Shoutout to the three brave people who went into Reactor 4's flooded basement to drain water meant to cool the reactor before the still-active core could burn through the concrete below itself. If that melting core hit that water, another steam explosion could have blown up the other three reactors and covered half of Europe in fallout, which would have made a large chunk of the whole continent unsafe to live in for around 500,000 years. Those three brave people walked through knee-deep radiated water to save not only their country from a worse explosion, but also Europe as a whole. As an American, I can and will still say, bless those guys, and bless the people constructing the Arch over the Sarcophagus to protect the rest of Ukraine.
It wouldn't have blown up Units 1 and 2, but the adjacent Unit 3 would've suffered tremendous damage and meltdown, releasing a lot more fuel and fallout into the surrounding area.
The welder at 6:40 goes to take his mask off and accidently strikes an arc from the beam beside his head just as the narrator says "Proceeding from Number One requirement, safety"
Ah yes the power plant for Ukrainians managed by Ukrainians and guess what the workers nationality during the night shift was…. Mind blowing I know. Most of the liquidators were from Russia but yeah sure budd
Aiii.. I'm glad the new safe confinement is in place now. This was another disaster just waiting to happen. I'm glad Europe and others worked together to make it happen as soon as possible.
Instead of sending in Middle Class workers to rememdy this problem, we should be sending in violent prisoners & corrupt politicians to do the job instead.
While great in theory I don't think you'd find sociopaths with nothing to loose to be the best people to take on such an important assignment. We're talking about a project that's suppose to protect a good portion of the world from any further fallout. It's the same principles that explain why torture is usually ineffective. If someone believes they're going to die the last thing they're going to do is help the people that are getting ready to kill them. On the other hand if you could find a group of sociopathic idiots that know next to nothing about the effects of radiation and promise them full pardons for their service then you would have something you could work with. lol.
I saw a docu drama a few months back made by the BBC . In it was a scene with the divers. I had not know about them until I saw this and watching it I cried those 2 men along with the others deserve the highest honours for what they did.
Something to keep in mind: when speaking about nuclear fuel going critical, it doesn't mean an explosion, rather just a nuclear reaction as that which is normally used to generate power. All active nuclear reactors can thus be described as critical.
this no longer matters, this structure is covered by something that's built to last 100 years, but wtf does the space shuttle have to do with Chernobyl anyway? i dont get it
100 years is fuck all compared to the 20k years most of the uranium will take to decay. Theyre hoping in 100 years we have something better and can actually clean up something of that magnitude
*apologies for the essay* feel very strongly about this. Ive always thought the liquidators should have been given much more recognition around Europe (and the rest of the world really). It wasnt the people of Chernobyl, Ukraine or USSR that were to blame but it was them that sacrificed themselves for the greater good. Like the guys that swam thru hugely contaminated water, knowing that they would die relatively quickly. I dont even know the names of those guys and i think that is a massive injustice. They should have been awarded high honours from European Countries as they showed us what it means to have heart and courage. Just for a small comparison - it takes a brave sort to go to war as there is always the chance of being killed. But to know that you have absolutely no chance whatsoever of surviving and the chances are it will be a horrible, agonising death - to volunteer for that role as you see it as your duty. That takes balls. I have eternal respect for those guys, and all the other liquidators/rescue personel who deliberately put themselves in harms way. May they rest in peace and be forever blessed. I hope they get the respect and recognition they deserve and for their actions they shouldve won something equivelant to the N.P.P. so their names will be remembered better. Wherever they are, i hope they know how many lives they helped and how much we owe them.
@@filipo666sk I see it that way also. They were and ARE and always will be...beyond 'heros'!!! This should be taught in schools throughout the world of what they did. Also of the stuff many others who are unsung hero's. Suffering the loses of their loved ones. Unbelievable suffering, & they gave their lives, their everything to save countless of people ALL OVER THE WORLD.
I feel the same as you do. But I hope it wasn't in vain. They're covering up the top & sides but what about BELOW? When the stuff like the elephants foot finally eats through the concrete & hits the water there will be an even (possibly) bigger explostion.
@@ghostcityshelton9378 you need to get your facts straight cause you've said this in like 5 other comments. The elephants foot has solidified decades ago and is not going anywhere. There is other stuff in te rooms under the reactor that may do so but there is not much known about the condition it's in.
The 2 guys that went through the water didn't actually swim. It was about knee deep as far as I know. 1 still alive, the other lived till his 60s. Heros they are
Kinda miss not having everyone saying hbo? Or anyone here after hbos Chernobyl, it’s kinda annoying but I’m glad that the heroes that died are being recognized
Imagine how Brits feel? It was an HBO/BBC co-production yet you never hear a single person say "BBC's Chernobyl". HBO gets all the credit despite the majority of the cast being Brits, just like in every HBO/BBC joint venture like Game of Thrones and The Terror.
The fact that the crumbling shelter could have collapsed wasn't 'the dark side of Chernobyl shelter'. The dark side of the Chernobyl shelter was how many people died a horrible death building the damn thing. The people who built the new safe confinement building had it easy compared to those who had to build the original sarcophagus.
"had it easy". Really? It was still an extremely readioactive zone when the new safe confinement was built. And that is the exact reason they built it. To prevent any further nuclear disaster.
@@peterwolf8395 no I do not agree. Radiation taken for years that is less than the initial dosage still causes life threatening damages and to your offsprings aswell.
"..proceeding from number one requirement: safety." meanwhile 6:40 worker accidentaly touches nearby metal with welding rod while taking off weld-mask... 🤣🤣
@@UpUpDnDnLtRtLtRtBAStart I just said those two things happened at the same time and I found it funny. Didn't mean to offend experts/intellectuals like you...
The liquidators were not given a choice nor were they given the correct protective clothing etc. They were forced to clean it up. They were not told what they were cleaning up or how dangerous it was. They gave them an iodine pill a face mask and basically told to March...... it is sad and they unknowingly sacrificed their lives for the rest of the world. It is heroic but definitely sad.
Heroic in the sense that they kind of saved the rest of the world from its aftermath......it is still there but contained. And you are right they would have probably faced the gulag etc.
@@williamklug4647 The 700000 people working on the chernobyl disaster were mostly volunteers. They were told that the thing they'll clean is dangerous and they had little over a minute to anything on the roof. Don't spread misinformation. What I wrote might not be 100% true but they definitely weren't forced to work there.
Time is an appropriate song to play in the background: "The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older Shorter of breath and one day closer to death."
Well 2020 also already had a pretty big boom. Let's see if there will be a bigger one by the end of the year... ...I wouldn't be surprised when I look at what has been going on throughout the year...
Keith, A Chernobyl disaster was avoided by a sheer 30 minutes, some say 20 minutes at 3 Mile Island seven years prior to Chernobyl. Due to the Cold War intense rivalry the US did NOT pass onto the Soviet Union the lessons they learned from 3 Mile Island, specifically the build up of hydrogen gas by the boron rods in the reactor. It's not really a Russian stuff up, more like the HBO TV series documents well, an inherent FAULT of the so called " Socialist Soviet State " built on cronyism and corruption fuelled by lies.
It was only one reactor, one core. So much damage, I have got Hashimoto's disease from this accident. Someone sad "pride goes before falling". Soviet Union failed like Nazis, but in a different way, from inside dissaster.
My gramps died from a G4 Lung and Kidney tumor both growing independed from one another one of those is bad luck 2 is not a coinsidence fpund his drop medal and a longterm dosimeter with 100Rem on it explains alot
1:34 The Elephant's Foot. Stand next to that thing for more than 10 minutes and your are 100% guaranteed to be dead within the next month due to the immense amounts of radiation from it.
+Graystripe000 Actually I believe during the mid 1990s when some scientists went to get a better picture of it and explore the area a little more... with the radiation produced being one tenth of what it was originally... about 500 seconds and you will die from acute radiation poisoning in around two days. Scary huh? I'm not sure how radioactive it is now though... still deadly though I'm sure!
***** Depends on who you are. Some people are more resistant to radiation than others. Also, radiation levels off that thing have dropped in the past 30 years, and it seems to me that both old and new information about it are bouncing around, so it's safer to say "within a month or two".
This has been known for a while. If the roof falls in and further destabilizes the bare nuclear material, it would work it's way down to the water table and go off like a nuclear roman candle. We have NOT seen the end of Chernobyl...
It is sad because now we have 2 Chernobyl type disaster Fuckishima is now the new one. It could become worse as it releases more and more radioactive waist into the Pacific. Sadly news and even Japanese government doesn't seem to give much focus to this looming disaster.
Candace Cotton the ocean will be able to handle the radiation because water is a perfect radiation stopper plus the radioactive bit is only a small portion of it
@@jasonrichardson1999 Wrong!! It will keep going killing with radiation, & spreading. Also the they don't seem to care about the radiation like the elephants foot finally eatting through the concrete & when it hits the water another explostion will take place.
Well the graphite fire was pretty bright I would imagine… And just after explosion when its shooting the blue glow light into the sky was probably quite bright
@freaky12ju in japan the reactors arent failing, its the water lines and coolant pumps that are exploding and allowing contaminated water to leak. all they can do is use sea water and backup pumps to cool the reactors until they can get the proper ones fixed.
@PaPa JeRRy yy I wear them at work when we break concrete. Trust me dip shit they don't do much. Every arvo when I clean my nose there's heaps of concrete in my nostrils. Hence why I said it doesn't even stop dust let alone any other contaminated parts...
@freaky12ju when the nuclear reaction is underway they use nuclear control rods to control the reaction, they basically stop the reactor from overloading and can be taken out and put back in again when they need to. the operator who removed them in chernobyl thought that he could just cool the reactor down with water instead of putting some rods back in which built up enough steam to blow up the reactor. hope this helps :D
I actually came here for a few reasons: It happened when I graduated high school & it just was so chilling to me.I grew up in a time where the Cold War was ending&the prospect of Nukes was beginning to be known&has always been 1 of my greatest fears. I've had nightmares galore about nuclear disaster over the course of my life;it remains a terror inside of me. Lastly, I started to remember Chernobyl all over w/release of Chernobyl Diaries, wondering what the REAL people thought about such a film.
a fun fact is that the reactor in the next building, reactor 3, stayed in service as a power plant until 2000. that means the big candy cane tower they were repairing that was in danger of falling onto the sarcophagus was in service at the time.
When this video was uploaded, the world only had 2 Meltdowns the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. 3 Years after this video was uploaded we had another exclusion zone and 6 meltdowns in total.
@@cjmillsnun hmmm? Oh really? Name a few other nuclear meltdowns other than the ones mentioned above. There's 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. No other commercial reactor had its core meltdown. Please state otherwise.
@@dioszegizoltan4493 The K-19? The reactor in the sub lost its cooling but the crew managed to jerry rig a cooling system to prevent a Meltdown. K-19 incident was also onboard a navy vessel and thus not commercial.
Happy Aaron Oh ok never mind. Also on the Wikipedia page for Nuclear Meltdowns there are a few meltdowns on commercial reactors you missed :A1 plant, Saint-Laurent Nuclear Power Plant ,Chapelcross nuclear power station ,Lucens reactor and a lot more experimental reactors and military ones . These ones weren’t major accidents so I guess that’s why they are forgotten . Also these ones are only rated 4 on the International Nuclear Event Scale
Most of the workers who made the concrete tomb died of radiation poisoning, the rest got thyroid cancer... now that it is all cracked and damaged, it will need to be repaired with a brand new arc structure, workers will have to work in 20minute bursts to avoid death.
The new sarcophagus should and could have been completed years ago. Corruption and because this project provides the main source of work for locals, as well as highly paid salaries and allowances for Americans and French, it has been dragged out.
Don't forget the stuff still inside, stuff like the elephants foot which is eatting through the base of the reactor plant & when it hits the water will explode again.
You're an idiot if you truly think this. Not all projects are "delayed cause corruption!". Could they have finished it earlier? Sure. Why didn't they? Fairly sure it has something to do with the immense radiation levels seeping out from reactor 4's building, not allowing anyone near the area for more than a set time. Also would do you mean should? The new Sarcophagus has been up for two years since you posted this comment. So your whole comment is idiotic really.
@@drowsy_mouse8406 It still is currently melting through. But at an extremely slow rate. It probably won't break through anymore, but it still is that hot.
Brave souls who work to make this planet a safe place. These are the true modern soldiers, and should be awarded medals. So many of us just go about our lives without any clue as to what is happening there.
I've worked in the industry for 36 years. I have to agree....it is most definitely NOT the 'answer'. In fact, all it does is to keep increasing the risk of something dreadful happening. Sobering thought, is that they actually HAVE many forms of cheap/plentiful energy sources available.....they just won't release them. I think we're all going to get what we deserve!
The radiation has dramatically decreased and pripyat is a tourist destination, I know, I've been there. There are people living inside the exclusion zone since the disaster and are in healthy condition living of their own livestock.
No, I think that probably the cooling pump (lots of pipe) although I do see some graphite block on the floor there. The reactor core would just be a big empty space with nothing but debris as most of the materials have been ejected out of the core or evaporated during the accident
@@lasseengelsbak2648 The shelter was built to the exterior of it, if they built it inside, it'd take forever. And it's unrealistic, not to mention, pointless; when you could just create something to cover it.
@@lasseengelsbak2648 Correct, as working from the inside is extremely dangerous. You'd suffer high doses of radiation. The individuals only had mere moments inside the reactor, so they're only allowed for a few minutes or so. Even directly working above the reactor is said to be considerably hot. As stated in the video, Chernobyl is a "nuclear kitchen."
The original shelter was built on an unstable and damaged building which is why they are trying to raise funds for a new shelter. It will cost about a billion dollars and will be effective for about 100 years. There is no bright side to Chernobyl.....
@@TomTly sorry, i thought you are talking about recommending new shelter building (video content). it is indeed an old video, but people are searching a lot for chernobyl nowdays because of the HBO series, so it floated out of youtube depths :D
There are several documentaries on RU-vid regarding local health issues involving 3MI. If you have the time you might want to have a look. Unfortunately, the US has over 20 reactors identical to the one in Japan. I've never heard about the fact that a Japanese plant worker may have been responsible. Based on what I have studied the accident was caused by a failure of Japan's backup systems. But I am definitely interested about learning more about this plant worker. Thanks.
im a self/dad taught welder..my dad does have his cert however but, thats more of an "oh, i hope no one saw that" moment VS an "OH FUCK" moment....lol however, if i was welding on radioactive shit..id want to be PERFECT in everything i did, know what i mean? more of a safety risk to the dudes ego/confidence than to any real saftey threat
I love how right when the narrator says "SAFETY" at 6:44 you clearly see the welder is not wearing his respirator as he opens his visor and carelessly arks his tip on a I-beam over his shoulder... oops doesn't seem like safe work place techniques to me.
Nuclear meltdown was supposed to be stopped by digging the tunnels underneath, it later turns out that it wasn't necessary cause the uranium didn't melt through the concrete underneath the reactor. A "sarcophagus" was built over it to lock all the radiation in and protect it from climate elements, etc, and it was later replaced by a new confinement which allowed safe dismantling of the sarcophagus and radiated material.
you probably are one of those people that wonders why they didn't just dismantle the reactor and bury it somewhere... the reactor didn't just melt down, it exploded violently, there's a special lava down there, good luck carrying extremely radioactive and hot lava around
@filipo666sk true, the reactor needed a certain amount of control rods to remain safe and maintainable. the operator removed almost all rods and tried to balance the heat with an overflow of coolant, all this did was build steam and cause an explosion
This sarcophagus was designed to last only 15 years I believe. There was supposed to be built another enclosure that goes over the current sarcophagus that should last for 100 years, but I don't know what happened with that money.I think that was supposed to be built by 2010.
It is not repaired yet. Only the first phase of stabilizing the roof structure was completed. The waste storage problem, like all high-level nuclear waste storage problems has not been touched. The new containment structure to be built by AREVA S.A. has already eaten up over 2 billion euros of funding and is over a decade behind schedule. This video is a fundraiser effort to get more money to continue the job. The danger still very much there.
that is not really the reason why the chernobyl accident happend, the reason was they were making an experiment with the reactor, and they turned off automatic emergency shut down procedure, the staff was inexperienced. iit was caused by authorities, and staff itself.
