Interesting fact: Sweden was one of the first countries to notice that something had gone terribly wrong when the workers at a Swedish nuclear power-plant couldn't go through their own detectors without having them going off, they thought there was something wrong with their detectors until they tracked the radiation to Chernobyl, and expected the worse, so they picked up the phone and called them and received an answer that everything was OK and nothing bad had happened, so then Sweden called the US and explained the situation.
True. I remember that very well. At that time I was a freshman at the college. On the May 1st the college authorities told us to go to an athletic event in order to celebrate the Worker's Day, as Poland, my country was ruled by communists those days. So we were carelessly playing soccer and nobody was aware that radioactive dust was shining at us from above, since the Soviets kept the disaster in secret. Thanks to those open-eyed Swedish guys Europe received the warning. Next, all countries implemented suitable security measures which probably saved thousands of lives.... Soviets/ Russians have never taken care about human lives, so they kept all in secret for propaganda reasons. Today, we all see that nothing has changed in their mentality up to present days... Hadn't those Swedish fellas spill the beans, many many people would die or suffer from radiation syndrome. And maybe the Soviet Union would't collapse so quickly, if ever. So, Sweden did a really great thing... 👍👍👍
@@michiv334 , zanim napiszesz głupoty, zaprojektuj i zbuduj elektrownię jądrową. opanuj technologię wydobycia, przetwarzania i wzbogacania uranu. w międzyczasie Twój poziom rozwoju technologii, słodki przyjacielu, polega na wytwarzaniu energii z drewna opałowego i obornika osła. dlatego okazuj szacunek Radzieckim inżynierom i budowniczym.
@@retrocompaq5212 Ok, but it was just slightly exaggerated...They fell off 4 hours later...The deaths were also greatly under reported. NONE of those that were initially on the scene up to the 5 week mark, are alive today!
@@layzee3810 no since the electrical power output never reached more than normal. the energy they're talking about is the thermal energy coming out of the core. also, i'm pretty sure since it was during a test it wasn't actually connected to the main power grid. so no, no lightbulbs where harmed during the event (except maybe those in the reactor room).
What is sad is that the engineers who built and operated the reactor were not stupid. They were, as most nuclear engineers generally are, brilliant people. The problem is that in a totalitarian regime such as the Soviet Union, bureaucracy and politics often overrule sound engineering. The saying, "When science meets politics, politics always wins", might apply here. A lot of group-think, a system that discouraged anyone speaking up, and pressure to just make things work resulted in a disaster that cost many brave men and women their lives. Thankfully the lessons learned have led to improvements around the world.
Politicians didn't allow the design engineers to let the operation guys know about the deficiency. Everything is supposed to be perfect in communist countries.
Does that mean that we don't have a process to shut down a nuclear reaction fully yet or at least not one that they have yet to disclose what the public? Because if so why the hell are we even fucking around with something we don't understand. The genius of humans
"This is like a car motor increasing power to encounter a jambed hand brake." What a great explanation! This is a great short explanation of the Chernobyl Disaster.
One thing he got wrong was he kept saying modern reactors use "water" when Chernobyl also used water lol. I'm pretty sure he means heavy water, which is water that contains deuterium and acts as a moderator instead of a absorber.
@@TeddyKrimsony The Soviet Union wasn't exactly poor. Here is the point: Their economy was smaller than that of the NATO nations. To stay competetive in the arms race with NATO, they had to pour an unhealthy dose of their GDP into their miltary (just like the US in the last 20 years...). That led to other sectors of the Soviet society to be critically underfunded by the 80's. The rest is history.
@@thomaskositzki9424 Yes, it was shitload of money for nucklear and submarine program. Point is if you can't afford it don't do it. And quality was always questionable
@@dmitryhetman1509 They couldn't affort it but they couldn't stop either. Lagging behind NATO was surrendering, as they would've exploited any weakness.
What’s even more incredible is that he said it was 2000 tons. If that’s accurate, it’s actually 4 million lbs US or could be almost 4.5 millions US pounds if it was meany as 2000 Metric tons. Either way, scary as hell.
@@moparman0314 I guess metric tons. In Europe and (back then) USSR it was (and still is) metric system through and through, bar UK. Thus a tonne is always 1000 kg, or 2205 lbs (US).
@@MrKotBonifacy It was 2,000 metric tonnes. I worked on a safety upgrade in the Leningrad NPP in 1997, have seen these things close up and they're scary beyond belief!
Let one thing be clear: The reactor did not behave in a way that was not known. It was known. But it was the policy of secrecy, suppressing information and general paranoia in the Soviet Union, that led to this disaster. The operators were highly skilled and professional. There was no "pressure" present (as depicted in the HBO series). They were cautious and confident in what they were doing. The problem is, they were not told the full story, the truth about the RBMK reactor and its design. Until the disaster at Chernobyl NPP, safety concerns were only from the viewpoint of how to protect workers from the radiation of the reactor. After Chernobyl, the safety shifted in how to protect the reactor from operator error. This was a very valuable lesson learned. The automatic reactor control and safety systems had to be manually disabled by operators at Chernobyl in order to do the test. They worked against the safety protocols and were aware of it. If they knew the full truth about how the reactor behaves in those conditions, they would have never ever do what they did. This was not the first time that this test went wrong. The Leningrad incident ten years before Chernobyl made this clear. Lucky for them, at Leningrad, they performed the test with a "fresh" reactor, which was not operated for extended periods of time. At Chernobyl, the fuel rods were burned up much more. The operational reactivity margin was way lower, which resulted in even more control rods to be withdrawn, making the reactor extremely unstable. The lesson learned from Chernobyl: Protect the reactor from human error. Today it is impossible to manually withdraw more control rods than is safe. Also design changes were made to the control rods, removing the graphite displacers with steel ones. The efficiency dropped a little and the fuel enrichment had to be raised a bit to compensate for that. I cannot stress this enough: The reactor did not fail. It was the human operators who failed. The design of the reactor was known to have certain issues and the designers knew of them. But the operators were not told the full truth. Even worse, after the incident at Leningrad NPP, where a similar test resulted in an almost identical result, the full truth about the reactor was not told to the operators. Human error and a paranoid mindset made the Chernobyl accident happen. The technology did not fail in any way. It was a human mistake and error. The lesson from Chernobyl is clear: If you do something, you must know at each point in time what you are doing and understand what, how and why works. If critical information is being kept from you, you inevitably make a mistake, sooner or later. All the natural laws are known and the reactor was designed properly. There was absolutely no miscalculation or misunderstanding in the laws of nature. There was just human error. The operators are not to blame. The whole culture is to blame, if it is poisoned by unnecessary secrecy and paranoia. Also, we need to protect delicate technology from humans the same way we protect humans (and the whole environment) from dangerous things like radiation, chemicals, etc.
Finally! Someone who's read books on the event. The shady Ministry of Medium Machine Building designed the reactor, and kept all its dirty secrets to itself.
Corrections thanks to commenters: *The bottom control rods were not coupled with the AZ5. AZ5 only lowered the top rods. If the bottom rods had moved as animated the disaster would have been averted. Here is the corrected video in the Russian version of this video ua-cam.com/video/NeZScDZA_uY/v-deo.html *There was a smaller first explosion followed by the main explosion approximately 2.5 seconds later. See ua-cam.com/video/NeZScDZA_uY/v-deo.html *The delay meant less xenon because of the longer time to burn it off. *It is not certain whether Akimov or Toptunov pressed AZ5. In certain accounts Akimov disconnected the servos to drop the rods faster. *The lid weighed 1,000 ton *The return loop from the turbines is indicated here. ua-cam.com/video/NeZScDZA_uY/v-deo.html A3-5 is the Russian spelling for AZ-5...
@@connclark2154 Yup true. The return pipes routes are not clear in the drawings I that I got my hands on so I didn't know how to model the return in the 3d's either.
@@Mike-Bell not a bad explanation however Anatoly Dyatlov did get interviewed, have you watched his interview? he provides so much information about what was going on in the control room from his 1st hand experience... and "nuclear stalkers" cant get close to the reactor plant to remove anything which is a relief because pripyat has been further destroyed by marauders... not to be confused with urbex guys who have rules by which they are to leave the place exactly how they found it. security within the exclusion zone is very tight due to marauders but there are plenty who take the chance to document and even try to maintain the place for future urbex. Some channels for you to see this would be Bad Cat, Shiey and Kreosan.
I worked for GE back in the 1980s. We were working at a nuclear power plant in Arkansas when our electrical supervisor called us altogether to meet in the electrical shop. Quietly in hushed tones he explained to us that Chernobyl had just exploded. We couldn't believe it. We thought about all those engineers, mechanics, operators, health physics personnel had been killed instantly and that more would die later on. To us it was a tragedy way beyond what anyone could imagine. Some of us began to pray for those workers and their families, that somehow God would offer comfort. I've never forgotten that terrible day
Only a handful of people were killed instantly by the explosion itself. The other deaths resulted from radiation poisoning as a consequence of the explosion, but those all took place some time afterward.
This is probably the best and most interesting video I've even seen on the Chernobyl accident. The focus on the reactor physics among with the 3D models made all the difference compared to other videos mostly focusing on the consequences. I've shared the link to this video to a large Facebook group with focus on nuclear energy, hope this gives you many more views. Greetings from a NPP worker in Sweden :)
@@terbentur2943 I'm so glad. I make particular effort to not go overboard too Sciency and the technical terms. And yet make it easy to grasp some quite complex physics.
The best explanation I've seen so far. I would just add that what turned Chernobyl into a disaster unlike Three miles island was the absence of a confinement shield around the reactor
Glad you appreciated the effort. The scavenged control room is a cool story. However sometimes the truth spoils a good story. multiple comments tell me it was impossible for radiation stalkers to access the control room. Security was impossible. I would think it us safe to say the staff who would have had legit access would conceivably have pocketed a few keepsakes for themselves. I would have. 😅
@@Mike-Bell those stuff will probably be end up in underground auctions one day, imagine if someone took the actual control room 4 az 5 switch, just imagine how much would it be sold for?🤔
@@Mike-Bell You fail to appreciate the ingenuity and stealth of humans. The sarcopagus was far from secure. Until that dome sent up, I can see a few determined souls braving both security and the radiation for that high value component.
I mean, I have several gauges and old switch gear from various dead industrial complexes littering my shed walls, but nothing that would register on a Geiger counter. Scientist, engineer or other, it doesn't seem like a winning move to salvage this site. Those who salvaged all the left over response vehicles/aircraft (that have not been cancered to death that is) would likely agree.
There were people at Chernobyl who made really bad decisions that, combined with design flaws in the reactor, lead to the disaster. But there were far more heroes present who limited the disaster to only the one reactor and prevented it from spreading to the other reactors. If the fires raging in the turbine hall had engulfed the other three reactors, much of Europe would be uninhabitable today.
Europe being unhabitable is a myth, debunked many times. Soviet Union's propaganda tried to make people focus on heroism instead of the system flaws, so they kinda overblown the importance of heroic task.
@@cytrynowy_melon6604 only reactor 4 melting down already affected a large part of Europe badly for years. Now imagine what would've happened if all the other reactors melted too.
@@cytrynowy_melon6604 No. It really hasn't been "debunked"; If only reactor 4 continued to burn unabated; YOU would be dealing with the fall out right now! You would be seeing %70 overall cancer rates, with %95 in the hotter zones. At least a %60 still born rate, with cancers developing quickly in "normal" births. Those brave men, literally saved the world from living in fall out bunkers on a permanent basis!
I also want to comment how helpful the utterly seamless transitions from animation to the real thing were. Made everything so clear. Thanks for this educational experience of this horrific event.
Most thorough explanation of the Chernobyl incident I’ve ever come across. You guys deserve some kind of award for this exceptional, play by play description of one of the most serious nuclear disasters in history. Very well done Matt and Mike Bell. Bravo!!! Edit: Instant new sub here from Columbia, Missouri, USA 🇺🇸 And a big 👍 for everyone who played a part in this remarkable video!
This is one of the few accurate videos that explain the events of that night in simplistic terms without clouding the facts with 'untruths'. Good job Mike,
I come back to Chernobyl documentaries and such every couple of years, kind of a tradition if you will, and I must say what You've done here is amazing! You've managed to tell the story and effectively explain what happened in 13 minutes, and still do it better than most 30-60 minute lectures and make it more clear visually than 45-90 minute documentaries. Bravo, good Sir!
I feel so sorry for the staff involved, it wasn't their fault since they didn't even know about the hidden danger, they paid with their lives trying to fix the problem and not even comprehending how bad it was.. may them rest in peace and hope they are at a better place than they were at the time
They knew they were violating every safety regulation in the book. To go back to the car analogy, it's like speeding toward a group of pedestrians on a busy city street at 120mph counting on the fact that your ABS brakes will stop the car just in time when you jam the brake pedal to the metal. If the brakes fail at 120 mph but wouldn't have failed at 35 mph it's still the driver's fault - maybe he didn't know the brakes would fail in that particular way at 120mph, but any idiot knows not to drive down a busy city street at 120 mph.
yeah, ask the people who build nuclear power plant in Fukushima. It constantly leaking high amounts of VERY radioactive water into the ocean for a fucking 10 years. 4 reactors melted and 2 of them expolded.
@@brentfarvors192 They could have just build a seawall high enough like every other NPP on the ocean shore has. Tsunami was completly predictable, its not something that happens once in million years, yet coproration, just like soviets, ignored basic safety of construction.
@@redsun9261 Oh, I definitely agree; They should have NEVER built the facility without sea walls; Still doesn't help now, since it's already melted through the core...They basically have a bunch of melted corium laying on the sea floor; Every time the tide comes in/out, it is taking the radioactive waste with it...
@@brentfarvors192 just putting your plant by the shore and not by one of the inland lakes when you live right on top of a seam in two tectonic plates says enough for me lol
I really like how clean your video message appears. It's so easy for me to get confused but not in your video. Was able to finally understood what and how exactly happened from start to finish.
The most perfectly narrated video I’ve ever seen, clear and unrushed. There’s lots of informative videos on UA-cam which are ruined by people who rush through dialogue as if they have a train to catch! I will look through your listing for more gems.
This was amazing to watch! I’ve read up, and understand every part of why the reactor went into a meltdown phase, but your video was able to explain every detail, and every part of it all... in under 13 minutes!! That’s an amazing feat! Great job on this!
Well if you understand it, can you explain why lowering the graphite that is already in the reactor would increase reactivity? Water at the bottom is replaced by boron on top - net result surely is less reactivity, not more, and afaik the reactor is hottest at the top, not the bottom? The only thing that makes sense to me is this explanation if for some reason the reactor was really uneven, and even though net reactivity decreased, it increased locally so much in the bottom to cause the explosion. The other option would be that the rods were actually pulled out so far that the graphite was out of the reactor until the button was pressed.
@@cyberfunk3793 The graphite didn't reach all the way to the bottom of the reactor, so when it was lowered, it displaced the water at the bottom of the reactor, to the point where there was almost nothing controlling neutrons at the bottom of the reactor, which caused a localized power surge. This was explained in-video, by the way.
@@chengaanimates2108 "so when it was lowered, it displaced the water at the bottom of the reactor, to the point where there was almost nothing controlling neutrons at the bottom of the reactor, which caused a localized power surge" And this would have been compensated for by the water(or boron in the control rods) replacing the position higher up where the graphite had been before, so the net reactivity would have been less unless for some reason the reactor was functioning very unevenly and there was significantly more reactivity lower down, which would be strange as the temperature is higher the higher you go so it should be the opposite: more reaction higher up or at the center. "This was explained in-video, by the way." The explanation doesn't add up, as I made clear, by the way.
There are still pieces of radioactive graphite in the far away surrounding area. The UA-camr Bionerd was good at digging them up. The poor cleanup of the area is to this day a disgrace.
It was not "poor" per say. It could've gone better, and it should've never happened, but a reminder that the cleanup had the budget exceeding that one of the ENTIRE Apollo space program, so it was surely one of the biggest endevours in the modern world
@@euvo_sound Doesn't make much sense. The graphite would cool down extremely fast. Only the uranium fuel would keep pumping heat. And if it was ejected from the actual reactor it is unlikely to be concentrated enough to do so.
well that is easily truth,.. someone desighned it, someone else builded it, and someone else mantain it and control it,... every accident had error on one or more of those stages,...
This was the video I have been looking for, for years now! A well explained, detailed, animated account of what had happened. You put the perfect amount of technical information on how the RBMK reactors work, and how they’re flawed. Great job.
Such a tragic loss of life. We have to commend the operators who sacrificed their lives to keep the other 4 reactors from suffering the same fate. Chernobyl was a huge disaster, but it could have been so much worse.
Chernobyl only had 4 reactors at the time of the accident. But they were building unit 5 and 6 at the time who was never completed. The last reactor shut down early 2000
Hoping to achieve a better understanding, I’ve always wanted someone to make a video giving a visual reference as to what took place that night within the RBMK reactor when things went wrong, and you did this masterfully. Thank you.
The most simplistic, well visualised & explained timeline of events. Very well done. I was one of 22 people in the UK who developed an illness that is categorised as ‘most likely’ attributed to the fall out from Chernobyl. The ‘most likely’ title means that the government doesn’t need to pay compensation, though my Doctors over the years since 86 have all agreed on radiation poisoning. Nothing like being in the Wrong place, at the Wrong time‼️☢️
I watched your previous Chernobyl video, and this one is another amazing visualization and explaination. Definitely blows all mainstream media out of the water.
Short answer: The RBMK reactor 4 at the chernobyl NPP was a graphite modified RBMK1000, the reactor got too low power so the controlers started to raise the power, the power got too high power so the A3-5(AZ-5). The control rods shot into the reactor, but the graphite RAISED the power. To around 33,000. To make it worse, the reactor was also poisoned
As someone who has done a lot of reading and digging on what was going on in that reactor that night. This so by far the best video I have seen on the subject.
It's kind of terrifying to think about Khodemchuk after all these years. He was never found, we don't know if he's under all of that debris, if his body decomposed or anything, it's heartbreaking
From what I know the radioactivity is high enough to not let decomposition causing bacteria and fungi live, so probably his body is only damaged by the debris and likely burns, considerably well preserved compared to most corpses.
I have no doubt he was vaporized in the explosion, and died instantly. He was more fortunate than the others who died a slow, agonizing death from Acute Radiation Syndrome.
Best chernobyl disaster explanation ever! Legasov would thank you for that 3D Modelling. That was what I was missing to get complete understanding about "how could a BRMK explode?".
I think you're right to remind that this was designed in an earlier time, without much of the detailed knowledge and modelling that we now have, and that it is easy to criticise individuals who did not have the benefit of our hindsight. However, that said, it's pretty reasonable to criticise a system that allowed the reactor to start work before its safety testing was complete, placed very clear pressure on its engineers to complete the test regardless of whether the moment was suitable or not, and decided not to tell them about known flaws in its emergency shutdown systems. Just as this was a steam and gas explosion not a nuclear one, the root problem was a managerial failure not a technical one.
@Amy Weinholtz The U.S. also has done its share in that regard, and then some. And we also had nuclear accidents that have killed people horribly by radiation poisoning and acute radiation sickness.
5:44 I have read and watched a lot on this subject and but your demonstration of the xenon poisoning and rationale on why they should not restart after it is poisoned, was extremely helpful. It was mentioned "as a matter of fact" in Wikipedia but more in a "scientific way" where we are all supposed to get it. Unless all the plant workers were trained nuclear scientists I cannot see how anyone working there would have a clue about this stuff. But evidence is clear that those that designed them for sure held critical operational information back - either from the get go or as issues at other plants occurred. Thanks for the video - well done.
Only one thing I have to add to this excellent video. At the time of disaster instructions were different and allowed operations with only 7 to 15 equal rods. 26 appeared only in 1987. Dyatlov in his memoirs mentioned that.
I just have to say, incredible work! The animations, the attention to detail, the 3d rendering, the information served. By far the most informative and polished animated info-videos I've seen! Fantastic work 👍🏻
Great video, the 3D tour was incredibly helpful, I've watched many videos on nuclear and Chernobyl specifically and the model here was by far the most comprehensive and informative.
Extremelly well done animation! A mistake not already mentioned is that there were no channel ruptures at Ignalina. Ignalina is where tip effect was discovered, not Leningrad. Also, you should have mentioned the spatial problem: core too big, essentially ~40 reactors under one cover. It only took a small fraction of the core to go supercritical for the disaster to happen.
Correct. The failure of several fuel channels was the cause of the first explosion that flung away the 1,000 ton reactor top. Steam pressure built up in a "hotspot" at the base of the core so rapidly in those fuel channels they ruptured and the steam escaped beneath the reactor lid. It soon built up rapidly enough to fling away the reactor lid and all the control rods right through the roof a kilometer into the air. When that happened, all the other fuel channels which were also at extreme pressure were suddenly open to the atmosphere, and the water in them flashed to steam too. That was followed by the second explosion which occurred when hydrogen, red hot graphite and oxygen from the air came into contact with one another.
**Edit** Mike actually edited the video to implement most of these changes, which must be unprecedented in the history of UA-cam! Good video overall, but here are some corrections: 4:20 - The graphite sections were cut short because there wasn't enough space below the core, rather than to equalize fuel burn. 4:45 - The previous test had been performed just after a reactor startup, but on April 26 there was a shutdown planned. 5:00 - Running the reactor at half power did not poison it. On the contrary it gave time for the xenon to burn off. If not for the delay, the poisoning would have been worse. Xenon is not a contributing factor to the accident any more than gravity contributes to a skydiving accident. 6:00 - The rules at the time DID allow for restoring power regardless of Xenon, so long as certain conditions were met. It is ambiguous whether any rules were broken, but at the time the operators would not have seen any clear reason not to continue. 6:15 - The control rods were in a normal and allowed position after restoring power for the test. But later changes to coolant flow and temperature meant that more rods had to be removed. The car analogy is silly because the RBMK was designed to be operated like this (fewer rods inserted = greater fuel efficiency). 6:45 - The personnel had agreed to push AZ-5 at the START of the test, but apparently there was some confusion and this action was delayed for 36 seconds. 7:15 - An entire group of automatic control rods was fully inserted, and another set was in motion as well. There is nothing 'frightening' about no rods being fully inserted; this is just how the RBMK was supposed to be. 7:25 - In practice the limit was 15 rods, not 26. RBMKs had to regularly operate with less than 26 rods, and operators were unable to track short-term fluctuations in this value because at low power there was no instrument capable of tracking it. 7:38 - AZ-5 did NOT insert any rods from below. If it had, the reactor would have been saved. This safety improvement was scheduled to be implemented following the scheduled shutdown.
Thanks for this information. The positions of the control rods at moment of AZ5 I modelled exactly as in the INSAG-7 report. This shows 7 below rods partially in the core. How is it that these rods had not yet been installed if they are shown in INSAG? Insag also shows the Auto rods were mostly extracted at the time. I don't recall INSAG saying they the below rods were still to be installed and this is a pretty vital aspect. Are you certain the below rods were not yet installed? Its the first I heard this. But when visualizing it in 3d, it does seem odd they were not enough to the stop the runaway on the floor and makes sense.
@@Mike-Bell What page of INSAG are you referring to? I will check, but suspect you are misinterpreting something. By the way ORM = 7 has nothing to do with 7 rods being partially inserted. Many more rods were partially inserted than that. ORM is a calculated value that depends on the shape of the neutron fields, "1 rod" is sort of an imaginary value. The bottom-insertion rods (USP group) were installed, they just didn't insert when AZ-5 was pressed. The planned fix was to connect their insertion to the AZ-5 signal.
@@MinSredMash Ok now I understand. Chernobyl did have it’s below rods but they didn’t enter the core on the night of the disaster because they weren’t coupled to the AZ5. Had Toptunov inserted the below rods first and then shutdown or if they were included with the AZ5 signal it would have all been a non-event . What a tragic ballsup because it is so clear from the 3d how they would have prevented the explosion. Page 45 right at the top confirms that the shortened below rods were proposed in 1977 to be coupled to AZ5 but not implemented at Chernobyl as well as other plants. Now I’m pondering whether to take the video down and upload a correct version with the below rods not moving in the animation with the pushing of the AZ5. And also delete the wording about the ORM and some of the xenon poisoning wording. The xenon caused the stalling of the reactor to 1% right? Redoing the voice is big job now but I can redo the 3d modeling easily and quickly. p 119 shows the rod depths I modeled in 3d. I presume this is reliable. It shows the auto rods also extracted. Thanks for the corrections you list.
You make very good points, added detail to the scientific happenings within the reactor rather than just the design flaw being that "it was graphite tips" and gave in depth information such as what "xenon poisoning" is. I never knew this before, there wasn't enough information on youtube at least for this particular thing.
I love it! Thank you so much for those animations, models and photo... I learnt that between the lid of the reactor and the reactor itself, there is a huge gap for control rods
An excellent video. The designers of the RBMK were well aware of the problems of the design. Particularly at low power levels. Apparently they produced a detailed manual explaining what the operators should do. However the KGB felt that the manual could fall into the hands of a terrorist/saboteur. As a result the manual was suppressed. As a result of this the power station staff had no real idea of what to do. The remarkable thing is not that the disaster happened but that it hadn't happened earlier. As you point there had been problems at Ingalina and Leningrad. But due to the culture of paranoia in USSR this information was not disclosed.
Are there any sources for claim that KGB was behind preventing releasing manual about reactor flaws, though? Because there are sources that main designer of the reactor Nikolay Dollezhall ignored the reports of flaws, as acknowledging them could hurt his career, because he was seen as a flawless genius in USSR. Alexandrov who was supervising him, was also engaged in advocating and supporting this reactor type. It is true that moving the supervision of operations of nuclear power plants from one ministry to other apparently contributed to problems with communication and flow of information. But this transfer was done because designers of reactors most probably lied that those are ready, very safe much more than they really were, so party assumed that they can be supervised by more 'civilian' ministeries, such as ministry of energy. In my opinion designers were too ambitious and lied about progress with reactors, because of that they later had to rush the design process, with resulted with trivial errors. For example water space at the bottom of control rods resulted from miscalculation, designers initially thought rods could be longer, this space at the bottom of reactor was meant to be taken by longer graphite tips. When it turned out that those would not fit, and it is impossible to change the whole construction (as first reactors were build almost at the time of design process and equipment was manufactured already), they assumed they would use different technology to reduce amount of water (water film cooling). But this technology finally turned out to be unready, so they were left with too short tips. Like an architect who forgot to include the height of the building when planning number of floors. Absurd and terryfying. Buy that's what happens when design process is really rushed, that's why nuclear phycists shouldn't lie about having their reactor designs proven and ready, as this most probably happened. They believed too much in their own genius, especially because people from communist party, even such high ranking as Kruschev were not intelligent and knowledgeable enough to know that physicists are lying to them about reactor progess. Designers and other people from Kurchatov institute who were promoting the RBMK construction, such as Alexandrov, Dollezhall, Legasov (as he was not such a good guy in reality, earlier he was also promoting RBMK despite it's flaws) believed they can get away with such lies and errors because they are smarter than everybody else, and that ultimately nothing will happen, so errors in reactors can be covered up to protect their careers, especially because it was easy to keep things secret in nuclear industry in the USSR, which makes it even easier to designer of reactor to hide his errors. But it happened and revealed everything. If we only knew more about design process of reactor,. I think what happened and what really caused chernobyl, is what I have described above. Not screaming diatlov, but lying physicists from Kurchatov institute, such as Legasov. Ironically, HBO series end when he is talking about lies being the cause of all problems. He was a a part of that lie, despite show portraying him in good light in opposition to others.
@@cytrynowy_melon6604 Quite Tomasz. It is easy to forget that the RMBK was a dual purpose reactor. As it was designed to generate electricity/district heating and to provide weapons grade plutonium. Actually it was carefully designed to allow it to operate on natural uranium without using heavy water. What is apparent is that the lead design engineer Nikolay Dollezhal (1899-2000) was well aware of its shortcomings. However for the reasons that you outline he kept quiet. That said the RMBK proved to be both reliable and robust in service. The issue with the fuel rods was understood by the Kurchatov Institute. Hence the manual to deal with this and the other issues of the reactor (At this point it is worth noting that all types of Reactor have their own operating systems, characteristics and foibles etc etc) From what I have read N.Dollezhal never actually claimed that he was "infallible" it was the Soviet media that did that. Let's be honest about this He was not the only scientist or engineer in the USSR who treated in this way. One thinks of Sergei Korolov for example! Or indeed Andrei Sakharov that is until he began to denounce the Soviet system. It was Valery Legusov The First Deputy Director of Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy (He would later commit suicide in 1988 apparently due to his despair over the Soviet civilian nuclear energy programme). Who led the investigation into the Chernobyl disaster. He made it clear that the KGB had suppressed the RMBK operation manual for the reasons stated earlier in his report to the IAEA. He was also extremely critical of the lack of a coordinated approach by the various regulatory bodies in the USSR to share information on the operating characteristics of the RMBK reactor. It is also clear that had the problems experienced at both Ingalina and Leningrad been reported accurately and disseminated to the correct authorities at the other nuclear power stations using RMBK reactors then it is almost certain that the Chernobyl disaster would never have happened. You are absolutely correct in thinking that the endless changes in top level management and the changes of ministerial control of the civilian nuclear programme was a major factor in this. Even Leonid Brezhnev was critical of the endless "reforms" to Soviet industry and privately is said to stated "Reforms , Reforms! People ought to work better, that's the problem!" Another issue that didn't help was the "Campaign" attitude to getting things done! As this often meant that things were done quickly and with very little concern shown to "difficult" or "troublesome" issues or situations. Which were simply brushed aside.
@@cytrynowy_melon6604 Everything I’ve ever read about short rods attributes them to equalizing the reaction - an intentional design versus a screw-up. Yours is the first I’ve read otherwise. What have I read? Internet drivel but lots of it. You sound quite knowledgeable - how did you find this out?
That piece that got blown up to the air and fell down back to the reactor wasn't a lid, it was the Elena - a bio-shield. Incredible animation and explanation tho, exceptional work my man!
Correct its the Upper Bio Shield but everyone calls it a reactor lid because it’s like a cup lid in a sense if you squeeze a cup enough you’ll get the same reaction to what happened at Chernobyl where the lid flew about 500m in the air.
@@rigel8755 the distance was an exaggeration. As for the bio shield everyone has called it the Reactor Lid from the scientists all the way to designers and investigators
@@deathjr112 ohok, but anyways, calling it a reactor lid is wrong, because it's a Bio-Shield. It's like everyone calls an airplane engine a ''turbine'', but it's called ''engine'', turbine is just a piece that is assembled inside the engine, got it?
it's 2022, I've seen a few documentaries and the obvious series but out of all of them, this video was the best at explaining what happened clearly. Cheers bud.
The best video about chernobyl, simple , direct and objective. It is possible understand that happened in 00:12:50 of video. There are in youtube, some other videos with 1 hour or more that doesn´t get it. Congratulations.
The video is great, I would just like to note a couple of things. AZ-5 was never that far down on the operator panel. A video of the Unit 4 Control Room during commissioning revealed this. In that specific location, there was a joystick used to move the control rods up and down. Second thing, AZ-5 did not insert the control rods from below the core, but after the scheduled shutdown of Unit 4 in 1986, AZ-5 was going to be modified to insert these rods from below the core.
A clear and concise explanation as to the disaster that occurred at Chernobyl. The computer generated diagrams were essential for dummies like me to understand. Superb presentation.
As with the Challenger disaster, this issue came down to two elements: design and project management. The urgency to get the Challenger mission into orbit (plus the PR from McAuliffe as the first teacher) and the lack of communication about O-Ring temperature issues led to the solid rocket booster breach that led to complete loss. For Chernobyl, it was Viktor Bryukhanov - the Chernobyl plant director - who was under pressure to complete a long-postponed safety test. This urgency juxtaposed with end-of-month deadline demands for power and the desired promotion outcomes (Bryukhanov would get bumped up, Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomin would take his place, and Deputy Chief Anatoly Dyatlov would move up to Fomin's job). Add in the shift-change in personnel (and a lack of experience at that), plus state intelligence keeping RBMK reactor flaws hidden, and it just happened to be a perfect storm (as disasters often are) that led to the explosion. People can point to the USSR's desire to put cost and secrecy at higher importance than safety, but that's a factor regardless of being Soviet or American. Just as you often get what you pay for, the desire to rush complex processes to completion regardless of anticipation of risk outcome will lead to other disasters down the road.
I clicked on this video with absolutely low expectations. I thought it would be another clickbait super low quality video with (wrongly) copied facts out of wikipedia again, by someone who wants to make some youtube dollars but has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Boy, was i wrong. This is a gem!
Great video. Always been fascinated with Chernobyl and 90% of the videos I've watched that don't address the lower portion of the reactor being the fuse, this video explains it the best. This was the mother of all pressure cooker explosions and not a nuclear bomb. It would have been exponentially worse (though impossible) for to it have detonated as a bomb. The other reactors would have blown as well. All the pressure went up, thankfully. Though the worst nuclear disaster in human history (so far) it could have been so much worse. Cheers, I enjoyed that.
If it was close to Kiev, it would have been far worse, with many dying of Acute Radiation Syndrome. Look how slow the authorities were to evacute the people living near the plant. How would three million people possibly be evacuated in time even here in the West, let alone Ukraine?
Your modelling of the systems, animation is without doubt the best I’ve ever seen on this. More than all this all, thank you for showing care and understanding of this catastrophic event. I’ve have subscribed to your channel and look forward to more uploads. Well done!
Another excellently done animation, Mike. I have been told by operators that there are procedures for bringing a poisoned reactor back to working levels, but those are water reactors; increasing the power in the reactor does burn off the poison, and the operators have to be following the reactivity very closely to be inserting control rods as the poison is burned off, but it can be and apparently is done. That they should be trying it on third shift with the lack of attention and with safety equipment shut off in preparation for the test seems criminal. I was gratified to hear that you believe that the reactor did not suffer a criticality accident, that it was steam and hydrogen; there seems to be a lot of people who want some sort of criticality to be the explanation.
Many comments in my previous video repeatedly insisting it was nuclear. In fact they know it was one, apparently there are mathematical calculations ... LOL
This is so well done. Thank you. I was 15 years old when this accident occurred and of course I did really understand the seriousness of what had occurred. I mean, I understood it was a terrible tragedy but I didn't understand what had occurred. Decades later, all I feel is profound respect for all of the men and women who sacrificed life and health in an attempt to mitigate further damage and who, ran towards the burning building.
This was a GREAT video! I've read a lot about the Chenobyl disaster, but the way this video explained it well with a combination of visuals that really makes you understand it a lot better. You've earned another subscriber.
8:42 will always give me the chills because, power was off the charts, and that delivery of "there wasn't anything left to do the measuring," like something tiny observing our side of things, and we show it our normal vs its normal, and the size between the two things is overwhelming
I would have told the Wish Granter to change the universe so that environmental catastrophes can be managed more easily and safely when they occur. 31 people should not have had to die in order to clean up after the Chernobyl disaster. Millions of people shouldn’t have to die during the coronavirus pandemic.
Just watched the (excellent) TV series again and watched this video by way of explanation of some of the science behind the disaster. Many thanks Mike as it was most informative.
Thank you for this video. After the HBO series came out I was intrigued and researched and read various independent sources. I reached the same conclusion which you emphasize in this video, and which was unfortunately misreported in the series It is not that the operators brought the the reactor to the point of explosion and the AZ-5 was "too late" to help. It's the fact that due to the design flaws, the AZ-5 itself is what blew it up. Yes, the conditions that led to this situation were due to a sequence of wrong decisions by the operators, however, as you said - they did not know about these flaws. The best phrase I've seen in this context goes something like: "The question of fault of the operating personnel should be addressed in a context of one's accountability while sitting on a keg of gunpowder, completely unaware". The designers of the reactor were fully aware of the flaws, thanks to those earlier smaller accidents you mentioned. But only after the big disaster they got around to fixing them, quickly and efficiently, across all remaining RBMK reactors, quietly and without ever admitting any responsibility. Shameful.
Shortly before his death in the nineties, Anatoli Dyatlov would say: "The reactor shouldn't have been in operation. The real blame lies with the atomic energy authorities. Not having the correct documentation when and where it was needed made the explosion of the reactor inevitable. The reactor marched straight to its doom." I agree with that assessment. If it hadn't been him and that reactor, it would have been someone else with another. Once the design was approved, it was only a matter of time.
The Soviet authorities made him a convenient scapegoat. While he was an ardent man who his coworkers generally didn't like arguing with he was nowhere near as clueless and disrespectful as media (and the famous mini-series) portray him as. While the ultimate blame still rests on him one can totally see how he himself had little to no knowledge of the inherent design flaws of the reactors.
Dyatlov was an idiot. All he had to do was leave the reactor alone for three days once it was poisoned by xenon. Complete negligence on his part, combined with an obsolete reactor design.
leonid toptunov had once mentioned to one of his co-workers that he was concerned about the graphite tipped control rods, because he thought in a case of emergency they might actually do the exact opposite of what they were supposed to do and kickstart a positive feedback loop of chain reactions. i guess if he had reported these concerns to his superiors he would have lost his job, so he kept quiet about it, only to be proven right, which he paid with his life. he was only 25 when he dXed.
Nah, he would absolutely not have been fired, what a nonsense. He would've been just shot on the spot. And his family too for good measure. It's the Soviet Union we're talking about after all. /s
Interesting fact: Sweden was one of the first countries to notice that something had gone terribly wrong when the workers at a Swedish nuclear power-plant couldn't go through their own detectors without having them going off, they thought there was something wrong with their detectors until they tracked the radiation to Chernobyl, and expected the worse, so they picked up the phone and called them and received an answer that everything was OK and nothing bad had happened, so then Sweden called the US and explained the situation.
Xx
True. I remember that very well. At that time I was a freshman at the college. On the May 1st the college authorities told us to go to an athletic event in order to celebrate the Worker's Day, as Poland, my country was ruled by communists those days. So we were carelessly playing soccer and nobody was aware that radioactive dust was shining at us from above, since the Soviets kept the disaster in secret. Thanks to those open-eyed Swedish guys Europe received the warning. Next, all countries implemented suitable security measures which probably saved thousands of lives....
Soviets/ Russians have never taken care about human lives, so they kept all in secret for propaganda reasons. Today, we all see that nothing has changed in their mentality up to present days...
Hadn't those Swedish fellas spill the beans, many many people would die or suffer from radiation syndrome. And maybe the Soviet Union would't collapse so quickly, if ever.
So, Sweden did a really great thing... 👍👍👍
@@michiv334 , zanim napiszesz głupoty, zaprojektuj i zbuduj elektrownię jądrową. opanuj technologię wydobycia, przetwarzania i wzbogacania uranu. w międzyczasie Twój poziom rozwoju technologii, słodki przyjacielu, polega na wytwarzaniu energii z drewna opałowego i obornika osła. dlatego okazuj szacunek Radzieckim inżynierom i budowniczym.
And this was just less than 3 months after the PM was assassinated (Olof Palme) such a traumatic year for Sweden
sweden always doing the best
When the button supposed to kill the reactor takes the word literally.
"Kill it"
"Very poor choice of words"
And that there is the self destruc... I mean rapid shutdown button yeah yeah that's what I meant.
@@crazeelazee7524 kill it with humans
@@williampittam1 you mean have a no life zone fast button
@@I.LOVECRYSTALCASTLES ehhh same difference
8:12 With the press of a single button, Anatoly Dyatlov had solved the entirety of Russia's energy needs for 8 whole seconds .
wow
Bro solved the whole eastern Block
If only we could do that today, One building for the entire half of Russia seems good to me.
Lol....
He got russia like a million energy for 8 but the energy wanted to escape not to be used so well it hapened
“Fireman said they warmed their hands over the graphite on the ground” that gave me chills
their hands did not burn after 2 min like the stupid and fake uk serie
@@retrocompaq5212 uh okay was still a good tv show though
@@retrocompaq5212 Ok, but it was just slightly exaggerated...They fell off 4 hours later...The deaths were also greatly under reported. NONE of those that were initially on the scene up to the 5 week mark, are alive today!
@@retrocompaq5212 Shut up.
@@retrocompaq5212I think It's a good miniseries
When you complete the five year plan energy production in less than 15 seconds. Smart move
Smashing good fun for everyone
True communism archived
Everyone’s lightbulbs that night must’ve like fucking exploded or something
@@layzee3810 no since the electrical power output never reached more than normal. the energy they're talking about is the thermal energy coming out of the core. also, i'm pretty sure since it was during a test it wasn't actually connected to the main power grid. so no, no lightbulbs where harmed during the event (except maybe those in the reactor room).
@@yutiros5174 interesting, thanks for the information
What is sad is that the engineers who built and operated the reactor were not stupid. They were, as most nuclear engineers generally are, brilliant people. The problem is that in a totalitarian regime such as the Soviet Union, bureaucracy and politics often overrule sound engineering. The saying, "When science meets politics, politics always wins", might apply here. A lot of group-think, a system that discouraged anyone speaking up, and pressure to just make things work resulted in a disaster that cost many brave men and women their lives. Thankfully the lessons learned have led to improvements around the world.
I think it should be "When science meets politics, people fucking die"
Hey kind of like Covid. Fauci was covids dyatlov.
@@genericscottishchannel1603 much better hahaha
A french writer said: Communism is the art to turn brillants peoples seems stupids. Nazism is the art where dumbs peoples believes they are brillants.
Politicians didn't allow the design engineers to let the operation guys know about the deficiency. Everything is supposed to be perfect in communist countries.
how ironic, chernobyl exploded because of a safety test and pressing the emergency shutdown button
@@ifuoo dang I did not know this thanks man
@@ifuoo we shall change it to self destruct button
Does that mean that we don't have a process to shut down a nuclear reaction fully yet or at least not one that they have yet to disclose what the public? Because if so why the hell are we even fucking around with something we don't understand. The genius of humans
This is why you test before going to production.
@@ifuoo If you want i can tell the real hsiotry about that reactor,, and you will be suprised i worked there, nothing you especulate here is true.
The transitions from the the animation to the real reactor were amazing.
"This is like a car motor increasing power to encounter a jambed hand brake." What a great explanation!
This is a great short explanation of the Chernobyl Disaster.
No no, he said a car motor increasing PAST FULL THROTTLE......lol
amazingly explained
amazingly presented
amazingly narrated
amazingly animated
You forgot amazingly accurate
One thing he got wrong was he kept saying modern reactors use "water" when Chernobyl also used water lol. I'm pretty sure he means heavy water, which is water that contains deuterium and acts as a moderator instead of a absorber.
@@weasle2904 water as used as a moderator
@@SenkaBandit Chernobyl used water, modern reactors use heavy water.
@@weasle2904 Chernobyl used graphite as a moderator. Modern US reactors use heavy water as a moderator. Chernobyl only used water as coolant
"It's cheaper"
Comrade Legasov
it's what poor nations can afford
@@TeddyKrimsony The Soviet Union wasn't exactly poor.
Here is the point: Their economy was smaller than that of the NATO nations. To stay competetive in the arms race with NATO, they had to pour an unhealthy dose of their GDP into their miltary (just like the US in the last 20 years...). That led to other sectors of the Soviet society to be critically underfunded by the 80's. The rest is history.
@@thomaskositzki9424 Yes, it was shitload of money for nucklear and submarine program. Point is if you can't afford it don't do it. And quality was always questionable
@@dmitryhetman1509 They couldn't affort it but they couldn't stop either. Lagging behind NATO was surrendering, as they would've exploited any weakness.
@@sta1nless They lose anyway, ussr is not existing country, and Russia will be soon.
The amount of energy required to send the two MILLION pound reactor lid 100' in the air is absolutely terrifying!
What’s even more incredible is that he said it was 2000 tons. If that’s accurate, it’s actually 4 million lbs US or could be almost 4.5 millions US pounds if it was meany as 2000 Metric tons. Either way, scary as hell.
@@moparman0314 I guess metric tons. In Europe and (back then) USSR it was (and still is) metric system through and through, bar UK. Thus a tonne is always 1000 kg, or 2205 lbs (US).
@@MrKotBonifacy It was 2,000 metric tonnes. I worked on a safety upgrade in the Leningrad NPP in 1997, have seen these things close up and they're scary beyond belief!
@@Li.Siyuan Thanks for the info/ confirmation. Cheers!
@@MrKotBonifacy 🖖
Let one thing be clear: The reactor did not behave in a way that was not known. It was known. But it was the policy of secrecy, suppressing information and general paranoia in the Soviet Union, that led to this disaster. The operators were highly skilled and professional. There was no "pressure" present (as depicted in the HBO series). They were cautious and confident in what they were doing. The problem is, they were not told the full story, the truth about the RBMK reactor and its design. Until the disaster at Chernobyl NPP, safety concerns were only from the viewpoint of how to protect workers from the radiation of the reactor. After Chernobyl, the safety shifted in how to protect the reactor from operator error. This was a very valuable lesson learned. The automatic reactor control and safety systems had to be manually disabled by operators at Chernobyl in order to do the test. They worked against the safety protocols and were aware of it. If they knew the full truth about how the reactor behaves in those conditions, they would have never ever do what they did. This was not the first time that this test went wrong. The Leningrad incident ten years before Chernobyl made this clear. Lucky for them, at Leningrad, they performed the test with a "fresh" reactor, which was not operated for extended periods of time. At Chernobyl, the fuel rods were burned up much more. The operational reactivity margin was way lower, which resulted in even more control rods to be withdrawn, making the reactor extremely unstable. The lesson learned from Chernobyl: Protect the reactor from human error. Today it is impossible to manually withdraw more control rods than is safe. Also design changes were made to the control rods, removing the graphite displacers with steel ones. The efficiency dropped a little and the fuel enrichment had to be raised a bit to compensate for that. I cannot stress this enough: The reactor did not fail. It was the human operators who failed. The design of the reactor was known to have certain issues and the designers knew of them. But the operators were not told the full truth. Even worse, after the incident at Leningrad NPP, where a similar test resulted in an almost identical result, the full truth about the reactor was not told to the operators. Human error and a paranoid mindset made the Chernobyl accident happen. The technology did not fail in any way. It was a human mistake and error. The lesson from Chernobyl is clear: If you do something, you must know at each point in time what you are doing and understand what, how and why works. If critical information is being kept from you, you inevitably make a mistake, sooner or later. All the natural laws are known and the reactor was designed properly. There was absolutely no miscalculation or misunderstanding in the laws of nature. There was just human error. The operators are not to blame. The whole culture is to blame, if it is poisoned by unnecessary secrecy and paranoia. Also, we need to protect delicate technology from humans the same way we protect humans (and the whole environment) from dangerous things like radiation, chemicals, etc.
Thanks for a great explanation
Finally! Someone who's read books on the event. The shady Ministry of Medium Machine Building designed the reactor, and kept all its dirty secrets to itself.
Indeed. Now stop voting for democrats and make the world safer 👍
@@PeterbFree ...what?
@@PeterbFree you want to say, vote for corrupt GOPs, to manage to perform such disaster at home?
Corrections thanks to commenters:
*The bottom control rods were not coupled with the AZ5. AZ5 only lowered the top rods. If the bottom rods had moved as animated the disaster would have been averted. Here is the corrected video in the Russian version of this video ua-cam.com/video/NeZScDZA_uY/v-deo.html
*There was a smaller first explosion followed by the main explosion approximately 2.5 seconds later. See ua-cam.com/video/NeZScDZA_uY/v-deo.html
*The delay meant less xenon because of the longer time to burn it off.
*It is not certain whether Akimov or Toptunov pressed AZ5. In certain accounts Akimov disconnected the servos to drop the rods faster.
*The lid weighed 1,000 ton
*The return loop from the turbines is indicated here. ua-cam.com/video/NeZScDZA_uY/v-deo.html
A3-5 is the Russian spelling for AZ-5...
This video was probably the best explanation for Chernobyl I've ever gotten. Thanks!
missing a return pipe from the condenser to the reactor
@@connclark2154 Yup true. The return pipes routes are not clear in the drawings I that I got my hands on so I didn't know how to model the return in the 3d's either.
@@Mike-Bell the animation still way better than i can ever want to achieve
@@Mike-Bell not a bad explanation however Anatoly Dyatlov did get interviewed, have you watched his interview? he provides so much information about what was going on in the control room from his 1st hand experience... and "nuclear stalkers" cant get close to the reactor plant to remove anything which is a relief because pripyat has been further destroyed by marauders... not to be confused with urbex guys who have rules by which they are to leave the place exactly how they found it. security within the exclusion zone is very tight due to marauders but there are plenty who take the chance to document and even try to maintain the place for future urbex. Some channels for you to see this would be Bad Cat, Shiey and Kreosan.
Go to sleep at midnight: ✖️
Stay up till 2am watching a compilation of videos on chernobyl: ✔️
2:05 am for me broo
I literally did this last night, except until 5am
Currently up at 1:43 AM. HAHA
@@Coalgate_frsh lol yes but 4:00AM
2:02 Mar del Plata, Argentina.
I worked for GE back in the 1980s. We were working at a nuclear power plant in Arkansas when our electrical supervisor called us altogether to meet in the electrical shop. Quietly in hushed tones he explained to us that Chernobyl had just exploded. We couldn't believe it. We thought about all those engineers, mechanics, operators, health physics personnel had been killed instantly and that more would die later on. To us it was a tragedy way beyond what anyone could imagine. Some of us began to pray for those workers and their families, that somehow God would offer comfort. I've never forgotten that terrible day
Only a handful of people were killed instantly by the explosion itself. The other deaths resulted from radiation poisoning as a consequence of the explosion, but those all took place some time afterward.
Arrogance takes a heavy toll.
i’m from arkansas lol
@@razorbackroar
Hilarious
Don't mix "god" with physics
This is probably the best and most interesting video I've even seen on the Chernobyl accident. The focus on the reactor physics among with the 3D models made all the difference compared to other videos mostly focusing on the consequences. I've shared the link to this video to a large Facebook group with focus on nuclear energy, hope this gives you many more views. Greetings from a NPP worker in Sweden :)
Thanks so much Mikael. I am glad my effort is appreciated and thanks for sharing. Views are mushrooming all the time.
This is the first video where I actually understood what was going on.
@@terbentur2943 I'm so glad. I make particular effort to not go overboard too Sciency and the technical terms. And yet make it easy to grasp some quite complex physics.
@Mikael Andersson
for interest. The views linked with FB around the time of your comment are around 460. Total FB linked view are now 1,100 !!
@@Mike-Bell Yup, I did what I could along with your other fans. Great work must be given credit :)
The best explanation I've seen so far. I would just add that what turned Chernobyl into a disaster unlike Three miles island was the absence of a confinement shield around the reactor
Just breath taking, you answered my little questions like why the control room is scavenged up till today
Glad you appreciated the effort. The scavenged control room is a cool story. However sometimes the truth spoils a good story. multiple comments tell me it was impossible for radiation stalkers to access the control room. Security was impossible.
I would think it us safe to say the staff who would have had legit access would conceivably have pocketed a few keepsakes for themselves. I would have. 😅
@@Mike-Bell those stuff will probably be end up in underground auctions one day, imagine if someone took the actual control room 4 az 5 switch, just imagine how much would it be sold for?🤔
@@Mike-Bell You fail to appreciate the ingenuity and stealth of humans. The sarcopagus was far from secure. Until that dome sent up, I can see a few determined souls braving both security and the radiation for that high value component.
I mean, I have several gauges and old switch gear from various dead industrial complexes littering my shed walls, but nothing that would register on a Geiger counter. Scientist, engineer or other, it doesn't seem like a winning move to salvage this site. Those who salvaged all the left over response vehicles/aircraft (that have not been cancered to death that is) would likely agree.
There were people at Chernobyl who made really bad decisions that, combined with design flaws in the reactor, lead to the disaster. But there were far more heroes present who limited the disaster to only the one reactor and prevented it from spreading to the other reactors. If the fires raging in the turbine hall had engulfed the other three reactors, much of Europe would be uninhabitable today.
Europe being unhabitable is a myth, debunked many times. Soviet Union's propaganda tried to make people focus on heroism instead of the system flaws, so they kinda overblown the importance of heroic task.
@@cytrynowy_melon6604 only reactor 4 melting down already affected a large part of Europe badly for years. Now imagine what would've happened if all the other reactors melted too.
@@cytrynowy_melon6604 People are still dying due to the disaster in places like Germany, Spain, and Norway.
@@cytrynowy_melon6604 No. It really hasn't been "debunked"; If only reactor 4 continued to burn unabated; YOU would be dealing with the fall out right now! You would be seeing %70 overall cancer rates, with %95 in the hotter zones. At least a %60 still born rate, with cancers developing quickly in "normal" births. Those brave men, literally saved the world from living in fall out bunkers on a permanent basis!
@@tracklizard4018 No
I also want to comment how helpful the utterly seamless transitions from animation to the real thing were. Made everything so clear. Thanks for this educational experience of this horrific event.
Night shift “ dude I bet you $20 I can kick flip the reactor lid”
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Heads or tails?
😂😂😂
@@calvinmaybe6550 it landed on its side… so… tails?
I bet 20rubbels that it fall on head,...
Most thorough explanation of the Chernobyl incident I’ve ever come across. You guys deserve some kind of award for this exceptional, play by play description of one of the most serious nuclear disasters in history. Very well done Matt and Mike Bell. Bravo!!!
Edit: Instant new sub here from Columbia, Missouri, USA 🇺🇸 And a big 👍 for everyone who played a part in this remarkable video!
Awesome. Thanks for the subscribe 😊
seeing that massive system of pipes i can only imagine how many hours of plumbing alone went into the construction
This is one of the few accurate videos that explain the events of that night in simplistic terms without clouding the facts with 'untruths'. Good job Mike,
I come back to Chernobyl documentaries and such every couple of years, kind of a tradition if you will, and I must say what You've done here is amazing! You've managed to tell the story and effectively explain what happened in 13 minutes, and still do it better than most 30-60 minute lectures and make it more clear visually than 45-90 minute documentaries.
Bravo, good Sir!
I feel so sorry for the staff involved, it wasn't their fault since they didn't even know about the hidden danger, they paid with their lives trying to fix the problem and not even comprehending how bad it was.. may them rest in peace and hope they are at a better place than they were at the time
Don't worry. The culprits were found. The employees knew about the danger.
WHAT???...they broke every safety rule....If they did't had pulled all of the control rods out, this would never happen.. They are 100% at fault...
@@kommunistkomsomolskiy yea found dead
They knew they were violating every safety regulation in the book. To go back to the car analogy, it's like speeding toward a group of pedestrians on a busy city street at 120mph counting on the fact that your ABS brakes will stop the car just in time when you jam the brake pedal to the metal. If the brakes fail at 120 mph but wouldn't have failed at 35 mph it's still the driver's fault - maybe he didn't know the brakes would fail in that particular way at 120mph, but any idiot knows not to drive down a busy city street at 120 mph.
I thought two senior members of the team were given prison sentences. Did they die in jail.?
Western Nuclear advice: “If in doubt, ask!”
Soviet Nuclear advice: “If in doubt, you are delirious. Take this man to the infirmary!”
yeah, ask the people who build nuclear power plant in Fukushima. It constantly leaking high amounts of VERY radioactive water into the ocean for a fucking 10 years. 4 reactors melted and 2 of them expolded.
@@redsun9261 The problem with Fujushima being; They literally cant do anything to stop it...
@@brentfarvors192 They could have just build a seawall high enough like every other NPP on the ocean shore has. Tsunami was completly predictable, its not something that happens once in million years, yet coproration, just like soviets, ignored basic safety of construction.
@@redsun9261 Oh, I definitely agree; They should have NEVER built the facility without sea walls; Still doesn't help now, since it's already melted through the core...They basically have a bunch of melted corium laying on the sea floor; Every time the tide comes in/out, it is taking the radioactive waste with it...
@@brentfarvors192 just putting your plant by the shore and not by one of the inland lakes when you live right on top of a seam in two tectonic plates says enough for me lol
I really like how clean your video message appears. It's so easy for me to get confused but not in your video. Was able to finally understood what and how exactly happened from start to finish.
Glad it was helpful!
The most perfectly narrated video I’ve ever seen, clear and unrushed. There’s lots of informative videos on UA-cam which are ruined by people who rush through dialogue as if they have a train to catch! I will look through your listing for more gems.
This was amazing to watch!
I’ve read up, and understand every part of why the reactor went into a meltdown phase, but your video was able to explain every detail, and every part of it all... in under 13 minutes!!
That’s an amazing feat! Great job on this!
Well if you understand it, can you explain why lowering the graphite that is already in the reactor would increase reactivity? Water at the bottom is replaced by boron on top - net result surely is less reactivity, not more, and afaik the reactor is hottest at the top, not the bottom? The only thing that makes sense to me is this explanation if for some reason the reactor was really uneven, and even though net reactivity decreased, it increased locally so much in the bottom to cause the explosion. The other option would be that the rods were actually pulled out so far that the graphite was out of the reactor until the button was pressed.
@@cyberfunk3793 The graphite didn't reach all the way to the bottom of the reactor, so when it was lowered, it displaced the water at the bottom of the reactor, to the point where there was almost nothing controlling neutrons at the bottom of the reactor, which caused a localized power surge. This was explained in-video, by the way.
@@chengaanimates2108 "so when it was lowered, it displaced the water at the bottom of the reactor, to the point where there was almost nothing controlling neutrons at the bottom of the reactor, which caused a localized power surge"
And this would have been compensated for by the water(or boron in the control rods) replacing the position higher up where the graphite had been before, so the net reactivity would have been less unless for some reason the reactor was functioning very unevenly and there was significantly more reactivity lower down, which would be strange as the temperature is higher the higher you go so it should be the opposite: more reaction higher up or at the center.
"This was explained in-video, by the way."
The explanation doesn't add up, as I made clear, by the way.
I have heard that the heat was so intense at the bottom that things melted and control rods could not move down
Спасибо за адекватную оценку произошедшего, грамотное объяснение физики реактора, а так же за отличную анимацию!
There are still pieces of radioactive graphite in the far away surrounding area. The UA-camr Bionerd was good at digging them up. The poor cleanup of the area is to this day a disgrace.
Typical Russians
It was not "poor" per say. It could've gone better, and it should've never happened, but a reminder that the cleanup had the budget exceeding that one of the ENTIRE Apollo space program, so it was surely one of the biggest endevours in the modern world
yeah and other ukrainian channels (one of them being kreosan) saw a intact graphite rod just sitting in the jupiter plant
YOU DIDN'T SEE GRAPHITE
YOU DIDN'T!!!
BECAUSE IT'S NOT THERE
@@euvo_sound Doesn't make much sense. The graphite would cool down extremely fast. Only the uranium fuel would keep pumping heat. And if it was ejected from the actual reactor it is unlikely to be concentrated enough to do so.
“Man can dream up the most amazing things, but ultimately it’s humans responsible for the things going wrong” that sounds bad
Indeed. There are no more dangerous words than "It can't do X". Titanic can't sink. The RBMK design can't explode. Etc.
Humans will always be the weak link.
well that is easily truth,.. someone desighned it, someone else builded it, and someone else mantain it and control it,... every accident had error on one or more of those stages,...
@@jfbeam
Another examples are planes can’t collapse the World Trade Center.
This was the video I have been looking for, for years now! A well explained, detailed, animated account of what had happened. You put the perfect amount of technical information on how the RBMK reactors work, and how they’re flawed. Great job.
I set out to achieve exactly what you describe. I'm glad you think so and the your comment is much appreciated.
This is superb and sensibly narrated. This must be one of the 10% of the best on UA-cam.
Such a tragic loss of life. We have to commend the operators who sacrificed their lives to keep the other 4 reactors from suffering the same fate. Chernobyl was a huge disaster, but it could have been so much worse.
Chernobyl only had 4 reactors at the time of the accident. But they were building unit 5 and 6 at the time who was never completed. The last reactor shut down early 2000
@@Manny.93 Ok, that's why I have heard of more than 4. I can understand why the other two were nixed.
Haha yea. There are some videos on YT showing people visiting the locations of the new reactor buildings
Layers of Iies promoted both by Soviets and the West. It was the biggest CIA operation in history.
Bruh remember us when you're famous. This shit is on point.
Must you use "bruh"?
@@JC-lu4se Must you be so miserable?
Hoping to achieve a better understanding, I’ve always wanted someone to make a video giving a visual reference as to what took place that night within the RBMK reactor when things went wrong, and you did this masterfully. Thank you.
The most simplistic, well visualised & explained timeline of events. Very well done.
I was one of 22 people in the UK who developed an illness that is categorised as ‘most likely’ attributed to the fall out from Chernobyl. The ‘most likely’ title means that the government doesn’t need to pay compensation, though my Doctors over the years since 86 have all agreed on radiation poisoning.
Nothing like being in the Wrong place, at the Wrong time‼️☢️
I watched your previous Chernobyl video, and this one is another amazing visualization and explaination. Definitely blows all mainstream media out of the water.
Short answer:
The RBMK reactor 4 at the chernobyl NPP was a graphite modified RBMK1000, the reactor got too low power so the controlers started to raise the power, the power got too high power so the A3-5(AZ-5). The control rods shot into the reactor, but the graphite RAISED the power. To around 33,000. To make it worse, the reactor was also poisoned
As someone who has done a lot of reading and digging on what was going on in that reactor that night. This so by far the best video I have seen on the subject.
This is brilliant. You are very skilled at capturing detail of a complex subject. The animation is stunning, and your narration is perfect.
Wow, thank you!
It's kind of terrifying to think about Khodemchuk after all these years. He was never found, we don't know if he's under all of that debris, if his body decomposed or anything, it's heartbreaking
From what I know the radioactivity is high enough to not let decomposition causing bacteria and fungi live, so probably his body is only damaged by the debris and likely burns, considerably well preserved compared to most corpses.
His body evaporated. There are very high temperatures.
I have no doubt he was vaporized in the explosion, and died instantly. He was more fortunate than the others who died a slow, agonizing death from Acute Radiation Syndrome.
Stunning visuals and video!! Please post more!! I learned so much my friend
Well done... I just started watching the HBO drama and wanted more info. Great timing.
Your in shock. Go to the infirmary.
Best chernobyl disaster explanation ever! Legasov would thank you for that 3D Modelling. That was what I was missing to get complete understanding about "how could a BRMK explode?".
I think you're right to remind that this was designed in an earlier time, without much of the detailed knowledge and modelling that we now have, and that it is easy to criticise individuals who did not have the benefit of our hindsight. However, that said, it's pretty reasonable to criticise a system that allowed the reactor to start work before its safety testing was complete, placed very clear pressure on its engineers to complete the test regardless of whether the moment was suitable or not, and decided not to tell them about known flaws in its emergency shutdown systems. Just as this was a steam and gas explosion not a nuclear one, the root problem was a managerial failure not a technical one.
Human Incompetence. The source of 99.8% of the world’s problems.
@Amy Weinholtz The U.S. also has done its share in that regard, and then some. And we also had nuclear accidents that have killed people horribly by radiation poisoning and acute radiation sickness.
I've watched several videos about this, yours is the first that actually gives a decent visual and explanation for what exactly happened! Thank you!
5:44 I have read and watched a lot on this subject and but your demonstration of the xenon poisoning and rationale on why they should not restart after it is poisoned, was extremely helpful. It was mentioned "as a matter of fact" in Wikipedia but more in a "scientific way" where we are all supposed to get it. Unless all the plant workers were trained nuclear scientists I cannot see how anyone working there would have a clue about this stuff. But evidence is clear that those that designed them for sure held critical operational information back - either from the get go or as issues at other plants occurred. Thanks for the video - well done.
Only one thing I have to add to this excellent video. At the time of disaster instructions were different and allowed operations with only 7 to 15 equal rods. 26 appeared only in 1987. Dyatlov in his memoirs mentioned that.
I just have to say, incredible work! The animations, the attention to detail, the 3d rendering, the information served. By far the most informative and polished animated info-videos I've seen! Fantastic work 👍🏻
Great video, the 3D tour was incredibly helpful, I've watched many videos on nuclear and Chernobyl specifically and the model here was by far the most comprehensive and informative.
One of the best documentaries on the actual process of the reaction and explosion.
Extremelly well done animation! A mistake not already mentioned is that there were no channel ruptures at Ignalina. Ignalina is where tip effect was discovered, not Leningrad.
Also, you should have mentioned the spatial problem: core too big, essentially ~40 reactors under one cover. It only took a small fraction of the core to go supercritical for the disaster to happen.
Correct. The failure of several fuel channels was the cause of the first explosion that flung away the 1,000 ton reactor top. Steam pressure built up in a "hotspot" at the base of the core so rapidly in those fuel channels they ruptured and the steam escaped beneath the reactor lid. It soon built up rapidly enough to fling away the reactor lid and all the control rods right through the roof a kilometer into the air. When that happened, all the other fuel channels which were also at extreme pressure were suddenly open to the atmosphere, and the water in them flashed to steam too. That was followed by the second explosion which occurred when hydrogen, red hot graphite and oxygen from the air came into contact with one another.
Wow, I didn’t expect to see this in my feed!
**Edit**
Mike actually edited the video to implement most of these changes, which must be unprecedented in the history of UA-cam!
Good video overall, but here are some corrections:
4:20 - The graphite sections were cut short because there wasn't enough space below the core, rather than to equalize fuel burn.
4:45 - The previous test had been performed just after a reactor startup, but on April 26 there was a shutdown planned.
5:00 - Running the reactor at half power did not poison it. On the contrary it gave time for the xenon to burn off. If not for the delay, the poisoning would have been worse. Xenon is not a contributing factor to the accident any more than gravity contributes to a skydiving accident.
6:00 - The rules at the time DID allow for restoring power regardless of Xenon, so long as certain conditions were met. It is ambiguous whether any rules were broken, but at the time the operators would not have seen any clear reason not to continue.
6:15 - The control rods were in a normal and allowed position after restoring power for the test. But later changes to coolant flow and temperature meant that more rods had to be removed. The car analogy is silly because the RBMK was designed to be operated like this (fewer rods inserted = greater fuel efficiency).
6:45 - The personnel had agreed to push AZ-5 at the START of the test, but apparently there was some confusion and this action was delayed for 36 seconds.
7:15 - An entire group of automatic control rods was fully inserted, and another set was in motion as well. There is nothing 'frightening' about no rods being fully inserted; this is just how the RBMK was supposed to be.
7:25 - In practice the limit was 15 rods, not 26. RBMKs had to regularly operate with less than 26 rods, and operators were unable to track short-term fluctuations in this value because at low power there was no instrument capable of tracking it.
7:38 - AZ-5 did NOT insert any rods from below. If it had, the reactor would have been saved. This safety improvement was scheduled to be implemented following the scheduled shutdown.
Майкл, ты?
@@ВячеславТитов-ы8ж тихо, я инкогнито
Thanks for this information.
The positions of the control rods at moment of AZ5 I modelled exactly as in the INSAG-7 report. This shows 7 below rods partially in the core. How is it that these rods had not yet been installed if they are shown in INSAG? Insag also shows the Auto rods were mostly extracted at the time.
I don't recall INSAG saying they the below rods were still to be installed and this is a pretty vital aspect.
Are you certain the below rods were not yet installed? Its the first I heard this. But when visualizing it in 3d, it does seem odd they were not enough to the stop the runaway on the floor and makes sense.
@@Mike-Bell What page of INSAG are you referring to? I will check, but suspect you are misinterpreting something. By the way ORM = 7 has nothing to do with 7 rods being partially inserted. Many more rods were partially inserted than that. ORM is a calculated value that depends on the shape of the neutron fields, "1 rod" is sort of an imaginary value.
The bottom-insertion rods (USP group) were installed, they just didn't insert when AZ-5 was pressed. The planned fix was to connect their insertion to the AZ-5 signal.
@@MinSredMash Ok now I understand. Chernobyl did have it’s below rods but they didn’t enter the core on the night of the disaster because they weren’t coupled to the AZ5. Had Toptunov inserted the below rods first and then shutdown or if they were included with the AZ5 signal it would have all been a non-event . What a tragic ballsup because it is so clear from the 3d how they would have prevented the explosion.
Page 45 right at the top confirms that the shortened below rods were proposed in 1977 to be coupled to AZ5 but not implemented at Chernobyl as well as other plants.
Now I’m pondering whether to take the video down and upload a correct version with the below rods not moving in the animation with the pushing of the AZ5. And also delete the wording about the ORM and some of the xenon poisoning wording. The xenon caused the stalling of the reactor to 1% right? Redoing the voice is big job now but I can redo the 3d modeling easily and quickly.
p 119 shows the rod depths I modeled in 3d. I presume this is reliable. It shows the auto rods also extracted.
Thanks for the corrections you list.
You make very good points, added detail to the scientific happenings within the reactor rather than just the design flaw being that "it was graphite tips" and gave in depth information such as what "xenon poisoning" is. I never knew this before, there wasn't enough information on youtube at least for this particular thing.
I love it!
Thank you so much for those animations, models and photo...
I learnt that between the lid of the reactor and the reactor itself, there is a huge gap for control rods
You should take on more disasters that has happened in the past, best animation so far and I appreciate that you talk calm and collected.
This was really fascinating, thank you for all the work you put into this. I always wondered what had really happened
An excellent video. The designers of the RBMK were well aware of the problems of the design. Particularly at low power levels. Apparently they produced a detailed manual explaining what the operators should do. However the KGB felt that the manual could fall into the hands of a terrorist/saboteur.
As a result the manual was suppressed. As a result of this the power station staff had no real idea of what to do. The remarkable thing is not that the disaster happened but that it hadn't happened earlier. As you point there had been problems at Ingalina and Leningrad. But due to the culture of paranoia in USSR this information was not disclosed.
Fabulous comment!! Thanks. I'm learning all the time from your comment and others like it...
Are there any sources for claim that KGB was behind preventing releasing manual about reactor flaws, though? Because there are sources that main designer of the reactor Nikolay Dollezhall ignored the reports of flaws, as acknowledging them could hurt his career, because he was seen as a flawless genius in USSR. Alexandrov who was supervising him, was also engaged in advocating and supporting this reactor type. It is true that moving the supervision of operations of nuclear power plants from one ministry to other apparently contributed to problems with communication and flow of information. But this transfer was done because designers of reactors most probably lied that those are ready, very safe much more than they really were, so party assumed that they can be supervised by more 'civilian' ministeries, such as ministry of energy. In my opinion designers were too ambitious and lied about progress with reactors, because of that they later had to rush the design process, with resulted with trivial errors. For example water space at the bottom of control rods resulted from miscalculation, designers initially thought rods could be longer, this space at the bottom of reactor was meant to be taken by longer graphite tips. When it turned out that those would not fit, and it is impossible to change the whole construction (as first reactors were build almost at the time of design process and equipment was manufactured already), they assumed they would use different technology to reduce amount of water (water film cooling). But this technology finally turned out to be unready, so they were left with too short tips. Like an architect who forgot to include the height of the building when planning number of floors. Absurd and terryfying. Buy that's what happens when design process is really rushed, that's why nuclear phycists shouldn't lie about having their reactor designs proven and ready, as this most probably happened. They believed too much in their own genius, especially because people from communist party, even such high ranking as Kruschev were not intelligent and knowledgeable enough to know that physicists are lying to them about reactor progess. Designers and other people from Kurchatov institute who were promoting the RBMK construction, such as Alexandrov, Dollezhall, Legasov (as he was not such a good guy in reality, earlier he was also promoting RBMK despite it's flaws) believed they can get away with such lies and errors because they are smarter than everybody else, and that ultimately nothing will happen, so errors in reactors can be covered up to protect their careers, especially because it was easy to keep things secret in nuclear industry in the USSR, which makes it even easier to designer of reactor to hide his errors. But it happened and revealed everything. If we only knew more about design process of reactor,. I think what happened and what really caused chernobyl, is what I have described above. Not screaming diatlov, but lying physicists from Kurchatov institute, such as Legasov. Ironically, HBO series end when he is talking about lies being the cause of all problems. He was a a part of that lie, despite show portraying him in good light in opposition to others.
@@cytrynowy_melon6604 Quite Tomasz. It is easy to forget that the RMBK was a dual purpose reactor. As it was designed to generate electricity/district heating and to provide weapons grade plutonium. Actually it was carefully designed to allow it to operate on natural uranium without using heavy water. What is apparent is that the lead design engineer Nikolay Dollezhal (1899-2000) was well aware of its shortcomings. However for the reasons that you outline he kept quiet. That said the RMBK proved to be both reliable and robust in service. The issue with the fuel rods was understood by the Kurchatov Institute. Hence the manual to deal with this and the other issues of the reactor (At this point it is worth noting that all types of Reactor have their own operating systems, characteristics and foibles etc etc) From what I have read N.Dollezhal never actually claimed that he was "infallible" it was the Soviet media that did that.
Let's be honest about this He was not the only scientist or engineer in the USSR who treated in this way.
One thinks of Sergei Korolov for example! Or indeed Andrei Sakharov that is until he began to denounce the Soviet system.
It was Valery Legusov The First Deputy Director of Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy (He would later commit suicide in 1988 apparently due to his despair over the Soviet civilian nuclear energy programme).
Who led the investigation into the Chernobyl disaster. He made it clear that the KGB had suppressed the RMBK operation manual for the reasons stated earlier in his report to the IAEA. He was also extremely critical of the lack of a coordinated approach by the various regulatory bodies in the USSR to share information on the operating characteristics of the RMBK reactor.
It is also clear that had the problems experienced at both Ingalina and Leningrad been reported accurately and disseminated to the correct authorities at the other nuclear power stations using RMBK reactors then it is almost certain that the Chernobyl disaster would never have happened. You are absolutely correct in thinking that the endless changes in top level management and the changes of ministerial control of the civilian nuclear programme was a major factor in this. Even Leonid Brezhnev was critical of the endless "reforms" to Soviet industry and privately is said to stated "Reforms , Reforms! People ought to work better, that's the problem!"
Another issue that didn't help was the "Campaign" attitude to getting things done! As this often meant that things were done quickly and with very little concern shown to "difficult" or "troublesome" issues or situations. Which were simply brushed aside.
@@nicholaskelly6375 Were reforms and campaigns a legacy of Stalin's 5 year plans or Mao's great leap forwards?
@@cytrynowy_melon6604 Everything I’ve ever read about short rods attributes them to equalizing the reaction - an intentional design versus a screw-up. Yours is the first I’ve read otherwise. What have I read? Internet drivel but lots of it. You sound quite knowledgeable - how did you find this out?
That piece that got blown up to the air and fell down back to the reactor wasn't a lid, it was the Elena - a bio-shield. Incredible animation and explanation tho, exceptional work my man!
Correct its the Upper Bio Shield but everyone calls it a reactor lid because it’s like a cup lid in a sense if you squeeze a cup enough you’ll get the same reaction to what happened at Chernobyl where the lid flew about 500m in the air.
@@deathjr112 bro... it's really not a lid... and *how the hell did it flew HALF A KILOMETER in the air???*
@@rigel8755 the distance was an exaggeration. As for the bio shield everyone has called it the Reactor Lid from the scientists all the way to designers and investigators
@@deathjr112 ohok, but anyways, calling it a reactor lid is wrong, because it's a Bio-Shield. It's like everyone calls an airplane engine a ''turbine'', but it's called ''engine'', turbine is just a piece that is assembled inside the engine, got it?
@@deathjr112 and in fact, the RBMK reactors really have lids, it's the surface the workers can step on.
it's 2022, I've seen a few documentaries and the obvious series but out of all of them, this video was the best at explaining what happened clearly. Cheers bud.
Excellent explanation, without getting to deep into reactor physics, you did a grand job there!
The best video about chernobyl, simple , direct and objective. It is possible understand that happened in 00:12:50 of video. There are in youtube, some other videos with 1 hour or more that doesn´t get it. Congratulations.
Thank you. This is the first direct, no-nonsense explanation I've seen on what happened at Chernobyl.
Thank you. I appreciate your comment.
The video is great, I would just like to note a couple of things. AZ-5 was never that far down on the operator panel. A video of the Unit 4 Control Room during commissioning revealed this. In that specific location, there was a joystick used to move the control rods up and down. Second thing, AZ-5 did not insert the control rods from below the core, but after the scheduled shutdown of Unit 4 in 1986, AZ-5 was going to be modified to insert these rods from below the core.
I was about to write it, well see
@@vladkryptonsalvinorine6715 He already acknowledged it and several other things in a comment which he did not pin (I don't know why he didn't pin it)
I was in highschool when this happened really didn't understand how serious it was but I have learned over the years
I was in elementary school; I knew how bad it was...
A clear and concise explanation as to the disaster that occurred at Chernobyl. The computer generated diagrams were essential for dummies like me to understand. Superb presentation.
Very good video, now I really understand how it did happend, your channel is so underrated.
I appreciate that!
@@Mike-Bell so you're telling me the az5 button was a trap? Right I warned that whipersnapper dyatlov about pulling up those control rods
This is 100% quality
As with the Challenger disaster, this issue came down to two elements: design and project management. The urgency to get the Challenger mission into orbit (plus the PR from McAuliffe as the first teacher) and the lack of communication about O-Ring temperature issues led to the solid rocket booster breach that led to complete loss.
For Chernobyl, it was Viktor Bryukhanov - the Chernobyl plant director - who was under pressure to complete a long-postponed safety test. This urgency juxtaposed with end-of-month deadline demands for power and the desired promotion outcomes (Bryukhanov would get bumped up, Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomin would take his place, and Deputy Chief Anatoly Dyatlov would move up to Fomin's job). Add in the shift-change in personnel (and a lack of experience at that), plus state intelligence keeping RBMK reactor flaws hidden, and it just happened to be a perfect storm (as disasters often are) that led to the explosion. People can point to the USSR's desire to put cost and secrecy at higher importance than safety, but that's a factor regardless of being Soviet or American. Just as you often get what you pay for, the desire to rush complex processes to completion regardless of anticipation of risk outcome will lead to other disasters down the road.
This is spectacular animation, and really helped me visualize what happened. Thank you for all your hard work!
I clicked on this video with absolutely low expectations. I thought it would be another clickbait super low quality video with (wrongly) copied facts out of wikipedia again, by someone who wants to make some youtube dollars but has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Boy, was i wrong. This is a gem!
Prob the best 'laymen explanation' I've seen yet. Top work👍👍
Great video. Always been fascinated with Chernobyl and 90% of the videos I've watched that don't address the lower portion of the reactor being the fuse, this video explains it the best. This was the mother of all pressure cooker explosions and not a nuclear bomb. It would have been exponentially worse (though impossible) for to it have detonated as a bomb. The other reactors would have blown as well. All the pressure went up, thankfully. Though the worst nuclear disaster in human history (so far) it could have been so much worse.
Cheers, I enjoyed that.
If it was close to Kiev, it would have been far worse, with many dying of Acute Radiation Syndrome. Look how slow the authorities were to evacute the people living near the plant. How would three million people possibly be evacuated in time even here in the West, let alone Ukraine?
This is one of the better documentaries... Keep it up 👍
Thanks, will do!
Nice job on the video. The animations were well put together.
Your modelling of the systems, animation is without doubt the best I’ve ever seen on this.
More than all this all, thank you for showing care and understanding of this catastrophic event.
I’ve have subscribed to your channel and look forward to more uploads.
Well done!
Feedback is appreciated and thanks for the subscribe. Now i need to find more time for animating. 😁
Another excellently done animation, Mike. I have been told by operators that there are procedures for bringing a poisoned reactor back to working levels, but those are water reactors; increasing the power in the reactor does burn off the poison, and the operators have to be following the reactivity very closely to be inserting control rods as the poison is burned off, but it can be and apparently is done. That they should be trying it on third shift with the lack of attention and with safety equipment shut off in preparation for the test seems criminal. I was gratified to hear that you believe that the reactor did not suffer a criticality accident, that it was steam and hydrogen; there seems to be a lot of people who want some sort of criticality to be the explanation.
Many comments in my previous video repeatedly insisting it was nuclear. In fact they know it was one, apparently there are mathematical calculations ... LOL
@@Mike-Bell Even if it was, it was a "fizzle," fortunately.
Nicely done. The animations and modelling were excellent.
This is so well done. Thank you. I was 15 years old when this accident occurred and of course I did really understand the seriousness of what had occurred. I mean, I understood it was a terrible tragedy but I didn't understand what had occurred. Decades later, all I feel is profound respect for all of the men and women who sacrificed life and health in an attempt to mitigate further damage and who, ran towards the burning building.
This video honestly helped me with a history project because it's so detailed and awesome!
Merci pour les sous titres en Français ! Sa fait plaisir d'avoir un véritable documentaire de qualité.
This was very well done, and all the information I could ever want in a very well made animation. This is S+ Tier.
This was a GREAT video! I've read a lot about the Chenobyl disaster, but the way this video explained it well with a combination of visuals that really makes you understand it a lot better. You've earned another subscriber.
8:42 will always give me the chills because, power was off the charts, and that delivery of "there wasn't anything left to do the measuring," like something tiny observing our side of things, and we show it our normal vs its normal, and the size between the two things is overwhelming
As a STALKER myself, I stood in the destroyed reactor number 4 and and was blessed by The Wish Granter.
I would have told the Wish Granter to change the universe so that environmental catastrophes can be managed more easily and safely when they occur. 31 people should not have had to die in order to clean up after the Chernobyl disaster. Millions of people shouldn’t have to die during the coronavirus pandemic.
Just watched the (excellent) TV series again and watched this video by way of explanation of some of the science behind the disaster. Many thanks Mike as it was most informative.
Subscribed for the extremely in-depth analysis and absolutely incredible visualizations.
Really well made vid. And animation is out of the world man.. Nice one..
Amazing animations 😍😍😍
Very indepth explanation for all the nuclear jargons I've been reading and watching. Thanks.
2:27 Correction. Neutrons released from fission have mean velocity in region of 20 Mm/s. Very far from "nearly speed of light".
Thank you for this video. After the HBO series came out I was intrigued and researched and read various independent sources. I reached the same conclusion which you emphasize in this video, and which was unfortunately misreported in the series
It is not that the operators brought the the reactor to the point of explosion and the AZ-5 was "too late" to help. It's the fact that due to the design flaws, the AZ-5 itself is what blew it up.
Yes, the conditions that led to this situation were due to a sequence of wrong decisions by the operators, however, as you said - they did not know about these flaws. The best phrase I've seen in this context goes something like: "The question of fault of the operating personnel should be addressed in a context of one's accountability while sitting on a keg of gunpowder, completely unaware".
The designers of the reactor were fully aware of the flaws, thanks to those earlier smaller accidents you mentioned. But only after the big disaster they got around to fixing them, quickly and efficiently, across all remaining RBMK reactors, quietly and without ever admitting any responsibility. Shameful.
Really amazing the way you have demonstrated what went wrong that awful night.
Shortly before his death in the nineties, Anatoli Dyatlov would say: "The reactor shouldn't have been in operation. The real blame lies with the atomic energy authorities. Not having the correct documentation when and where it was needed made the explosion of the reactor inevitable. The reactor marched straight to its doom."
I agree with that assessment. If it hadn't been him and that reactor, it would have been someone else with another. Once the design was approved, it was only a matter of time.
The Soviet authorities made him a convenient scapegoat. While he was an ardent man who his coworkers generally didn't like arguing with he was nowhere near as clueless and disrespectful as media (and the famous mini-series) portray him as. While the ultimate blame still rests on him one can totally see how he himself had little to no knowledge of the inherent design flaws of the reactors.
Dyatlov was an idiot. All he had to do was leave the reactor alone for three days once it was poisoned by xenon. Complete negligence on his part, combined with an obsolete reactor design.
leonid toptunov had once mentioned to one of his co-workers that he was concerned about the graphite tipped control rods, because he thought in a case of emergency they might actually do the exact opposite of what they were supposed to do and kickstart a positive feedback loop of chain reactions.
i guess if he had reported these concerns to his superiors he would have lost his job, so he kept quiet about it, only to be proven right, which he paid with his life. he was only 25 when he dXed.
Nah, he would absolutely not have been fired, what a nonsense. He would've been just shot on the spot. And his family too for good measure. It's the Soviet Union we're talking about after all. /s