Chernobyl Nuclear Explosion Disaster Explained (Hour by Hour)
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
- The Chernobyl nuclear accident is one that haunted many of the survivors until their painful deaths from radiation poisoning. Just what went wrong that day at the nuclear facility that would change the lives of so many? Check out today's epic new video that breaks down the events that led to one of the biggest nuclear accidents in history!
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The most dangerous thing throughout the whole tragedy was the amount of denial from the people in charge.
Withholding truth from the public should be treason and domestic terrorism. Lotta lives could've been saved during the ordeal.
Looking at the people in charge in Russia now, nothing has changed.
You didn’t see graphite
It was just a x ray
Is it really a lot different than the USA though? I feel like the Baltic nations are way ahead of the USA on this.
"If you can't hold the state accountable, the state is broken" Those are some true words
Very relevant to the early 2020's
@@GwladYrHafEspecially in Russia still
@@marcopohl4875 I wouldn’t say Russia is any more or less guilty of this than Ukraine, USA, Australia, Iran, UK etc.
My comment wasn’t to score points against a single nation, as most are guilty.
@@GwladYrHaf Yeah, but I as taliking about accountability. You can hold the US president accountable by just not voting for him next election season, how are you gonna hold the russian president accountable?
Yep.
Chernobyl 2019 still resonates with me to this day. The hospital scenes alone are more horrifying than any horror movie can ever hope to be
Agreed. That was one of the best limited series I’ve ever watched.
For me it’s the scene with the “volunteer” scuba divers. The whole show was just epic
I can't agree more especially when I saw Vasily ignatenko's and Leonid Toptunov irradiated bodies
I totally understand.
Tv eh, ultra MK, Z
It should be noted that this wasn’t the first accident at Chernobyl, just the most catastrophic.
Not only was there an incident at one of the other reactors but according to some former residents of Pripyat, incidents were so frequent that cleanup crews were a fairly regular sight in the city.
This whole operation was a litany of negligence and a disaster was inevitable.
That's what I've always gathered. I was almost 12 when this happened. I also think this because I never hear anyone say what would've happened if they HADN'T dropped the control rods? Sounds like a disaster was a certainty regardless of what happened at that point? Was just a matter of how bad it would be, is what I think is obvious?
I think it almost certain it would've been a disaster at that point.
The latest the reactor could've been saved would've been when the power dropped due to the neutron poison.
They should have shut it down and ended the test right there, but Dyatlov insisted it continue. However, he only did so because he thought the control rods would solve any issues, and claimed that he had no idea of any design flaws.
I tend to believe him. The man was a hardass and a hothead, but not suicidal. And it fits with the typical Soviet scheme of lies and cutting corners.
@Zephyr I still blame him though there was many chances to stop even after he was warned and he still continued
The Chinese use that same style of reactors. It's only a matter of time.
@@KenBober I'm pretty sure they would have fixed the issue with the cheap graphite control rods that caused the explosion, no? I mean they do have a pretty strong sense of self-preservation and the country is doing way better economically than the USSR did in its final years. I would imagine they made sure that can't happen in their reactors. While I doubt the Chinese would do that out of the concern for her people, but surely nobody wants the hassle of an exploding nuclear reactor?
It was amazing how much criminal negligence was going on in the Soviet Union at this time in history
In 2022 as well
We really aren’t any better. If we are being honest with ourselves
Both in USSR AND the US. Not even just negligence with the US, but just pure criminal behavior
@@mattycapone4281 True but it's not a competiton
Just like in Germany right now.
I went to the Chernobyl in 2016 before they rolled on the new sarcophagus. Went to both the destroyed reactor and the city Pripyat. Was picked up in Kiev by a guy and was given a geiger counter.
In Kiev the radiation was 0,16 units. When i got to Pripyat it was 20,35 units and the geiger counters alarm went off like crazy, especially when i was inside the old hospital where the firemen had been treated. Their clothes are still in the basement and are highly radioactive.
@@cold_servo_pie not for short durations so he is prob ok :)
Wait did u take the pictures of the hospital base ment??
@@j_4ck761 no the stairs down to the basement was filled with sand to prevent looters for stealing the clothing as souvenirs. This has apparently happened recently before and they didn’t realize that it was still radioactive af. One piece of clothing the looters dropped in the lobby of the hospital with was still there and we could look at but no get too close to.
Wouldn't doubt it considering they were at ground zero. What people don't understand about radiation is that it is culminating. Those firemen were exposed to thousands of rads over a few hours and I wouldn't be surprised if their corpses were encased in lead and concrete
@@SSG64 not very smart, init?
Can we give a round of applause to Valery Legasov and his team of scientists who exposed the Soviet Union and knew how dangerous it really was. The fact that this man killed himself to make sure his voice and the voice of others werent silenced. Rest peacefully to the fallen.
But he’s still alive tho
He killed himself in 1988 @@Rairii62
@@Rairii62 he's not. He killed himself the day after the 2nd anniversary of the disaster. A lot of Soviet scientists tried to say that he was depressesed, or he was being overlooked for promotions and harassed by peers because of his presentation to the UN. Those closest to him stated he was very clear-headed, and he did it deliberately.
@@socialdeviant13 The scientists said he was what?
Those people who were willing to actually stay or go to the Chernobyl power plant to save lives risking theirs are really brave. Most probably also forced by the government but still brave.
if it happened in America you wouldn't have said they were forced, the western double standard is beyond imagination. 🙄🙄
West is literally lying on propaganda.
@@revolutionaryleader9615 it was the USSR. literally enough said
@@revolutionaryleader9615 that depends on if the people doing the clean up were in the military or not. If they were then yes I would say they were told to do it because that’s what would be the truth in the United States military. Retired Sgt Army
@@leeenfield2602 the US is 100× worse than the USSR.
Honestly, We shouldn't forget those brave fire-fighters that were the first ones in the scene. They weren't warned about the radiation. Their looks just accelerated from looking like a 25 - 30 year old to a 70 - 80 due to some change in their inner organs.
And we'll never know how it feels to experience radiation aging.
I'm gonna guess you ilife will change alot and suffer from radtion
Probably a GOOD thing that they were totally uneducated. Imagine going into a situation like that KNOWING you're going to be doomed.
@@davelowets if they knew what they were going into they would never have gone. Their lives would’ve been saved. They weren’t able to put out the fire anyways, their water evaporated before it could actually reach the core fire.
Some of them would have known the danger though.
I knew something wasn’t adding up when I heard the story of the baby “absorbing” the radiation for the mother and saving her life. Thanks for clearing that up.
The baby didn't fully absorb it however it is possible it died of radiation due to it being very vulnerable while the mother can handle much more
It makes sense to an extent because radiation effects quickly dividing cells. That's why high turnover cells like skin and intestine have cancer more than muscle cell cancers.
I remember this.
Loads of birds dropped dead in a park in my town, due to the radiation that had traveled over to Scotland and the birds flew through the radioactive plume.
It also effected some farming land that still cannot be used to this day.
Makes it worse that this flaw was know about and had happened a year or so before Chernobyl at the ignalina power plant during a similar test, but it fortunately didn’t end like Chernobyl and there was no explosion, just the power surge with the emergency shutdown working in this case.
😥
If I may ask, how old were you at the time?
I'm just trying to imagine what it would be like if I saw it at different ages in my life. Like as a really young kid, then as a tween, then a teen. Basically, the older I would have been, the more I would have crapped myself.
@@oracleofdelphi4533
I would have been 6 at the time.
You were in Scotland? well the radiation wouldn’t be able to damage farmland to the point of not being able to be used for 35 years
I understand the birds, but not the farmland, oh and were the birds black?
I’ve always wanted to visit Chernobyl. Honestly it is truly a monument in humanity’s ever turbulent path. This war may sadly prevent me from pursuing that dream.
There are still plenty of hotspots. Like this one forest, all the wood is dead and dry leaves litter the ground. They haven't decomposed since the disaster, since the radiation killed all the bacteria and fungus, and kills the worms in the ground.
Imagine what would happen if it caught fire.
@@Thoralmir the red forest has caught fire multiple times and as long as you're not a Russian soldier trying to walk and then dig in the red forest you will be fine if you go there legally they will actually drive you through the red forest to get to Chernobyl
I was planning a group visit with work colleagues for this year. Cheers Putin, yakhunt...
also there's videos of radioactive fungus like mushroom and veins in Chernobyl on RUclips so the radiation isn't killing everything still that's completely false although it's definitely effecting how some plants are growing for sure.
I feel you. On February 21st when I was in Ukraine, I got a birthday present from my wife and friends, a tour to Chernobyl. February 24th the war started.
Everyone who see this comment Have a good week
Thanks :) you too
Thanks
Don't tell me what to do
u too brother
@@ProdSmooth ☺️☺️☺️
Man i want to thank the three men who risked their lives so much. The explosion happened when my mom was a child, and the radiation permenatly damaged her thyroid and her siblings. Too this day she still has problems and my aunt and uncle have already had thyroid surgery. If those men hadnt risked their lives my mom and family would have been killed and i would have never been born. They are the reason i am alive. I send prayers to their family.
The three men: Alexei Ananenko, Valery Bespalov, and Boris Baranov all survived the mission to go down under and drain the tank. Alexei and Valery are still alive to this day, but Boris Baranov died of a heart attack in 2005 at 65 years old.
"50,000 people used to live here, now it's a ghost town. Never seen anything like it."
-Captain McMillan, 1996
The dog population around Chernobyl actually adapted surprisingly well and their numbers are on the rise. This was a total surprise and scientists have been studying DNA samples of the animals. The research is still in the early stages, but it appears that the surviving dogs have activated genes that adapt the animals to the new environment. The findings suggest that life can actually find methods to survive in higher radiation environments, not by becoming mutants but rather by kind of the opposite: putting more work into repairing genetic damage as it occurs. As I said it's still early, but the insights gained from studying the wild dogs could potentially one day be put to use finding ways for humans to survive in higher radiation environments like space.
"Is it possible to learn this power?"
@@jimbocraggins If you mean learn as in a matter of willpower, then I would say definitely not. If you mean learn as in figuring out physically how genetics adapts to survive hostile environments, then almost certainly yes, given some very smart people and science way above my head lol. I mean, our DNA already devotes a lot of energy into repairing genetic damage, probably an amount tuned to our typical environment on earth. The interesting bit is that appears not to be the most it can do, as in the high radiation environment around Chernobyl it seems to have adapted to put even more work into repairing DNA damage so the dogs can survive there.
@@jimbocragginsnot from the Jedi...
All the dogs were dead within 4 years, the ones that bred and had pups none lived over a couple of years, other people felt sorry for the dogs in the cut off areas and fed them, this attracted more dogs to come in the area and breed. The dogs were in a bad way under acovid lock down when people were not allowed on the feeding missions. The dogs didn't thrive they suffered until they sterilised them. All dogs alive came from bred lines of dogs that never were contaminated. Until the feeding and lowering the numbers the dogs didn't thrive they were having it hard with cold climate and starvation, the dna line are all hardy breeds that made it the first year and none were wild because they kept in contact with the feeders. A normal dog lives over a decade the Chernobyl dogs didn't live a couple of years on average. But one were radiated, those died, you have to remember how huge the area was and farms never irradiated were closed and their dogs lived through extermination. The dna and radiated dogs is all a myth about them becoming strong at fighting the radiation,
True memory a sad memory of when I was put to task for destroying these pets around the area 2mnths after catastrophe...1st day. I saw this female dog was in the middle of the room with her puppies. She went for me - I put a bullet in her. The puppies were licking my arms, being all sweet and playful. We had to shoot at point-blank. Saints preserve us! There was this one dog, a little black poodle. I still feel sorry for it. We heaped the tipper full of them. Taking them to the burial site. To tell the truth, it was just a plain old deep pit, though you were meant to dig it taking care not to reach the ground water and line the bottom with plastic. You're meant to find some spot fairly high up, but you know how it is. The rules were broken all the time: we had no plastic, and we didn't spend long looking for the right spot. If you wound them rather than killing them, they'll squeal and cry. They were tipping them out of the truck into the pit, and this little poodle began scrabbling about. It climbed out. Nobody had any cartridges left. Had nothing to finish it off with, not a single cartridge. They shoved it back into the pit and covered them all up with earth. Still feel sorry for it. It's a disaster which, as of 2020, is still affecting crops and animals - in Sweden (the first country to learn of the explosion), mushrooms, reindeer, and wild boar are still screened for Cesium-137 contamination and occasionally declared unfit for sale.
I'm glad I'm able to see the picture of the fire and radioactive beam of light 100% safely. It truly was a beautiful sight.
The radioactive beam of light was Cherenkov Radiation. It is caused by emitted alpha particles smashing into oxygen and releasing a flash of visible light.
On HBO? 😉
Human negligence is the only dangerous thing about nuclear energy
Literally this. ^
👍
and crummy reactor designs that explode when you press the shut down button
@@Trainman10715 it's partly the reactor design but the RMBK reactor is sort of genius in its design. The issue more than design is operating the reactor outside of safe parameters.
They pulled too many rods out more than was allowed by operating guidelines. Which pulls more moderator rods into the reactor. At that point the reactor is way over moderated and the xenon and water acting as neutron absorbers are the only things keeping the reactor from going prompt critical. As the xenon kept decaying away which is to be expected the reactor power started rising. There were not enough control rods still in the reactor to keep power from spiking. The power spiking in regions of the core cause the light water in those areas to flash to steam. Which cause the reactor to not have that water acting as a neutron absorber in those regions. So the reaction speeds up in those regions.
They drop the rods which have the graphite moderators at the bottom of the rods. When all the rods drop at once because almost all were pulled out, the moderator rods which are shorter than the fuel rods to maintain stable lines of neutron flux. You have the bottom of the reactor sudden massively over moderated. The heat spikes to insane levels. The water boils off in the bottom of the reactor. You now have no water acting as a neutron absorber, nor xenon for that matter. Reactivety spikes to ridiculous levels and then there is nothing you can do.
As much as the reactor design isn't the most inherently safe which is how you want reactors to be designed. It was more improper operation that doomed reactor 4. There are still 10 RMBK power plants in operation to this day. They just follow the rod extraction rules much better now.
@@johnh8546 believe me, im aware of how the power excursion unfolded and how the AZ5 system caused the reactor to explode. i wouldnt call the RBMK genius, yes there are several good qualities about it, how cheap it is, its ability to run on low enrichment uranium, produce lots of plutonium and to be refueled while running. but those good qualities come at a cost, the fact that you end up with an enormous graphite pile, moderated by a solid object that wont boil away with heat and cooled with water resulting in a very high positive void coefficent (unlike magnoxs and AGRs) and you need silly moderator ends on the control rods to allow them to do anything as without them the water that would otherwise fill the channel vacated by the control rod acts as a control rod anyway. this results in a design thats very easy to make unstable in certain situations and id say that cost overweights the benefits.
i agree operator error also played a big part in the disaster, it was a combination of a flawed design and operator error, and i agree that when RBMKs are being operated properly and the safty systems are switched on they are perfectly safe (especially after their post chernobyl modifications) but in my opinion reactors need to be totally fail-safe and fool proof, so that operator error can not result in an accident. starting with a positive void coefficient is therefor going in totally the wrong direction unless massive precautions are taken such as with the CANDU reactors which use neutron poison injection instead of their control rods as their SCRAM system.
perhaps while none of the individual quirks of the RBMK were of particular concern if alone, put together they resulted in an overall poor (and in some cases, fail-deadly) design
It's scary how the Soviet Government kept so much information hidden from the people, and the exact same thing is happening here in the US with the train derailments.
Could be sabotage
You do realize train derailments happen and happens all the time. You think it's happening more often now but only because the news media is picking it up and running with it.
Didn't Trump deregulate train speeds through built up areas? It's always deregulation. Profit over people.
@@RunOfTheHindwasn’t it the democrats who refused to Agree to a pipeline that is much safer than rail transport? We all ask political questions but in the end Red or Blue Republican or Democrat they don’t have our interest in mind only their wallets.
And the 💉💉💉
The most important things to remember from this disaster is that we shouldn’t fear nuclear energy, but learn from the mistakes to improve it. Also, keeping secrets during a time like this will only cause more harm.
No, we should fear nuclear energy. It is never safe, ever. Even just existing. There is always millions of things that could go wrong. You do not have to worry about poisoning and destroying humanity and the planet if you choose solar, water or wind derived power for example. Even if it is not as powerful or as cheap it is a better choice overall. Not all science is good science should be used. It is simply not worth the risk. The planet has existed for millions of years without the existence of something created that could destroy it. Only natural disasters. In a relatively short period of time we have created a lot of things that will lead to our destruction.
@@marniekilbourne608 I disagree. Nuclear energy is far safer than most people realize. However, just like anything else in existence, what matters is the ones using it. In the right hands, it can do great things. In the wrong hands, it can do horrible things. The problem with disasters like Chernobyl and Fukushima wasn't the nuclear power, but the fact that the ones in charge were idiots. Three Mile Island was a freak accident that has been thankfully sorted out, so there's that.
The point is that yes, nuclear power can cause great harm if not used correctly, but that doesn't mean it should be feared. What we should fear is people wielding it irresponsibly.
@TheMiningAssassin16 and who's gonna handle it responsibly, bro? The government? Ofc it's dangerous
@@lanac5793 Trusting humanity with anything is dangerous, from what I've learned. Talk to anyone about the most dangerous thing on the planet, and they may say hurricanes, tornadoes, cancer, AIDS, snakes, nukes, and whatever else. Me, I say humans, because humans create world-ending devices with no regards for anything other than what they might get out of it.
But hey, sometimes you just have to make a choice. Will you live in fear, or will you not? I choose not to live in fear.
i still really think we should work on making fusion energy because it is FAR safer and works FAR more efficiently with absolutely no waste
The idea that radiation had an effect on the fetus was still prevalent to as late as 2009. I was diagnosed with a brain tumor and my doctor concluded that it was my mother taking on the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster. My mother was born in 1971 in Ukraine but was god knows how far from Chernobyl and I was born in 1997 also god knows how far from Chernobyl, yet they still said I got enough radiation to get that brain tumor in 2009. Like what?
This happens because rapidly growing cells, such as fetuses and young children are more sensitive and more affected by radiation than older people.
My uncle Colin had a similar experience, he had a seizure and got diagnosed with a brain tumor.
@@djbeatty449Not just radiation, lead, too. If it were on your cookware (Pyrex, toys, dishes, Tupperware of the day) was LOADED with lead. Bad is 90, they were finding HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of lead units in Pyrex and Fisher Price toys. It sheds lead as you use it
I have a friend who was born in Ukraine and later adopted. This disaster still took from people even years later. My friend suffered birth defects which were later corrected. It's crazy to think that we consider this history. It's still a really recent event, that has many repercussions still to this day.
that's a very good point
Everything is history even yesterday
At 2:20 it should be noted that for reactors 1,2, and 3 it was successfully demonstrated but was not for reactor 4
Yeah as i got it, it was a normal omologation test they did before the reactor is put online. Reactor 4 was used both for civil and military purposes, it wasn't a normal reactor, so they powered it up without passing the mandatory test.
That's also the reason why it didn't had a containment structure, had a crane on the roof, graphite tips and probably also why part of the manual was blacked out also for the people operating it.
This is incorrect
Infographics is one if the best channels,always been loyal subscriber
What do you subscribe to the their other 2 channels?
It’s just horrible to thing that all these victims suffered severally for something they couldn’t control, but their sacrifices must be remembered for as long as we can remember what they done to keep others safer that what wouldn’t happened, it’s still horrible to know that so many close to the disaster slowly suffered when they didn’t didn’t deserve it
I know a lot of people still get caught up in Cold War nationalism, and Russia is absolutely a pariah state for what it's currently doing, these Soviet civilians did what they thought had to be done to not only save the surrounding area, but Europe and Soviet Bloc countries as well. And with all the unknowns back then, a lot more people suffered far more than they needed to because everyone was ignorant of the dangers of not only that amount of radiation, but of the situation. The fog of war had descended onto the power plant and they still managed to stop things from getting even worse. o7 I regret they had to suffer the way they did.
Me, too. The liquidators and others are heroes in my book and always will be. I include KGB personnel in the helicopter who took pictures of the damage because pilots and photographers took lethal amounts of radiation, because the damage needed to be documented.
3:15 Legasov's explanation in Ep5 of Chernobyl series, on how the RBMK reactor works is just beautiful, clear, simple and easy to understand.
I still don't understand how this channel manages to post 2 high quality videos *DAILY*
Because they are team not a single person
It's not that hard to understand multiple people work to make these videos
I wouldn't call this video high quality when there's a few inaccuracies
@@simoncohen9323 they mean the animation and editing and partly the facts
50,000 people used to live here now it’s a ghost town
Beat me too it
Crazy how 36 years later Chernobyl made headlines again with Russia seizing it early in the war in Ukraine.
Great a ahhh.. anyways profile picture (end qoute)
I think they were trying to wake up the Russian woodpecker.
Yep and they were seen digging foxholes in the fallout area
It actually made headlines in 2019 when HBO released the mini series “Chernobyl”.
@@n8archy121 yeah those guys that went into the red forest and dug trenches am not so sure there alive anymore because unless you sneak under the lid dome on reactor number 4 the red forest is probably the most radioactive place near Chernobyl except probably els liquidator's gear.the tress are red for a reason
I was living at Bitburg AFB West Germany when that happened. I remember my dad coming home everyday wearing his full MOPP gear for a full week, telling us he was doing training exercises, but in reality he was working on the flight line on a front line air base where they needed constantly ready F-15s on stand by, so they wore their MOPP gear until they were told otherwise.
OKas Play is it OK Siri
A
Okay ✅ I’m
My dad was stationed in Germany when this happed. We had to cover the windows and weren't allowed to play outside for a while. Two active toddlers I'm sure really tested my parents patience.
I love how a TV show makes dozens of people experts in nuclear science
yeah then they claim bogus things
Some of us actually are, lol. I am a licensed nuclear reactor operator, and I have been operating reactors for 23 years now, both in the US Navy and in the commercial nuclear power industry. I find myself often joining in the comments sections of videos like this, trying to clear up misconceptions and point out and explain the things that people have gotten wrong or don't understand.
@Adam Hutchins so is it true that we're all mistaken, and modern day reactors don't explode?
@@Fitchy-ke3wz There were very unique vulnerabilities in the RBMK (Chernobyl) design that Western reactor designs just aren't susceptible to. I say "Western" reactor designs, meaning the PWRs and BWRs, and I am not calling them "modern" designs, because they're not modern. The PWRs and BWRs we operate are really a 1960s-1970s design. But despite being an older design, they are indeed extremely more of a safe design than Chernobyl.
The biggest difference is the inherent stability. The basic concept is that the RBMK design has what is known as a positive void coefficient of reactivity. I'll try to make it simple, here. Due to the design of an RBMK, it relies heavily on neutron absorption in the water to regulate the fission rate. Let's say for some reason power starts to rise. It creates more heat, the water expands and is less dense. More of the water begins to form steam bubbles which is even less dense. That means it is absorbing fewer neutrons, and so the fission rate goes up more. More heat, more steam bubbles, less neutrons absorbed, more fissions, more heat, etc. For the RBMK design, any power increase will make power rise more and more and faster and faster, until the operators and/or control systems use control rods to stop and stabilize the power. The problem is, under certain situations, like what happened at Chernobyl, it happened so fast there was no way to control it, because they pushed the reactor so far away from its operating limits.
The big difference in Western designed reactors is that we do not use graphite as a moderator. When you have neutrons born from fission, they're moving way too fast to really be absorbed and cause more fission, and they usually just zip right out out of the reactor. If you want to maintain a stable fission rate, (known as criticality) you have to slow these neutrons down so they can cause fissions. You have to use what is called a moderator. In Chernobyl, they used graphite. Neutrons hit the carbon atoms in the graphite and by bouncing around, they slow down, and then they can make the uranium fission. Water also works really well as a moderator, but water can also absorb neutrons, too. Since Chernobyl had graphite, it was what we call "over-moderated." You could take out all of the water, and it still had enough moderator in the graphite for the reactor to operate. So in Chernobyl, the water was acting more like an absorber, since you already have "too much" moderator anyway. When the water formed steam bubbles in Chernobyl, it was taking away neutron absorbers and making MORE neutrons available and making MORE fissions happen.
In our reactor designs, we don't have graphite. We have a lot of water in the core, flowing through the core. It does two main things. Primarily, it is the coolant that is cooling the reactor and taking heat out to the rest of the plant to make steam. PWRs generate steam in big heat exchangers called steam generators, and BWRs are basically designed where the top of their reactor is a steam generator like design and they make steam directly in the reactor. But the other main purpose is that the water is our moderator. If the water goes away, you have fewer thermalized neutrons, and you have less fission.
It makes the reactor self stabilizing, and here's how that works. Let's say you withdraw some control rods (which absorb neutrons). You are now absorbing fewer neutrons in the control rods, and you have more neutrons to cause fission, and power will rise. More fission means you make more heat. As you make more heat, the water expands, and if it's a BWR, it will also make some more little steam bubbles. But when that water heats up and expands or makes more steam bubbles, that means you are losing your moderator by that much. It can't slow down as many neutrons. So as power rises, more heat, moderator is less dense, fewer neutrons are thermalized, and the fission rate stabilizes and stops rising.
Basically, in a PWR or BWR, any power rise will cause power to go up, but that makes your moderator less dense and makes it harder to slow down neutrons, and your fission rate will stabilize. The same thing happens in the opposite direction, when you lower power. Less heat means the moderator is more dense, and will thermalize more neutrons to help raise the fission rate to stop power from continuing to fall.
RBMK reactors act with a positive coefficient, so each power rise will make power rise more and rise faster until you do something to stop it. That's because in an RBMK, the moderator doesn't change, a power rise makes one of your neutron ABSORBERS, the water, go away. PWRs and BWRs have a negative coefficient, and any power rise will make the moderator less dense and slow the power rise and stabilize it on its own. You don't have to do anything to stop it. That's because in a PWR or BWR, the moderator is the thing that is changing. Raise power, your moderator is now not able to moderate as well, and power stabilizes. I know this is very complicated, and I'm trying to give an easy to understand explanation, and I would be happy to explain more if you have questions and it's not clear.
But the big picture is an RBMK is designed so that if power rises, it continues to rise more and more and faster and faster until you do something to stop it from rising. In our Western reactor designs, if you raise power, it raises a little bit, then the power rise slows and stops and it stabilizes at a new higher power level. Basically, our reactors in the West have always been self stabilizing like this. That's the biggest difference. You simply can't get this runaway power excursion in our reactors like you can in an RBMK. That's not to say there aren't other accidents that can happen, but they are much less severe. And the good news is that there are newer designs that are even safer. The new AP1000 design is built with a lot more passive safety systems. You can have a loss of power at AP1000 for 72 hours and the plant is kept safe through passive cooling. It practically eliminates the vulnerability of what we saw at Fukushima. And there are other even more advanced designs in the works where the fuel is constructed of materials that physically cannot get hot enough to melt.
So the big takeaway is that no, Chernobyl is not possible in our Western reactors. The reactors are fundamentally designed differently. Our PWRs and BWRs are incredibly safe, but the good news is that if we can clear away the red tape and begin developing and building the newer Generation IV reactor designs, they are even more safe with passive cooling designs and even safer fuel designs.
The fact the firefighters' uniforms are still radioactive and had to be sealed away in the hospital basement so people would stop trying to find them is amazing.
One key thing that is rarely mentioned in any of these documentaries is that in the USSR/Russia (unlike in the West) nuclear reactors do not have a containment vessel. The reactor has shielding around it but no concrete containment vessel. This meant that the explosion, once it occurred, allowed radioactive material and gasses to immediately escape into the open air. The arrogant Russians thought their RBMK reactor flawless - no accident could happen. The Three Mile Island reactor did have a containment vessel and therefore there was extremely limited release of radioactivity.
The tips being made of graphite was only a small part of it. The biggest issue with that design is that there was water pooled at the bottom of the reactor channel, acting as a little bit of a moderator. When the rods went in, they displaced that water and that little moderation that the water was providing was gone.
The positive void coefficient right?
I'll always remember a book that kinda resumed this in: Imagine designing cars in which, in a moment of need as in a steep, the brake pedal works like an accelerator for some seconds, imagine not saying anything and when an accident happened, putting the blame in the driver saying he didn't understand how brake pedals work". O.O
@@ubiergo1978 that puts it in a great way
You're half right. I have been a nuclear reactor operator for 23 years, both in the Navy and in the US commercial nuclear power industry, and I want to clear up some confusion. The issue is that the graphite tips of the rods displaced the water, but that's exactly why the RBMK design has graphite tips anyway. I think you misunderstand neutron moderation. U-235 is a thermal fuel, meaning you have to have slow neutrons in order to be absorbed and cause U-235 fission. The neutrons born from fission are always fast neutrons, and have much too high of an energy level to be readily absorbed by U-235 and cause fissions. You have to have a moderator to moderate, ie slow down the neutrons, in order to cause fission. Basically more moderator means more fission, and less moderator is less fission.
Graphite is the main source of neutron moderation in an RBMK reactor. Whether it is the graphite blocks surrounding the channels in the core, or you're talking about the graphite tips on the rods, both of these bits of graphite moderate the neutrons and make the fission rate go up. So what about the water then? Well, in most Western design reactors, water is the moderator. It is the collisions of the neutrons hitting the hydrogen atoms in the water molecules that slows the neutrons down so they can cause fission. But water is also pretty good at absorbing neutrons, too. That's how you get deuterium and tritium. Those same hydrogen atoms in the water molecules can absorb your neutrons to become H-2 (deuterium) and H-3 (tritium).
Everything in a reactor is a game of balancing all of these different effects. In most Western reactors, you have no graphite, water is your only moderator, and you balance everything out with control rods and/or boron dissolved in the coolant. In the RBMK style reactor at Chernobyl, there was so much moderation from the graphite, that the moderating effect of the water did not matter, and their "balance" was that water acted more as a neutron absorber. The control rods are also a neutron absorber, which is how they work to function as control rods. So in an RBMK reactor, if you withdraw control rods, you're removing a neutron absorber, and it is filling up with water, which, in their reactor functions primarily as another type of neutron absorber. It doesn't really do much. So in order to make their reactor work, when they withdraw control rods, the absorber section is pulled out of the core, and it pulls a graphite section into the core. Less absorber material means more neutrons, and more graphite means more neutron moderation which means even more neutrons causing fission, and this is how they control power. Need more fission? Pull out some absorber material (control rods) and pull in some more graphite for more neutron moderation. Need less fission? Push the extra graphite out, and push absorber material back in.
The problem with Chernobyl, is due to xenon buildup, they had withdrawn way too many rods, and withdrawn them too high up in the core. That meant that all of those slugs of graphite were in the middle of the core, and there was a section at the bottom of the core where there was only water in the control rod channels. Still, they had just managed to keep the reactor critical (meaning a stable chain reaction). So the bottom part of the core was filled with neutron absorber (water), and when they hit the infamous A3-5 button, the rods began to fall in. The bottom part of the core that was critical with water in the control rod channels, now had the absorber/water pushed out, and had moderator/graphite pushed in. Less absorber means more neutrons. More moderator means more neutrons thermalized in order to cause fission. The bottom of the core that was initially critical (stable reaction) while being filled with water, now went extremely supercritical (in this case prompt critical) in a fraction of a second, because you shoved in more moderator and shoved out all of the neutron absorbing water.
Chernobyl also had a positive void coefficient of reactivity. The water, being an absorber for them, is what causes this positive coefficient. As soon as the power spiked due to the graphite being shoved into the bottom of the core, temperature rose almost instantaneously and the water immediately became steam vapor. Steam is much less dense than liquid water, and it essentially meant you removed the neutron absorbing water from the rest of the core, as well. More power, more heat, more steam, less neutron absorbing water, more power, more heat, more steam...repeat. Within a small fraction of a second, power rose exponentially to the point that heat generation caused a massive steam explosion. As the head of the reactor blew off, there was now an in rush of air into this core with superheated graphite and hydrogen being produced from the accident, and this caused a second, even larger combustion explosion. This blew the roof off of the building and started a massive fire as all of this graphite burst into flames.
So I don't mean to nitpick your response, but I just wanted to make sure the terminology was correct, because a lot of people don't understand. The big picture of your answer is correct, but I wanted to clear up what neutron moderation means. For a thermal fuel like U-235, more moderation means MORE fission, because the moderator has to thermalize the neutrons in order to cause fission. It is moderating (slowing down) the neutrons to produce more fission. It's NOT moderating the reaction (lowering power), it's moderating the neutrons (raising power). The confusion also comes about from the fact that in most Western reactors, water acts primarily as a moderator, enabling fission, where in the RBMK, the water acts primarily as a neutron absorber. For most reactor designs, you'll hear water referred to as a moderator, which leads to the confusion, but it's not the case for an RBMK, where it acts primarily as an absorber.
I know this was long, but I hope some find it interesting and I hope it helps explain things.
@@adamhutchins1981 that actually makes perfect sense. I was using the term “moderation” when I should have been using “neutron absorber” or something to that effect. I understand now that “moderation” has a different connotation. It’s slowing the neutrons down, but because it’s slowing them down, fission is occurring due to the decreased neutron flux, right? I guess in my head at the time, I equated the “slowing down” aspect of moderation to “decreasing reactivity”.
Thank you for the response. I genuinely read the entire thing and I appreciate you nitpicking. All of this is about facts and if I don’t get something right, I am happy to stand corrected. Thank you
3.6 reontgen... Not great, not terrible.
You said radiation can’t be spread person to person because it is not contagious. If that’s the case then bodies wouldn’t be buried in lead and concrete. Also the CDC says you are wrong.
that's what some understood at the time.
that isnt what they still believe.
@@Jaws10214 but it is scientist and many others who study radiation still say that radiation can be transmitted between people just like between objects
A person with long term exposure, such as Mme Curie and the Radium Girls, have incorporated radioactive material into their bones and are radioactive and dangerous even after scrubbed. There have also been cases of people involved in nuclear lab accidents who have had large amounts of radioactive material driven into their skin by an explosion, who would remain radioactive after cleaned. However a person with brief, acute exposure, such as the Chernobyl firefighters, once stripped and scrubbed, would be minimally radioactive, if at all, and not dangerous.
One thing that isn't making sense is how they say that the wife couldn't get radiation from her husband who was already cleaned. If that is so, why did they say he was still radioactive and buried him in a zinc coffin?
Just smiling and bobbing our heads while having cancer and acute radiation sickness. No problem just smile it away. These are facts I’ve been told from survivors in this video.
The Babushka who said she wasn't scared of radiation, but of starvation, probably lived through Holodomor.
“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is settled.”
- Valery Legasov
i love the surviving 100 days of a neclear war video
(German here)
The Generation of my Parents are still in fear of Radiation to this day.
The went out on the Street protesting during the ''Atomkraft? Nein Danke!'' Movement which was going on years before the disaster,
you couldn't eat cabbage, Mushrooms and other Vegetables,
Sandboxes were thrown away because of partially iradiadet sand and such,
many flocks of deer were whiped out because of radiation,
the fear they had during the ongoing cold war became even worst,
my Parents couldn't even watch the Chernobyl Netflix show without having some sort of uneasy feeling
This reminds me of the accident here in Idaho that didn’t get as much popularity. They couldn’t find one of the people that were in the room for hours because he was pinned between one of the 700 pound control rods and the ROOF
You mean the SL-1?
@@corinneamani8823 I think it was the SL-1, thank you!
That incident still had no where near the impact and radiation as Chernobyl
@@simoncohen9323 agreed, there are similarities, but chernobyl had a much bigger impact
The only common part in the SL-1 and Chernobyl is the fact that there were both incidents involving the fuel rods, if I can even call it that. The scram button vs. pulling the main control rod out by hand? But they don't really have any similarities other than both being radioactive lol
18:05 “people are living it up, full blast. Weddings are going on”…. Most of those weddings won’t have an anniversary and many of them won’t even have a honeymoon. Radiation be scary. So sad 😞
A sad thing is that my grandfather died because of the Chernobyl disaster not directly but because we are from Bulgaria which is kinda close and as the radiation carried over to different countries it reached Bulgaria and we believe he got cancer from the radiation and that was before I was even born.
I don’t watch a lot of sole education videos but the infographics show is the one thing I will never not watch
Yup yup yup
To everyone who died that day may the rest in peace
Well done! You've brought up some details I've never heard before now. For those who want more, I recommend "Midnight in Chernobyl : The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster" by Adam Higginbotham.
Ooo, sounds interesting, I’ll be sure to look into it! Thanks for the recommendation!! ❤️
@@RazzleGhostie You're welcome! It's a very good read.
@@TheKulu42 Another good read on the topic is "Chernobyl. The history of a nuclear catastrophe" By Sehrii Plokhy, an Ukrainian historian!
@@brod7053 Thanks! 😀
Great book! I have it and will read again at some point 😁
You glossed over my favorite parts the technical aspect of why it exploded.
There are a lot of problems with this video
@@beejereeno2the music is the first thing. i can’t concentrate on what he’s saying.
@kyon-kyon- there should never be music and narration at the same time
@kyon-kyon- there should never be music and narration at the same time
Fun fact: my grandpa almost had to clean up at chernobyl but he acted like he was autistic to have a excuse to not go
smart move
I'm going to be honest: the HBO series Chernobyl was incredibly accurate and a lot easier to watch and understand
I watched that mini series the past week. In the west, they build containment buildings around the reactor. In the Soviet Union they don't because it is cheaper to build that way. There is a video of an old F4 Phantom jet smashed into a wall built to the same specifications of a containment building to test it. The F4 lost.
@@donturner3239 I heard most people think that even a containment building wouldn't have stopped the explosion at Chernobyl it was literally the worst case scenario possible
@@mikehurt3290possibly, but the chain of events that led to the explosions at Chernobyl could not happen in western reactors. We don't use graphite moderator, we use water.
This is much safer because if cooling is lost the water boils, which deprives the reactor of a moderator, thus slowing the reactor and preventing a runaway reaction.
We can still experience meltdowns from residual heat, but that's very different from having explosions
Much was learned from this which was applied at Fukashima and probably saved many people, particularly the creation of radioactive iodine and strontium causing secondary irradiation post accident which causes thyroid cancer in humans particularly children
This was really really well explained. I'm reading midnight in Chernobyl right now and this video is a great accompaniment
The quality of information in this show really went up after the years
Love your content can you make more videos on Greek mythology?
I would love for them to cover Homer's Odyssey if they already haven't done it.
Lol uploaded 7mins ago and 1k plus views already! Shows how good the content is :)
It’s only 3.6 roentgen.
Not good, but not horrifying
Wish I was there to witness it all
Wish granted,you are now the janitor in the control room
Bruh
After watching the show, I don’t wanna be within 1000 miles of Chernobyl!
I wanna see it but I don't wanna be anywhere near it to see it
@@sincedoc1605 just wear a hazmat suit
Don’t let this video confuse you, coal power takes tens of millions of lives every few years, nuclear power is still the safest form of energy. It’s like how airplane crashes go all over the news even though it is far safer than driving.
It not only destroys electrons, but destroys the whole molecule.
I'm actually surprised by the level of details presented here. Big kudos. One thing though - I believe the helicopter crashed later than few hours, on October 2nd
The guy in charge did not care about the test circumstances and this is what happens.
That's Eastern Europe for you.
“Where once I would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?”
- Valery Legasov, HBO’s Chernobyl
"the pressure cooker incident"
Love all your videos! You should use some sort of de-esser plugin for the voiceover to make it a little less sibilant. Keep up the good work!
This is my favorite education channel and I am subscribed to MANY channels like this also Early gang
Some of those guys who knew that he was actually gonna be exposed to deadly amount of radiation saved others and trying to stop the spread of the radioactive ☢️ fires. Some of them didn't know that the fire was actually radioactive with no protective suit and gas mask.
yes, and they killed all the pets after the disaster because it was more humane then letting them all die from radiation poisoning, they showed that in Chernobyl 2019
50,000 People Used to Live Here. Now It's a Ghost Town
Bush did 9/11
Yet this is the first place the Russians went to when they invaded Ukraine ? Why?
Impossible, RBMK Reactors don't explode, Comrade
What they need to do is study how Dyatlov was exposed to two nuclear accidents in his lifetime as well as spending everyday around radiation and never once got any health issues from it.
Fine, I’ll rewatch Chernobyl again
50,000 people used to live here, now it's a ghost town...
The only people who inhabit the area around Chernobyl are only the the workers and their families who work at the plant to keep watch for any nuclear leakage and also It was inhabited by the Russians when they invaded but fell victim to radiation poisoning.
I'm learning all my world history from Infographics, I really hope they're accurate, lol.
I really recommend to check other videos talking about Chernobyl, he didn't mention a lot of important things, and in my opinion he explained it not in the best way for understanding.
@@Disorder2312
Got any links or channel names for some good docs? I find it very interesting.
The Chernobyl series is the best. 100% recommend it
Thank you for covering this FACTUALLY
The extreme low amounts of meltdowns is actually incredibly impressive
I remember hearing this on the news, it was terrifying!I hope all victims recover🙏 it's so eerie to find out what really happened
But the melancholy is that; there is no recuperation from this atrociously jacked up incident. All we can hope is not to let another such dire thing prevail.
This was real good ^^ wish the elephants foot had been mentioned more, but there’s other videos for that
*Based on a true story
“He’s turning black and feels like he’s a monster”😳
🤨
It’s to show how they were physically afected. Not to be racist
“The boron reduces the activity but not the tips”
Like I was watching the actual show.
Correction: There was no power surge before pressing of the AZ-5 button. It wasn't until after they pressed the button there was a power surge. Idk why this part of the story is so widely misreported since it is so important.
Wait, If there was no power surge then why did they pressed the AZ-5 button ?
@@xaina222 because the power level had reached disastrously low and AZ-5 button was the fail safe. But when they did press the button all of the fuel rods started to go back in the reactor at one to stop the overall reaction but because the tips of the fuel rods were a catalyst for the reaction instead of stopping it, they increased the reaction this resulting in the sudden power surge.
@@usernotfound0404 Im confused, If the power level was low then theres barely any reaction anyway right ? then why did they press the button to stop all reaction then ?
@@xaina222 because the reactor was choking, it isn't easy to build and repair a reactor core.
@@usernotfound0404 you keep saying fuel rods when you mean control rods. You're not helping to clear it up.
To this day, I'm learning more about nuclear weapons and fall out from these videos.
If you are gonna have a nuclear power plant you better ensure that you have the absolutely right resources and the right person for the right job.
6:51
everybody gangsta till the control rods start jumpin
7:40
Worker: "Reactors don't explode silly!"
RBMK-1000: *laughs in alpha decay*
There’s a kids book about the disaster. It’s called The Blackbird Girls. 10/10 definitely recommend. It’s emotional in the last 150 pages.
Great video! Thank you ^^
And I couldn't help but recommend the book Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham, it's a very interesting read, full of information but easy to digest, when I was reading it I literally couldn't stop, it also contains some photos and schematics, not the most important part but it's always nice, and I found myself turning pages back and forth to consult the RBMK-1000 schematic while reading the book. I'm not the best at describing stuff but honestly if you have some time and a little money to spare buy the book, it's truly amazing and also heartbreaking.
Thx man
This story is such a tragedy 😢
The background music was throwing me off😂😂
rods jumping, dyatlov an absolute idiot, calling it a bomb, showing a mushroom cloud, complete bingo of misinformation...
Can you guys make a playlist of all of your videos so someone can watch them all?
If you go to their page, pick videos, there is a "play all" link to play literally all videos on the channel though not in specific categories
Actually irradiated persons CAN irradiate other people. When you become irradiated, certain atoms in your body can activate and become radioactive themselves (become a radioisotope). Our bodies can become irradiated the same way inanimate objects can. That is why the stem cell transplant didn’t work on Hisashi Ouchi, because his body was so irradiated it immediately mutated and killed off his sisters stem cells they gave him
Usually the radioisotopes in your body alpha or beta decay (with a gamma) and these won't cause atoms in another person's body to turn into a isotope like fast neutron radiation can.
The example you gave isn't that one person can irradiate and activate another person. The example you gave was - the one body was so irradiated/ damaged that it failed to accept what was in effect a family member blood transfusion.
50 thousand people used to live here... Now it's a ghost town
26:15
Just to clarify this,
Radioactive- gives off radiation.
Irradiated- has been affected by radiation, does not give off radiation
A duck fell into the reactor!
It’s a ghost town now and there’s still loads of radiation so it’s not even safe to go explore
False there's stalkers and Ukrainian granny's that still live there although there are obviously still hot spots especially the red forest that's still highly radioactive but the city isn't that radioactive anymore because the clean up work and the gaint lid they moved over the blow up reactor
@@minekush1138 don’t forget the Russian soldiers
@@gamingwithcallum6087 true
I’ve been there on a tour in 2010. Multiple checkpoints and paperwork needed.
Drove through the red forest as fast as possible.
There were four of us and a guide with a van and radiation meter.
Had lunch in the town of Tchernobyl.
Probably not local produce 😅
The railway bridge and the amusement park had the highest radiation levels of the places we visited, other than the parking lot right next to reactor #4
@@minekush1138 I feel sorry for Ukraine. They don’t deserve this. I’m British but I wish I could do something
So...not all that you post here is accurate. A handful of the reactor workers and most of the initial firefighters were exposed to a huge number of nuclear isotopes that were absorbed into their bodies. Most of which are mistakenly recognized by the human body as normal chemicals needed for longevity and life; absorbed by the liver, kidneys, bones, thyroid, and stomach. These isotopes were not "cleaned" from those like you stated and who were exposed to them, as you cannot easily clean the innards of humans.
Their bodies were highly radioactive, while and after they died. That is why they were isolated in Chernobyl and buried zinc lined coffins under many feet of concrete in a special cemetery. Lyudmila Ignatenko's admission that her unborn child protected her from the radiation given off by her dying husband is documented in the book, where she provided first hand testimony (entirely discounted in this video (as well as other simplifications of the facts)). While it is true that her fetus most likely did not absorb the radiation given off by her husband while she visited him, it is also true that his body was giving off an enormous amount of radiation due to the radiation his body absorbed.
Read "Voices From Chernobyl" to get a less biased account of what really happened. The original poster has no understanding of the radioactive footprint left on human lives.
Recheck your facts.
Everyone gangster til the control rods start jumping.
Welsh lamb was taken off the menu because of the radioactive material deposited on the Welsh mountains & hills from Chernobyl, it's only in recent years that it has been allowed back into our diets, though the radiation levels are still significant, but "acceptable", that's how far the radiation travelled from that "Reactors don't explode!" event...