One direct result of the SL-1 incident that Simon didn’t mention is the “one stuck rod” criterion. Following SL-1, it became illegal in the US to design or operate a reactor that could become critical simply by withdrawing a single control rod all the way out of the core. Conversely, all reactors must be able to be shut down with any single rod stuck fully out of the core and incapable of being inserted. This is HUGE in terms of reactor safety, and prevents, by design, the kind of accident that occurred at SL-1.
Most likely. Imagine if you service your car on a jack stand from below. If stand fails, car will squish you. Making two rods mandatory is like regulation to make cars that can't lift off the ground by any one jack, only two or more, making it impossible to die squished because one jack failed. @@ZQRDS2W
@@ninehundreddollarluxuryyac5958 in this particular instance that sounds like data that should be possible to collect and it would be in the best interest of people who implemented the improvement to actually collect it.
I have an old magazine from the 1960's with an article on the SL-1 and what caused it to blow up. The design had one large control rod and several small control rods. Despite that, the rods weren't enough to shut it down. Additional neutron absorber was needed so boron "poison strips" were attached to the sides of the control rods, taking up most of the clearance between the sides of the rods and the fuel assemblies. Under the constant bombardment of radiation and the very hot water, the boron strips would swell up and break apart. The article included a photo of some damaged boron strips which had been replaced. As the strips deteriorated, they made the control rods difficult to move. The other major flaw in the SL-1's design was that the main control rod could start the fission reaction by itself if pulled up far enough. The rods had been disconnected from their drive motors so the motors could be serviced. The crew was reconnecting the rods to the motors. The swollen boron strips caused the main rod to stick, resisting being raised to reconnect it. When a bit more force was applied, it popped loose, snapping upwards much too far. The poor guy likely didn't even have a chance to begin to start thinking "Oh sh!t!"
You missed the biggest lesson learned in this disaster, that no reactor should ever be designed to allow any single point failure as was the case with the central control rod of the SL1
@@InterdictionAirsoft I like submarines for some odd reason, that's why I asked. I wasn't doubting him. People get so negative on here, you know what i mean?
When I was a Navy nuclear plant trainee in Idaho, there were still old timers around that were on the site when SL-1 exploded. They were always interesting to listen to.
Back in '79, when I was at A1W prototype, my crew chief's father-in-law was one of the first persons to respond to the initial alarm. This accident was presented to my class at NPS just shortly before going to prototype. That guy had some fascinating stories of the response. I recently taught orientation classes to new engineers at out site and used the AEC films as a springboard to getting into emergency planning and accident response.
This is covered in Navy nuclear power training to illustrate how procedures and the buddy system is essential when conducting procedures in a reactor compartment.
'Someone was impaled to the ceiling by a control rod from an exploding nuclear reactor' is one of those sentences where, if you are talking about a movie, you go 'whooa wicked, that's gnarly', but when you're talking about real life you kind of just have to stare in horror and go 'Oh... oh NO...'
Yeah your like yup someone fucked up somewhere that's usually the case in these things. I worked in refineries before and like 9 out of ten times someone fucked up it happens we all human. And it only takes one time
@@troygarza5720 when it comes to pulling jammed control rods out of a reactor, it shouldn't be possible for a human yanking a bit too hard to cause the whole thing to explode. This was a fundamental design flaw. Not some worker fucking up
@@WhichDoctor1 you missed the part in the video about failed maintenance routines I guess. Know why because it's expensive so they cut corners period in every industry and this early in nuclear it was I imagine no different than the refineries of today. Google it they all blow up every 4 to 6 years all of em. Because it's expense to shut everything down to do maintenance vrs just wait tell there's a failure. It's literally cheaper to wait. By a large margin bro. So yeah human error due to human greed and laziness period. Ask any engineer or builder/mechanic that's the truth. Good work don't come cheap there's a reason for that and good work and quality are the same when taking about engineering and building. including maintenance.
We spent a lot of time discussing this in the navy nuclear program. What surprised me was that no one I knew, myself included had heard of the incident before. Thanks for bringing this to light. This and the rest of your channels are full of interesting information that I’m surprised we all don’t know more about.
Outside of the nuclear industries, I think most in the US think of Three Mile Island, Hiroshima, Fukashima Daichi and Chernobyl for nuclear disasters first followed by uranium/plutonium processing, mining and bomb test sites, perhaps Hanford and then maybe Radium Girls. I don't remember hearing of SL-1 in my education although I had heard of Fermi Lab first reactor. I'm wondering if I confuse SL-1 as being at Hanford.
I was an operator of a reactor on a submarine years ago and while on watch in the engine room, literature was not allowed. I read the T-manuals of so many nuclear accidents over and over again on mid watch. As far as nuclear accidents go, it's tough to surpass Chernobyl in terms of action, but I've always wondered why this one wasn't more well known.
Kyle Hill earned his bachelors of science in civil and environmental engineering from Marquette University in 2011, and his masters of arts in science communication from the same university in 2013. Taken from his biography page. And yes his half life series is excellent well worth checking out.
i was served a UA-cam ad for my local atomic energy company whilst watching this. 😄 The basic message was "nuclear power is safe and clean, and keeps us free of dependence on Russian oil and gas"
To add to the comments about Kyle Hill, he also was able to explain in a fairly recent video why other green energy sources are actually less economically viable than nuclear. If I remember correctly, it's because the other sources recquire batteries for storage, whereas nuclear can just plug into the grid.
I live in Central Pennsylvania and was about 10 when Three Mile Island happeend. There is talk recently about restarting the undamaged reactor that was decommissioned some years back.
I hate to plug another channel, but I highly recommend Kyle Hill's video on SL-1 if you're interested in a deeper dive. It's about twice the length of this video if I recall correctly.
On that note, I was probably watching this video because I've been thinking about how safe nuclear power is these days and how I thought nuclear power should be more prevalent than it is. Then, our orator finished his story, and I was left with thoughts of history repeating itself. Much respect.
Somewhere there is a video of a PowerPoint presentation given some years ago by one of the firefighters that was there that night. Very interesting to hear. The ambulance was not permanently abandoned; they parked it out in the desert with McKinley's body in it after he was declared dead because his body was a hazard and the nurse and driver weren't equipped to deal with it yet. Later, after his body was removed and taken to a lab, the ambulance was decontaminated and stayed in service for several years after. One of the guys was wearing a watch and the guy stuck to the roof was wearing a wedding ring. These metal parts were analyzed as part of the investigation to determine the power excursion of the reactor. There is a very good government film on youtube which details the investigation and cleanup of the accident. The amount of information the scientists and engineers were able to gather was very thorough and the brains of those guys is impressive. Sadly, even smart people make mistakes.
I was a committee member on the Hanford Health Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Some of the things I learned while serving the Tribe I worked for were actually very spooky! I learned a lot of things about the Idaho Nuclear Engineering Laboratories operations & and I grew up as a "downstreamer" to the INEL. Not pretty.
I was a college student in Utica, New York during the Three Mile Island incident.The thing that made us so fearful is that no one gave us ANY information leading to absolute distrust of nuclear power and the Federal Government.
Well it would be. It's an example of what not to do, the dangers etc. It being talked about with people who are to work in the nuclear area isn't the same as it being known by the general public.
My great uncle and his family lived at the Idaho Falls base. They moved before the accident occurred, though. The military was smart enough to keep housing far enough away from SL-1 to keep everyone safe.
@@yt.personal.identification just to answer your question, yes. This is part of the site design. They produce so little waste now, it is stored on site in bunkers.
You should do a story about the reactor meltdown in Los Angeles, Califorina at the Santa Suzana Field Labratory that was covered up for decades. Even today, I would say that the majority of people in Los Angeles know nothing about it.
Quite a few comments on Kyle Hill's video were from people trying to restrain themselves from making a joke out of "pulling Legg" down from the ceiling. Which was the hardest recovery, since part of the building had to be cut open just to get to him.
Studied this in college. There's some interesting background. The guy that was stuffed up in the cooling tower was not seen at first. They found 2 guys in the reactor room, one dead, the other close to. There should have been 2 guys on top of the reactor, so it appears that 1 had time to jump, which would not have been possible had he not been aware that something was going to happen. The guy in the ceiling was having personal issues, and an early theory (not proven, nor debunked), was he yanked the rod on purpose giving warning to his colleague so he could jump. The near-dead guy having come in to try to pull him out. Of course this narrative fits what the military and reactor builder want people to believe, that it was not a flaw in the equipment, but in the person. The reactor "jumped" because the fuel, at the bottom of the vessel and covered with water, instantly evaporated the surrounding water, driving it towards the "low pressure" side of the vessel (up), creating a massive water hammer on the upper side of the vessel. That lifted the vessel up the 2.x meters, after which it fell back into place. The military did not notice that displacement for a time, hence the reason they did not immediately look for the lost guy in the cooling tower. The initial searches were by volunteers who had seconds in the room, then could never return. The cost to cut up the reactor with shielded cranes / equipment was staggering. They buried most of it in pits for future generations to find and deal with.
i mean nobody talks about it because it’s a bit much to be like “hey did you ever hear about that US reactor explosion where that guy got impaled by a rod and dangled from the ceiling for a while when they found him” in the middle of a conversation… there’s rarely a good time for this
If you look at any of those "hydraulic press" channels, generally there's a lot of people talking about how horrific injection injuries are, and then you just go "but what if what was ripping your tissues apart like christmas wrapping was boiling water that was also highly irradiated?"
It has come up a surprising number of times in my life. But then I'm a veteran and a current engineer, and I tend to hang around a bunch of other engineers and veterans, and this sort of morbid safety analysis tends to be common "whiskey and cigars" conversation fodder. 😂
Meanwhile, societally the west discusses Chernobyl and Fukushima regularly, and uses them both in the nuclear discussion in politics and etc.... yet, completely pretends this issue never happened in the us.... or any other western nation for that matter..... its almost as if there's a reason it's not discussed, while other countries nuclear disasters are still discussed decades later...
It does make for one hell of a story to tell my little cousins around the fire pit at the family reunion when they ask me to tell a scary story. Doubly so as most of my extended family live in a town who's most direct route to it cuts through a bit of the INL. Kind of surprised I haven't seen more people my age joking about it though, considering I've seen a fair few jokes/memes of other horrifying safety stories from my fellow Gen Zs (stuff like the Therac-25 incidents, the Demon Core, etc) but maybe its due to the SL-1 incident being so isolated and nobody surviving the initial blast means no person dying slowly in a hospital with ARS publically.
Nuclear energy was genuinely the silver-bullet solution to energy demand and utilizing green energy … what a shame that public opinion on it caused the industry to falls apart so badly 😢
Ongoing corporate gaslighting by the petroleum industry is a big factor. From Saudi princes to billionaire oil oligarchs, a lot of people greatly benefit from our lack of energy options. And ensuring their bank accounts stay full is their number one priority, not the well being of the other 99.999% of the global population.
@@daryllect6659 The technology is safe. The way those managing/operating it behave is what has been unsafe. Even wind turbines and solar panels can kill those installing them if the company isn't safety-conscious or is actively cutting corners to save money.
@Vaeldarg Problem is, EVERY company is cutting corners for quarterly profits.....Boeing, PG&E, every pipeline operator ever, etc etc etc....starting to see the problem????
@@gomahklawm4446 And that's why libertarianism makes the least sense to me. Being able to rely on companies to self-police themselves is just a pipe dream, and is why regulations are a necessity.
I was wondering why such a crucial and potentially deadly task of insertion and extraction of the control rods was not done by mechanical devices such as remotely controlled jackscrews, which would have not only minimized radiation exposure for the crew but provide far more force to move a stuck control rod. Additionally, the jackscrew would prevent sudden large movements to the rods because it is just that: a screw.
The rod _was_ operated by a powered mechanism in normal operation. The accident happened while the crew was attempting to reattach the rod to said mechanism, which operated from overhead and required the rod to be lifted slightly past its normal rest position to hook it back onto the rig. That's not a great design either, I grant you, but SL-1 was an experimental design from the dawn of the industry.
The early US nuclear power plants were extremely rushed in their design and testing, with GE just desperate to find the easiest way to turn the potential of nuclear energy into money. So little thought was put into potential accidents that something like this was pretty much guaranteed to happen sooner rather than later. All that effort into making plants safer should have been required by the government long before the first plant was built, but GE and other corporations were able to sidestep this costly work by intensive lobbying and using the existing fear of America being upstaged by Russia to encourage politicians to approve what were extremely shonky reactor designs. The cost of this initial rush has been proved again and again, not just in the lives lost to accidents, but by the public perception of nuclear energy as unsafe meaning poisonous coal plants continuing to supply most of America's energy for decades longer than it should. The 3-mile-island accident was also a result of a really shitty reactor design, the same design as SL-1, because even with improved safety protocols and more intense training, it was still a dangerous design that had inherent flaws that should never have been approved at all. These days we have reactor designs that are completely safe, where meltdowns are impossible, but these plants are being built in China where the public's opinion isn't so important in deciding how to generate electricity. And America will be one of the last countries to atually use the most valuable energy-production system of all, nuclear. All because those greedy 1950s and 1960s executives just wanted to make as much money as they could as soon as possible.
I've driven through that area near INL quite often on trips to visit extended family, going north on state highway 28. That entire area from Mud Lake to the entrance of the mountain valley always gave me an ominous feeling as a child, like something was just...wrong about that area. I'd look in the rear view and be glad to see the INL entry sign behind us. Lo and behold turns out something horrifying did happen and I just learned about it within the past few years, with an accident nearly 40 years before I was even born. Maybe younger me was more perceptive than I thought...
The whole design reminds me of the origin of the shutdown term "Scram". Safety control rod axe man - the control rod was held in place by a rope, with an axe nearby to cut the rope in case of emergency.
I used to work in the Nuclear industry in the 90s I heard the story your probably talking about, The story was that the Guy who pulled the control rod out did it on purpose, Because one of the other Two was having an affair with his Wife, so He ended it all, can't say that's a fact but I heard that from Two different People, Never Know truth is sometimes stranger than Fiction, 🤔 HMMM
In 1984 I was trained at Naval Nuclear Power School in Orlando FL. The SL-1 accident and a then-classified documentary was part of the curriculum. I wonder if the excerpts you've shown at around 10:15 are from the unclassified release of this film.
I really don't envy the poor bugger who had to drive the radioactive stuff to that hot shop 30 miles away from the original site at 10mph, hope he got a pay increase for that.
adding a link to someone elses content so people can watch someone elses content for free is tacky. UA-cam knows when you skip/mute and doesnt pay for the view, and basically Simon and his crew are working for you for free. its just a damn minute.
This incident was thoroughly covered at NNPS (Navy Nuclear Power School) Mare Island back in the mid 70's, and the accompanying films were a bit more complete than anything you're likely to find on the web. Somewhat the equivalent to the old black-and-white Drivers Ed. films, with the same intent. It was particularly relevant because the hands-on training was, for many, at the aforementioned Idaho Falls facility. The underlying lesson was "You do NOT violate procedures, EVER!"
I live in East Idaho. My grandfather took me out as close as we could get to tell me about this back in the 90s when I was a young boy. He worked for the DOE when this happened.
Fission releases both "prompt" and "delayed" neutrons. Normal operations dictate that "delayed" neutrons are required to make the reaction self sustaining. The delayed nature makes things controllable. "Prompt critical" means that the neutrons immediately released are in sufficient numbers to "cascade" the rate of reaction in an uncontrolled manner where "delayed" neutrons are not needed to sustain or accelerate the reaction rate. An interesting related fact is that reactors that have been shutdown for a long time have such low neutron populations bouncing around that they can be difficult to detect on the instruments used to monitor the reaction rate. For safety in those cases you have to pull control rods a specific, limited increment, and then wait a fixed period of time before proceeding with another incremental pull. This is to prevent a rapid buildup of the neutron population from occurring when the levels are not yet detectable. It makes starting up your submarine reactor from a long maintenance period much slower than if it was only shutdown for a very brief period. The US Navy has pretty well established procedures for such. The Arco desert had the S1W submarine protoype in the late 1950's. Seems strange that the Army's little reactor failed to follow the Navy's lead in this area of safety. Thanks for covering this story.
I was enrolled in the Naval Radiological Defense Lab student co-op program at the time of this accident. One of the country's nuclear accident rapid response teams was located at NRDL staffed mainly by enlisted Naval personnel. They were one of the teams dispatched to SL-1 after the accident as part of the cleanup effort. All of the team members ended up receiving their lifetime allowable doses of radiation.
The biggest lesson learned (by the public) from Three Mile Island incident? The extreme risk associated with allowing a private company to operate a nuclear facility. The 'profit imperative' should NEVER be allowed to influence nuclear operations.
A friend and I happened upon Arco, Idaho - “the first city in the world powered by Atomic energy” - some years ago while taking the back roads from somewhere to somewhere else. We knew nothing about this incident, but soon realized something was up when several black SUVs started shadowing us as we passed by what was obviously a very secure sight. I imagine the fact that we were communicating between cars via walkie-talkie might have aroused suspicion. Rather the highlight of that day’s driving!
So the control rods were already moved with by pulling on a bar screwed into the end of the rod. Why was pulling something so risky in case of overextraction, and known prone to sticking, *_by hand,_* ever a thing?? Bent joints on long limbs, muscles and tendons in strong tension - a person cannot reliably react fast enough to relieve that tension before pulling too far when it abruptly unstucks. Nor release their grasp on the pull bar. Why not use a basic extractor puller to at minimum get past any sticking points?? It's really not a complicated thing. Basically just a sliding hammer screwed into or around the "pull handle", being operated by winding around a screw thread instead of the impact and momentum of a sliding hammer head. Once it breaks free, it doesn't go anywhere. There's no significant spring tension or momentum involved.
Wow, I had never heard about this one. Thought I had a pretty good grasp on the nuclear accidents in the US and the world, and have read widely on the subject.
May be an odd request, even a text warning at the start of videos with lots of cuts to flashing would be great, love your channels but as an epileptic, I do get headaches with some of the edits at times! thanks to you and your team for the awesome content none the less!
15:16 I have questions. My area had a reactor come online this year and it has been under construction since 09 or 10. They had one come online last year. Plant Vogtle.
Yes but when was it commissioned? If they began construction in 2010 then that would be after rounds of design proposals funding proposals site impact studies etc. The go ahead to build a new plant could easily have been more than a decade earlier.
My dad worked for GE and was involved in the cleanup of the SL-1 site. He died in 1969 from an unrelated accident but I always wondered if his exposure to the radiation there would have cut his life short.
Several years ago, there was a video of the film the Army made of explaining this incident on UA-cam. It's probably still here. It goes into excruciating detail explaining this procedure.
So, what is a radiation suit made of? Do they protect from all radiation? That would be an awesome episode to do, radiation suits and how they work, different levels of suits, the amount of radiation they prevent from contacting the person within the suit, yea, that would be cool. I hope you see this, Simon, and are interested in doing an episode on it, and then, y'know, do.
One thing I believe glossed over on this (former nuc reactor operator) is that this occurred at a time when we were still learning reactor operation principles, and also that this incident largely affected reactor design criteria. After this, reactors were designed in such a way this incident could never occur again
We visited ERB-1 last month on a road trip. SL-1 down a restricted access road from ERB-1. Arco, as the entire area is called, is a remote, but very interesting area, with nearby Craters of the Moon National Monument.
Everybody going through Navy Nuclear Power School had to watch that AEC movie about SL-1. Study of lessons learned from all incidents is just one part of the safety culture in both Navy and civilian nuclear power. Although the SL-1 buildings were long gone by the time I started prototype training at the Naval Reactors Facility, there was still an SL-1 road sign on the Idaho National Engineering Laboratories. Every time I drove by that sign for three years it would remind me of the scene in the AEC movie where the first responders ran out of the SL-1 building. It is terribly unfortunate that the combination of scientific illiteracy among the American public and irresponsible sensationalism by the news media has had such an impact on the nuclear power industry. We would be far better off if a majority of our power needs were supplied by nuclear power.
A friend of minw was involved in the design of the Fukushima reactor. The bilders voiced concern about locating the plant so close to the coast, which had experienced tsunamis previously. But the Japanese government insisted it be built where it was, only allowing some additional protections be included, which obviously proved inadequate.
There is also a big anti-nuclear policy, with groups who see no problem in the exploitation of coal, gas and oil for the production of electricity. And who profit from every incident of this type.
Loved this. It's not that we aren't fully in control. But I think it actually helps us find where "consciousness" comes from. Definitely a cool video. If you want to know why I clicked on it, well that's cause I'm a curious person
I remember watching this reenactment by the DOE after I completed the comprehensive final exam during Naval Nuclear Power School. The film quality had seriously degraded from what you showed. :D
The book, "Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident" by William McKeown, Bob Dunsworth, et al.is a great source of information. I drove by the SL-1 site every workday back in the early '70s when working at the then National Reactor Testing Station (now INEL).
Excellent explanation! However, you left out a few things. First, this incident has been studied more than most. I am sure that almost every nuclear worker has heard the story you tell. Most numerous times. The incident operators were reported not to be of good character. This accident is portrayed as a murder suicide. You never mentioned the increased demands of clearances and the difficulties of keeping them. They just don’t let anyone work at these facilities. The rejection rate is high.
The three men who died were buried in lead caskets, together. Cremation was too dangerous to perform. It took weeks to retrieve the man impaled to the ceiling but he had not begun to decompose because all the microbes, etc. in his guts were killed by the radiation!
Interesting. I could swear that I read somewhere about the lead caskets, and that one of them is buried in Arlington National Cemetary and there is a small monument over his grave with the international radiation danger symbol. The other two were buried in their respective hometowns, but it didn't say if their graves had radiation symbols, though one would think they did.
There are a few, the rule of thumb I have found is this: The less radiation escaping into the public, the less it is talked about. Remember Cockcroft's Folly, anyone? Pretty sure Simon has done something on it.
Which is odd, because SL-1 was a massive release to the envionment which almost no one knows about today, whereas Three Mile Island hardly released anything above background levels but the nation lost its mind and it almost completely killed US nuclear power.
@@Kriss_L probably the reason is-SL-1 was located 25 miles North of Nowhere. ANY kind of release would not have affected any major population centers. Even Idaho Falls. Or Pocatello. Or Twin Falls. The area where INL is located is some of the most desolate land in the US. It was put there-FOR A REASON. The Apollo crews trained for the moon in the relative area-hence the National Park called Craters of the Moon.
Really a mystery for the ages this one, I particularly like Kyle Hill’s Half-Life-Stories episode on the SL-1 disaster. Obviously the design was extremely poorly thought out, it feels like common sense to build a reactor incapable of achieving criticality based off the positioning of a single, central control Rod
You need to update your script. We just commissioned two new reactors in Georgia early this year. The first ones in 40 years. When I was in the Navy we studied the SA1 indecent.
It wasn't the only accident to occur at the facility in Idaho. EBR-1 also experienced a partial core meltdown. No one was hurt in that one. It's been long shutdown, cleaned up, and turned into a Historical site. The public can tour it in the summer months.
This was actually an inflection point for nuclear in the US. There has never been another US designed reactor that could go critical with the withdrawal of one control element. This was a tremendously good lesson unfortunately accompanied by a tragic loss of life.
Planes,cars and most everything else can be made safer. What will never be accomplished is getting rid of incompetence (or as Simon Smoothskull so generously put it "human error") altogether.
The timeline included in the official report is kind of fascinating. It starts at a scale of months but gets down to sub millisecond events at the time of the explosion.
Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter promo code ITS for 4 months EXTRA at surfshark.com/its
One direct result of the SL-1 incident that Simon didn’t mention is the “one stuck rod” criterion. Following SL-1, it became illegal in the US to design or operate a reactor that could become critical simply by withdrawing a single control rod all the way out of the core. Conversely, all reactors must be able to be shut down with any single rod stuck fully out of the core and incapable of being inserted.
This is HUGE in terms of reactor safety, and prevents, by design, the kind of accident that occurred at SL-1.
Out of curiosity, is it know if this actually prevented disasters?
Most likely. Imagine if you service your car on a jack stand from below.
If stand fails, car will squish you. Making two rods mandatory is like regulation to make cars that can't lift off the ground by any one jack, only two or more, making it impossible to die squished because one jack failed. @@ZQRDS2W
@@ZQRDS2W Nobody ever hears about all the disasters you prevent, all they talk about is the one you didn't prevent.
Engineering happens.
@@ninehundreddollarluxuryyac5958 in this particular instance that sounds like data that should be possible to collect and it would be in the best interest of people who implemented the improvement to actually collect it.
@@ZQRDS2Wcollect it yes, make that data public no.
I have an old magazine from the 1960's with an article on the SL-1 and what caused it to blow up. The design had one large control rod and several small control rods. Despite that, the rods weren't enough to shut it down. Additional neutron absorber was needed so boron "poison strips" were attached to the sides of the control rods, taking up most of the clearance between the sides of the rods and the fuel assemblies.
Under the constant bombardment of radiation and the very hot water, the boron strips would swell up and break apart. The article included a photo of some damaged boron strips which had been replaced. As the strips deteriorated, they made the control rods difficult to move.
The other major flaw in the SL-1's design was that the main control rod could start the fission reaction by itself if pulled up far enough.
The rods had been disconnected from their drive motors so the motors could be serviced. The crew was reconnecting the rods to the motors. The swollen boron strips caused the main rod to stick, resisting being raised to reconnect it. When a bit more force was applied, it popped loose, snapping upwards much too far.
The poor guy likely didn't even have a chance to begin to start thinking "Oh sh!t!"
This is taught in great depth to all US military nuclear operators, and how it informed future military nuclear power plant operations
I’m pretty sure he’s indicating that the GENERAL PUBLIC doesn’t know about this one the way we’ve heard about Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.
"This is taught to the specific group of people that is solely required to know this" 😅
yeah thats not exactly a surprise....
There's a reason US nuclear accidents--to say nothing of fatalities--have been exceedingly rare. If nothing else, we learned from mistakes.
@@dallasgauthier3543 No, this is not a surprise, rather a worrying trend.
Too bad the Soviets didn't take notes from this. The circumstances are *alarmingly* similar to what happened at Chernobyl.
You missed the biggest lesson learned in this disaster, that no reactor should ever be designed to allow any single point failure as was the case with the central control rod of the SL1
I'm a retired Reactor Operator (Navy) Senior Reactor Operator (civilian).
I can assure you, we trained on SL-1 regularly.
What type of vessels did you serve on?
The ones UFOs liked.
@@FrithonaHrududu02127he might have worked on a reactor in the states
@@InterdictionAirsoft I like submarines for some odd reason, that's why I asked. I wasn't doubting him. People get so negative on here, you know what i mean?
Thank you for your service!
it was Richard Legg pinned to the ceiling. It also took cleanup crews time to find him because of that fact.
When I was a Navy nuclear plant trainee in Idaho, there were still old timers around that were on the site when SL-1 exploded. They were always interesting to listen to.
Back in '79, when I was at A1W prototype, my crew chief's father-in-law was one of the first persons to respond to the initial alarm. This accident was presented to my class at NPS just shortly before going to prototype. That guy had some fascinating stories of the response. I recently taught orientation classes to new engineers at out site and used the AEC films as a springboard to getting into emergency planning and accident response.
@@charleswells9682 That's about the time I was at S1W.
@@iasimov5960 Class 7902
This is covered in Navy nuclear power training to illustrate how procedures and the buddy system is essential when conducting procedures in a reactor compartment.
'Someone was impaled to the ceiling by a control rod from an exploding nuclear reactor' is one of those sentences where, if you are talking about a movie, you go 'whooa wicked, that's gnarly', but when you're talking about real life you kind of just have to stare in horror and go 'Oh... oh NO...'
Yeah your like yup someone fucked up somewhere that's usually the case in these things. I worked in refineries before and like 9 out of ten times someone fucked up it happens we all human. And it only takes one time
@@troygarza5720 when it comes to pulling jammed control rods out of a reactor, it shouldn't be possible for a human yanking a bit too hard to cause the whole thing to explode. This was a fundamental design flaw. Not some worker fucking up
Sometimes, reality is a lot stranger than fiction....
@@WhichDoctor1 you missed the part in the video about failed maintenance routines I guess. Know why because it's expensive so they cut corners period in every industry and this early in nuclear it was I imagine no different than the refineries of today. Google it they all blow up every 4 to 6 years all of em. Because it's expense to shut everything down to do maintenance vrs just wait tell there's a failure. It's literally cheaper to wait. By a large margin bro. So yeah human error due to human greed and laziness period. Ask any engineer or builder/mechanic that's the truth. Good work don't come cheap there's a reason for that and good work and quality are the same when taking about engineering and building. including maintenance.
@@WhichDoctor1it was both. It had major design flaws *and* the operator made a critical mistake. The rest was inevitable.
We spent a lot of time discussing this in the navy nuclear program. What surprised me was that no one I knew, myself included had heard of the incident before.
Thanks for bringing this to light. This and the rest of your channels are full of interesting information that I’m surprised we all don’t know more about.
I never heard about it until a department of energy class I took, even though my dad worked on and off at nuclear power plants for most if my life
Outside of the nuclear industries, I think most in the US think of Three Mile Island, Hiroshima, Fukashima Daichi and Chernobyl for nuclear disasters first followed by uranium/plutonium processing, mining and bomb test sites, perhaps Hanford and then maybe Radium Girls. I don't remember hearing of SL-1 in my education although I had heard of Fermi Lab first reactor. I'm wondering if I confuse SL-1 as being at Hanford.
I was an operator of a reactor on a submarine years ago and while on watch in the engine room, literature was not allowed. I read the T-manuals of so many nuclear accidents over and over again on mid watch. As far as nuclear accidents go, it's tough to surpass Chernobyl in terms of action, but I've always wondered why this one wasn't more well known.
A wise man learns from his mistakes.
A wiser man learns from others mistake.
What’s wild is this is by every metric the worst nuclear accident in the US and so few even know about it
Former Navy Nuc here; trust me, SL-1 gets discussed *PLENTY.*
Safety 'lessons learned" training based on SL-1 is a frequent event.
This is covered in Kyle Hill’s half life series. Hill has a physics degree (I think) and goes over more details.
Kyle Hill earned his bachelors of science in civil and environmental engineering from Marquette University in 2011, and his masters of arts in science communication from the same university in 2013. Taken from his biography page. And yes his half life series is excellent well worth checking out.
Watched that one just the other day. Good presentation style, and clearly understands his physics & engineering.
@@nmgg6928thanks. I assumed it was physics because of his content.
@@shiftymcgee9359 understandable 🙂
Although I do think this is the first time I've heard anyone mention that the first responders were so unfortunately ill affected
i was served a UA-cam ad for my local atomic energy company whilst watching this.
😄
The basic message was "nuclear power is safe and clean, and keeps us free of dependence on Russian oil and gas"
All of which is true, in comparison with the quietly lethal and tremendously messy electric power industry we have now.
To add to the comments about Kyle Hill, he also was able to explain in a fairly recent video why other green energy sources are actually less economically viable than nuclear. If I remember correctly, it's because the other sources recquire batteries for storage, whereas nuclear can just plug into the grid.
Not everywhere can host nuclear reactors, of course. But in places like Europe and the US where existing industries already exist, it's a no-brainer.
I live in Central Pennsylvania and was about 10 when Three Mile Island happeend. There is talk recently about restarting the undamaged reactor that was decommissioned some years back.
IIRC Microsoft bought it and wants to generate power for the grid to offset what it's Azure data centers use.
yes.
I hate to plug another channel, but I highly recommend Kyle Hill's video on SL-1 if you're interested in a deeper dive. It's about twice the length of this video if I recall correctly.
Simon Whister would be the best campfire storyteller.
With sossys on sticks and plates of beans. 😅
On that note, I was probably watching this video because I've been thinking about how safe nuclear power is these days and how I thought nuclear power should be more prevalent than it is. Then, our orator finished his story, and I was left with thoughts of history repeating itself. Much respect.
@@jeremiahdavismusic Don't worry about the history repeating itself. We can learn from past mistakes. Worry about new mistakes that can be made.
False, thats Mr. Ballen
Somewhere there is a video of a PowerPoint presentation given some years ago by one of the firefighters that was there that night. Very interesting to hear. The ambulance was not permanently abandoned; they parked it out in the desert with McKinley's body in it after he was declared dead because his body was a hazard and the nurse and driver weren't equipped to deal with it yet. Later, after his body was removed and taken to a lab, the ambulance was decontaminated and stayed in service for several years after.
One of the guys was wearing a watch and the guy stuck to the roof was wearing a wedding ring. These metal parts were analyzed as part of the investigation to determine the power excursion of the reactor. There is a very good government film on youtube which details the investigation and cleanup of the accident. The amount of information the scientists and engineers were able to gather was very thorough and the brains of those guys is impressive. Sadly, even smart people make mistakes.
I live in Washingtin State and though we've all heard the Hanford Reactor Site, I'd never heard of this one. Interesting!
Ditto, sister!
But have you heard about all the nuclear reactors in Kitsap county? Another open secret that Seattle would probably lose their minds over.
I was a committee member on the Hanford Health Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). Some of the things I learned while serving the Tribe I worked for were actually very spooky! I learned a lot of things about the Idaho Nuclear Engineering Laboratories operations & and I grew up as a "downstreamer" to the INEL. Not pretty.
I was a college student in Utica, New York during the Three Mile Island incident.The thing that made us so fearful is that no one gave us ANY information leading to absolute distrust of nuclear power and the Federal Government.
I am VERY sure this is still talked about during basic training in both military and civilian facilities; it certainly was 20 years ago in the UK.
Well it would be. It's an example of what not to do, the dangers etc. It being talked about with people who are to work in the nuclear area isn't the same as it being known by the general public.
My great uncle and his family lived at the Idaho Falls base. They moved before the accident occurred, though. The military was smart enough to keep housing far enough away from SL-1 to keep everyone safe.
😂 wind…fallout…
Oh, you were exposed to radiation via steam releases into the air. I.F. is a downwinder area....
@@guyh.4553 The funny thing about that is that only my great-aunt got cancer - and she lived to be 89. So think before you type.
We just commissioned Vogtle 3 and 4 in 2023 and 2024!!!
Good. Nuclear power is a great bridge to other green energy and (hopefully, eventually) fusion
I was a senior NRC hydrologist for that site. One of many to follow.
Did you commission long-term waste storage?
Rhetorical...
@@yt.personal.identification just to answer your question, yes. This is part of the site design. They produce so little waste now, it is stored on site in bunkers.
This is why we can't play with our central control rods... or go on excursions with em either
Awww, poor control rods never get any fun. No wonder they get explosive sometimes.
"Cheap, powerful and safe. Choose any two"
You should do a story about the reactor meltdown in Los Angeles, Califorina at the Santa Suzana Field Labratory that was covered up for decades. Even today, I would say that the majority of people in Los Angeles know nothing about it.
Byrnes and Legg had their parts swapped in several part of this. Legg was in command, and was the one pinned to the ceiling, for example.
Quite a few comments on Kyle Hill's video were from people trying to restrain themselves from making a joke out of "pulling Legg" down from the ceiling.
Which was the hardest recovery, since part of the building had to be cut open just to get to him.
Studied this in college. There's some interesting background. The guy that was stuffed up in the cooling tower was not seen at first. They found 2 guys in the reactor room, one dead, the other close to. There should have been 2 guys on top of the reactor, so it appears that 1 had time to jump, which would not have been possible had he not been aware that something was going to happen. The guy in the ceiling was having personal issues, and an early theory (not proven, nor debunked), was he yanked the rod on purpose giving warning to his colleague so he could jump. The near-dead guy having come in to try to pull him out. Of course this narrative fits what the military and reactor builder want people to believe, that it was not a flaw in the equipment, but in the person.
The reactor "jumped" because the fuel, at the bottom of the vessel and covered with water, instantly evaporated the surrounding water, driving it towards the "low pressure" side of the vessel (up), creating a massive water hammer on the upper side of the vessel. That lifted the vessel up the 2.x meters, after which it fell back into place. The military did not notice that displacement for a time, hence the reason they did not immediately look for the lost guy in the cooling tower. The initial searches were by volunteers who had seconds in the room, then could never return. The cost to cut up the reactor with shielded cranes / equipment was staggering. They buried most of it in pits for future generations to find and deal with.
i mean nobody talks about it because it’s a bit much to be like “hey did you ever hear about that US reactor explosion where that guy got impaled by a rod and dangled from the ceiling for a while when they found him” in the middle of a conversation… there’s rarely a good time for this
If you look at any of those "hydraulic press" channels, generally there's a lot of people talking about how horrific injection injuries are, and then you just go "but what if what was ripping your tissues apart like christmas wrapping was boiling water that was also highly irradiated?"
Maybe for you....
It has come up a surprising number of times in my life.
But then I'm a veteran and a current engineer, and I tend to hang around a bunch of other engineers and veterans, and this sort of morbid safety analysis tends to be common "whiskey and cigars" conversation fodder. 😂
Meanwhile, societally the west discusses Chernobyl and Fukushima regularly, and uses them both in the nuclear discussion in politics and etc.... yet, completely pretends this issue never happened in the us.... or any other western nation for that matter..... its almost as if there's a reason it's not discussed, while other countries nuclear disasters are still discussed decades later...
It does make for one hell of a story to tell my little cousins around the fire pit at the family reunion when they ask me to tell a scary story. Doubly so as most of my extended family live in a town who's most direct route to it cuts through a bit of the INL. Kind of surprised I haven't seen more people my age joking about it though, considering I've seen a fair few jokes/memes of other horrifying safety stories from my fellow Gen Zs (stuff like the Therac-25 incidents, the Demon Core, etc) but maybe its due to the SL-1 incident being so isolated and nobody surviving the initial blast means no person dying slowly in a hospital with ARS publically.
The is no image of the explosion. Thumbnail is clickbait.
No replies???
Kyle Hill covered this one very well if anyone wants a great follow up
Nuclear energy was genuinely the silver-bullet solution to energy demand and utilizing green energy … what a shame that public opinion on it caused the industry to falls apart so badly 😢
Ongoing corporate gaslighting by the petroleum industry is a big factor. From Saudi princes to billionaire oil oligarchs, a lot of people greatly benefit from our lack of energy options. And ensuring their bank accounts stay full is their number one priority, not the well being of the other 99.999% of the global population.
Nuclear-generated electricity: Perfectly safe ... until it's not.
@@daryllect6659 The technology is safe. The way those managing/operating it behave is what has been unsafe. Even wind turbines and solar panels can kill those installing them if the company isn't safety-conscious or is actively cutting corners to save money.
@Vaeldarg Problem is, EVERY company is cutting corners for quarterly profits.....Boeing, PG&E, every pipeline operator ever, etc etc etc....starting to see the problem????
@@gomahklawm4446 And that's why libertarianism makes the least sense to me. Being able to rely on companies to self-police themselves is just a pipe dream, and is why regulations are a necessity.
This not being talked about is all relative, but it's a horrifying and interesting incident.
Glad to hear what you & yours made of it.
These clips generally provide a balanced, non biased view of the issues discussed. I respect that!
"allegedly" 😉
I was wondering why such a crucial and potentially deadly task of insertion and extraction of the control rods was not done by mechanical devices such as remotely controlled jackscrews, which would have not only minimized radiation exposure for the crew but provide far more force to move a stuck control rod. Additionally, the jackscrew would prevent sudden large movements to the rods because it is just that: a screw.
The rod _was_ operated by a powered mechanism in normal operation. The accident happened while the crew was attempting to reattach the rod to said mechanism, which operated from overhead and required the rod to be lifted slightly past its normal rest position to hook it back onto the rig.
That's not a great design either, I grant you, but SL-1 was an experimental design from the dawn of the industry.
That radar antenna @ 3:22 is interesting.
The early US nuclear power plants were extremely rushed in their design and testing, with GE just desperate to find the easiest way to turn the potential of nuclear energy into money. So little thought was put into potential accidents that something like this was pretty much guaranteed to happen sooner rather than later. All that effort into making plants safer should have been required by the government long before the first plant was built, but GE and other corporations were able to sidestep this costly work by intensive lobbying and using the existing fear of America being upstaged by Russia to encourage politicians to approve what were extremely shonky reactor designs.
The cost of this initial rush has been proved again and again, not just in the lives lost to accidents, but by the public perception of nuclear energy as unsafe meaning poisonous coal plants continuing to supply most of America's energy for decades longer than it should. The 3-mile-island accident was also a result of a really shitty reactor design, the same design as SL-1, because even with improved safety protocols and more intense training, it was still a dangerous design that had inherent flaws that should never have been approved at all.
These days we have reactor designs that are completely safe, where meltdowns are impossible, but these plants are being built in China where the public's opinion isn't so important in deciding how to generate electricity. And America will be one of the last countries to atually use the most valuable energy-production system of all, nuclear. All because those greedy 1950s and 1960s executives just wanted to make as much money as they could as soon as possible.
Fukushima was also a flawed GE reactor.
I've driven through that area near INL quite often on trips to visit extended family, going north on state highway 28. That entire area from Mud Lake to the entrance of the mountain valley always gave me an ominous feeling as a child, like something was just...wrong about that area. I'd look in the rear view and be glad to see the INL entry sign behind us. Lo and behold turns out something horrifying did happen and I just learned about it within the past few years, with an accident nearly 40 years before I was even born. Maybe younger me was more perceptive than I thought...
The whole design reminds me of the origin of the shutdown term "Scram". Safety control rod axe man - the control rod was held in place by a rope, with an axe nearby to cut the rope in case of emergency.
There was a whole personal drama bit that may or may not have been true regarding two of the three men
It was pretty much debunked. But the Navy pulled it out of storage for the USS IOWA gun turret explosion in 1989.
I used to work in the Nuclear industry in the 90s I heard the story your probably talking about, The story was that the Guy who pulled the control rod out did it on purpose, Because one of the other Two was having an affair with his Wife, so He ended it all, can't say that's a fact but I heard that from Two different People, Never Know truth is sometimes stranger than Fiction, 🤔 HMMM
In 1984 I was trained at Naval Nuclear Power School in Orlando FL. The SL-1 accident and a then-classified documentary was part of the curriculum. I wonder if the excerpts you've shown at around 10:15 are from the unclassified release of this film.
I really don't envy the poor bugger who had to drive the radioactive stuff to that hot shop 30 miles away from the original site at 10mph, hope he got a pay increase for that.
"poor bugger..." How old are you?
Time and a half, *at least*
Thanks for doing this one. I grew up in Idaho in the early 90s and didn't learn about it until a few years ago.
Video starts at 1:02
starts at 0:00 if you use sponsorblock
Revanced ftw
Ever heard of sponsorblock??
@@LordMarcusor smart tube for android tv and plugin for firefox 👌👌👌
adding a link to someone elses content so people can watch someone elses content for free is tacky. UA-cam knows when you skip/mute and doesnt pay for the view, and basically Simon and his crew are working for you for free. its just a damn minute.
This incident was thoroughly covered at NNPS (Navy Nuclear Power School) Mare Island back in the mid 70's, and the accompanying films were a bit more complete than anything you're likely to find on the web. Somewhat the equivalent to the old black-and-white Drivers Ed. films, with the same intent. It was particularly relevant because the hands-on training was, for many, at the aforementioned Idaho Falls facility. The underlying lesson was "You do NOT violate procedures, EVER!"
I live in East Idaho. My grandfather took me out as close as we could get to tell me about this back in the 90s when I was a young boy. He worked for the DOE when this happened.
Fission releases both "prompt" and "delayed" neutrons. Normal operations dictate that "delayed" neutrons are required to make the reaction self sustaining. The delayed nature makes things controllable. "Prompt critical" means that the neutrons immediately released are in sufficient numbers to "cascade" the rate of reaction in an uncontrolled manner where "delayed" neutrons are not needed to sustain or accelerate the reaction rate. An interesting related fact is that reactors that have been shutdown for a long time have such low neutron populations bouncing around that they can be difficult to detect on the instruments used to monitor the reaction rate. For safety in those cases you have to pull control rods a specific, limited increment, and then wait a fixed period of time before proceeding with another incremental pull. This is to prevent a rapid buildup of the neutron population from occurring when the levels are not yet detectable. It makes starting up your submarine reactor from a long maintenance period much slower than if it was only shutdown for a very brief period. The US Navy has pretty well established procedures for such. The Arco desert had the S1W submarine protoype in the late 1950's. Seems strange that the Army's little reactor failed to follow the Navy's lead in this area of safety. Thanks for covering this story.
.....it was the Army.
I love your mini Docs Simon, they are all really interesting, and very well presented.
15:27 "...as it grapples with... more economically viable energy sources" - as long as those sources receive huge subsidies.
I was enrolled in the Naval Radiological Defense Lab student co-op program at the time of this accident. One of the country's nuclear accident rapid response teams was located at NRDL staffed mainly by enlisted Naval personnel. They were one of the teams dispatched to SL-1 after the accident as part of the cleanup effort. All of the team members ended up receiving their lifetime allowable doses of radiation.
The biggest lesson learned (by the public) from Three Mile Island incident? The extreme risk associated with allowing a private company to operate a nuclear facility. The 'profit imperative' should NEVER be allowed to influence nuclear operations.
A-f**king-men to that!
See... Pulling out is dangerous.. 😂😂😂
💯Never pull out!! 💀😝
I remember hearing about it when I was 8 years old, but my Uncle was a subcontractor at Idaho National Laboratory.
A friend and I happened upon Arco, Idaho - “the first city in the world powered by Atomic energy” - some years ago while taking the back roads from somewhere to somewhere else. We knew nothing about this incident, but soon realized something was up when several black SUVs started shadowing us as we passed by what was obviously a very secure sight. I imagine the fact that we were communicating between cars via walkie-talkie might have aroused suspicion. Rather the highlight of that day’s driving!
So the control rods were already moved with by pulling on a bar screwed into the end of the rod. Why was pulling something so risky in case of overextraction, and known prone to sticking, *_by hand,_* ever a thing?? Bent joints on long limbs, muscles and tendons in strong tension - a person cannot reliably react fast enough to relieve that tension before pulling too far when it abruptly unstucks. Nor release their grasp on the pull bar.
Why not use a basic extractor puller to at minimum get past any sticking points?? It's really not a complicated thing. Basically just a sliding hammer screwed into or around the "pull handle", being operated by winding around a screw thread instead of the impact and momentum of a sliding hammer head. Once it breaks free, it doesn't go anywhere. There's no significant spring tension or momentum involved.
Wow, I had never heard about this one. Thought I had a pretty good grasp on the nuclear accidents in the US and the world, and have read widely on the subject.
May be an odd request, even a text warning at the start of videos with lots of cuts to flashing would be great, love your channels but as an epileptic, I do get headaches with some of the edits at times!
thanks to you and your team for the awesome content none the less!
Vogtle units 3&4 were just commissioned in the last few years and Watts Bar 2 commissioned in 2016
Always educational and informative thank you again
15:16 I have questions. My area had a reactor come online this year and it has been under construction since 09 or 10. They had one come online last year. Plant Vogtle.
Yes but when was it commissioned?
If they began construction in 2010 then that would be after rounds of design proposals funding proposals site impact studies etc. The go ahead to build a new plant could easily have been more than a decade earlier.
My dad worked for GE and was involved in the cleanup of the SL-1 site. He died in 1969 from an unrelated accident but I always wondered if his exposure to the radiation there would have cut his life short.
Several years ago, there was a video of the film the Army made of explaining this incident on UA-cam. It's probably still here. It goes into excruciating detail explaining this procedure.
Great mini documentary! 😁
I see you've returned the jacket to Don Johnson, then.
So, what is a radiation suit made of? Do they protect from all radiation? That would be an awesome episode to do, radiation suits and how they work, different levels of suits, the amount of radiation they prevent from contacting the person within the suit, yea, that would be cool. I hope you see this, Simon, and are interested in doing an episode on it, and then, y'know, do.
One thing I believe glossed over on this (former nuc reactor operator) is that this occurred at a time when we were still learning reactor operation principles, and also that this incident largely affected reactor design criteria. After this, reactors were designed in such a way this incident could never occur again
We visited ERB-1 last month on a road trip. SL-1 down a restricted access road from ERB-1. Arco, as the entire area is called, is a remote, but very interesting area, with nearby Craters of the Moon National Monument.
Being from Idaho I have been waiting for this video.
I used to drive but the site every day as I worked at INEL. Good lessons learned.
Well presented 😊
Vogtle units 3 and 4 are now online in Georgia. First new Nucs since the 80s. There are a couple of other plants in the works, as well.
Normal person: "Power"
Simon: "PAAAAHH!"
Ugh for real 🤮
I'm from Boston so it only sounds a little bit strange to me. POW-uh is the proper pronunciation
@@FrithonaHrududu02127 I'm a Brit like simon, I find it odd too.
@@Lord_of_Dread where is he from do you know? There's what, 38 major British accents....is he using RP?
...I'm sorry, is he saying "POW!"?
Everybody going through Navy Nuclear Power School had to watch that AEC movie about SL-1. Study of lessons learned from all incidents is just one part of the safety culture in both Navy and civilian nuclear power. Although the SL-1 buildings were long gone by the time I started prototype training at the Naval Reactors Facility, there was still an SL-1 road sign on the Idaho National Engineering Laboratories. Every time I drove by that sign for three years it would remind me of the scene in the AEC movie where the first responders ran out of the SL-1 building.
It is terribly unfortunate that the combination of scientific illiteracy among the American public and irresponsible sensationalism by the news media has had such an impact on the nuclear power industry. We would be far better off if a majority of our power needs were supplied by nuclear power.
A friend of minw was involved in the design of the Fukushima reactor. The bilders voiced concern about locating the plant so close to the coast, which had experienced tsunamis previously. But the Japanese government insisted it be built where it was, only allowing some additional protections be included, which obviously proved inadequate.
1:05 `as the clock struck 9 01 pm` Do they have their own time zone on Idaho?
Fun fact, Idaho has two time zones. Southern Idaho uses Mountain time, and North Idaho uses Pacific time.
@ljn369 that wasn't very fun.
There is also a big anti-nuclear policy, with groups who see no problem in the exploitation of coal, gas and oil for the production of electricity. And who profit from every incident of this type.
Loved this. It's not that we aren't fully in control. But I think it actually helps us find where "consciousness" comes from. Definitely a cool video. If you want to know why I clicked on it, well that's cause I'm a curious person
Hey I finally found a channel with Simon still on it!
I remember watching this reenactment by the DOE after I completed the comprehensive final exam during Naval Nuclear Power School. The film quality had seriously degraded from what you showed. :D
The book, "Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident"
by William McKeown, Bob Dunsworth, et al.is a great source of information. I drove by the SL-1 site every workday back in the early '70s when working at the then National Reactor Testing Station (now INEL).
Excellent explanation! However, you left out a few things. First, this incident has been studied more than most. I am sure that almost every nuclear worker has heard the story you tell. Most numerous times. The incident operators were reported not to be of good character. This accident is portrayed as a murder suicide. You never mentioned the increased demands of clearances and the difficulties of keeping them. They just don’t let anyone work at these facilities. The rejection rate is high.
worked out there at INEL... drove past SL-1 site often
The three men who died were buried in lead caskets, together. Cremation was too dangerous to perform. It took weeks to retrieve the man impaled to the ceiling but he had not begun to decompose because all the microbes, etc. in his guts were killed by the radiation!
Interesting. I could swear that I read somewhere about the lead caskets, and that one of them is buried in Arlington National Cemetary and there is a small monument over his grave with the international radiation danger symbol. The other two were buried in their respective hometowns, but it didn't say if their graves had radiation symbols, though one would think they did.
Might wanna do a video about the nuclear accident, fires and the sodium burn pits at the Santa Susanna Field Lab, here near LA...
Speaking of Kucushima it is still leaking 10's of thousands of gallons of radioactive water to this day
There are a few, the rule of thumb I have found is this:
The less radiation escaping into the public, the less it is talked about.
Remember Cockcroft's Folly, anyone?
Pretty sure Simon has done something on it.
Which is odd, because SL-1 was a massive release to the envionment which almost no one knows about today, whereas Three Mile Island hardly released anything above background levels but the nation lost its mind and it almost completely killed US nuclear power.
@@Kriss_L probably the reason is-SL-1 was located 25 miles North of Nowhere. ANY kind of release would not have affected any major population centers.
Even Idaho Falls. Or Pocatello. Or Twin Falls. The area where INL is located is some of the most desolate land in the US. It was put there-FOR A REASON.
The Apollo crews trained for the moon in the relative area-hence the National Park called Craters of the Moon.
Really a mystery for the ages this one, I particularly like Kyle Hill’s Half-Life-Stories episode on the SL-1 disaster.
Obviously the design was extremely poorly thought out, it feels like common sense to build a reactor incapable of achieving criticality based off the positioning of a single, central control Rod
You need to update your script. We just commissioned two new reactors in Georgia early this year. The first ones in 40 years. When I was in the Navy we studied the SA1 indecent.
The idea and violence of getting nailed to the ceiling by a relatively dull object is mind-blowing. I don't believe that he suffered.
It wasn't the only accident to occur at the facility in Idaho. EBR-1 also experienced a partial core meltdown. No one was hurt in that one. It's been long shutdown, cleaned up, and turned into a Historical site. The public can tour it in the summer months.
This was actually an inflection point for nuclear in the US. There has never been another US designed reactor that could go critical with the withdrawal of one control element. This was a tremendously good lesson unfortunately accompanied by a tragic loss of life.
Hi great video. In the UK and in the us. They are starting to build mini nuclear reactors is this shape of things to come?
let’s go for another journey into the shadows!
Planes,cars and most everything else can be made safer. What will never be accomplished is getting rid of incompetence (or as Simon Smoothskull so generously put it "human error") altogether.
The first time and probably the last time (before this video) that a watched anything on SL 1 was either the mid to late 80's or early 90's.
The timeline included in the official report is kind of fascinating. It starts at a scale of months but gets down to sub millisecond events at the time of the explosion.