less is a mark where the human body become to get radioactive burns and you will become defintely severe radiation sickness.
They say the general who went himself to go get an accurate reading of the radiation that night was protected by his massive brass balls as they soaked up all the radiation. The bravest man.
lead surely? 😀
Fought two of the greatest threats of the century and made it into the next one.
@@redcardinalist Depends - for most types of radiation, sure, but if it's neutrons you want to shield against, you actually want light elements for shielding - water's pretty good because of the hydrogen (see episode 5), but presumably you'd get some secondary beta emission through neutron activation of the oxygen in the water - of course that can be stopped by a fairly thin metal shielding.
I guess what I'm saying here is that his balls only need to be *plated* with brass, which I'm sure would be a great comfort to Gen. Pikalov.
He survived the battles of Moscow and Kursk. Driving up to a nuclear reactor was not the most dangerous thing he had done in his life
I can't take credit for this:
The lead wasn't to protect General Pikalov from the radiation, the lead was there to protect the radiation from General Pikalov.
General Vladimir Karpovich Pikalov commanded the Chemical Troops of the USSR from 1968 to 1988. He fought in World War II and he was wounded several times. He took part in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk.
About the nuclear power question: most reactors are relatively safe when properly regulated. Chernobyl and Fukushima have been the only major accidents that released a lot of radiation.
Coal plants are more dangerous than nuclear plants over a period of time in that they cause more death.
@@georgeharrison5362 which was basically nothing
A thing to clarify here is that coal power plants cause death even when working correctly, because of the significant polution they cause. Even wind power casuses more deaths yearly than nuclear does (falling technicians etc during maintenance).
When a nuclear plant is working correctly, it produces basically no pollution, with the exception of the spent fuel of course. While that is extremely dangerous for a LONG time, it's a contained small amount of material that can be controlled way more easily than the millions of tons of smoke created by burning coal.
I wouldn't say NPPs are relatively safe when properly designed, regulated and managed, I would they they are one of the safest forms of power generation, for the sheer amount of power they produce, that we have available at our disposal. Even wind turbines damage more property and kill more living beings per year than nuclear powerplants.
Coal cause more death??? Really..Clean coal is the best and America has plenty of it
Jarred Harris, has stated that the bullet speech was a way for Legosav to help the other men in the room understand the danger, since he knew that if he used scientific terms he would lose them, but as military men, they understood the word bullet.
Having spent a large part of my career working in power plants, both nuclear and fossil fuel, I have always found it interesting that most of our electricity is actually produced by... steam. Yes, the nuclear reactions and burning of fossil fuels is all to produce heat which produces steam which in turn drives the turbines that drive the generators that produce electricity.
So, although few realize it, we are still living in the steampunk days.
And, oddly enough, train engines are actually run by electricity produced by diesel generators. Almost feels like they are more advanced in a way. Though generating power using steam is actually pretty convenient since air and water are abundant on earth. It's just the method we use that can be a challenge.
Kind of surprising no one has thought to build an epic powerplant on top of or adjacent to a volcano. That is a near perpetual source of heat. If the volcano eventually erupts, no environmental disaster beyond what there already would be, sans powerplant.
@@spartanical That's essentially what geothermal power plants are. Iceland has quite a few of them. There are a couple of big obstacles to the use of geothermal energy, though, most notably that volcanoes tend to be in places that aren't ideal for power plants.
You want to generate electricity as close to where it will be used (heavily industrialized or densely populated areas) because transporting electricity over large distances means you lose much of it, and for much of human history, people had few reasons to want to live close to a volcano, and a couple rather compelling reasons not to want to live close to a volcano.
@@spartanical Iceland uses a lot of geothermal, but it can't be easily exported. So Iceland instead uses it for electricity intensive production, mainly aluminum and now crypto mining.
@@JaapZeldenrust good points...
I was only 6 years when this happened, but I still remember it. Despite being over 2000 kilometers away, radioactive fallout rained down on our northernmost territories, poisoning reindeer. Were a couple of years when livestock from those areas could not be safely eaten.
until this series very few people only knew how close Europe was to devastation. literally a razor's edge from complete apocalypse. in the next episode or two you realize that and it will blow your mind. it's going to get heartbreaking buckle up. Love you popcorn You're awesome. seriously buckle up. ❤️💚☘️
Very few people? I'm not sure that this is the case. In the West, in Europe itself, maybe. In Russia, many people knew and understood the scale of the disaster long before this series.
But this is understandable, it happened here, in Russia. To be more precise, in the USSR.
But the fact that after the series a lot more people learned about this disaster is a fact!
Greetings from Russia!
It's too bad this series chose to run with the most inaccurate, but most sensational case here.
What is true: in the chaos right after the accident, some early numbers were run on the possibility of a steam explosion from the core material reaching the water tanks. A few scientists made wild predictions about the result, such as Europe becoming uninhabitable, etc.
However, these predictions were quickly found to be badly wrong by actual physicists. There was never any danger of such a massive event.
The reason is simple: the calculations were based on every last molecule of water flashing to steam. This would not have happened. If you set off a stick of dynamite, a brick of C4, etc, only about 3 to 4% of the actual material explodes. The shockwave from the initial microseconds of the explosion throws the rest of the explosive clear before it can itself react.
In the same way, a violent steam explosion would quickly rupture the entire building, throwing clear the vast majority of the liquid water and leaving most of the rest to simply run out along the ground. There was literally no danger of a 30-kilometer explosion (which is absurd anyway on its face - nuclear reactors are not nuclear bombs), and Europe would not have been "poisoned" to any further extent (other than the amount of radionuclide dust carried by the steam cloud itself).
However, such a steam explosion would have greatly complicated matters at the actual site - because, although there wouldn't be another fire and smoke element, the explosion would most likely crack open the remaining three reactors, compounding the radionuclide problem by a factor of 4. Cleanup in the region would have become much more dangerous and problematic.
Unfortunately, while the show is gripping and well acted, it always leans toward sensationalism any time it specifically tackles the subject of radiation. The initial calculations on the steam explosion could have been shown later in the series to be wrong; unfortunately, the show runners let this misconception linger because it was more dramatic and dangerous that way. It's one of the reasons that, as electrifying as the show is, it is a drama rather than a documentary and should be taken as such.
@@channelwacke interesting take, and your expertise, knowledge and basis of this information comes from, what. are you a nuclear physicist are you a biologist, are you a botanist, do you have a master's degree in history. are you from Russia. I mean that was a long thesis with some valid points. I understand dramatic license. but you make it sound like all of this was made up. there's one thing I give credit to HBO and how they do a show they do their f****** research. You stated a lot of facts but no sources. so, back your theory. in a nutshell it's dramatic representation of what happened but the basic facts are true. there was explosion, the Soviet Union tried to hide it. there was an extreme threat to contamination of the groundwater, there was an extreme threat to a thermal explosion. And what was well covered was the sacrifices that many men and women made to keep this from literally destroying most of Europe, and Ukraine.
@@tadmurphy7436 I can't claim to be an expert myself. I did, however, grow up with one. My dad worked in the nuclear industry for over 35 years (at a plant, and then at a Superfund nuclear cleanup site) - right through the 80s when this disaster happened, and the 90s when the truth started coming out of Ukraine.
We talked about this stuff all the time, and he knew every aspect of it - even down to minor differences in construction and safety procedures between the NRC and its Soviet counterpart, or the inner workings of the RBMK light water graphite reactor versus the Western POW or AGR models. He can still bore you senseless talking about the difference between positive and negative void coefficients if you let him. :)
Basically, I grew up around this stuff and had daily access to a bona fide expert on the subject. And I was very curious about it all.
@@channelwacke Yeah... There could be no explosion... And some people claimed RBMK reactor could not explode in principle .....
I was raised in Germany and a teen when this went down. The stay indoors thing was real. Produce and livestock were also scarce in central Europe, after. It was a very scary time for everyone.
When this happened, I was 9 years old. On Sunday 27th we were on a hike in the south of Germany. We were collecting berries and stuff. Nobody knew anything about the events. Next day in the evening it came in the news. I can still remember how shocked everyone was back then in West Germany.
17:15 "Why do we need nuclear power?" Hey, that's not a stupid question at all. I took an course on the energy sector for my Environmental Science degree last year. The simplest answer is that it's very reliable and efficient; the amount of power that we glean from it is far better than the other options. Coal - aside from the obvious effects it has on the atmosphere, is pretty inefficient in comparison. Much like oil, it's also a non-renewable resource. When it runs out - and it _will_ run out - there needs to be a way to replace the demand, or the oh-so comfortable ways we live now will disappear. There's a lot of talk in politics about the Green New Deal, but it's not going to work _exactly_ as they say it will. Solar panels are absolutely going to be a huge player in the future, but the technology for better efficiency and battery storage just aren't there yet. There's also the issue of maximizing the amount of energy depending on the tilt of the Earth in a given season of a year. Wind will also be huge, but those can only be built in relatively specific areas, and have a limited peak efficiency because of the energy needed to keep the turbines moving. Hydroelectric plants will also be extremely important, but most of the major rivers in the world are already in use. And that's not even getting into stuff like the infrastructure for electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. As a result, the energy grid of the future will have to be a combination of everything in order to keep up with demand, and nuclear power _will_ have to be a part of it.
That all being said, nuclear energy gets a bad rap. People are scared of it, especially because of incidents like Chernobyl. But there are actually several nuclear plants in use, but you never hear about them because they're working perfectly fine. And yeah, there are still major issues when it comes to the impacts of uranium mining and nuclear waste disposal. But if you want to read something heartening, look up the ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), which a fusion reactor currently being built in France and slated for operation within the next 15 years. It's supposed to utilize Deuterium and Tritium reactions. Deuterium is actually really common; it exists in about 0.015% of naturally occurring hydrogen. A D-D reaction creates 3.3 MeV of energy, which basically means that there's enough to power mankind's energy demand until we go extinct. The problem is that D-D reactions usually just occur naturally in stars. For example, remember how Thor got his Stormbreaker axe in _Infinity War?_ It required the heat of a star. D-D is kinda like that, except there's no machinery or superheroes. Instead, it requires temperatures of at least 1,000,000 K, which our current nuclear reactors are nowhere close to reaching. Meanwhile, a D-T reaction nets a whopping 17.6 MeV. The problem is that Tritium only has a half life of 12.3 years, and not much of it exists in nature. We can get around that by exposing lithium to neutron bombardment, but there isn't that much lithium around, either. That means more mining. If the ITER works correctly, they'll be up to temperatures of 100,000,000 K. When that happens, the nuclear energy sector is going to get far more interesting.
TLDR: We need nuclear energy because it's more reliable and efficient than other sources. In order to keep up with energy demands, nuclear energy _will_ absolutely be necessary in the future, even if no one likes talking about it. Also, nuclear fusion is on the way.
the trade off is the waste thats poisonous for thousands of years. building them on the coast isnt very bright either considering what can happen
To elaborate: environmental activists are pushing to stop using coal, oil and gas because of their carbon emissions. Wind, solar and water each have their own problems (and environmental impacts), and none are sufficient to replace carbon fuels. So the only real alternative is nuclear power. Hopefully someday we'll master fusion, but until then, fission reactors are all we have. Fusion may be 15 years away, but they've been saying that for 50 years.
The RBMK reactors were particularly unsafe; for one, they didn't have containment buildings like those in Western plants (including Three Mile Island and Fukushima). The Western accidents have resulted in a small release of radiation, but at Chernobyl the core of the reactor was wide open.
True, the stupid question comes at 11:47 lol
Uranium is not a renewable resource either. The storage needed for renewable energy is best realized with power-to-gas, not batteries. This can easily store enough energy for any period of time. Yes nuclear power has a bad reputation - and quite rightly so. Even economically, it no longer makes sense, since nuclear power is already more expensive than solar and wind power. Whether nuclear fusion reactors will ever work is completely unclear. We also don't have decades to wait for an experimental technology. We already have all the technology needed for 100% renewables, and we have an energy source that will provide enough energy until humanity ceases to exist - the sun.
Nuclear power makes no sense and we don't need it.
@@jeremywalters4133 it depends on the type of reactor as for the danger. Given CO2 emissions or nuclear waste storage, I'll take nuclear waste storage. The fact is, if we're looking at a stop-gap until we can be 100% renewable, nuclear makes a lot more sense.
Nuclear power is actually quite safe when used properly; essentially like how planes have revolutionized all travel and is essentially unimaginable today without them. But like planes, having a 'perfectly safe' accident is about as 'perfectly safe' as being in a plane crash: Its very unlikely but it can be very, very dangerous if it happens.
Id argue something like Fukushima was handled about as well as it could be, it was controlled obviously alot better, and even it had mistakes made that we've learned from.
Also your channel is awesome!
Fukushima wouldn't even had happened if the Tokyo Power Company had listened to their own engineers telling them *time and again* that the emergency generators were placed far too low for safety. Its sister plan further north got hit even harder and there wasn't a single breach of containment simply because the company that managed *that* plant LISTENED TO THEIR OWN ENGINEERS.
nuclear power is the only realistic way forward to maintain a reliable power grid while moving away from fossil fuels. current renewables simply cannot get the job done. it's a shame the left has demonized it.
@@asdfasdf7199 It us a shame that risks and incidents like that are talked down. There is nothing worth taking these risks. How can you be so ignorant?
If we want affordable electricity over the next century, we need nuclear power.
Beyond that, we could almost certainly replace it with space-based solar power (in space, solar collectors need not worry about clouds or snowcover or nightfall).
its also very clean so its ideal vs global warming. so yes if its with professional safety measures its both safe and clean, as well as efficient.
Love the blocking when the four are waiting for General Pikalov and the true roentgen readings; Legasov sitting on one side, the two idiots sitting on the other, and Shcherbina pacing between them in the middle, waiting to be swayed into one camp or other other.
The helicopter going down at 11:45 followed by “Did it kill them?” sent me into a laughing fit, and I think I’m supposed to feel bad about that.
Hildur Guðnadóttir, the composer for the series, went and recorded sounds inside powerplants to create her award winning music for these episodes.
13:50 there is a reason why they seemed calm, most of them were just given 5 minutes notice, they were told to pack lightly, as you can see most of them carrying 1 suitcase per person, no pets to be taken, because to prevent panic, the people of pripyat were told they would only be leaving for 3-4 days. What they didn't know, their absence from Pripyat would be permanent
Permanent to this day. Pripyat still is a ghost town.
@@HrWisch plus reclaimed by nature, and wildlife
That’s what I have been told about covid 18 months ago, we would go home for a month until the disease went away
@@alasdairmacleod7769 No, it really hasn't. my tour through the exclusionary zone highlighted how it is a shell of being reclaimed by nature and wildlife. The leaves were not decomposing from the previous fall and the animals were all young because the older ones constantly die from disease. Nature is still not welcome there.
@@fabioalves5433 not really man
This and Band of Brothers are the only two series I consider pitch perfect from the first to last minute. Phenomenal filmmaking.
You needa watch more stuff, brah.
@@whaleroast “brah”. Okay there kiddo
True Detective Season 1 is pretty pitch perfect. Given that it is anthonlogy, I think it is safe to remove it from its successors.
@@whaleroast Why do I think "more stuff" is probably crap?
What about Game of Thr--- oh yeah.
3:07 there are times in life where the world hinges on ONE PERSON, ONE DECISION, and it’s usually a moral question that must be answered.
@Caradoc how about courage instead?
check out Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov. One dude's decision who saved us from an actual nuclear war.
@@stephenkane1074 is he the Cuban Missile era guy? I think I watched one of those fact videos with him in it
Each cracking noise on those Geiger Muller detectors means that one "bullet" which is a neutron, or alpha particle, or a gamma particle hit that detector.
The final scene of this episode is one of the most intense things I've ever watched. Instant stress headache. However, happily, the three guys who went into the water all survived the incident, and two of them are still alive (or were, as of 2019.) The third died in 2005.
@17:15 -- bear in mind there are all sorts of different reactor designs. The RBMK reactor used at Chernobyl was both flawed *and* operated ineptly. But we've had our own accidents in this country (not nearly as bad as Chernobyl but not good either) such as the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania back in 1979 (before the Chernobyl accident happened). There are reactor designs which *cannot* suffer meltdown no matter how ineptly they are operated (namely molten thorium salt reactors). Right now scientists the world over are trying to find a way to create nuclear fusion reactors -- which would produce power without radioactive waste. That has been a hard nut to crack, but we will get there.
If anything the Chernobyl accident is not so much a condemnation of nuclear power as it is of abuse of power -- of societies built on an inability to admit mistakes, on propaganda, on lies, on a lack of respect for the natural world and the scientific method which remains our best tool for understanding reality. Physics and the universe don't care about what lies we choose to tell ourselves or parade before the world, as always we can either respect the truth and live, or ignore it and die. Sadly this is a lesson we have not learned -- it never ceases to amaze me how people refuse to accept that basic reality -- whether we are talking about reactor design, or pandemics, or climate change and sea level rise.
Physics and reality will assert themselves. The truth *will* out. Trying to pretend they won't can be lethal.
That is the lesson of Chernobyl.
the guy at 9:09 is Col. Gen. Vladimir Pikalov, commander of the Chemical Troops of the USSR, veteran of the Battle of Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk, he was 62 years old at the time of the Chernobyl Disaster, he died in 2003 at the age of 78.
dang...a war hero
@@dracolithtitan2372 War hero is an understatement. This man is a veteran, a personal witness to two of the largest and bloodiest battles in the entire history of humanity. A million men died at Stalingrad and that's only military deaths. Kursk was the largest tank battle in the history of mankind and probably will never be topped. The sheer numbers of men in that battle is staggering to even think about.
We in the west talk alot and glorify a lot about our part in World War 2. But the Eastern Front, the USSR vs Nazi Germany. That war, was nothing short of absolute insanity. It's almost impossible to think about the scale of it and the brutality of it.
So consider for a moment a man that has seen that, and survived that. That's a man who isn't afraid of anything.
@@ktvindicare thank you the insight..really appreciate it..this is truly uncomprehendable...
I just found your channel by coincidence and I have to admit...You have such a lovely and honest reactions/impressions! You are amazing! Good luck!
The worst part of the evacuation, was that the people that lived there was told that they were only going to leave for 3 days, so almost all of their belongings were left behind
My father was stationed in Germany during this event. I was in high school with 3 sisters.. We were never told to be concerned. My sister was pregnant at the time and my niece was born with a thyroid issue. My sisters and high school friends are suffering from other similar ailments. The world health organization will not acknowledge this affected Germany or the ailments people are suffering.
the only bright spot is the people who stepped up and made the sacrifice , knowing the dangers and what it would cost.
the general who took the readings, the 3 men who emptied the water tanks, the coal workers etc.
@@keithsj10 There’s always someone who has to be an utter dick for no reason. Congrats on disregarding all the female scientists, medical staff, etc etc, just to try and score a cheap, meanspirited point. Clap. Clap. Clap. What are you even Doing here?
Those three volunteers actually lived. Two are still alive today. How, I have NO idea. A welcome miracle.
@@vercoda9997 some people suck lmao simple as that
Cassie has said she couldn't volunteer, and you know what, I don't blame her, it's a potentially horrible death and even if you survive the long term health problems are disturbing.
Plus as mentioned there will have been female doctors, nurses, scientists, probably military personnel as well.
@@keithsj10 while I understand where you are coming from, there was no need for your outburst
In actuality, nuclear power is *very* safe, clean, and renewable (just don't build them in areas that can flood or near fault lines lol). The only thing they emit is water vapor.
However, what you are seeing with Chernobyl is a disastrous toxic combination between gross negligence and arrogant short-shortsightedness. Episode 5 will lay that out magnificently.
Yeah, it's great, UNLESS something bad happens, then we don't have the ability to deal with it. Not worth the risk.
@@jeffrogers2180 Statistics say otherwise. More people have died from coal-related pollution than nuclear. Its just from nuclear, it happens in a very visible high profile way in a short period of time in a way that is easy to trace to the source, vs particulates in the air causing all sorts of health effects over a lifetime.
@@dguisinger Right. The positive void coefficient of RBMK is not present in other reactor types.
Episode 4 does detail most of it, though it kind of leaves out that even for RBMK, Dyatlov had to manually override a lot of safeties to have the control rods in that configuration.
@@jeffrogers2180 Take both western style reactor meltdowns. Three Mile Island and Fukushima neither caused anywhere near the contamination or explosion when compared to Chernobyl. Also this is only 3 nuclear reactor meltdowns over how many years and millions of operating hours of dozens of nuclear reactors around the world. Each of which gives extremely clean and reliable energy to a massive demand. Look at USA and Germany now as they shut down reactors their pollution goes up as coal and gas or even diesel generators try to make up the short fall.
@@Vulkanprimarch I didn't say I wanted us to use coal.
I already watched this show and the history, the events, everything is incredible and terrifying. But reading the comments of people that were actually nearby living that craziness just added a huge depth to this show and makes it wayy more real.
I live in the Netherlands, I remember a story my parents told me that my grandparents had a little vegetable garden across the street from the house where my mom grew up. You here him saying the wind turned towards Germany. They couldn't eat from there vegetable garden for years because of this.
20:06 he isn’t talking about cities. He is talking about countries.
yes.
entire countries being destroyed almost permanently.
Yea she was saying basically every counter from Russia to east Germany effected and most of the soviet union uninhabitable for 100 year
@@MrRidged Actually, not only East Germany but also most of Western Europe. But they didn't give a shit about those as the Soviet Union ended at East Germany and everything beyond was the enemy.
@@HrWisch True
@@HrWisch Basically most of Europe would be uninhabitable.
7:50 the Communist version - 'You worked in a Shoe Factory' - the Capitalist version 'You worked for a Law Firm'
Those fireman's clothes are still there to this day and are extremely radioactive. The tourists that go there have video taped and put it here on youtube showing how radioactive it still is! Not to mention you might be interested to know they just recently completed the new confinement structure around the reactor.
Dude, don't spoil the ending
@@tilltronje1623 how can you spoil history lol
@@tfdanielxd1 Like a movie that has existed for years, history has also existed for years. However, it is new to every generation and each experiences it as though it has just happened anew. So yes, you can spoil history.
@@tfdanielxd1 Its stuff that will be brought up in future episodes. Just let her watch and experience it for herself.
17:33 Remember, this was a rather dangerous design for a reactor, known to be unstable in certain configurations... and was driven into that unstable configuration by people who didn't understand what they were doing. Western power reactors are of a completely different design, and are inherently much safer to begin with. Plus, there are multiple safety systems (that Chernobyl didn't have) to prevent unsafe conditions, and a containment vessel (the big concrete domes) if things still go wrong. The worst accident we've had here in the US was Three Mile Island Unit 2, where the core partially melted down. Only a small amount of radioactive contamination escaped the containment building, though.
Realistically, though, nuclear power is the only way to generate reliable and constantly available electrical power without producing carbon dioxide - the wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine, and there's no way to build a battery big enough to compensate. If you always want your lights to go on when you flip the switch, nuclear power is the only real option.
Excellent points. The first episode made a point to stress how they are RBMK reactors several times.
Nuclear power is reasonably safe as long as constant vigilance is maintained. Man-made disasters like this don't happen as a result of one mistake, but a series of mistakes or problems or circumstance. There is always risk in life, so it isn't possible to say there is zero risk from any nuclear power plant, no matter how safely designed it is. Every disaster, every train collision, ever airplane crash, every ship capsize is an opportunity to learn how to prevent those mistakes/problems/circumstances from aligning in the future.
Those firefighters uniforms are still in that basement. There’s a TH-cam channel called exploring with Josh. He goes to Chernobyl and puts a gauge through the doorway of the room they dumped the uniforms. It’s absolutely still lethal.
I've been trained to react to CBRN situations (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear), and water is extremely effective in reducing the amounts of radiation spread. You can effectively use water to wash the radiation off an exposed subject to greatly minimize damage. Current day reactors are usually submerged in water and to an extent are safe to even swim in directly above the reactor. ( there are some obvious exceptions to Chernobyl because that's an exposed core). I've also used Geiger counters (the ones they used at the end of the episode) and they really do make that horrific sound. It's bone-chilling to hear in person.
Boris is easily my favorite character! Keep watching and I think you'll see why!
My favorite Boris moment was, "OF COURSE I KNOW THEY'RE LISTENING!! I DON'T GIVE A FUCK!"
20:00
It wasn't just cities. Whole COUNTRIES. Ukraine alone is the second largest country in Europe by landsize, second only to Russia. Wholly uninhabitable. And add the whole of Belarus to that. Tens of millions of people. Let that sink in.
Could be worse, could be Japan.
Take a look on Google Maps at all of those water containers. That is the most radioactive water on the planet.
Radathor is coming back baby!!
@@ronaldckrausejr7762 Nope, the Japanese water tanks and the destroyed reactors cannot interact to produce a thermal explosion. Fukushima reactors were different than Soviet and had more layers to secure the core reactor. The 2011 earthquake made fail the primary power for the cooling system and the tsunami made to fail the Diesel generators, so the reactors melted. Nowadays in fact they're still cooling the reactors after they melted inside its concrete armor.
yea and it's also complete rubbish, this is where the HBO series was talking the most nonsense.
@@ronaldckrausejr7762 i would drink it
Nuclear reactors are extremely safe,, especially the ones like here in the west and the newer reactors used in the world today which uses water as a moderator and for steam turbines. Chernobyl was a rbmk reactor with boron rods as a moderator but also had tips that was graphite. This was done to save money in the Soviet Union and Baltic states. When a spike is detected and the reactor needs to be shut down 'scrammed' the shut down switch is used which lowers the control rods and it's those rods that are supposed to shut down the reaction within the reactors....however...the graphite tips used on rbmk reactors increase reaction for just a moment as the control rods are lowered then as the boron is continually lowered after the tips, reactions are stopped. Another problem with chernobyl that they do not cover here is the test they were performing. They wanted to see if turbine coast down would power pumps long enough for the generators to spin up fast enough to keep the pumps running. Sadly this test SHOULD have been done by the turbine manufacturer while it was being designed and built..but it wasn't. Even more tragic is the fact that there were generators in the soviet union that powers up 3 times faster than the ones installed at chernobyl. Either of these would have made the test that night unnecessary in the first place.
There are major differences between soviet reactors and those here in the west where we use water moderated reactors if a reaction starts to spike all it does is boil water out of the reactor then reaction stops...water IS the reason for Nuclear reaction AND the moderator...so it's extremely safe...so safe that when it gets out of control it shuts itself down. Think of a car speeding down a deserted road...gas makes it go, run out of gas though, and it stops. Another is mandatory containment buildings...this also would have saved chernobyl. Buy I think and so did the scientist at chernobyl that if the generators were updated and the turbine manufacturer had ran turbine coasting test....this would never had happened.
Note...if you're one of those that think of green goo when thinking Nuclear waste...that's also not correct. It's a solid that is encased in another solid...you can stand and lean against it and not be harmed. I know activists will tell you differently...but only because that is what they want you to believe. But it's not true. Nuclear energy is safe, safer for the environment, and cheaper than coal or natural gas.
I was 6 years old living in Manheim Germany on the US military base there. When this happened we weren't allowed outside for what seemed like weeks. This was 35 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
This was my favorite episode of the series. I loved the acting from Jared Harris, who I first discovered in "The Terror" and who, since that point forward, I will watch in anything. This episode also hit my personal perfect balance of information, reactions, twists, complications, and great individual scenes ("It's not 3 roentgen. It's 15,000").
What an episode! The Geiger Counter Sounds are definitely unnerving - gives chills every time it crackles faster and faster -
Anyway, great reaction as usual! On to Episode 3!
The scene in the water is horror masterpiece...i was speechless for about 30 min.
17:26 Nuclear power plants are sustainable and very safe when you do not try to cut costs.
As an engineer, I am a wholehearted supporters of nuclear. By far the safest atleast now that we have gen 4 reactors and have made mistakes to learn from. Chernobyl is the only nuclear disaster of its scale. Nothing else comes close. Bupal was way worse and noone talks about it because it's a run of the mill chemical plant.
@@justinknoepker1850 absolutely agree
Thanks!
"Why do we need nuclear power plants?" Nuclear power is actually one of the safest and most reliable sources of power. We should actually be using more nuclear power plants.
Yep, petrochemical power has caused far more deaths, injuries, and ecological damage than all nuclear disasters put together.
If designed correctly and not built on earthquake/tsunami zones
@@bitbyterjr Yeah putting the diesel backup generators in the basement at Fukushima was a choice that must have made sense for some reason, but it was a bad idea.
@@Thoughmuchistaken in my opinion, thinking that you can design something as potentially dangerous and environmentally damaging as a nuclear power plant to survive some of nature's most powerful forces is pretty damn arrogant not to mention foolish.
Fusion would be much safer than fission.
When they evacuated Chernobyl, the citizens left with what they could carry and nothing more. It is truly a city that time forgot.
I'm going to have to re-watch this series, and that's all there is to it. Also, I cannot recommend the The Chernobyl Podcast highly enough. It was produced by HBO as a companion-piece to the series, and in it, they cover a lot of ground, both in regards to the series and the actual accident itself, and there's an installment for each episode of the series. It's available right here on TH-cam, or anywhere you get your podcasts.
So glad you stuck with the show. It is worth it. I agree with the person that said Boris Scherbina’s arc is great.
I also love the way they portrayed Gorbachev. He was very different from any of the other leaders they had. He listened and tried to be reasonable, and responsible to his position.
I shudder to think if this had happened under any of the others. Khrushchev, Brezhnev, hell even Andropov probably wouldn’t have listened. I don’t really know much about Chernenko his tenure was really brief.
19:54 just to clarify. The places he was naming were not cities. They were countries. I say this so you can understand the magnitude of how dangerous & severe it was. Multiple countries would be inhabitable for hundreds of years. The water that goes through was one of the main water supplies for most of Eurasia.
Series only gets better, and knowing it's based on a true story makes it kinda important to learn about, they will explain a lot later on.
Nuclear Energy is actually pretty safe and much clear than coal as you mentioned. The design flaw lays with the he RBMK reactors in the way they were designed.
Wow, you know, absolutely, nothing about nuclear power. So, it stands to reason you would attempt to give an "answer". LOL
@@malcolmdrake6137 bruh… lmfao.
@@malcolmdrake6137 No he is right.
Nuclear power is safer and cleaner than coal.
and the RBMK-3000 reactors were an objectively awful reactor design.
@@malcolmdrake6137 It's clear that the one who doesn't understand nuclear power is you.
Nuclear power plants are one of the cleanest forms of energy production we have. The byproduct of it is mostly spent uranium which is stored in barrels a number of miles underground until it becomes inert (no longer radioactive).
It is renewable, generates more and causes less issues than any other form of energy production. Only issue is when people dump radioactive waste where they shouldn't to cut costs on those underground bunkers.
The fumes from coal are super toxic and causes a lot of the global warming. It's burning alternative is wood, which leads to deforestation.
Solar is hard to store and generetes fewer amounts of energy. The byproduct of the spent materials in solar panels is also very toxic and can't quite be treated yet.
Hydroelectric is fairly clean but can cause issues for the fauna living in those waters.
Wind power causes massive issues for bird migrations and other fauna, causing severe environmental issues that haven't been properly studied in their entirety yet.
Oil is very finite and has a lot of waste that is toxic and polluting.
Nuclear is the future and what is going to get mankind the farthest in the safest way.
The only reasons it's not more popular is because of Chernobyl, and because big influential people own oil fields, coal mines, etc and because shutting down a coal mine or powerplant etc can essentially kill a small town's economy.
Nuclear is non-renewable. You have a fuel, U-235, that’s used and then it’s useless. Then you need new U-235 to replace it, from the refinement of raw Uranium ore into the fissile isotope. Also, it’s not just alpha-emitting Uranium in the spent rods, but the byproducts of fission, which includes Kr-85, which decays into Rb-85, and Ba-141, which also decays ... they are all beta and gamma emitters. It’s pretty bad stuff.
@@MP197742 You're forgetting one thing If you reprocess the rods you can get more life out of them. but if you look at the overall carbon footprint solar and wind their initial construction has such a high carbon footprint not to mention mining for the rare earth elements necessary for them it's terrible.
but the number one thing that a lot of people don't realize is an explosion like the one in Chernobyl is impossible in any other country. Just because Western designed nuclear reactors have what's known as a negative void coefficient. I'm not going to explain it go to Wikipedia and look it up educate yourself
"The byproduct of it is mostly spent uranium which is stored in barrels a number of miles underground until it becomes inert (no longer radioactive)."
You skipped the part where it takes thousands of years for this to happen. The industry still doesn't know how to do any of this safely. Kind of the key point which you glossed over.
@@adamndirtyape he also skipped a part that as a technology progresses there will be less waste produced. he also skipped over the part that there are prototype reactors that actually utilize this waste to create low amounts of energy.... So yes you are in fact correct he did skip over a lot of parts
17:20 yes, we do. What we don't need are RBMK reactors, which were used to produce weapon-grade plutonium other than electric energy. Also, having a containment building would have helped. Like, A LOT.
The 3 divers actually survived years after this! Due to the rubber suits that they were wearing actually protected them better than any lead suits that was available. I think one of the divers died in 2002 or 2005 I can't remember. The other 2 are still alive? I never saw an update.
You are wrong Cassie. You ARE brave. It's brave to sit in front of the camera and pour your heart out when tousands are watching.
This show was so sad and heartbreaking I wanted to stop watching but the level of filmmaking and acting here was so good I had to finish it
Coal is an extremely toxic fuel source, when you consider the long-term effects it has had on our planet. Nuclear energy is the safest and most powerful form of clean energy in the world, but unfortunately people prioritized money over safety and this led to events like Chernobyl. Nuclear energy is a beautiful and amazing innovation, if you respect it. If you don't, you die.
I’m living in Sweden and was 20 when the accident occurred. I remember when they first detected the radiation outside a nuclear reactor here. They were very puzzled about the levels because they couldn’t figure out where it came from. As I remember it they did some kind of emergency shutdown. It was all over the news. Then the next morning we learnt about Chernobyl. Experts were like “If this is the levels we are experiencing here, we can only imagine what it is like in Pripjat.”
It was a chilling experience and it affected us for years after.
"I want to give him a hug."
That was the comment from you that made you my favorite TH-camr.
Boris Shcherbina was in charge of Soviet crisis management of two major catastrophes: the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the 1988 Armenian earthquake. Shcherbina served in a similar role after the catastrophic 1988 Armenian earthquake. He proposed inviting international rescuers - from Austria and Czechoslovakia - who had thermal imagers and specially trained dogs at their disposal to search for living people.
To answer your question. As far as I understand is that the amount of energy produced by nuclear power plants is far more than what coal could produce. There’s of course solar power, and is just now becoming increasingly popular and safer, but nuclear power also allowed the production of weapons manufacturing, as well as instantaneously providing larger populations with electricity.
The man with the birthmark on his head was Mikhail Gorbachev. He is responsible for dismantling the former Soviet Union and the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. He was a great statesman for his people, I genuinely liked him.
A lot of people don't like him cause he presided over economic failures, but I think that's a little unfair as the Soviet Union was already stagnating at that point from Brezhnev's policies, Gorbachev gets the blame for it but it probably would have been far worse had he not instigated his reforms. And he gets big points in my book for his efforts to bring more freedom of speech and freedom of the press to Soviet society.
@@G1NZOU yeah no argument there, the Soviet Union was already in decline at that point. Due to all the money that they were spending on their military, in particular their nuclear arms, that was crushing their country. They just couldn't outspend us, that's all
Not fully correct. Yeltzin and his friends dismantled the Union, but Gorbachev, having never wanted this, still gave power away and conceded to the will of the people.
@@FEARoperative close enough for government work
@@FEARoperative True he wanted reform to save the Soviet state and it may have gone a lot better there not been pushback against it and a coup attempt.
The end of the episode never ceases to almost give me a panic attack!! 😂🤣😂🤣
Nuclear power, even taking the three worst accidents into account (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima), is still the safest and most efficient source of energy we've discovered.
Hopefully you'll react too DeepWater Horizon after this series!!! 😊
See. That's what I'm saying. Like all these energy creators have some accident and a movie lol.
@@GBrimstone Because they are all designed, maintained and staffed by humans :) we are nothing if not fallible :(
reactors are pretty safe and very green and efficient when no accidents occur, especially western ones, there was a design flaw in Chernobyl, and the other two significant events was the 3 Miles island event in the USA and Fukushima in Japan
I love your reactions so much, I may have to watch this show so I can enjoy them with you. This is actually the first show/movie you have reacted to that I haven’t seen, so I may give it a shot.
My take on your "Why nuclear power?" question which, by the by, is not stupid at all and the subject of intense debate these days- We currently use nuclear power today because of its high efficiency vs other forms of power generation. In terms of the amount of fuel you put in, you get a massive amount of power in return compared to a coal or oil based plant (Which themselves come with their own sets of problems, mainly to do with air pollution and, as you said, their non-renewable nature). And in terms of physical space required vs solar and wind based generation, where a nuclear plant will take up a fraction of the space that a solar or wind turbine farm would for the amount of power generated. Nuclear plants, however, are quite expensive to construct so it's a "High cost of entry but low cost of fuel" sort of thing.
On the flipside, about its safety- think of mankind's earliest discovery of fire, it being an important source of heat, energy and light when properly handled with the care that it demands, but a source of immensely destructive power when not. Nuclear power, similarly, is incredibly dangerous when mishandled and care is not taken to construct a plant where the #1 concern is safety. To date, all three current major nuclear plant accidents have occurred due to poor design decisions where the bottom line was more important than overall safety, coupled with insufficiently trained staff. With that said, when things go wrong in a nuclear plant, they can go REALLY wrong REALLY quickly.
Beyond these dangers, even though a nuclear plant has a low greenhouse gas emission footprint compared to coal and gas, there is also the concern that a nuclear plant generates a lot of physical nuclear waste, where spent fuel rods and various other byproducts remain highly radioactive for many, many years afterwards and this waste has to go *somewhere*.
So to answer the general question: Because it's what we have now, to cover the insanely heavy energy requirements that mankind has imposed upon itself in the 21st century. Lately, a number of countries are now starting to move away from nuclear power and towards solar/wind turbine/fossil fuels plus hydroelectric where applicable, and are slowly decommissioning existing nuclear plants (As you can't just "turn off" a nuclear plant, there are many steps that must be completed before and after the fact). There is also research being done on the use of alternative fuels for nuclear power, which will hopefully be safer compared to the types of fuel in current use.
Lets hope the fusion problem will be solved in the near future. International project in france will be completed around 2035.
Nuclear power is actually very safe when it’s done right. You’ll find out why it exploded in Ep 5.
Visited those places this winter and filmed some videos. It was quite an experience. I am sure you'd like it, too.
Imelda Staunton, female nuclear physicist....great British actor! Everything shes in is always great!❤️
17:20. “Why do we need nuclear power?” It’s not just the nuclear power; we need the additional steps of safety, research, and understanding to ensure this doesn’t happen. Western reactors have multiple layers of safety to ensure this doesn’t happen. The soviets built their reactors to cheapest way possible. Three Mile Island was a disaster, but was contained because we stressed safety.
Nuke power has zero emissions and barely any waste and last for an extremely long time.its quite safe when regulated like we do it over here.france is completely powered of nuke power so is a part of the us.most our submarines are nuke powered also
American aircraft carriers as well.
and some aircraft carriers
France is not completely nuclear powered, though a majority of it is, however France is seeking to reduce its use of nuclear power in the coming decades. About 1/5 of the electricity generated in the US is from nuclear power, which represents about 1/3 of all nuclear power in the world.
Nuclear power is not "zero emissions". Not surprisingly, nuclear radiation is one such emission, though this amount is rather low. Nuclear is carbon-free, though, which is a strong focus when it comes to energy right now.
Just adding some clarity to your statements.
@@Blizzard0fHope *all* active US carriers and ballistic missile subs. Most, maybe all, active fast-attack subs.
France electrical mix is about 72% nuclear, then 12% hydro, 9% fossil and the rest various renewables.
Also, let's not gloss over the "barely any waste". I'm a big proponent of (late gen) nuclear power, but it also has its problems, and brushing them under the rug is not the way to go. The correct procedure is to acknowledge the issues, first for the sake of transparency and improving public image, and second because you can only tackle a broblem if you properly acknowledge and identify it.
Nuclear has mostly three big issues :
1) safety - This applies mostly to older gen plants, so the solution is to replace/upgrade them with modern ones
2) economics - Nuclear has a huge upfront cost and only pays off in the very long term, so private investments are rare. Only governments have the means, the incentive and the long term planning for such andeavours. And I should say "had" since more and more politicians tend to have short term visions, and public opinions (=votes) are straying away from the nuclear option. The solutions are mostly better education of the public about energy sources to sway the opinion, and developping new technologies for smaller scale units that would not restrict the investment to governments only (like LFTRs)
3) last but not least : long term waste. This is the big one. Nuclear waste might be small in volume, but it's very dangerous and the timescale over which it needs to be stored poses many engineering and planning issues. We're noy without solutions, but we've yet to find satisfactory ones, be it in termes of efficiency, feasability or cost. It's a yet unsolved problem, but not an unsolvable one. We just need to invest time and resources solving it, but again, you can't do a good job at it if you're hiding the issue.
The pile of firefighters clothes still sit in a pile on the floor in that hospital...recently it was sealed off because too many TH-cam's were going there filming and its still radioactive
SPOILER!
There's a documentary "Uranium twisting the dragons tail" where they go to Pripyat the abandoned town and the presenter Dr. Derrick muller goes down to the basement where the fireman's uniforms are still dumped the guiger counter goes off the scale. Very sobering. Worth reacting to. Also very informative regarding atomic power and its affects.
@@zacharywarner9047 it’s not a spoiler because this information isn’t in the show.
@@Shawn-rq4py yes it is. In the end.
@@Shawn-rq4py It is in the show...
Nuclear power is actually the most efficient clean energy source there is currently. Its actually *incredibly* safe, but *if* it goes wrong, it can be very bad. Its like flying in a plane, its statistically the safest form of travel, but if it ever goes wrong the situation is dire. A properly designed nuclear reactor is perfectly safe to operate and the waste it produces is minimal when compared to coal or natural gas. Nuclear is really the only realistic method of mass energy generation we have until nuclear fusion is achieved. You just cant cut corners.
Fission is getting closer and is very soon within our grasp. Its a lot safer.
As much as I love this series, I fear it will scare new generations away from nuclear power despite the huge advancements we’ve made since the events of Chernobyl.
@@Acekorv You mean fusion. Fission is what we already have. The trouble with fusion is that we have yet to have a safe method of generating enough heat to maintain an energy positive reaction. The only way we've be able to do so thus far is in a hydrogen bomb, where we use a fission (atom) bomb to start the fusion reaction. Obviously that is not a sustainable process lol.
It is not incredibly safe because every 18 months you are producing spent fuel which has to be contained for thousands of years. How can we possibly maintain that kind of vigilance?
@@AnthonyMartin-k8m they should send all those used fuel rods into deep space lol
2:52 Yes. With all of the tiny radioactive material in the air, people's clothing becomes like a big air filter. The clothing collects material from the air and continues to give off radiation.
9:11 the general that drove the truck to the reactor was General Vladimir Pikalov, a highly decorated WW2 hero IRL. He fought in Stalingrad, Minsk and Kursk as well as the Siege of Berlin. He was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union award for being in charge of the cleanup operation at Chernobyl. Despite driving the dosimeter to the reactor, he survived and died at the age of 73. Legend.
I'm sure you've read this a few times now, but nuclear power is the most efficient, cleanest power supply yet developed. People understandably are scared of it, but having learned from Chernobyl, nuclear reactors have never been safer.
plus chernobyl was an exclusively human fault, not an accident, it was just ussr corruption and stupidity
@@EUenjoyer What about that reactor that blew in Japan some years ago?
@@lalalarose8197 exclusively human error as well. They built it on the coast in a high tsunami risk area, and they placed the back up emergency generators too low, so when the tsunami hit, they were flooded and made inoperable. So much of what happened at both Chernobyl and Fukushima was preventable human error.
the thing is, though human error will always continue to be a factor.
there will always be that small percentage of cases where stuff goes horribly wrong.
@@lalalarose8197 human fault again, this time was indirect human stupidity. Fukushima disaster wasn't an accident, was the consequence of a natural disaster very frequent in that area. If you build a nuclear power plant in japan, indonesia, florida, california, croatia, central italy (man I'm not a geologist but even I can basically say which places are not secure) you're just stupid. Those places are frequently hit by earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, monsones, there are vulcanoes, if you build there, it's definitely your fault.
Thus Soviet RBMK reactor were very old tech, from the very beginning of Nuclear Science. Modern Reactors, like a Thorium-Salt Reactor, are extremely safe, and protect themselves against meltdown, and produce very little Waste. Nuclear Power is really the only truly sustainable way out of Fossil Fuel use.
@Gerald H agreed, I think in the immediate future the Research into Molten Salt reactors that use Nuclear Waste as fuel, is very promising.
@Gerald H for sure Fusion is the ultimate future, it will be interesting to see which design ultimately ends up being the most successful. But there are definitely very advanced and safe Fission options to fill the gap. I never take seriously any discussion about eliminating Fossil Fuels, that doesn’t include mass construction of Modern Nuclear Power Plants
@Por Qué? Since Voyager, there has been backlash against the launching of low radiation radioisotope thermoelectric generators, (powering deep space probes and rovers). Launching highly radioactive waste would receive tremendous resistance. There have actually been studies into dumping some Nuclear Waste into certain Volcanoes that match very specific criteria, but at this point it’s only a proposal
@Por Qué? Rockets are even now not 100% reliable if they blow up in the upper atmosphere then it can irradiate a very large area. There are better and cheaper options on earth for disposal.
Imagine that those firemen's clothes are covered in glitter, and try to handle them without getting any glitter on yourself. Now replace glitter with radioactive dust which you also saw in the previous episode where people were watching from the railroad bridge.
As a few years back people would get into the old hospital and their Geiger counters still went bonkers when they put them near those clothes.
Far as I know the basement was finally filled with sand recently so it can no longer be reached.
Not really a good comparison. You could easily handle the clothes without getting glitter on you, you wouldn't however be able to avoid exposure to the radiation.
Not sure whats worse...
Don’t forget physics, those clothes are sending out radiation as well.. you wouldn’t want to be close to anything exposed because you’ll be exposed to radiation as well
3 Mile Island in the US, something similar but not on the same scale - and yes, there were attempts to conceal the truth there too.
The radioactive cloud came to Italy too. Scary times. I would warn you to prepare yourself for the next couple episodes... they are tough.
"Do we need Nuclear Energy?"
Yes, yes we do and more than ever. Nuclear power plants do not produce Greenhouse Gases which are causing the Climate Change and will have disastrous impacts in the medium and long term climate outlook. Coal and Gas plants are major sources of this pollution, plus they produce other chemicals that can lead to smog and a variety of health issues. Nuclear plants are incredibly clean and the radioactive waste they produce can now be recycled and be stored for as little as 200 years. Plus the waste produced is basically nothing compared to the Greenhouse gases produced by coal and natural gas plants. A well designed and well run nuclear power plant is one of the safest and cleaneet forms of generating electricity. Only wind and hydroelectric are cleaner. Plus nuclear energy does something that wind and solar cannot do and that is provide constant clean energy 24/7, rain or shine, day or night. You need wind to turn windmills and you need sunlight to power solar panels. Nuclear energy + renewable (solar & wind) is the only way we have to cutting down on the destructive pollution from coal and gas power plants.
Oh and the latest, most advanced generation of nuclear reactors are not even comparable to the ones in Chernobyl. They are extremely safe and are physically incapable of exploding. They shut themselves down automatically whenever they exceed their safety tolerance, even if there is a power outage or a leak in the coolant.
Keep watching the show and you'll find out why the RBMK reactors failed. And keep in mind the theme of the show. It's not an issue about nuclear energy. The real danger is about a system of corruption and denial of reality. This can be applied to so many other things in our society.
You asked why we need nuclear power plants... well... for starters, if we manage the plant correctly, we use them to produce an insane amount of electricity with 0 impact to the environment.
Save for the small problem of nuclear waste disposal, nuclear power is 100% clean.
Not only is it clean, it's the least expensive way to produce electricity.
Right now in 2021 there is no better way of generating electricity than nuclear power... until we figure fusion out.
Accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima are very VERY rare.
As it stands, right now, using coal for energy has killed way more people than nuclear has.
Edit: don't worry about the divers. They lived... but they lived because of the diving suits... at the time we had no idea that the rubber in those specific suits was the best thing to shield from nuclear radiation... they went in there thinking they were doomed, but the suits saved them.
I won't spoil the end of the show, but Chernobyl happened for a reason. Fukushima happened because of an earthquake. There are hundreds of reactors around the world that operate with no problems. That's not even counting the reactors that power several dozen of our Navy ships.
@@JohnnyXoz All nuclear power plants in the world have shutdown buttons that stop the reactions... no power grid required.
"small problem"
Nuclear power has not the lowest production price compared to other forms of energy even if you leave out decommissioning cost and waste disposal. The nucelar power industy was very clever to achieve contracts where they don't have to pay for that, but the state (-> the tax payer) does. And the building of nuclear power plants was highly subsidized by the states all over the world. That money is also never included in the calculation of the production price for energy. If you included all that cost, nuclear power production is a quite expensive way to produce energy. Most countries did not even solve the nuclear waste problem until now.
Nuclear is by far the best combination of "clean" and output we have. The rest of the world uses MUCH safer reactors that don't have the deadly flaws of Chernobyl. Fukushima in Japan had major damage from the tsunami in 2011 but thats about as bad as it can get nowadays.
the clicking sound that was from the Geiger radiation counter machine, the sound of it gives the users nightmares because if it started clicking too much that's it turns to a rapid sound means you're about to be dead in hours or even minutes even after being able get out of the contaminated zone
I loved how intense was your reaction! Thank you! This tv show deserve a lot of praise! We must show this to kids... (not too young).
Colonel General Pikalov who drove the truck with the high range dosimeter was a real person. Prior to Chernobyl he had served in WWII and been wounded several times in battles like Stalingrad and Kursk. The guy was a real hero not sending a subordinate and doing the job himself.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Pikalov
The radiation didnt kill the helicopter crew (though it didn't help), but when they flew into the smoke the helicopter rotor hit a cable from a crane. You can see the rotor cutting the crane cable in the film.
Even crazier. They kept the other reactors going for quite a few decades. So plant workers were still working there ! I think the last reactor was shut down and decommissioned in like 2009
But other reactors of the same type still operate in Russia today.
@@davidjack7418
More the fact that they were working in radiation central still. Those reactors operating inside their intended parameters seem safe.
Yeah a lot of the power plant scenes were filmed at Ignalina which was a plant of the same type in Lithuania and decommissioned in 2009, they got EU funding to be able to finally decommission it, one reason they kept that last reactor going so long is cause Ignalina's Unit 2 reactor amounted to like 70% of Lithuania's whole electricity demand.
17:17
Yes the risk if a significant problem occurs can be great but nuclear energy is actually one of the safest (and most efficient) forms of energy production even when taking Chernobyl into account. By contrast coal energy is both the dirtiest and deadliest having directly sickened, injured and killed millions of people.....not to mention It is literally changing the chemistry of the planet's atmosphere.
I'm glad you stuck with this series. One of my favourites in recent years. Good reaction!
The US did have a somewhat similar issue but luckily nowhere near as severe at Three Mile Island just outside Harrisburg, PA in 1979. There's a good documentary on Netflicx about it called "Meltdown".