Because in the first three tests they didn't even come close to finishing the test to begin with, the safety test was supposed to end by initiating AZ-5 after the backup generators were up and running, they actually *COMPLETED* the test the 4th time they tried, but nobody knew the control rods were graphite moderated because it was classified as a state secret.
It wasn't the crew that was at fault, Dyatlov was merely a scapegoat for the disaster he did everything he was told and the safety test would end with initiating the instant shutdown button AZ-5, the test itself required the reactor to be pushed into its limits and people in the control room already knew that, what they didn't know was if all the control rods were pulled back, initiating AZ-5 would have disastrous consquences due to the tips of control rods being made of graphite.
There is only one thing I dont get. Why was the reactor put into a low power state for thr test. Wouldnt a spontanous piwer loss usually occur under nornal power generation and thus full reactor power?
Because that was part of the safety procedure it was a conducted simulation of what would have happened if reactor had all its power shut down, the control rod tips being made of graphite was hidden from the people working in the control room that day, they didn't know initiating AZ-5 would be the reason causing the explosion.
@@wilhufftarkin5852 No, they performed the test at low power because it was exactly what the safety test was all about. But they had no idea a reactor with no power would result in such a catastrophy due to its design flaws.
@@wilhufftarkin5852 RBMK reactors are notoriously unstable when run at low power that's why the safety shutdown test was delayed and failed so many times and when they actually finished the test by initiating AZ-5 to do a complete shutdown, it caused the disaster as we know today. The reactor needed to be brought to its limits for the test to be done and that resulted in massive steam explosion which caused the reactor core to be exposed.
Schcherbina had the best character development of the series. From a calcified bureaucrat that didn't understand anything about nuclear powerplants and radiation to explaining exactly how everything works.
One problem with this scene is that the test was run in multiple Soviet nuclear stations over some time and the people on trial were ordered to run the test, while another order came in to keep the reactor running longer than usual.
Stellan Skarsgard was fantastic in his role as Shcherbina. He started out cold, indifferent, somewhat arrogant. But after he saw things for himself he was ready to move heaven and earth to support the people trying to clean the mess up. Once we get to this point in the story, you can tell he had zero f__ks left to give, would not gloss things over, and spent his entire presentation almost daring someone in that room to challenge anything he said. His grim determination to support the Liquidators, combined with Legasov’s stubborn persistence to get the truth out may have saved more lives than either man ever ultimately knew. And even after Chernobyl, Shcherbina, already slowly dying at that point, went on to coordinate recovery and relief efforts following the 1988 earthquake in Armenia.
I don't know how accurately this court proceeding is portrayed, but it's really awesome how they explain us, laymen, the things in a way we can easily understand them.
Also check out that in the Soviet Union, the District Attourney equivalent does the Judge's job of chairing the proceedings, while the Judge only does the determination of law.
They were never able to successfully run this test at any reactor of this design. After the disaster and the issues with the reactor design were fixed, they still did not try it. They found, like any computer farm or power plant that you would build an uninterrupted power supply, basically a pile of batteries hooked in to instantly power the critical infrastructure until the generators kicked in. After seeing the scene in the cabinet room where they tell Gorbachev that if the water underneath gets hit by the"lava" and destroys the other reactors, kills probably 70 million or so and makes, what, 25% of the planet uninhabitable, I always wondered, if there was a nuclear war and these plants were all destroyed, as I am sure they were targets, how much radiation and fallout would they throw into the atmosphere.
They probably would throw less than chernobyl as the explosion force came from inside the reactor itself. The water explosion is an overstatement but it would have severely impacted Ukraine
@@benedekhalda-kiss9737The water thing was an exceptional overstatement, the 2 to 5 MT yield exceeds the largest bomb in the current US arsenal (the B83, with a 1.2 MT yield). The decimal should be moved at least 7 places over, and realistically there wouldn't even be an explosion at all. Also the three engineers who went in didn't consider going in to drain the bubbler tank particularly hazardous, here's part of an EX UTOPIA interview with one of them from 2019: > everything went okay - we opened the valves, and heard the water rushing out of the tank. When we returned to the surface I gave my dosimeters back. I don’t remember the measurements at that point either, but there wasn’t any kind of high radiation reading there.
I was 5 years old when it happened. I remember that our street tested all fruits and vegetables with a Geiger counter before consuming them. That was in Germany, many many miles away from the desaster. And yet, we had some fall out. Not much, but enough to not eat anything without testing it. Crazy times
I grew up a little closer in Hungary. In that socialist era they tried to keep it secret as long as it possible. I was 16, often was listening Radio Free Europe from Munich in short wave capable radio. I had heard it here about the disaster first. The socialst officials didn't care about our health at all, there was no Geiger-Müller counter, you'd better not talking about it, beacause they figure out you listening the forbidden radio. 1st of May as students we had to march in their fucking parade under the sun and under the radioactive air. I knew at least dozen people around me (classmates, friends, neighbours at my age), who died in their 20's, 30's, in cancer.
I've read that things like truffles that people would dig up from the ground to sell or eat themselves had to sometimes be discarded due to unacceptable levels of radioactive contamination from that fallout. They did the right thing by testing the food first.
What, why is there a bright dot? Why is there a bright line on the right of the screen? Why is the video jumpy like it was filmed on 2s? Are we trying to dodge copyright strikes?
When I was younger, I genuinely thought that the nuclear core was the one being siphoned for the electricity. Then I've learned that it's purpose is the same for coal to generate steam in a steam powered vehicle. My reaction to that is just....seriously? That's very very dangerous with a chance of having unimaginable damage and for what? Steam powered turbine electricity?
Even if we do fusion or antimatter neutronic scifi fantasy thingy, electricity will be generated by making hater hot which make a turbine spin. It's all about making the most efficient system to make water turn into steam. Also coal plant are way more dangerous and kill way more people each year than nuclear power plants
My frustration is why wasn’t it designed so that some of the power coming from the turbines could always be feeding the pumps. Then no need to shutdown the reactor. If they did need to shut it down they could do so in stages. Furthermore you had other reactors in the same location. Why couldn’t plant 4 get power from plant 3 if it needed to?
I'm no nuclear physicist or engineer, but the RBMK reactor designed was flawed, and well out of date by 1986, with its origins dating back to 1954, with little in the way of safety measures or consistent redundancy. The final design of the most "modern" RBMKs that were first used in the 1970s was rushed in order to "get it out the door". They had to operate exactly as designed with no basically no room for deviation from protocol or room for error, otherwise a major stability issue could rear its ugly head and quickly become unrecoverable. Chernobyl was not the first RBMK disaster, as you can see in a documentary about it here on RU-vid, but it was the most serious one by far. As far as getting power from other reactors is concerned, I think this test was supposed to be conducted as sort of a "worst case scenario", as in, assuming that all other reactors were shut down for maintenance or something, or otherwise damaged or inoperable for some reason, meaning that reactor number 4 was carrying the load by itself until there was a new emergency that would facilitate the need to use the diesel generators. They knew about the diesel generator flaw discussed in this video, and they were banking on using the "spin down" power to keep things going until the generators could take over. That was a very tight window of time, and like the RBMK reactor design itself, left essentially no room for error. These issues weren't exclusive to RBMK reactors either. Design and operating oversights like these were very common in nuclear submarine reactors of the time, and shortcuts were taken all over the place in the design and implementation of new technology, in both the military and civilian sectors. See some of the other Soviet era technology botches of that time period, such as the K-19 "Windowmaker" submarine with a bad safety record up to and including a reactor issue, the Tupolev 104 civilian jetliner which was the first one made in that part of the world, being hastily derived from a military bomber plane and as a result of safety not being a priority, being involved in a number of crashes and other accidents, the Tupolev Tupolev 144 supersonic jetliner airshow disaster and poor overall design and performance, like needing a parachute to land or making so much noise in the cabin that the passengers had to write notes to each other to talk, or the fact that it couldn't make a trans-Atlantic journey, often referred to as the "Concordski" or the DUGA early detection radar array, which could be jammed by amateur radio operators in other countries. They just did everything they could to beat the west to the punch in technological or military might, or at least keep up with them, that they kept throwing safety guidelines out the window, to their detriment.
@@unr3alGaming Thank you for your comment, was very informative and I think you have hit the nail on the head. They did “get it done and working” over safety then tried to Work some safety in after the fact and ironically that’s what got them in the end.
I love the difference between Scherbina’s testimony and Legasov’s. Scherbina focuses on how the corruption of three men doomed the reactor while Legasov attacks the flaws in the design of the plant and the system the state created that approved it. Scherbina, the party man, knows that you cannot take on the party directly. Legasov, the idealistic and well-intentioned scientist, knows nothing of politics.
Not sure, remember the diesel submarines used batteries to power the electric motors and other systems on board for hours. I find it hard to believe they could not power water pumps for a minute.
@@jeep146that's actually pretty accurate motors have an intense surge of a rush of power and high amperage when they first come online after a status of being turned off and completely cold They then have to come back down from this huge surge and afterwards they can begin to supply their constant output at a more stable rate If you want back up motors to power something you need to either adjust for this huge influx of power at the beginning of the back up motor's start cycle so it doesn't fry whatever it is the motor will be powering Or you must already have the backup motors running in tandem at a constant output that matches the primary motors used to supply your power
I think you guys might be underestimating just how large power plant nuclear reactors are and just how much water needs to be pumped through it. Using even the largest batteries available back then would have been akin to filling your swimming pool using a turkey baster.
