From Japan. Thank you very much for your excellent video. I clearly remember watching the news of the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and thinking that something incredible had happened. At that time I had no idea that the next similar accident would happen 200 km from me.
And I vividly remember watching the disaster in Japan in 2011... I was awake at about 1AM here in America. Worst disaster I've ever seen unfold. And then later we heard about Fukushima. I was horrified seeing the footage of the hydrogen explosions. Everyone thought that it was as bad as Chernobyl. Thankfully, the reactor pressure vessels and containment buildings held, and the heroic effort kept the spent fuel pools covered with water.
This superb video is possibly the most informative and in-depth review of the accident - thank you for such wonderful hard work and investigation. I'm really looking forward to further episodes. Great work thank you all.
This was very good! I liked the 3D maps of the Zone, the microscopic picture of a particle (I've never seen that before). Looking forward to part 2. Lots of love ❤
nicely done explanation of the history and situation. Never seen any footage of the actual evacuation. This is heartbreaking. And the shots of normal life, with the film registering the radiation... this is pure horror movie. Seeing a camera picking up invisible death surrounding what still was a normal day to day life, with today's knowledge of what was happening at this moment, a few kilometers away, is terrifying...
this video is one of those amazingly detailed videos that honestly deserve more recognition. i hadn't seen or known about some of the things mentioned in this video so it was definitely very informative to me :)
Fantastic, informative video! I still remember watching the news that fateful day in 1986. The tragedy was somewhat physically distant (I was in Italy), but deeply impacted me all the same. I've always wanted to learn more about what happened, and your channel is doing such excellent work providing that information. I hope to be a patron soon. Thank you for your work! Cheers! //Rick
Great Video ! I'm looking forward to part 2, It's a shame Chornobyl had to happen, but I hope we all learned something from it and I don't mean the banning nuclear energy. I think we'll still need to lean on that type of power generation for the future despite what a lot of people think.
Given that we have blackouts in Ukrаine due to dеstroyed generating facilities, we have a very good illustration that nuclear has no alternatives. In other words, I could make this video only because we have reactors which gave me at least a few hours of electricity.
Thank you for this great explanation of the zone and its history! This video deserves a lot of attention for everyone interested in this topic. Can't wait for the next episodes :) Since the beginning of the destructive war, the power plant area has been taken over by Russian soldiers. Before that, it was very well documented which areas are relatively safe to go to, and which areas are to be avoided. I can imagine that since the Russian invasion of the area, a lot of that has changed. It would be great to have some insight on these changes somewhere in the future.
Thank you! More to come. They were thrown away on April 2022, but within one month of their presense the damage to safety infrastructure was massive. It took a lot of money and effort to restore everything, but now it is all up and running. Well, we also made a contribution by delivering a lot of computer tech bought with Patreon pledges.
Thankyou so much for a wonderful first episode. I'm looking forward to the next installments. I have dreamed of visiting the zone after viewing stories from other you-tubers, but now no longer have the opportunity. Video's such as this one help soften the blow. The zone seems to have a kind of magic appeal that draws one towards it. For me, not so much Pripyat, but the remaining villages and the remnants of a past life. Not to forget all the amazing wildlife Please keep up the great work you are doing, documenting this special place !
Thank you! In this case, I guess you will like our next episode, because we will talk about ancient history, traditional culture, language, daily life and what was before the power plant.
This is great man. I will (edit: hopefully!) never directly use the information but I was a kid when this happened and it seems the curiosity never went away... always looking for new angles on an old event with this one. Keep up the good work!
@@ChernobylFamily - No, thank you. Like many other people, I find this fascinating. The fact that you’re from the area adds a unique perspective to it all.
Thank you for an excellent and very informative documentary! I'm very interested in the exclusion zone and it's very special biotope. A bit of curio: Lately I've been working on a concept for a 'miniature gamma camera' - for use on small commercial drones, especially for aereal mapping of hotspots from radionucleid fallout. This project was actually born from my interest in the Chernobyl site. The idea is based on miniature scintillators, a special arrangement of photo detectors and AI driven optical analysis of the traces...
Magnificent first-hand look and review of Chernobyl. Allow me to be a Devil's Advocate for the RBMK reactor and the overall Soviet nuclear reactor program. It is clear that Reactor 4 blew up from failure to follow safety rules and shift engineer Dyatlov going against what the operators knew to be dangerous. Had the RBMK 4 been shut down instead of forcing the planned experiment under very dangerous and unstable conditions due to an excess of Xenon in the core, none of this would have happened. Going back further, safety recommendations were made to address problems experienced at older RBMK reactors. Had those recommendations been implemented and the plant commissioned only when it was ready, and not before the deadline just to get bonuses, this would not have happened. Getting to the very core of the RBMK design, it was designed to be built with less sophisticated materials and methods. It could use poor quality or very low enrichment fuel. The positive feedback in certain regimes was known and extra controls were built in. This design could've made nuclear power available to poorer countries which could not afford the PWR reactors of the west. This disaster was a failure of operation and much less so of the core design itself.
While we are very much for nuclear energy, in this particular case I'd not agree with your last statement; core design in its pre-86 version had issues, which were resolved with introduction of BAZ and USP systems during post-disaster modernization. The cause of the disaster is more the overall culture and approach to safety, what operators did - after all that was just a very last drop.
@@ChernobylFamily Good point. I was trying to get into the thoughts of the designers who had certain objectives in mind and how the RBMK design would meet those objectives. A graphite moderated system like the RBMK is designed to always be ON i.e. constantly stimulating fissions in poor quality fuel that would otherwise not perform. Fuel that could boil a small volume of water in a small channel. That seemed to be the only way the Soviet Union could get nuclear power at all. The inherent problems with the RBMK required complex controls and a better operations and safety culture. They developed the controls but, the culture failed to develop. That in contrast to the PWR reactors in the West which use high quality fuel and requires a design that either wants to stay stable or shut off. On top of that, we have the operational culture to safely run them. It is safer but, the construction and materials to build the pressure vessel is beyond most countries to build. Let alone be able to process the uranium into high quality fuel rods. I'm sure the Soviets saw the advantages but, they couldn't do it. RBMK was better than nothing and that's where they went. And that is what I am conjecturing from the aftermath of Chernobyl. Had Chernobyl disaster not happened, I wouldn't have even learned what an RBMK reactor was.
Well, they had a subtype of PWR reactor - VVER series, which are more widespread than RBMK. But, at the time of mass-construction of RBMKs VVERs were not enough powerful yet, and the need in energy generation was really acute, so the choice first went for RBMK.
That is a very serious thing, very hard to use, but for some tasks it is quite irreplaceable, so used in the zone even now. We actually have an old video with a review of it: ua-cam.com/video/0ZfEmW8dNQ0/v-deo.html
Well when ı was reading about 1975 Leningrad Nuclear power accident, I thought "hmm I saw same things around Chernobyl, they didn't learn anything from Leningrad ?" well they didn't for sure. Thank you for informative video.
That must have been crazy being one of the liquidators. "This stuff is so dangerous to life that you need to bury it" Imagine working all day for weeks, burying contaminated things, and knowing that it's so dangerous that it needs to be buried forever.
And now those burials are a big problem. Soviets left a heritage of a few thousands undocumented burials, all that has to be drilled, probed, opened, retrieved and placed in a controllable way... a very big and expensive job.
Excellent Video! My only question is are the outer borders of the zone still the same that was drawn up in 1986? Has the zone shrank or has it expanded in the last almost 40 years since the accident? That's my only question
I am not sure if you checked full video, so shortly, there was expansion in 1992 with addition of western territories towards Poliske town; original 1986 layout shrank with exclusion of two villages - Cheremoshna and Nyvitske from it.
This is one of the best videos I have ever seen on Chornobyl, thank you for the information. Your channel is like a goldmine of information. Are you still shipping your posters? I would like to purchase one but I am not sure if it is possible with the current conflict in Ukraine. Thank you once again for your amazing content
Great video. When I see documentaries like this, I always think about people for whom this was a greatest disaster. Not only they had to leave what was their whole life and all their possessions, but they often had to fight diseases for the rest of their lives. I was 11 at the time. I lived near east border of Poland. Our authorities lied to us too. They informed about the accident only after a few days. The Lugola liquid which was to prevent damage from radioactive Iodine was distributed too late. They told us to take part in 1 of May festivities (it was major fete in all communist countries behind iron curtain). I'll never forget a strange looking cloud, which was radiating some light -- to this time I don't know if it was reflection from the sun or something else, but I've never seen the cloud like this again.
Thank you for your documentary! I'm hailing from Portugal (a non-nuclear country) and I remember distinctively the disaster in 1986 as it was portrayed by the media. All we could say was, "thankfully, between the radioactive cloud and us, we have the Pyrenées" 😄 I know, it sounds awfully egocentric right now, and, in our defense, I can only say that I remember that we tried to get as many clothes and other articles of personal use to the evacuated people as we could. I believe, however, that despite the hard work of those international relief agencies, very likely much never reached any of the people evacuated - possibly because the USSR didn't *want* to look "helpless" and "lose face". It was only in the 2000s that I learned that the zone around the reactor was, to a degree, "open" for exploration (and had been for a while), although there were strict rules for staying safe inside the zone. There were some stories about so-called "nuclear tourism" for those who were insane enough to go there and take pictures... It's also amazing that you guys are able to do so much work while at the same time being the theatre of the biggest war in Europe since 1945 - Slava Ukraini!
Thank you so much for sharing. We are working on second episode (jeez, I am falling asleep, so much editing), hope it will be out this Sunday! Glory to heroes!
Nazarenko was head of Pripyat Film studio which was a structural department of the Palace of Culture. We will likely make a short episode about him, because this person is very important, but almost not known. We do not have exact information what happened back then. But assuming Pripyat always was quite stuffed by KGB informants, agents and eyes (that yellow book very well explainst the scale), we guess he was just seen and then "Sir, we have a question to you...". On 26-27 presense of KGB authorities likely doubled, if not quadrupled.
Cheers from Bucharest !! Slava Ukraini !! I was 10 y.o. in 1986 and I remember those crazy days of fear after the accident. I don't understand how the activity at the Nuclear Power Plant could be resumed in 1986 considering the level of radiation. Where those employees were sitting in Pripyat in normal apartaments so as not to be affected by radiation ?? I just can't understand how they can resume the activity just a few month afer the accident. Nobody fears of radiation as employee in 1986 ?? This is crazy !!
See, it is exactly about what I said in this video - "radiation is not a magic substance, there is always a physical source". With the power plant, most of contamination was created via vents which continued to operate for 3-4 hours after the explosion. It was very irregularly polluted, as the power plant is very very big and long, and generally contamination was concentrated on surfaces, floors, paint on the walls, etc. There was a long and massive work on removal and clean-up, as well as separation of U3 and U4. This allowed to reduce radiation to acceptable limits, and sometimes - to normal levels. As for Pripyat - conditions in the city varied drastically. Dormitories and vast majority of facilities in post-disaster period were deployed at District 4, which is farthest from the power plant and thus levels there were 1000-10000 times lower than in District 1 (closest). That said, it was very much possible to live in the buildings, but with strict compliance with safety rules, such as - closed/sealed windows, pressurized air-conditioning with filters, radiation control on entrance, and clothes changing. The idea was to prevent any dust ( = rad.sources ) getting inside, and that worked well. On our Patreon, there are translated reports titled "Chernobyl-88". There is a lot of data how all said above was done. Incredible reading.
@@ChernobylFamily Thanks for the explanations. But, at the end of the day, my big question remains: how they had the courage to work and live there ?? Because the death from radiation is a torture so awful and fear is beyond any technical explanations and measurments wich showed is all right to live there. All were heros. For any money in the world I didn't do that !!
@Andriushel well, and how we are working there? There are things that has to be done. Sometimes it is "who if not us", sometimes, it is "unique so much that I need to go there". Anyway, here is a key point: when the Zone came to the stage (~late 1986) when it became about daily normal WORK, not a "let's throw people in a nuclear hell to close it at any cost" it became about providing conditions where risks are controlled and minimized as much as possible. See, it is like with a wаr: everyone is in camo uniform, but not everyone is in the trench under a fire, there are many many jobs. Even now, there are high risk jobs in the Zone, and there are jobs which are not any different from sitting in an office, just in Chernobyl city. Same was back then.
@@ChernobylFamily So, I understand even the radioactivity was so high in almost all areas, there were certain areas, even very close to the plant, where the radiation was quite normal and people can live. Wow, it seems incredible !!!
There was no average, and still there is no. It was about getting 25R dose during all works all together before being discharged (there is another question how precisely it was calculated). In particular pictured task the most important was to prevent inhalation of dust.
Levels across the power plant greatly, I mean, GREATLY varied from a room to room. Internal contamination was mostly formed by what ventilation systems took inside, and given that the power plant is very huge and long, that diversity was even higher. There was conducted a complex survey of contamination and subsequently, decontamination with removal of affected surfaces, making new floors, etc, etc. as well as installing filtration systems into vents. This allowed to lower exposure to acceptable, and in some cases - to normal levels. Of course, very close to Unit IV there were very bad places, but not all premises must be manned to operate. I literally now am translating a new piece of archive reports circa 1986 into English to be published on Patreon; and there is a table with levels per room, measured on October 6 1986, and on October 23, 1986 after some extra clean up. So, for example, Control room 1 - 0.8 and 0.6 milliRoentgens per hour respectively, corridor near the entrance to it - 0.8 and 0.4, control room 3 - 15..100 (this is quite high, but not really deadly) and after decontamination - just 7 mR/h (roughly 61.9 uSv/h in modern units). So not astronomical levels, but indeed not a beach vacation; in case of control room 1, said 0.8 mRh is roughly 7 µSv/h - it is like in Pripyat today. Of course, very close to Unit IV things were not as good as this.
@@ChernobylFamily Thank you for your thorough explanation. As they needed the other three reactors, it seems they cleaned up the areas sufficiently to allow power generation to restart 'safely' again. Probably if there had been an alternative, the whole station and complex would have been decommissioned post-1986.
I have mixed feelings about this phenomenon and it starts right with the word used related to them. The thing is, the first stalkers of the Zone, in a meaning of people who want to explore and understand that place appeared in the time when many modern 'stalkers' were either not born or good if were in school (well, including me and my wife). There are boys and girls who trespass, but they have highest level of respect towards the place and a goal to feel it, and understand it. And there are trespassers, who do it... god knows for which reason. Those are not stalkers, those are just trespassers.
Can you explain that hotspot on the Belarus-Russia-Ukraine border region northwest of Chernobyl that looks like the hottest place outside the exclusion zone and more or less the same colors of contamination grade
@@ChernobylFamily yeah between there and Gomel and Ukraine. It shows up just as bad as the exclusion zone on most maps(other then the tiny black spec where the NPP proper is, obviously that's the hottest spot of all, but I mean outside of that they both look really comparable). What's up with that place
From Japan. Thank you very much for your excellent video. I clearly remember watching the news of the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and thinking that something incredible had happened. At that time I had no idea that the next similar accident would happen 200 km from me.
Thank you for sharing this. We stay with you, and Ukraine, as far I know, helped as much as we could. But, with this stuff, it is never enough.
And I vividly remember watching the disaster in Japan in 2011... I was awake at about 1AM here in America. Worst disaster I've ever seen unfold. And then later we heard about Fukushima. I was horrified seeing the footage of the hydrogen explosions. Everyone thought that it was as bad as Chernobyl. Thankfully, the reactor pressure vessels and containment buildings held, and the heroic effort kept the spent fuel pools covered with water.
*Warning! Hazardous radiation levels detected!*
This superb video is possibly the most informative and in-depth review of the accident - thank you for such wonderful hard work and investigation. I'm really looking forward to further episodes. Great work thank you all.
Thank you! More to come!
This was very good! I liked the 3D maps of the Zone, the microscopic picture of a particle (I've never seen that before). Looking forward to part 2. Lots of love ❤
@@technologic21 this 3D map is available as a poster! Thank you - we will do our best!
die schlimmste Tragödie für die Ukraine und auch für Belarus, über Belarus spricht man nicht mehr 😢
Чудове відео. З нетерпінням очікую наступної частини
Думаємо, через 2 тижня буде!
Thanks so much for this Fantastic Video. You just don't see any this good. All my best from the US, Jim
Thank you! More to come, and it will be interesting.
Another informative and useful video, excellent work
Thank you so much!
nicely done explanation of the history and situation.
Never seen any footage of the actual evacuation. This is heartbreaking. And the shots of normal life, with the film registering the radiation... this is pure horror movie. Seeing a camera picking up invisible death surrounding what still was a normal day to day life, with today's knowledge of what was happening at this moment, a few kilometers away, is terrifying...
Thank you. At some point, we will make a video about M. Nazarenko and his heritage. What a person, what a life... which so abruptly ended.
@@ChernobylFamily Yes that would be fantastic.
this video is one of those amazingly detailed videos that honestly deserve more recognition. i hadn't seen or known about some of the things mentioned in this video so it was definitely very informative to me :)
Thank you! This weekend the second episode will be out!
Thank you for new video, stay strong, kind regards from Serbia
Thank you!
Fantastic, informative video! I still remember watching the news that fateful day in 1986. The tragedy was somewhat physically distant (I was in Italy), but deeply impacted me all the same. I've always wanted to learn more about what happened, and your channel is doing such excellent work providing that information. I hope to be a patron soon. Thank you for your work! Cheers! //Rick
Thank you very much and you are warmly welcome to join!
These have to be the most frightening videos we have ever seen. Well done documentary.
Thank you
Great Video ! I'm looking forward to part 2, It's a shame Chornobyl had to happen, but I hope we all learned something from it and I don't mean the banning nuclear energy. I think we'll still need to lean on that type of power generation for the future despite what a lot of people think.
Given that we have blackouts in Ukrаine due to dеstroyed generating facilities, we have a very good illustration that nuclear has no alternatives. In other words, I could make this video only because we have reactors which gave me at least a few hours of electricity.
Thank you for this great explanation of the zone and its history! This video deserves a lot of attention for everyone interested in this topic. Can't wait for the next episodes :)
Since the beginning of the destructive war, the power plant area has been taken over by Russian soldiers. Before that, it was very well documented which areas are relatively safe to go to, and which areas are to be avoided. I can imagine that since the Russian invasion of the area, a lot of that has changed. It would be great to have some insight on these changes somewhere in the future.
I don’t think there are any Russian soldiers there. Maybe you thought about Zaporzhizia?
I don’t think there are any Russian soldiers there. Maybe you thought about Zaporzhizia?
Thank you! More to come. They were thrown away on April 2022, but within one month of their presense the damage to safety infrastructure was massive. It took a lot of money and effort to restore everything, but now it is all up and running. Well, we also made a contribution by delivering a lot of computer tech bought with Patreon pledges.
Thankyou so much for a wonderful first episode. I'm looking forward to the next installments. I have dreamed of visiting the zone after viewing stories from other you-tubers, but now no longer have the opportunity. Video's such as this one help soften the blow. The zone seems to have a kind of magic appeal that draws one towards it. For me, not so much Pripyat, but the remaining villages and the remnants of a past life. Not to forget all the amazing wildlife
Please keep up the great work you are doing, documenting this special place !
Thank you! In this case, I guess you will like our next episode, because we will talk about ancient history, traditional culture, language, daily life and what was before the power plant.
When I learned how many centuries those villages had existed, for me that became a not-well-known tragedy inside and on top of the well-known tragedy.
@jasonhaman4670 sadly, even in Ukraine not so many people know about it. We are going to fix it with the next episode.
@@ChernobylFamily Looking forward to it, and the rest of this series!
Thank you so much for these impressions. An amazing video 💖👏👏👏
Thank you! More to come!
Informative video! Thank you. Looking forward to more
More to come!
This is great man. I will (edit: hopefully!) never directly use the information but I was a kid when this happened and it seems the curiosity never went away... always looking for new angles on an old event with this one. Keep up the good work!
Thank you!
Greetings from Denmark. Thanks for a really good video
Thank you!!!
Excellent video. Thank you.
Glad it was helpful! Check the next episodes!
Super interesting! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Thank you! Cheers!
Superb! Thanks for making and posting this Alex :-)
Thank you!
@@ChernobylFamily - No, thank you. Like many other people, I find this fascinating. The fact that you’re from the area adds a unique perspective to it all.
Amazing content, i cant wait the another part, i need know the history before the zone
We are already workibg on it...)
Thank you for an excellent and very informative documentary! I'm very interested in the exclusion zone and it's very special biotope.
A bit of curio:
Lately I've been working on a concept for a 'miniature gamma camera' - for use on small commercial drones, especially for aereal mapping of hotspots from radionucleid fallout. This project was actually born from my interest in the Chernobyl site. The idea is based on miniature scintillators, a special arrangement of photo detectors and AI driven optical analysis of the traces...
Oh my god! This sounds very interesting!
Thank you for an insightful series on Chernobyl. 👍
It looks to be interesting.
And it will be!
Magnificent first-hand look and review of Chernobyl.
Allow me to be a Devil's Advocate for the RBMK reactor and the overall Soviet nuclear reactor program. It is clear that Reactor 4 blew up from failure to follow safety rules and shift engineer Dyatlov going against what the operators knew to be dangerous. Had the RBMK 4 been shut down instead of forcing the planned experiment under very dangerous and unstable conditions due to an excess of Xenon in the core, none of this would have happened.
Going back further, safety recommendations were made to address problems experienced at older RBMK reactors. Had those recommendations been implemented and the plant commissioned only when it was ready, and not before the deadline just to get bonuses, this would not have happened.
Getting to the very core of the RBMK design, it was designed to be built with less sophisticated materials and methods. It could use poor quality or very low enrichment fuel. The positive feedback in certain regimes was known and extra controls were built in. This design could've made nuclear power available to poorer countries which could not afford the PWR reactors of the west. This disaster was a failure of operation and much less so of the core design itself.
While we are very much for nuclear energy, in this particular case I'd not agree with your last statement; core design in its pre-86 version had issues, which were resolved with introduction of BAZ and USP systems during post-disaster modernization. The cause of the disaster is more the overall culture and approach to safety, what operators did - after all that was just a very last drop.
@@ChernobylFamily Good point. I was trying to get into the thoughts of the designers who had certain objectives in mind and how the RBMK design would meet those objectives. A graphite moderated system like the RBMK is designed to always be ON i.e. constantly stimulating fissions in poor quality fuel that would otherwise not perform. Fuel that could boil a small volume of water in a small channel. That seemed to be the only way the Soviet Union could get nuclear power at all. The inherent problems with the RBMK required complex controls and a better operations and safety culture. They developed the controls but, the culture failed to develop.
That in contrast to the PWR reactors in the West which use high quality fuel and requires a design that either wants to stay stable or shut off. On top of that, we have the operational culture to safely run them. It is safer but, the construction and materials to build the pressure vessel is beyond most countries to build. Let alone be able to process the uranium into high quality fuel rods. I'm sure the Soviets saw the advantages but, they couldn't do it. RBMK was better than nothing and that's where they went. And that is what I am conjecturing from the aftermath of Chernobyl. Had Chernobyl disaster not happened, I wouldn't have even learned what an RBMK reactor was.
Well, they had a subtype of PWR reactor - VVER series, which are more widespread than RBMK. But, at the time of mass-construction of RBMKs VVERs were not enough powerful yet, and the need in energy generation was really acute, so the choice first went for RBMK.
Thank you for sharing this history!❤
Our pleasure! Today episode 2 will be out!
16:48 🤩 that is such an awesome old Soviet radiometer.
That is a very serious thing, very hard to use, but for some tasks it is quite irreplaceable, so used in the zone even now. We actually have an old video with a review of it: ua-cam.com/video/0ZfEmW8dNQ0/v-deo.html
Congratulations, excellent info and presentation too!
16:37 ... Impressive then and now spot!
Thank you! This is a fragment of this our video ua-cam.com/video/LoLJ-Sc4_bY/v-deo.html
Very good Video! regards from Berlin.
Thank you! Greetings from Ukraine!
@@ChernobylFamily SLAVA UKRAINA!!!
From ROMANIA!"!!💛💛💙💙
@@ExiSTEIN glory to heroes!
Amazing historic video of the zone❤
Thank you! Next weekend will come the continuation!
Well when ı was reading about 1975 Leningrad Nuclear power accident, I thought "hmm I saw same things around Chernobyl, they didn't learn anything from Leningrad ?" well they didn't for sure. Thank you for informative video.
I am not sure if information was shared in a proper scale.
@@ChernobylFamily Or, that information was deliberately buried to cover up a failure, in the CCCP?
i am more for that it was released on a too high level only.
That must have been crazy being one of the liquidators. "This stuff is so dangerous to life that you need to bury it" Imagine working all day for weeks, burying contaminated things, and knowing that it's so dangerous that it needs to be buried forever.
And now those burials are a big problem. Soviets left a heritage of a few thousands undocumented burials, all that has to be drilled, probed, opened, retrieved and placed in a controllable way... a very big and expensive job.
Excellent Video! My only question is are the outer borders of the zone still the same that was drawn up in 1986? Has the zone shrank or has it expanded in the last almost 40 years since the accident? That's my only question
I am not sure if you checked full video, so shortly, there was expansion in 1992 with addition of western territories towards Poliske town; original 1986 layout shrank with exclusion of two villages - Cheremoshna and Nyvitske from it.
Excellent video.
Thank you very much!
This is one of the best videos I have ever seen on Chornobyl, thank you for the information. Your channel is like a goldmine of information. Are you still shipping your posters? I would like to purchase one but I am not sure if it is possible with the current conflict in Ukraine.
Thank you once again for your amazing content
Thank you!
Yes, we have them - check this public post www.patreon.com/posts/merch-our-91648436
Great video. When I see documentaries like this, I always think about people for whom this was a greatest disaster. Not only they had to leave what was their whole life and all their possessions, but they often had to fight diseases for the rest of their lives.
I was 11 at the time. I lived near east border of Poland. Our authorities lied to us too. They informed about the accident only after a few days. The Lugola liquid which was to prevent damage from radioactive Iodine was distributed too late. They told us to take part in 1 of May festivities (it was major fete in all communist countries behind iron curtain). I'll never forget a strange looking cloud, which was radiating some light -- to this time I don't know if it was reflection from the sun or something else, but I've never seen the cloud like this again.
Thank you so much for sharing!
Absolutely amazing!
Thank you very much! Next one will be even more epic :)
Love your videos! 👌
thank you very much!
Thank you for awesome video 👍 off topic question: Where is Michaela? :)
She prefers to stay in background, mostly on Patreon, no matter how I push her into the cam frame :)
very intresting 👍 thank you
Thank you!
Thank you for your documentary! I'm hailing from Portugal (a non-nuclear country) and I remember distinctively the disaster in 1986 as it was portrayed by the media. All we could say was, "thankfully, between the radioactive cloud and us, we have the Pyrenées" 😄 I know, it sounds awfully egocentric right now, and, in our defense, I can only say that I remember that we tried to get as many clothes and other articles of personal use to the evacuated people as we could. I believe, however, that despite the hard work of those international relief agencies, very likely much never reached any of the people evacuated - possibly because the USSR didn't *want* to look "helpless" and "lose face".
It was only in the 2000s that I learned that the zone around the reactor was, to a degree, "open" for exploration (and had been for a while), although there were strict rules for staying safe inside the zone. There were some stories about so-called "nuclear tourism" for those who were insane enough to go there and take pictures...
It's also amazing that you guys are able to do so much work while at the same time being the theatre of the biggest war in Europe since 1945 - Slava Ukraini!
Thank you so much for sharing. We are working on second episode (jeez, I am falling asleep, so much editing), hope it will be out this Sunday! Glory to heroes!
Very interesting, also which organizations that where part of it!
@@Produkt_R thank you! We will take a more in-depth look at that in future!
9:26 character-map printed on dot matrix, cool
Yes, it looks cool. From what we found, this was output of a custom processing program, now lost in the depths of time
Was Mr Nazarenko a Pripyat resident at the time? When he was filming the videos, that’s when someone reported him to the KGB?
Nazarenko was head of Pripyat Film studio which was a structural department of the Palace of Culture. We will likely make a short episode about him, because this person is very important, but almost not known. We do not have exact information what happened back then. But assuming Pripyat always was quite stuffed by KGB informants, agents and eyes (that yellow book very well explainst the scale), we guess he was just seen and then "Sir, we have a question to you...". On 26-27 presense of KGB authorities likely doubled, if not quadrupled.
Cheers from Bucharest !! Slava Ukraini !! I was 10 y.o. in 1986 and I remember those crazy days of fear after the accident. I don't understand how the activity at the Nuclear Power Plant could be resumed in 1986 considering the level of radiation. Where those employees were sitting in Pripyat in normal apartaments so as not to be affected by radiation ?? I just can't understand how they can resume the activity just a few month afer the accident. Nobody fears of radiation as employee in 1986 ?? This is crazy !!
See, it is exactly about what I said in this video - "radiation is not a magic substance, there is always a physical source". With the power plant, most of contamination was created via vents which continued to operate for 3-4 hours after the explosion. It was very irregularly polluted, as the power plant is very very big and long, and generally contamination was concentrated on surfaces, floors, paint on the walls, etc. There was a long and massive work on removal and clean-up, as well as separation of U3 and U4. This allowed to reduce radiation to acceptable limits, and sometimes - to normal levels.
As for Pripyat - conditions in the city varied drastically. Dormitories and vast majority of facilities in post-disaster period were deployed at District 4, which is farthest from the power plant and thus levels there were 1000-10000 times lower than in District 1 (closest). That said, it was very much possible to live in the buildings, but with strict compliance with safety rules, such as - closed/sealed windows, pressurized air-conditioning with filters, radiation control on entrance, and clothes changing. The idea was to prevent any dust ( = rad.sources ) getting inside, and that worked well.
On our Patreon, there are translated reports titled "Chernobyl-88". There is a lot of data how all said above was done. Incredible reading.
@@ChernobylFamily Thanks for the explanations. But, at the end of the day, my big question remains: how they had the courage to work and live there ?? Because the death from radiation is a torture so awful and fear is beyond any technical explanations and measurments wich showed is all right to live there. All were heros. For any money in the world I didn't do that !!
@Andriushel well, and how we are working there? There are things that has to be done. Sometimes it is "who if not us", sometimes, it is "unique so much that I need to go there". Anyway, here is a key point: when the Zone came to the stage (~late 1986) when it became about daily normal WORK, not a "let's throw people in a nuclear hell to close it at any cost" it became about providing conditions where risks are controlled and minimized as much as possible. See, it is like with a wаr: everyone is in camo uniform, but not everyone is in the trench under a fire, there are many many jobs. Even now, there are high risk jobs in the Zone, and there are jobs which are not any different from sitting in an office, just in Chernobyl city. Same was back then.
@@ChernobylFamily So, I understand even the radioactivity was so high in almost all areas, there were certain areas, even very close to the plant, where the radiation was quite normal and people can live. Wow, it seems incredible !!!
@Andriushel almost like this. It was a patchwork-like contamination. And with certain techniques it was and is possible to reduce it.
Will you be visiting CCR 1 or 2 (Central Control Room) at any time soon? Because I would love to see that😊
Unlikely. Not the best times.
6:27 workers there have 0 protection. What was the average dose at that time in the nearby vilages ?
There was no average, and still there is no. It was about getting 25R dose during all works all together before being discharged (there is another question how precisely it was calculated). In particular pictured task the most important was to prevent inhalation of dust.
Second watch. Still great!
👍good Work go for IT👍❤️
Actually, true.
After the 1986 accident, how did workers operate the remaining reactors without significant radiation exposure?
Levels across the power plant greatly, I mean, GREATLY varied from a room to room. Internal contamination was mostly formed by what ventilation systems took inside, and given that the power plant is very huge and long, that diversity was even higher. There was conducted a complex survey of contamination and subsequently, decontamination with removal of affected surfaces, making new floors, etc, etc. as well as installing filtration systems into vents. This allowed to lower exposure to acceptable, and in some cases - to normal levels. Of course, very close to Unit IV there were very bad places, but not all premises must be manned to operate.
I literally now am translating a new piece of archive reports circa 1986 into English to be published on Patreon; and there is a table with levels per room, measured on October 6 1986, and on October 23, 1986 after some extra clean up. So, for example, Control room 1 - 0.8 and 0.6 milliRoentgens per hour respectively, corridor near the entrance to it - 0.8 and 0.4, control room 3 - 15..100 (this is quite high, but not really deadly) and after decontamination - just 7 mR/h (roughly 61.9 uSv/h in modern units). So not astronomical levels, but indeed not a beach vacation; in case of control room 1, said 0.8 mRh is roughly 7 µSv/h - it is like in Pripyat today.
Of course, very close to Unit IV things were not as good as this.
@@ChernobylFamily Thank you for your thorough explanation. As they needed the other three reactors, it seems they cleaned up the areas sufficiently to allow power generation to restart 'safely' again. Probably if there had been an alternative, the whole station and complex would have been decommissioned post-1986.
Interesting video.
Enjoy!
Thanks
Glad you liked!
omg omg omg omg Im so excited to watch this
Enjoy...)
Thank you
Tomorrow - a continuation!
@@ChernobylFamily Awesome!!!
What do you think about the illegal visitors in the zone? (aka stalkers)
I have mixed feelings about this phenomenon and it starts right with the word used related to them. The thing is, the first stalkers of the Zone, in a meaning of people who want to explore and understand that place appeared in the time when many modern 'stalkers' were either not born or good if were in school (well, including me and my wife). There are boys and girls who trespass, but they have highest level of respect towards the place and a goal to feel it, and understand it. And there are trespassers, who do it... god knows for which reason. Those are not stalkers, those are just trespassers.
ZAJEBISTE! 🍻
Haha) more to come!
I did not know that some people still lived in Pripyat afterwards in that sense per se.
I have to say when long ago we discovered that we also were shocked.
Can you explain that hotspot on the Belarus-Russia-Ukraine border region northwest of Chernobyl that looks like the hottest place outside the exclusion zone and more or less the same colors of contamination grade
I suppose you mean Novozybkov region of russia, a side touch of northern track. A horrible place, as was never evacuated, while better would be.
@@ChernobylFamily yeah between there and Gomel and Ukraine.
It shows up just as bad as the exclusion zone on most maps(other then the tiny black spec where the NPP proper is, obviously that's the hottest spot of all, but I mean outside of that they both look really comparable). What's up with that place
I always thought the exclusion zone was a perfect circle 30km in diameter. I guess not!
What was almost a perfect circle was a pre-accident monitoring area
WELCOME HOME
Дякую!
🙏🇺🇦
Далі буде...)
An interesting video as usual, but a sad story about the past.
Yes, it is a hard story.
Great video, love ukraine!
Thank you! Next episode is out!
Uzasna tragedija.jeli istina da su operateri reaktora krivi?pozdrav iz srbije
They certainly made some impact, but their contribution to this is far less than a contribution of the systematic ignorance of problems.
22:29 this horror moment when i saw a parked soviet police car in modern video)) I hope there was no any "militsioners" inside!
That was an exhibit made by police near original police checkpoint. Unfortunately, it was damaged by r-s.
@@ChernobylFamily but how it even possible? It's like to throw the "most tasty soviet icecream" in a trash can!
@slavarayko4240 yes, such a paradox
Excelent.
ˈsɫaʋɐ ʊkrɐˈjinʲi
Thank you!
Thank you very much for this very interesting video and your wonderful work !
Thank you! Soon - a continuation.
Thank you very much for this extensive and informative video, very interesting!
Glad you enjoyed it!