Happy new year I know it's not nuclear but it's a good one I remember when it happened because it woke me up and I lived in Milton Keynes at the time which is about 30 miles away The Buncefield fire was a major fire at an oil storage facility on 11 December 2005 at the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal, located near the M1 motorway, Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, England
I'd like to mention the SNAP-10-A or 'SNAPSHOT' satellite experienced shedding whilst still in orbit in 1979 losing more than 50 pieces of debris. (Hopefully none of that came down here!) It also was equipped if I'm not mistake with a Cesium Ion Thruster making it the first electrical propulsion systems ever used in space on top of the first nuclear power plant. Might be worth adding this to the video at a later date I found this data on wiki however so it may need some source checking.
Someone made a timeline of all the nuclear explosion tests on earth an ran the years up as explosions happened all over the world. Once China got involved it really became a fireworks show 60+ crazy how we react so fiercely to a little melt down when half the world has had large unregulated "tests"
@@mrillis9259 You are aware that the United States has done more nuclear tests than almost all of the rest of the world combined, in addition to being the only nation to use nuclear weapons on civilians (twice), right? The United States did 1030 tests, USSR did 715, France did 217, the UK did 88, and China did 47 (note that some of the UK's tests were done with America on American territory. If you count those as American tests, the UK did 45).
Tsar bombs size was so insane (my bomb is bigger than your bomb) it started below ground testing treaty talks. When you think of how many of the countries own people were injured or killed in USSR kazakhstan and Nevada... lunacy
@@OAleathaO compared to the SL-1, which had a worker pinned to the concrete ceiling with a control rod bushing. Same flaw in that reactor as was in the Chernobyl unit, a moderator at the tip of the control rods and a positive void coefficient.
Compared to the usual nuclear video, this actually feels kind of wholesome for some reason I can't quite put my finger on. I mean, it's nuclear explosions, and probably contributed to thyroid cancer levels, but I can't help but imagine how fun it must've been for the operators to have the reactors go boom. It must've been like some nuclear episode of Mythbusters!
I thought maybe someone had told him his was saying it wrong so he re-recorded it, I would say that this video marks the first time he has pronounced it what I would say is correctly in any of his videos.
"three dollars sixty cents above critical" Well it was about that time I noticed Plainly Difficult was a giant crustacean from the paleolithic era, I said "dammit monster you ain't getting my tree fiddy"
Being able to go from 500W od design power to 74GW (*way* more then reactor 4 in Chernobyl when it tossed the lid through the roof) shows you just how much power there is in nuclear energy
Weeeell... The actual energy produced at the moment of the explosion is not known, 32-33000 Mw mark was just the last recorded output of the reactor, could have been more and i wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. 74000 is still pretty impressive for a tiny, spacecraft reactor (compared to the huge RBMK from Chernobyl)
Some kids never listened to mom when she said don't play with matches. Let's see how fast the curtains (reactors) burn! No wonder we have the Price-Anderson Act.
@@victr7487 I was thinking something similar. If a cute little 500W reactor can reach 74 GW, then reactor 4 must have reached a truly scary number before disassembly.
Well, you have to take all this data with grain of salt. You are dealing with highly classified military projects, whose real purpose will remain mystery. Read inbetween lines though. 1) Tests of getting reactor critical up to point of destruction were made. But those were not real failure tests - in reality such item would be destroyed during re-entry, or in worst case - during impact. So ask Yourself - why they tested how to blow this thing up? 2)Having device wchich could explode in orbit , polluting it with highly radioactive waste is one of elements of setting dominance over space. It is terrorism - play nice or orbit will be defunct for 50 or more years. Touch us and 40 such sattelites will just fall down on earth . 3)Do you really believe it is defunct on graveyard orbit? Having 500W device, able to explode, without any panels (size) sets dominance there too. That is loads of power in a place where billion dollar devices are parked. We know next to nil on military program of graveyard "junk" recycling, but sooner or later something will need to be done - once things will start colliding there, it will become graveyard asteroid belt, useless for thousands of years. Right now it is not possible to put really powerfull devices, like 20MW transmitters to "graveyard", but in 60's they did not know humankind will collapse in endless cold war, culminating with series of pandemics, destruction of goobal ecosysyem and population boom up to 7billion. Look up what was the population on earth in 1960. It was bad, but still offered some hope. They had sci-fi about dyson spheres and colonies on mars. They had no internet, worldometers.info or thousands of nation-state crime copycats building nuclear warheads like there is no tommorow. Marylin-manson was not even born back then, this did happen 9 years later 😅
@@piotrcurious1131 Uh, you realize nuclear anything (whether a bomb or a reactor) decays over time right? You can't just put stuff like that in space, and threaten people with it 60 years later. Half-life is a thing. NASA has always required those tests, not just for nuclear reactors, but for anything that goes up. Conspiracy theory nonsense
@@ultimaIXultima Well, sure not after 60 years 😅 But You also need to get the diplomacy - much better to say "voltage regulator failed" than "WE HAVE EXPLOSiVeS!" . Oficially there is no proof sat is active. But Your enemy cannot be sure if it cannot go back online. seemingly win-win, but a lie is a lie. You lie to Yourself, and Your children. and note this is not only sat of this type on the orbit 😅 Not much conspiracy theory there, note We are generations left with this trash up. Both diplomacy-wise and just junk on the orbits. Would You not want Tomsk being open city again? thousands of people being freed and being able to just talk about their jobs without fear some weirdo will use the knowledge to disrupt global communications? Just mass of the sattelite is disturbing. Also i am not going to whitewash NASA for wasting taxpayers money on useless tests, while leaving homeless on the streets, under-equipping soldiers and so on. People have right to feel screwed. Who is going to pay now for cleaning this s* out of the orbit? Who is going to pay for diplomatic relations wreckage? One needs to assume responsibility for own actions, otherwise it is another diplomacy fail. Noone trusts someone who lied once. And whole space and nuclear program is a chain of lies. There must be a point when this changes.
I just want to point out how much I appreciate that you put the black and white bar before adverts. One of the few UK based UA-camrs to actually do that, and it gives me warning that I need to turn down the volume since adverts are always deafeningly loud.
The wild west days of nuclear power were always interesting. Nuclear Physicist: "Let's blow up this reactor to see what happens." Nuclear Engineer: "Sounds good to me."
I agree, this is a constant flaw of the series which drives me mad: Using a dozen different units to measure radioactivity and explaining none of them.
I prefer the older "REM" - Roentgen Equivalent Man, or the equivalent dose a man would receive from one Roentgen of Cobalt-60 gamma rays; it's easier to say, and calibrated for equivalent biological damage, no matter the radiosource, be it neutrons, gamma, beta, or alpha rays. These days it's all about Seiverts and Grays. Gimme the old-school measures, thank you.
Yeah, better blow it up intentionally in advance than guess the outcome of falling in the middle of a city (extremely slim chance I know, but imagine if one did fall in the middle of eg. NY or Washington)
I was just about to go off site, but here you are in the comments doing that good work, you sage. Also, well, Actually Question should we all be terrified? Or would the atomic energy coop of the post- WWII era have had the “get under your desk”- atomic school-age kids see videos of all these those 30 or so realtors as more of little satellites? Such as a psa school video to lull them into a feeling of safety. Something with a narrator dub over basic kids looking through a clip art telescope, with an upbeat innovation jingle playing underneath , and him saying: “Hey look little Johnny! See way up there Sally? That’s no transatlantic PanAm flight, no, but you’re close. Just imagine all around you , in outer space, as you sleep, Nuclear power is circling the Earth! Isn’t it just the cats pajamas? Yes, just look up on any clear night sky from the safety of your American homes, and who knows? With the help of a high to medium powered telescope, you might see your friend- Little SNAP, ah yes, what a fella! Would wouldn’t believe the like he has had , and he is only the same age as you boys and girls! But don’t worry, wait to you find out how long he is projected to live! Is he lonely? Poppycock! Would you believe that he is just One of 30 our many brave orbiters, making their nightly trips, check ups I call them, around our world, and especially around the USofA? Little SNAP loves baseball and as he passes his orbit each day, he does so is a an adorable baseball uniform and a small Louisville slugger NASA designed just for him in space, and each night you could see him in the sky, as he rounds third base for what will be another home run on the scoreboard, you can see him sliding into home plate for the all American team! Now get out there and play ball with Nuclear power kids, because if you don’t, the communist will pick up this very bat, and who knows? They might just stay to get good at our game, and the next thing you and I know... they will win! (In this psa vid it shows a baseball/physicist guy swinging a bat and knocking the small test Nuclear Snap device clear into the stratosphere and the 2 kids are at his side looking up in amazement) - I don’t make the rules, I just make this stuff up..
One of the Soviet reactors is scattered across northern Canada. If you're hiking in the Great White North and run across grizzly bears with tentacles you'll know why.
I remember a similar destructive test of a nuclear reactor. The US government stuck a reactor in an artificial cave and simulated various incidents and emergency shut-downs. When they were finished, they ramped the reactor up, then ejected all the control rods. The reactor violently "disassembled itself." I tried to look it up to refresh my memory, but can't find anything. Does anyone know the incident I'm talking about?
@@derekp2674 The SPERT tests sound similar to what I remember. They mention earth-shielded bunkers, and ejecting control rods. If it's not exactly the same, that might be my faulty memory. Or it could be a different test program.
Funny story about that. George C. Scott wanted to play the character of General Turgidson more seriously than Kubrick wanted. Kubrick convinced him to go over the top with his actions, claiming that these were demo reels and wouldn’t be used in the actual movie. Of course they were and Scott, very annoyed at this, swore never to work with Kubrick again.
"Ok, gentlemen, we have determined that we need to test crashes into the ocean, in the desert, and in a large city, but the contracts office says we only have the budget for two test scenarios. So, let's decide which scenario is the least important and can be cancelled."
I just discovered your channel! Great stuff, well researched, scripted and presented. Keep it up, I'll look forward to your videos to come as I gorge myself on your back catalogue :)
I've been a fan of your channel for quit some time, and find all of your content quite interesting. I found this one uniquely interesting as I live in the city of Idaho Falls, which isn't all that far from the test bed (currently Idaho National laboratory) these experiments took place. It's kind of a giggle to myself as the house I currently own was originally government housing constructed in the mid 50's, for naval personnel working out at the INL at the time.
Any chance we could see a video about the SPERT experiments? the Special Power Excursion Reactor Test program had a very similar idea to SNAPTRAN, with the plan of testing the effects of prompt criticality on power reactors. Unlike SNAPTRAN, however, SPERT was intended for land-based reactors. And here's another plug for the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion incidents. Thresher's story has never been properly explained in detail before, and the Scorpion's true cause of loss was only discovered in the past few years.
These all sound interesting. Hope we get them someday. :) And the U.S. subs are discussed far less, at least in the U.S. than the Soviet subs that sank.
I love your videos and especially your humor! Well along with all of the information! You are a credit to criticality! Thanks for all of your hard work! Keep glowing like a Radioactive beacon in the darkness of night!
@@PlainlyDifficult Honestly, thank you. I also look forward to your Brief History videos. You put a lot of time into making these both funny yet informative. That's not easy. Well plus editing the videos and pictures! Lots of work. Just know that there are a lot of us out here who appreciate your work.
Foot steps on thing, fart sounds. Nice Python reference! :D Also, subscribed a while back, but never got around to telling just how much i enjoy your content! Thanks a lot, please keep 'em coming! :) Cheers!
Happy New Year, man! I absolutely adore your videos and they are REALLY motivating me to finally get out there and reach my dreams of becoming a nuclear engineer. I LOVE YOU! ❤
Number 2 but points at 1. I was thinking about that bit so much I missed the few minutes before that also the giant foot from flying circus through me. I'm easily confused :) Then the old fashioned 3 bars in the top right corner to show an advert was coming up sent me back to my childhood watching tv in the '80 and '90. See I'm easily distracted also :)
Strictly speaking $3.60 is a reactivity measurement not a power one. It means that the reactor was made substantially super prompt critical ($1 is the USA term for prompt critical - the Russians use an alternative symbol). This means that the neutron chain reaction can self sustain and increase on the basis of prompt neutrons alone, i.e. using the neutrons directly produced by the fission of U-235 and without having to wait around for any neutrons produced later by the radioactive decay of fission products. Such conditions would cause the reactor power to surge very rapidly, liberating enough energy to explosively dismantle the reactor in a very short time. I'm going to say less than 10 milliseconds as a rough guess, in which case the reactor would explode much as if it were being blown apart by a chemical explosive.
Well it is just a unit to measure reactivity in a critical mass. A dollar defines the rate of a steady criticality with no increase in it. Like a self sustaining chain reaction. So 2 dollars would be a runaway excursion for example. The more dollars greater than one means more and faster trouble....
Can you do a video explaining all the types of unit of measurement used in these videos and their effects on the human body? Curie Rad Rem Rondgens Sieverts Bequerel Culomb Grays Because I don't understand them well and you often switch units between videos for no explained reason. 😐
When it's controlled or at lest in a controlled and remote place (ahem, SL1), it provides good data for safety. US voluntarily destroyed reactors -> Three Miles Island is their worst nuclear incident. USSR never recorded anything on their multiple mishaps for secrecy reason -> Tchernobyl, Kyshtym, Andreev Bay...
A big thing here is NaK explodes when it contacts water, just like Sodium metal and Potassium metal. Because that's what it is! If you mix together Sodium and Potassium metal, they merge and become a liquid for some reason. Thunderf00t on UA-cam experiments with it a lot, I believe he put it in a car fuel injector to make a highly controllable and accurately dosed explosion-sprayer for experiments 😂
7:55 “Due to not having the reflector drums installed, a different form of power control was needed.” 9:08 “All 37 fuel elements and 6 beryllium reflectors were destroyed.” Must be one heck of an explosion to destroy reflectors that aren’t even installed.
Reflector =/= drum The reflectors in question were permanently affixed to the reactor unlike the drums Hence why all 6 were destroyed when there were only 4 drums
I did not get the notification for this video and I appreciate the posts to remind me. I look forward to my usual Saturday morning dose of nuclear chaos.
In the case of the SNAPTRAN-2 test, what would have been the mechanism causing the core to explode, rather than just melt? I can imagine that in SNAPTRAN-1, the rapid boiling of the water flooding the core would have produced a considerable destructive force, so would the expansion of air due to heating have produced a similar effect in the second test?
Been waiting for you to do a video like this also had another idea for a video how much nuclear waste is in space I watched a few of your videos that’s what I’m thinking right now
4000 years from now humans will either be long gone, or have progressed to the point that all that space junk will have be taken care of. They’ve already started to design (or conceptualize at least) space junk collecting spacecraft. Unless we, as a modern civilization, self destruct. In which case, all bets are off and good luck future humans.
The guy who always stepped on his colleges feet has obviously been replaced. Great to see nasty stuff being tested thoroughly. The Swedish warship Wasa (on display in Stockholm) was also tested and considered definitely not seaworthy. In came the captain: “Hoist ALL sails!!!” .... Absolutely a 10 on the richter scale.
Just thought I would diverge from the usual n say....love the danger fanfare intro and the continuing lack of annoying soundtrack throughout your videos 👍 Love the content also.....bring on the wider catchment areas of disaster
At $3.50, milliseconds of operation, 1.37 million times design power, and complete destruction of the reactor, this was a very low yield (5.6 kg TNT equivalent, or 0.0056 T) nuclear detonation of a reactor. The second destructive test equalled 12.8 kg TNT equivalent (0.0128 T TNT) - another nuclear bomb. A very low yield bomb, but more than ample to destroy the reactors and to make them dirty bombs.
Woah! This is both awesome and scary at the same time! I would like to see nuclear powered space travel to be a thing! Heck,I miss that nuclear boat that someone made! That thing sounded amazing too!😅
Happy new year everyone! Thanks for the support! As always any subject suggestions are always welcome below!
Nedelin?
Happy new year
I know it's not nuclear but it's a good one I remember when it happened because it woke me up and I lived in Milton Keynes at the time which is about 30 miles away
The Buncefield fire was a major fire at an oil storage facility on 11 December 2005 at the Hertfordshire Oil Storage Terminal, located near the M1 motorway, Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, England
Happy New Year!!!!
I'd like to mention the SNAP-10-A or 'SNAPSHOT' satellite experienced shedding whilst still in orbit in 1979 losing more than 50 pieces of debris. (Hopefully none of that came down here!)
It also was equipped if I'm not mistake with a Cesium Ion Thruster making it the first electrical propulsion systems ever used in space on top of the first nuclear power plant.
Might be worth adding this to the video at a later date I found this data on wiki however so it may need some source checking.
Happy New Year! Please consider making an episode about Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, who stuck his head in particle accelerator.
the 60's were a special time: "we're going to blow up some reactors, should we do it inside a containment building?" "Nah, Idaho will be just fine"
Someone made a timeline of all the nuclear explosion tests on earth an ran the years up as explosions happened all over the world.
Once China got involved it really became a fireworks show 60+ crazy how we react so fiercely to a little melt down when half the world has had large unregulated "tests"
@@mrillis9259 You are aware that the United States has done more nuclear tests than almost all of the rest of the world combined, in addition to being the only nation to use nuclear weapons on civilians (twice), right? The United States did 1030 tests, USSR did 715, France did 217, the UK did 88, and China did 47 (note that some of the UK's tests were done with America on American territory. If you count those as American tests, the UK did 45).
@@evelynh6223 an we are all fine right?
This is why Hanford is one giant superfund site
Tsar bombs size was so insane (my bomb is bigger than your bomb) it started below ground testing treaty talks. When you think of how many of the countries own people were injured or killed in USSR kazakhstan and Nevada... lunacy
"the radiation was measured at 2.7 ro/hr" I immediately thought "it's not great but it's not terrible".
😂
Just remember, you didn't see any graphite on the roof after the test. ;)
@@OAleathaO compared to the SL-1, which had a worker pinned to the concrete ceiling with a control rod bushing.
Same flaw in that reactor as was in the Chernobyl unit, a moderator at the tip of the control rods and a positive void coefficient.
@@spvillano the fault in that reactor was the fact that ONE CONTROL ROD could cause a criticality accident.
@@loganmeline9233 "Oh, so NOW you don't want to see me juggle four screwdrivers. Yeah, run away."
Compared to the usual nuclear video, this actually feels kind of wholesome for some reason I can't quite put my finger on. I mean, it's nuclear explosions, and probably contributed to thyroid cancer levels, but I can't help but imagine how fun it must've been for the operators to have the reactors go boom. It must've been like some nuclear episode of Mythbusters!
It's not a nuclear explosion jsyk.
you are old and thinking, in terms of reactors and nuclear things. There is only one holistic system of neutrinos.
"#2 on the Plainly Difficult scale"
Points to '1'
Which is the second digit on the scale
*Mind Blown*
Boom
@@PlainlyDifficult 😂👍
Damn, now he have to update the older videos to follow the correct values on the scale.
Yep. Computers and programmers count from 0, not 1. Mainly because it makes all sorts of calculations and formulas just significantly easier.
indexing
The rerecording of the roentgen lines makes me wonder.. you accidentally said 'rads' the first time, didn't you?
I thought maybe someone had told him his was saying it wrong so he re-recorded it, I would say that this video marks the first time he has pronounced it what I would say is correctly in any of his videos.
he was flamed pronouncing roentgen as "rotegen" in previous videos, I think this is his way of saying hello to the pedantics
ONE. MILLION. ANTS. Kind of reminds me of that, if you get the reference :)
This is like the overdubbing of Taco Bell for Pizza Hut in Demolition Man.
@@yakacm "rontegen"
"three dollars sixty cents above critical"
Well it was about that time I noticed Plainly Difficult was a giant crustacean from the paleolithic era,
I said "dammit monster you ain't getting my tree fiddy"
😂😭
How about Too Fiddy then
💘
I wish I could like your comment 💯 times!
Thats what I thought this he was referencing LoL
More accurately "free dollars sixty cents"!
"They Live!" A classic movie whose memorable lines are not often mentioned in the context of nuclear tests.
😂😂I’m glad someone got it!
Yup!
Also, "I'm here to chew bubblegum and blow up reactors, and I'm all out of bubblegum." ;)
@@PlainlyDifficult I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick Plainly Difficult's ass for chewing plain ordinary gum instead of bubblegum
Makes a lot more sense if you imagine Duke Nukem saying it
@@dillonhunt1720
Piece of cake
Being able to go from 500W od design power to 74GW (*way* more then reactor 4 in Chernobyl when it tossed the lid through the roof) shows you just how much power there is in nuclear energy
Weeeell... The actual energy produced at the moment of the explosion is not known, 32-33000 Mw mark was just the last recorded output of the reactor, could have been more and i wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. 74000 is still pretty impressive for a tiny, spacecraft reactor (compared to the huge RBMK from Chernobyl)
Some kids never listened to mom when she said don't play with matches. Let's see how fast the curtains (reactors) burn! No wonder we have the Price-Anderson Act.
@@victr7487 I was thinking something similar. If a cute little 500W reactor can reach 74 GW, then reactor 4 must have reached a truly scary number before disassembly.
@@Chainsaw-ASMR several petawatts maybe
Spend millions testing the reactor to destruction, use cheap voltage regulators from radio shack.
Does it look like we have Radio Shack money? those were salvaged from the back of a wireless set.
@@cmotdibbler4454 you think we have wireless set money? Those were of an intern's custom make!
Well, you have to take all this data with grain of salt. You are dealing with highly classified military projects, whose real purpose will remain mystery.
Read inbetween lines though.
1) Tests of getting reactor critical up to point of destruction were made. But those were not real failure tests - in reality such item would be destroyed during re-entry, or in worst case - during impact.
So ask Yourself - why they tested how to blow this thing up?
2)Having device wchich could explode in orbit , polluting it with highly radioactive waste is one of elements of setting dominance over space. It is terrorism - play nice or orbit will be defunct for 50 or more years. Touch us and 40 such sattelites will just fall down on earth .
3)Do you really believe it is defunct on graveyard orbit? Having 500W device, able to explode, without any panels (size) sets dominance there too. That is loads of power in a place where billion dollar devices are parked. We know next to nil on military program of graveyard "junk" recycling, but sooner or later something will need to be done - once things will start colliding there, it will become graveyard asteroid belt, useless for thousands of years.
Right now it is not possible to put really powerfull devices, like 20MW transmitters to "graveyard", but in 60's they did not know humankind will collapse in endless cold war, culminating with series of pandemics, destruction of goobal ecosysyem and population boom up to 7billion. Look up what was the population on earth in 1960. It was bad, but still offered some hope. They had sci-fi about dyson spheres and colonies on mars. They had no internet, worldometers.info or thousands of nation-state crime copycats building nuclear warheads like there is no tommorow. Marylin-manson was not even born back then, this did happen 9 years later 😅
@@piotrcurious1131 Uh, you realize nuclear anything (whether a bomb or a reactor) decays over time right? You can't just put stuff like that in space, and threaten people with it 60 years later. Half-life is a thing.
NASA has always required those tests, not just for nuclear reactors, but for anything that goes up.
Conspiracy theory nonsense
@@ultimaIXultima Well, sure not after 60 years 😅 But You also need to get the diplomacy - much better to say "voltage regulator failed" than "WE HAVE EXPLOSiVeS!" . Oficially there is no proof sat is active. But Your enemy cannot be sure if it cannot go back online. seemingly win-win, but a lie is a lie. You lie to Yourself, and Your children. and note this is not only sat of this type on the orbit 😅
Not much conspiracy theory there, note We are generations left with this trash up. Both diplomacy-wise and just junk on the orbits. Would You not want Tomsk being open city again? thousands of people being freed and being able to just talk about their jobs without fear some weirdo will use the knowledge to disrupt global communications?
Just mass of the sattelite is disturbing.
Also i am not going to whitewash NASA for wasting taxpayers money on useless tests, while leaving homeless on the streets, under-equipping soldiers and so on. People have right to feel screwed. Who is going to pay now for cleaning this s* out of the orbit? Who is going to pay for diplomatic relations wreckage? One needs to assume responsibility for own actions, otherwise it is another diplomacy fail. Noone trusts someone who lied once. And whole space and nuclear program is a chain of lies. There must be a point when this changes.
I just want to point out how much I appreciate that you put the black and white bar before adverts. One of the few UK based UA-camrs to actually do that, and it gives me warning that I need to turn down the volume since adverts are always deafeningly loud.
I just adblock, i c no ads on YT, it skips them for me.
Seamless ADR work there, you'd never notice the drop ins.
I'm amazed ADR can ever work
I would have used "Daniel" TTS voice for those voice-overs. 😁
I was listening but not really paying attention, and it made me jump when I heard it
MONTY PYTHONS FLYING REACTOR!
All 14 tones of it.
I thought Monty Python as soon as I saw the cartoon foot!!
🦶 *raspberry*
This whole series of tests has a very Monty Python feel...
I was hoping I wasn’t the only one who got excited by the Monty Python reference!
The wild west days of nuclear power were always interesting.
Nuclear Physicist: "Let's blow up this reactor to see what happens."
Nuclear Engineer: "Sounds good to me."
Oh the good old days before the thyroid cancer took hold!
@@PlainlyDifficult Take your iodine tablets and stop complaining.
How the fuck has this species made it to seven billion.
Answer breed like rabbits, invented penicillin.
@@WindTurbineSyndrome HEHEEE BOI
Please do a quick, or long, video on what all the different radiation measurments mean.
Thank you!
I agree, this is a constant flaw of the series which drives me mad: Using a dozen different units to measure radioactivity and explaining none of them.
If some guy in a lab coat and tie, carrying a clip board shows up to my work..... I'm outta there!
If you've already seen him you are already F**ked
"Take it away boys!"
Specially if he's wearing elbow length rubber gloves...
And a respirator, rubber boots, and rad badge.
I seriously love your sense of humor. I’m watching old episodes and the whole stepping stone has me cracking up in the middle of the night.
This channel makes me laugh my ass off. The Ford Pinto video demonstration, with a Coke can, piece of paper, and John's size 12 boot, made me cry.
Roentgen is a hard word.
I never get it right
I prefer the older "REM" - Roentgen Equivalent Man, or the equivalent dose a man would receive from one Roentgen of Cobalt-60 gamma rays; it's easier to say, and calibrated for equivalent biological damage, no matter the radiosource, be it neutrons, gamma, beta, or alpha rays.
These days it's all about Seiverts and Grays. Gimme the old-school measures, thank you.
@@PlainlyDifficult it wasn't great but not terrible either
I liked Rotegen. I know that German is a weird language since I am.
Yeah, once they start smooshing vowels together, all bets are off in the obvious pronunciation department.
Destructive testing can be very informative. When dealing with nuclear power, more knowledge is *always* better.
Yeah, better blow it up intentionally in advance than guess the outcome of falling in the middle of a city (extremely slim chance I know, but imagine if one did fall in the middle of eg. NY or Washington)
Love the last line "it will be up there for 4000 years".
Hopefully
Yup, technically it means hopefully not in any then human lifetime. And those 80 generations that follows.
i rate this a 10 on the plainly difficult viewer scale
Thank you!
Considering 4 kg uranium in orbit for thousands of years , yeah.
I just looked this up on wiki, and there's actually 30 nuclear reactors in orbit.
wow, I had no idea.
Only 1 American, 29 Russian
I was just about to go off site, but here you are in the comments doing that good work, you sage.
Also, well, Actually
Question should we all be terrified?
Or would the atomic energy coop of the post- WWII era have had the “get under your desk”- atomic school-age kids see videos of all these those 30 or so realtors as more of little satellites? Such as a psa school video to lull them into a feeling of safety. Something with a narrator dub over basic kids looking through a clip art telescope, with an upbeat innovation jingle playing underneath , and him saying:
“Hey look little Johnny! See way up there Sally? That’s no transatlantic PanAm flight, no, but you’re close.
Just imagine all around you , in outer space, as you sleep, Nuclear power is circling the Earth!
Isn’t it just the cats pajamas?
Yes, just look up on any clear night sky from the safety of your American homes, and who knows?
With the help of a high to medium powered telescope, you might see your friend- Little SNAP, ah yes, what a fella!
Would wouldn’t believe the like he has had , and he is only the same age as you boys and girls! But don’t worry, wait to you find out how long he is projected to live!
Is he lonely? Poppycock! Would you believe that he is just One of 30 our many brave orbiters, making their nightly trips, check ups I call them, around our world, and especially around the USofA?
Little SNAP loves baseball and as he passes his orbit each day, he does so is a an adorable baseball uniform and a small Louisville slugger NASA designed just for him in space, and each night you could see him in the sky, as he rounds third base for what will be another home run on the scoreboard, you can see him sliding into home plate for the all American team!
Now get out there and play ball with Nuclear power kids, because if you don’t, the communist will pick up this very bat, and who knows? They might just stay to get good at our game, and the next thing you and I know... they will win! (In this psa vid it shows a baseball/physicist guy swinging a bat and knocking the small test Nuclear Snap device clear into the stratosphere and the 2 kids are at his side looking up in amazement) -
I don’t make the rules, I just make this stuff up..
that there is only one American one and the rest are Russian, makes for better spin and disinformation. I’m going to go with it. Put a small ©️at bottom that says something to effect of “Brought to You by free and total Capitalism and in no way Commissioned by Soviet Outreach of Children’s assessment to very good better Party”
One of the Soviet reactors is scattered across northern Canada. If you're hiking in the Great White North and run across grizzly bears with tentacles you'll know why.
I remember a similar destructive test of a nuclear reactor.
The US government stuck a reactor in an artificial cave and simulated various incidents and emergency shut-downs. When they were finished, they ramped the reactor up, then ejected all the control rods. The reactor violently "disassembled itself."
I tried to look it up to refresh my memory, but can't find anything. Does anyone know the incident I'm talking about?
BORAX-I and BORAX-II were both tested to destruction as well, though neither was in a cave or underground.
The SPERT tests came later than the BORAX ones (see www.osti.gov/opennet/servlets/purl/907610.pdf ) but also may not have been in a cave underground.
@@derekp2674 The SPERT tests sound similar to what I remember. They mention earth-shielded bunkers, and ejecting control rods.
If it's not exactly the same, that might be my faulty memory. Or it could be a different test program.
Happy New Year PD! Here’s to a better year!
Thank you!
Another wonderful Plainly Diffi-Cult production.
Being the first to send something nuclear into space is... Maybe Dr. Strangelove wasn't as much of a satire as its made out to be.
It was a documentary!
Funny story about that. George C. Scott wanted to play the character of General Turgidson more seriously than Kubrick wanted. Kubrick convinced him to go over the top with his actions, claiming that these were demo reels and wouldn’t be used in the actual movie. Of course they were and Scott, very annoyed at this, swore never to work with Kubrick again.
It was satire? I thought it was a cold war era torture device. Worst movie I've ever seen.
Noo, our foot-stepping hero didn't appear 🤣
They needed a rest to go to a Podiatry health care professional
The voice overlay made me smile :D
Future earthlings will wonder where that radioactive meteorite came from.
Forget the reactor, I just wanna see what happens when a few kg of hot NAK hit a tank of water.
Hell, who *doesn't?*
As a first degree approximation, I'd say... boom?
@@StefanoBorini you are an order of magnitude out. It was kaboom
ua-cam.com/video/t9wmWZbr_wQ/v-deo.html
"Ok, gentlemen, we have determined that we need to test crashes into the ocean, in the desert, and in a large city, but the contracts office says we only have the budget for two test scenarios. So, let's decide which scenario is the least important and can be cancelled."
I just discovered your channel! Great stuff, well researched, scripted and presented. Keep it up, I'll look forward to your videos to come as I gorge myself on your back catalogue :)
Thank you gorge away! Just like how I'm eating my weight in chocolate!
enjoying binging your videos ,not sure how hard they were to make but based on the quality i can say for sure it was plainly difficult
Just wanted to say that the Monty Python foot tribute was awesome and made me LOL. I love your videos and watch/listen to them often. CHEERS!
Thank you
I've been a fan of your channel for quit some time, and find all of your content quite interesting. I found this one uniquely interesting as I live in the city of Idaho Falls, which isn't all that far from the test bed (currently Idaho National laboratory) these experiments took place. It's kind of a giggle to myself as the house I currently own was originally government housing constructed in the mid 50's, for naval personnel working out at the INL at the time.
Thank you for your support!!
Any chance we could see a video about the SPERT experiments? the Special Power Excursion Reactor Test program had a very similar idea to SNAPTRAN, with the plan of testing the effects of prompt criticality on power reactors. Unlike SNAPTRAN, however, SPERT was intended for land-based reactors.
And here's another plug for the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion incidents. Thresher's story has never been properly explained in detail before, and the Scorpion's true cause of loss was only discovered in the past few years.
These all sound interesting. Hope we get them someday. :) And the U.S. subs are discussed far less, at least in the U.S. than the Soviet subs that sank.
0:34 and now for something completely different
Or as nowadays kids would put it: I see you're a man of culture as well.
very fresh, fresher than the manhattan project in nuclear history.
Thank You for the wonderful videos! I enjoy when you release them.
Glad you like them!
9:37 I like that change in voice tone, adds just the perfect touch of sinisterness to the video.
Thus, the reactor goes ＹＥＥＴ.
Always looking forward to an upload! Great vid as usual!
I love your videos and especially your humor! Well along with all of the information! You are a credit to criticality! Thanks for all of your hard work! Keep glowing like a Radioactive beacon in the darkness of night!
Thanks so much!
@@PlainlyDifficult Honestly, thank you. I also look forward to your Brief History videos. You put a lot of time into making these both funny yet informative. That's not easy. Well plus editing the videos and pictures! Lots of work. Just know that there are a lot of us out here who appreciate your work.
If humanity manages to survive 4000 years, the people of that time will be in for quite a surprise.
50-80s probably the best time to be an American, just living you had a good chance to be part of major history.
You should do the Borax test reactors too!
Thanks for the suggestion
The Borat test Reactors...
My mind betrayed me fastttt
Something tells me this does NOT involve Borax laundry powder. 🤣
When I think about nuclear-powered testing I think oil company.
Well, if you play fallout, then yeah you really would. Poseidon Energy.
Energy company.
@@RCAvhstape yeah, but you get my point.
Looks like he’s entering into a Zone of Danger 10:15
No no, but how would you phrase that?
@@waharadome Danger Zone! 😂
@@interstellarsurfer Damn you, I'll never get that song out of my head now!
Hey Lana. Lana. LANA!
@@RCAvhstape WHAT!?
Graphite at Chernobyl: So, anyway, I started blastin'. Bah! Bah!
ehe
that safty check worked it showed that Chernobyl was not ready for use
Good start to the year, keep it up!
Loving the way yourself as a voice over is so different haha. Love all your stuff too by the way.
Foot steps on thing, fart sounds. Nice Python reference! :D
Also, subscribed a while back, but never got around to telling just how much i enjoy your content! Thanks a lot, please keep 'em coming! :)
Cheers!
“3.60$ above critical”
If you don’t mind, I will be laughing
Make that a 3.6
The bot must have missed read that bit
$3.60
What bot you doughnut, I'm referencing Chernobyl you idiots, "3.6 Roentgen, not great, not terrible" by Dyatlov
Happy New Year, man! I absolutely adore your videos and they are REALLY motivating me to finally get out there and reach my dreams of becoming a nuclear engineer. I LOVE YOU! ❤
Number 2 but points at 1. I was thinking about that bit so much I missed the few minutes before that also the giant foot from flying circus through me. I'm easily confused :)
Then the old fashioned 3 bars in the top right corner to show an advert was coming up sent me back to my childhood watching tv in the '80 and '90. See I'm easily distracted also :)
Boom!
@@PlainlyDifficult where did my 💓 go? See I don't miss anything :)
Woah. Your best one so far. Keep up the great work.
Thanks 😁
What does "power increase to $3.60 cents above critical" mean, keeping in mund my hearing isn't too flash?
Strictly speaking $3.60 is a reactivity measurement not a power one.
It means that the reactor was made substantially super prompt critical ($1 is the USA term for prompt critical - the Russians use an alternative symbol). This means that the neutron chain reaction can self sustain and increase on the basis of prompt neutrons alone, i.e. using the neutrons directly produced by the fission of U-235 and without having to wait around for any neutrons produced later by the radioactive decay of fission products.
Such conditions would cause the reactor power to surge very rapidly, liberating enough energy to explosively dismantle the reactor in a very short time. I'm going to say less than 10 milliseconds as a rough guess, in which case the reactor would explode much as if it were being blown apart by a chemical explosive.
Could someone kindly explain what the dollars and cents thing is about? I'm kinda fascinated by this.
I think he’s just expressing 360% in a funny way.
@@matthewkriebel7342 The funny people who originally engineered this stuff 'coined' that term. 😋
Well it is just a unit to measure reactivity in a critical mass. A dollar defines the rate of a steady criticality with no increase in it. Like a self sustaining chain reaction. So 2 dollars would be a runaway excursion for example. The more dollars greater than one means more and faster trouble....
@@eaglevision993 I never knew that! Thanks for the good, clear explanation.
So $3.60 meant that it was completely f*cked, I suppose?
Someone in another thread linked to this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_(reactivity)
0:36 Boomers Remember Monty Python
Can you do a video explaining all the types of unit of measurement used in these videos and their effects on the human body?
Curie
Rad
Rem
Rondgens
Sieverts
Bequerel
Culomb
Grays
Because I don't understand them well and you often switch units between videos for no explained reason. 😐
First episode of 2021! Nice vid, by the way!!
Thanks for sharing this bit of nuclear-powered 1960s madness!
Happy New Year to PD
Destructive testing is always fun, even with nuclear reactors!
I'm glad not to be the only sick bastard here thinking this! You know those guys enjoyed their work.
When it's controlled or at lest in a controlled and remote place (ahem, SL1), it provides good data for safety.
US voluntarily destroyed reactors -> Three Miles Island is their worst nuclear incident.
USSR never recorded anything on their multiple mishaps for secrecy reason -> Tchernobyl, Kyshtym, Andreev Bay...
Intentional destructive testing is always a win.
BORAX TEST NEXT? GREAT JOB
A big thing here is NaK explodes when it contacts water, just like Sodium metal and Potassium metal. Because that's what it is! If you mix together Sodium and Potassium metal, they merge and become a liquid for some reason. Thunderf00t on UA-cam experiments with it a lot, I believe he put it in a car fuel injector to make a highly controllable and accurately dosed explosion-sprayer for experiments 😂
7:55 “Due to not having the reflector drums installed, a different form of power control was needed.”
9:08 “All 37 fuel elements and 6 beryllium reflectors were destroyed.”
Must be one heck of an explosion to destroy reflectors that aren’t even installed.
Reflector =/= drum
The reflectors in question were permanently affixed to the reactor unlike the drums
Hence why all 6 were destroyed when there were only 4 drums
Love the lines in the top right to show ads are about to start like on tv
I did not get the notification for this video and I appreciate the posts to remind me. I look forward to my usual Saturday morning dose of nuclear chaos.
Thank you!
12:01 i thought i had water in my ear but it was just you correcting your sentances lmao
Cool vids, geezer! Keep ‘em coming... 😎😎
Thanks! Will do!
Great stuff! Working at a nuclear researc facility, I always learn something to anoy my bosses over here!
Thank you so much for reading out the PD rating scale number, I finally know what the rating is while I'm driving and can't see the screen
those jump cuts with the read oout levels omg
SNAP reactor development contributed to the Santa Susana Field Lab being a radioactive superfund site. The 60s were a different time!
Idk why I'm addicted to these vids
In the case of the SNAPTRAN-2 test, what would have been the mechanism causing the core to explode, rather than just melt? I can imagine that in SNAPTRAN-1, the rapid boiling of the water flooding the core would have produced a considerable destructive force, so would the expansion of air due to heating have produced a similar effect in the second test?
Three headed antelope are still seen in the Arco and Mackay area.
Been waiting for you to do a video like this also had another idea for a video how much nuclear waste is in space I watched a few of your videos that’s what I’m thinking right now
13:15 Wait! Does it mean in ~4000 years 4.7kg of Uranium will be falling down on earth?
Yes. But probably sooner when it gets hit by another piece of space debris and gets scattered into a large cloud of radioactive junk.
@@jamestheotherone742 I'd rather see it get picked up by a starship ;)
Holy
Sh... humanity already did THAT mess too?!! I am suprized no more people find this odd!!
4000 years from now humans will either be long gone, or have progressed to the point that all that space junk will have be taken care of. They’ve already started to design (or conceptualize at least) space junk collecting spacecraft. Unless we, as a modern civilization, self destruct. In which case, all bets are off and good luck future humans.
@@MrMontanaNights Yeah I agree, its that in between part that is tricky.
The guy who always stepped on his colleges feet has obviously been replaced. Great to see nasty stuff being tested thoroughly.
The Swedish warship Wasa (on display in Stockholm) was also tested and considered definitely not seaworthy. In came the captain: “Hoist ALL sails!!!” .... Absolutely a 10 on the richter scale.
So Stand-By........2020P was hell........6020, "HOLD My Beer!!!!" Sh**!!!!
On my way to work, last thing I get to do, watch a new plainly difficult video! Whoop whoop!
This is how you get through a snowy day in England
I wish it was snowing over here in east anglia! 😭
No snow in my sunny southeastern corner of London
I'm in south Yorkshire id love to be able to post a picture its -2
*Laughs in Canadian*
*Cries in upper-Midwestern USA accent*
one wonders what Cornelius will think when that satellite comes crashing to the surface...
"Ape has never nuked ape!"
Now this is a great start to a new year; excellent documentary and I wish I could work for you
Wait, that reactor is still up there?! That's a big space debris!
I find all your videos more then plainly interesting.
Do a video on the one time the US set plutonium on fire to see what would extinguish it
They tried that a few times by accident at rocky flats!
@@PlainlyDifficult I saw the aec video on it and it's pretty crazy but it was a different time and this kind of shenanigans was considered science
That explains the huge circular fenced-off areas you can see on Google maps of the western deserts.
Just thought I would diverge from the usual n say....love the danger fanfare intro and the continuing lack of annoying soundtrack throughout your videos 👍
Love the content also.....bring on the wider catchment areas of disaster
0:06 i dont need to imagine.... my bank statement says it all... and they're fuckin' pissed
At $3.50, milliseconds of operation, 1.37 million times design power, and complete destruction of the reactor, this was a very low yield (5.6 kg TNT equivalent, or 0.0056 T) nuclear detonation of a reactor. The second destructive test equalled 12.8 kg TNT equivalent (0.0128 T TNT) - another nuclear bomb. A very low yield bomb, but more than ample to destroy the reactors and to make them dirty bombs.
A report on U.S. nuclear waste sites like Hanford, Idaho National Laboratories, and so on would be interesting.
That NaK coolant would have been pretty exciting in a loss at sea....
NaK as coolant? Scary sh*t!
Woah!
This is both awesome and scary at the same time!
I would like to see nuclear powered space travel to be a thing!
Heck,I miss that nuclear boat that someone made!
That thing sounded amazing too!😅
"They can worry about it 4000 later".
If society survives 4000 years longer, we'll probably collect that space junk and land it in a controlled manner. Maybe even put it in a museum.
This is such a good channel thanks
Thank you!
You have my respect for all the research you are doing in your videos. And I like your good ol´ British sense of sarcasm... :)