The China Syndrome "Turbine Trip" scene with newly composed soundtrack by Philip DeWalt 

LOL....awesome.....or "That's our everything has gone wrong alarm"....."Everything's fine"

You did not hear it, because it's NOT THERE!!

You say that, but at Three Mile Island, which occurred 12 days after release, there were so many alarms, that it was normal to dismiss alarms because there was everything was fine alarms. The alarm readout at TMI took over 8 hours after the accident to print all of the alarms, and the accident at TMI was relatively tame with only one reactor damaged and recoverable with no radiation release.

Noise is another name for a loud sound. But that's not important right now!

@@Xithia It is a joke referring to an episode of the Simpsons I think

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zUeQm6XUPZg.html

I saw an interview in which the director admitted he asked Lemmon to do many of the scenes dozens and dozens of times. Lemmon was so well known that he didn't want the actor's previous acting personae to enter this film "Too 'Lemmony!'" the director would say. Every time, Lemmons said "OK, lets' do its again and get it right". A true professional.

I always thought it would be a great inside joke to have Lemmons character be named Frank Pulver.

I never thought he was funny at all, but his dramatic roles are always tight.

But he also doesn’t over do it. He goes from professional detachment to panic, but the change is subtle. It’s a wonderful scene.

Real-life scenarios can make a more scary/suspenseful movie than a horror movie can

The problem is, in order to achieve such emotion, you need good writers. I mean GOOD writers. It is much more simple, fast and cheap to recicle jump scares over and over. Also, young audiences nowadays have the proportional capacity to keep focused of a baby....so, in those wonderfull 7 minutes, half of the theather would left.

It helps to have a healthy functioning mindset unlike today's Gen, cursed with dillusion, fantastical arrogance, and ignorance. Not their fault. Our Gen handed them this baton. Happens every 20 yrs I would say.

@@versetripn6631 It is COMPLETELY their fault. Millennials think it's "cute" to be stupid.

@@ct92404 like saying, fighting dogs think its "cute" to fight. One cant decide 'A' is preferrable over 'B-Z' if one hasn't been APPROPRIATELY guided past 'A'. To touch on your point, EACH younger Gen views itself as 'advanced' over their predecessors, as I did. Not speaking for others, It's simply (as M. Crue once stated), "...the Same 'ol Situation, ...Same 'ol Ball and Chain!" Or to quote Michael Biehn as Latin-speaking 'Johnny Ringo': "Juventus stultorum magister!" *Youth is the Teacher of Fools* 😎

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-YKURr_YoNXI.html

The concentric rings of vibration in his cup of coffee. That's when you knew the T-rex was just about to breach the control room. Or JAWS hitting the side of the Orca

The vibrations at 3 Mile Island were a sign that the pumps that circulate the high temperature pressurized water were dealing with pockets and big bubbles of steam. A leak bled off pressure that kept the water in a liquid state. Bad sign.

So that was how Godzilla came to be, complete with epic super powers!

@@johnstuartsmith In the MOVIE, the vibrations are evidence of increasing imbalance in one of the high-speed turbines. It tore itself apart. This can easily happen: look at this: same thing but pushed by hydropower where 920-ton turbines FLEW. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayano-Shushenskaya_power_station_accident

It's extremely effective how there are no cuts to the outside. I am sure it would be tempting with a higher budget to include "cool" shots of control rods dropping, or water boiling in a reactor core, or valves opening, but it feels much tenser when we are shut in with the characters. All we hear and see are what the operators and TV crew can see and hear, with the exception of the plant workers running to safety.

Agreed, there's a scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind that's similar, the interior of an Air Traffic Control Center that only takes place with what the controllers saw. It helped that most of the actors in the room were actual former controllers, so them doing everything realistically made that scene even better. The closed room tension scene is rarely done nowadays, I can't think of any modern film off the top of my head that does it anymore

Kurtis Knechtel I’m a huge fan of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and that scene you’re referring to had never occurred to me as using the same technique, but you’re right. Also, new Hollywood directors like Steven Spielberg were aiming for a level of everyday realism that had never been seen before in movies. If Close Encounters of the Third Kind had been written by Spielberg but directed by someone else in the 1950s, the look and feel of the movie would have been different. An air traffic control center would have been built on a small set, and actors would have been hired to play the air traffic controllers. The radio transmissions from the pilots would have been crisp and clear and a lot of dramatic music would have been played to accentuate the suspenseful mood of the scene. A good technique for the time, but not nearly as realistic as what would really happen if air traffic controllers encountered a UFO on their radar screens.

I'm currently a student learning ATC, and they nailed that scene. Everything from the phraseology, to assigning the primary target a partial datablock was all spot on. I can't speak to nuclear reactors, but everything in THIS scene sounded right enough where I didn't feel the need to question it. Realism, even if it's not something 99% of people would be able to catch, is SO important when you're doing scenes like this. If all you're gonna have is dialogue and tension, the dialogue has to be right. Like I said, I've never noticed in modern movies, but I'm gonna be watching for scenes like this from now on

Kurtis Knechtel the first Final Destination from 1999 has its pivotal scene filmed only from inside the aircraft. A budget limitation turns the scene into something memorable. Still, 1999 is a while ago now...

what do you call a building with a restaurant on one side and a paint store on the other? Huff and munch

"And stop calling me Shirley!"

@@MrRooibos123 Shirley you can't be serious...

MFXdump Otto?

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop taking amphetamines.

just turn to water back on🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yeap. No explosions every 5 minutes, no gallons of blood, magic weapons and cars.

@@brayli86 no green screen and no slow mo. Only for certified boomers like me.

Reminds me of the andromeda strain

@@LunchBokth remember not to let the core melt down or your dead

There's nothing more concerning than a nuclear power plant engineer explaining how redundancy of some part of the system would prevent a meltdown.

The simulator used in the movie is for a BWR.

This was a liberal anti-nuke film. Everything you said is correct. This was highly dramatized for maximum effect.

it curious how three mile island incident happened about the same time this move came out, can you explain three mile island then. nothing is infallible, nuclear plant incidents can and do happen.

Thanks - really interesting stuff.

Diabetus

Lindsay Kay I wanted to be an 80s automotive engineer with Michael Keaton

My favorite role for him though, was as the Federal official in 'Absence of Malice': "Two things are going to happen here. We're going to find out the truth of all this, and I'm going to leave this room with somebody's head in my briefcase."

Quaker Oats

@@thomasthedoubter6813 My favorite character in one of my favorite movies.

He was sadly a bit typecast but in the serious roles he *did* do he was always top notch in his acting.

He did a remake of 12 Angry Men. He was nominated for Oscar for that role too.

I liked him in Glen Gerry Glen Ross. Deadly serious role with killer dialogue

Quite often comedic actors play the best serious roles, look at Tom Hanks and even Billy Connolly has done his share of serious roles

Days of wine and Rose's was his best.

imagine him being in the control room for Chernobyl reactor unit number 4 when they were playing around with it and made it explode what would he do in that situation besides shit himself?

You're right Gavin. His fear & concern was real on screen -- all chiseled on his face -- great actors have that ability to "act" with their expressions & mannerisms. Jack gave many acting lessons in this film. It's something very hard to teach. But like a monster scaring you -- Jack did it with that intense look & he didn't over-dramatize it. It was like contained anxiety. Yes, one of his greatest roles.

Cover it! . . . !!!COVER IT!!!

Jack is dyatlov

@@20PINKluvr Seems like he was much more competent in this case, he was just misled by a faulty gauge into making the wrong call.

@@atomic_wait Agreed. Dyatlov ignored all visual evidence to follow a narrative. Jack's fault here, I suppose, was believing that one gauge was the absolute truth when he never checked the other gauge which was operating correctly. Even when nothing was making sense to him, and he actually SAW graphite on the ground, Dyatlov refused to rethink his stance.

Hey Dyatlov? Didn't you go hiking recently?

3.6 seiverts an hour. I'm told it's the equivalent to a chest x-ray, so if your overdue for a check-up 🤟

That and the fact he couldn't have his coffee......because coffee's for closers only.

As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody wanna see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. Do you get the picture? Are you laughing now?

_Patel? _*_Patel!?!?_*

Don't you mean Professor Fate?

Your name's Levine? You call yourself a nuclear power plant manager you son of a bitch?

Get Frank Grimes in there

Damn that Mr. Burns!!!! :-P

venting prevents meltdown

LOL

If I learned anything from 20 years working is the right people never get fired

gonna be honest, this guy rite here handled it well...

I don't know if I can agree or disagree!!!! Days of Wine and Rises, The Apartment, Glengarry Glennross, The out of towners!! Geesh!

Lol... c'mon man! It's Jack Lemmon! He also played Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts. He was toying with fulminate of mercury long before Walter White.

Barney Rubble. Now THERE'S an actor!

He is actually really great in this one, I'd forgotten ...

I wonder if William Shatner would've pulled this scene off?

@@MrDavidh4 nope

Hard to believe that's "Fate the Magnificent!" & the prince from The Great Race.,,,,,more Brandy MORE BRANDY!!!

Chuck Taylor Yup, did that, too.

My dad had a dot-matrix printer on a small metal storage case in his room where he worked (not a nuclear plant lol) that printed out logbooks each day from all the interaction people made moving around in the buildings with their security cards. When printing the logbook (on the continuous feed printer paper :P ) the head of the printer would reach a resonance speed causing the case in which it stood to rock from side to side like 6-7 centimeters each. Over the years the case had totally bent connection points for the plank it was standing on, but boy was it fun to watch the thing rock from side to side like that.

Loud but very quick!

We had music ruled printer paper, each bar was actually 5 lines. They lived in an annexe at the rear of our control room because they were that loud...good times indeed

@C.O. Jones I remember seeing in computer magazines in the very early 90's, adverts for solid metal stands, with a brownish translucent plastic lid, that two black handles, and supported on two small gas struts, with the insides having 'egg box" foam on the two inner sides, made specifically for dot-matrix/golf ball printers, with the inlet/outlet slots, having brush like strips, as used for windproofing letterboxes in front doors; I think it was connected up with two gasket ports, one for power, the other for the parallel cable. No wonder it was soundproofed, because the sheer noise working next to them was loud enough to be deafening. For extra, you could add two shelves, one for the box the z-form paper came in from, plus another for a box to collect the printouts in, with the whole thing made up of thin-walled, steel tubing. I can't remember how much they costed then, but something tells me the whole soundproof stand, plus the two extra shelves, cost almost as much as the printer itself ...

ALWAYS tap your mechanical gauges!

He was. You can even see when he' starts waving his hand in frustration because of the contradicting pressure gauges but realizes he is being watched by the news crew. You don't get that kind of subtlety in actors anymore.

Brimley - Absence of Malice Lemmon - Disappeared

H B Oh there are some modern day "Jack Lemmons" today - but unlike him they're not noticed by the public.

A consummate actor

@@spacecat7247 he was a lying pos

@@TesterBoy lol many actors are. I watch them for acting ability not their personal issues.

Indeed. In reality, the material would get no further than the water table.

Yes it s a stupid fucking term by people who do not show sht about anything. morons, fucking morons.

@@nkt1 Incorrect

@@Michael_in_Vt Really? You're suggesting a nuclear meltdown could actually burn its way through the earth's core?

@@nkt1 Grow the fuck up!

It’s fantastic acting. Very raw.

Bullshit lying propaganda movie.

Yeah, yeah, yeah always blame the instrumentation

It is scary when grizzled old veterans are freaking out.

@@TesterBoy The movie is propaganda? For what? To invade Canada?

Coincidence logic, I like it. 2 of 3, incase 1 were to fail it would not cause a loss of reactor protection, or a spurious reactor protection action.

Did the alarm not go off becuaes of high water levels, and then after he opened the relief valves the needle then stuck as to not show the rapid drop in water level after the feed water was shut off.

@@jonnytightlips513 High Steam generator water level and Low Steam generator water level are two separate alarms, so he would get another alarm for how dangerously low it went.

@@tartus4916 yes I was just describing what happened in the scene. Also it was not the level in the steam generator it was coolant in the reactor core.

That makes sense. What is the water, is it cooling or reactor?

Same reason we test click tongs at the grill. Gotta make sure it works.

yeah, i am actualy surprised that it didnt have buffer owerflow problem,...

@@marianmarkovic5881 Perhaps there was a special "buffer" for this system? That's a LOT of printer buffer for a 1970's era "dot matrix" printer. My brother is blind, he has a special printer that "prints" out braille in very thick almost "cardboard" like paper. When that things fires up you certainly know it, but that dot matrix printed in "The China Syndrome" makes my brothers braille printer sound quiet.

Wow. Never knew that.

Hi, back in @ 1997 i worked for a bakery / food factory, production was about 12 hours 3pm to 3am/6am is late All of the orders were printed on that 132 wide column fan folded printers - a dos screen of 80x25 = 2k - the program would print out in larger and wider font so that people could read it better We had 2 printer buffers, it took me a while to understand them as the instruction for the afternoon guy ( 12 to 7 ) were a bit "strange" Basically set the switches everything to buffer #1, set printer no #1 - print report #1 - wait for the 4 or 5 lights to start "dancing", once i think whatever it was light #1 or #2 - whichever it was went solid it meant the buffer was full - or all recieved. Now set the PC > Printer cable to buffer #2 - do the same thing, it would print to its printer no #1 There were 4 or 5 reports, so when buffer #2 was full you go back and set the PC to Printer switch back to #1, then select printer #2 send the report form the PC and the next set of 5 lights would start flashing / dancing Anyway, the most important was report #1 , it told them what to take out of the fridge eg 200kg butter , 300 litres milt , 200 kg flour etc The next report was a break down by product, eg Qty 1,000 #6 bread rolls white, 500 pink donuts, 600 plain orange glaze etc the last 4 reports were the details for each customer order - packing list Anyway, douggy used to finish between 6 and 7 all of the printing, the send command from the PC was in the first 20-30 mins when he started, so yeah printing on 4 machines took about 4 to 5 hours While it was dead simple job, it was hard, and you had to do the process correctly, plus not much fun when the ribbon fades or rips or you get a paper jam, plus each detail printer box had to be 100% full , some time he would carefully sticky tape left over sheets to make a continuous roll again One Sunday afternoon the casual who used to come in for sunday night production forgot about the buffers and checking lights and it was still running 8am when i came in, ( 1pm to 8am - 17 hours , luckily the first 2 reports had the total qty or ingredients and the qty of units , they had used the downstairs bakery office pc to look up customer orders 1 by one and yell them out for people to scribble them on plain paper So the way it worked SALES PC has 1 printer port that goes to a switch box called Printer #1 and Printer #2 After the switch box it goes to a buffer called buffer #1 for printers #1 and #2 the the same the other switch on printer #2 is a buffer that feed printer #3 and printer #4 So basically you do this Set printer / buffer #1, on on the buffer #1 you set printer #1 Print report - wait for lights to end Flick to Printer #2 Run report - wait for lights to end Set pc to printer switch/ buffer #2 Select printer #3 Print report - wait for lights to end Flick to Printer #4 Run report - wait for lights to end I think after than printer #1 and #2 would finish, then you flick back and run report no #5 and #6 something like that - very simple but complex and easy to stuff up, the worst is when you check every 5 mins then find paper jammed or it is printing all on one line, you have to cancel what is there and work backward in the legible print outs to find which report it was, then start from that one and redo Regards George

Those old late-70s teleprinters like the DECwriters and similar ran on very slow connections, I don't think any faster than 1200 baud. Between that and the fact that they only printed maybe 30-120 characters per second depending on model, and yeah, they could fill up and get behind *real* fast. The very first job I ever had at 16 in 1982 was doing crap work around a college computer center in my hometown--printing/bursting/decollating documents, stacking paper, cleaning up, hanging tapes on the weekend, stuff like that. Our system console was a TTY very similar to the one in this scene and man was it slow. Mercifully we rarely ever had to use it.

Yeah and TMI was inconsequential other than permanently damaging a working reactor, while the movie depicts some impossible doomsday scenario. Yet it took the span of two seconds for the world at large to conflate the two.

Home Kitchen here we go with the conspiracy theories.

zolikoff sure wasn’t “inconsequential “ at the time. People were evacuating due to the report that were being released from the facility.

@@zolikoff TMI wasn’t inconsequential because it showed that mistakes can & do happen. It also was only a partial meltdown. Had it been any worse, it could’ve been a human & ecological disaster.

@@ktpinnacle People were evacuating due to superstition and fearmongering. That is not a consequence of anything related to the accident, it's a consequence of collective human delusion and stupidity. Yes, it's a serious consequence, but the power plant was not at fault.

i think the added effects of the score really help heighten the drama in this scene.

I think because it fits in so seamlessly that people forget that the whole point of this post was the added score.

Seriously? Its' freaking horrible, sounds like Friday the 13th and it wasn't needed at all.

Yes, seriously. It was a project for a film class. It's not a matter of being needed or not needed.

Attention spams of 20 seconds thanks to Dik Dok

I do too - particularly the old USSR stuff. Have you seen the HBO series on Chernobyl? I made a clock with that display because it looks cool

T-Rex? Whew, only a nuclear reactor rumbling.

But what did it mean?

@@TheEilypily - You have to watch the whole movie. No spoilers.

@@TheEilypily The welds on a pump support structure were substandard and.... oh, just watch the movie.

Excessive milk was chilling. Looked like tea

It disgusts me that he wasn't offered more roles. So many average movies of the 70's and 80's would have been a lot more tolerable had they featured a walrus mustache.

I thought he got a job in Memphis, TN as a Security Chief for an exclusive law firm.

Rich Weigel and he got dibeeeties

Bunch of smart asses, aren't you?

Yep, I heard he was put in charge of the South Pole Penguin Census (with apologies to Jay Ward).

Trere is one tiny problem whit alarms, they are good at getting your attantion, but too many alarms at same time may end up confusing crew, make it miss key points, it happend in TMI and it happend in 737MAX incidents as well.

@@marianmarkovic5881 Also note the habbit of just putting all the warning indicators in a grid with no order of significance or danger.

Wilford Brimley (1934-2020) R.I.P

“I’m gonna have somebody’s ass in my briefcase”. Mr Brimley was spectacular.

I watched the movie the first time as a kid, then I enjoyed it even more when I rewatched it after becoming a control engineer. Seeing what they got right about working in the control room is a delight.

So true, One of my all time favorites. Ive seen every one of his movies multiple time. All I have to do is think "the out of towners" and I start laughing!

velet

bizde biliyoz ben nükleer mühendis olacam. türk olanlar anladı

Ever seen the day after or threads?

Luke, you would like the Chernobyl episode of Surviving Disaster ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-yk3-XUe0oEU.html

This is why we don't have nuclear power in NewZealand; such serious pathos and highly pitched incidental music would scare all the sheep !

Indeed. Far more magical than the lifeless digital displays of today.

@@hochhaul Crude, bulky, basic, prone to sticking/failure. So magical.

@@walterbrunswick Depending on the era of the digital component, those circuit boards are not particularly more reliable. Especially when newer soldering alloys crashed the party. Tin whiskers, cold breaks, etc. Capacitor failures, resistor drift, IC degradation, etc.

@@walterbrunswick It a lot of ways better because it forced them to walk the room and be interactive instead if lay there sleepy and bored they had backups but didn't use them in this case.

@@walterbrunswick besides how else would you have this awesome accident? Compare. Gee an Led Segment Burned Out. Put in a new one. Disaster Averted! Movie: Jesus Jumping Christ the Core is Exposed!

Thanks - I deliberately selected a out of tune piano for that very reason to help highlight the "something's gone wrong" aspect of that moment.

Actually, at the point where it builds up there is no audible dialogue, Brimleys comment is virtually inaudible

It was only 3.6 Roentgens. Not that bad...

@@EtzEchad About as much as a x-ray, so if anyone is overdue a check up...... kek

It's just another faulty meter, you're wasting our time

@@averyvaliant You're delusional, get out of here!

Please take these guys to the infirmary!

I think his realisation that the gauge is stuck and that water pressure is low really hits the severity of the situation for me.

@@shugaroony it could have been a lot worse or an explosion

4:52 does it for me. Sheer, authentic disbelief.

Exactly, i watched the scene over and over again. Never thought its great acting. Years later i know it was fantastic acting.

Jack Lemon was an old liberal fart. Too many of his movies such as the China Syndrome were just propaganda pieces.

​@@TesterBoy Propaganda piece? Why because the company wouldn't spend the money to do it right and cut corners to save $$$ and endanger millions of peoples lives then hid all there criminal shit. That's straight out of the Trump play book you must be so pleased.

PlymouthVT It sounds you have been swayed by the movie. Every critical study I’ve read since the Three Mile Island Accident points to human error: www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html allthingsnuclear.org/dlochbaum/nuclear-plant-accidents-three-mile-island In it’s aftermath there were additional regulations and design changes. Why would a company knowingly cut corners if it caused the destruction of it’s own system? You are badly misinformed!

I, too, saw this in the movie theatre. I was 18 years old. Today I am 58 years young. This movie was amazing. The '70s were fantastic movie making years for Hollywood. With the oil crisis and recession, filmmakers did not have large production budgets and had to rely on great acting, great writing and camerawork. No moolah for pyrotechnic hooha. Thus the "Golden age of film" in 1970s Hollywood. Other greats from this period include but are not limited to, Dog Day Afternoon, And Justice for All, The Conversation, Deliverance, French Connection.

I saw it in a theatre, too. Specifically, the Ringling Theatre in Baraboo, WI, where I was working as a ring master at the Circus World Museum.

Me too! So much fun - and luck!

Seeing this clip on RU-vid made me buy the film

@@visionist7 I have it too (the region-free British Blu from Indicator/Powerhouse).

@@bmasters1981 I think I brought the American Blu... actually come to think of it, it has a booklet, I think... can't remember lol. Probably the British one

@@visionist7 The British one is the one that does.

@@bmasters1981 another film that has a lot of tension without needing any modern flashy gimmicks is The Andromeda Strain. I showed my friend the Blu and he found it very engaging despite often being bored with modern films. Funny that

Shiiii... Looking at it now, it's true! The Death Star's were dark and moody though lol. Where is this room in reality?

@@visionist7 It's at a power station in California.

Imagine Mr. Lemmon playing Chief Tenn Graneet.....

lol. oh, ha ha ha.😋

"ok let's pull the hammer back and cock this sodder!"

Homer is my hero.

No: his little drinking bird would save it.

With a huge bucket of water 💧 🪣

I think his first instinct would be to tap gauges

@@andrewceballos5404 >>tap the gauges That is not a joke: but no way should you need to be poking gauges, FFS. At TMI Unit 2, the gauges stayed up in false readings until somebody poked them. Note also that the underlying problem at TMI 2 was KNOWN BEFOREHAND by the manufacturer but not communicated to all stations. WTF. See the underlying problem made clear in this cut: the human-machine interface of that unit (and those of that time) were NOT built with human usability in mind (understatement). Alarm cascades caused deafening noise; readouts intimately connected technically were on different sides of the room, hidden on the back of large cabinets full of dials, etc. Printouts ran HOURS behind real time. OLD Nukes are NOT safe because they leak, they pop, and people simply can NOT keep their hands around fission with this level of technology. NEW reactors that self-shutdown rather than melt and have usable GUIs are our future, whether we like it or not. So says the bio major who went to the barricades in the 80s to shut down Shoreham, NA and Seabrook, NH.

David Hoffman This film is an example of operator based control and it was the standard back in the day. In other words the knowledge of the operator was thought to be sufficient for causality control. TMI proved that wrong. Humans are judgmental and easily fooled. So they developed a symptom-based method for causality procedures based on the experience of the airlines. Flip charts and checklists are now the norm.

Of course, this movie was released about a week before Three Mile Island and, although fictional, was very well researched. I've read The Warning, an account of the events before and during the TMI accident, - which was co-written by Ira Rosen (formerly of 60 Minutes) and Mike Gray (the writer of The China Syndrome screenplay). It is uncanny how closely the initial accident scenario in The China Syndrome mirrors what really happened at TMI.

My impression was that the book is unbiased.

broomsterm. Also remember that they came to within 30 minutes of total core meltdown and rendered Unit 2 completely unusable.

Jim Allen. To clarify, the operators thought the relief valve HAD closed because the switch controlling it had closed. Other than that switch, they had no direct way of knowing if the valve was closed or open. And while I totally agree with you that the system would have NOT have worked fine and resolved itself if the operators had not intervened, let us not forget that it was the human intervention - by intentionally shutting down the ECCS during the initial stages of the accident - that accellerated the progression of the accident.

You'll get diabethus.

You can with that hot bowl of Quaker oats when you join the science club at Fernard State School for boys. ... This just maybe the darkest meme on the net at the moment.

Completely agree

@@dougdauer281 If I look at the INES list of the last century I completely disagree, except one part: Nuclear power COULD save us.

Nuclear power CAN be made safely BUT it NEVER will be because of the cost to make it safely

We see now after some real world events that the underlying premise was flawed .

Truth…….we should have dozens of plants.

I must disagree. The liquid water is not going to expand. By lowering the pressure, there may be an illusion of expansion, but that will be due to an increase of boiling in the core. That's similar to what happened at TMI. In this scene, the operators had no clue what was happening, and no clue what to do about it. In a real power plant, there are procedures that they would have long been into to control anything that might be happening.

not to change the subject karunya but back in Tennessee after world war we brought back some Germans had a reactor and they reassembled it in oak ridge Tennessee and when they first started operating that thing here in the United States that used to vent the radioactive steam into the atmosphere on a regular basis no containment building are you trying to lower the the steam the head pressure so that you don't get a rupture in a pipe I'll take your word on on the rest of us assumption

​@@wolfpat Well at the time several things were happening here. Number 1, Reactor scram. This drops all the control rods in to stop the reactor, literally, American design control rods were quite literally dropped in by gravity in an emergency, they would take several seconds to insert. This kills the nuclear chain reaction as soon as they are all in. However, due to fission material and products, the reactor still produces about 7% of its total output as heat for the next few hours, slowly decaying to 2% and then to almost none over the course of a day or two. It is important to maintain active cooling on the reactor. Number 2, the turbine trip caused an increase of steam pressure as steam was no longer flowing through the turbine at the same rate. These type of reactors have 2 water loops, one is very high pressure the "primary loop" this is the one that is exposed to the core, and the "secondary loop" is where the water boils and creates power (this isolates the power generating water from the radioactive water). With less water flow in the secondary loop, this caused lesser cooling to the primary loop causing steam pressure to increase, tripping an emergency relif valve. This valve doesn't dump radioactive steam into the air or anything, it releases it into piping to take it to a closed loop emergency condenser where it is contained. Number 3, high radiation detected on level 8. This is caused by the flow of steam through the building near the top of the reactor (most American reactors have the emergency relief valves at the highest point and I assume level 8 is the highest level). Number 4, high water level. This was likely caused by the high pressure injection system, when steam is released the pressure in the primary loop decreases, but the pressure of the injection system remains the same, forward biasing the injection system. In response to this, they go off regulation and open emergency relief valves that they are not supposed to open. The high pressure injection system likely turned off. They assumed it is a feed water leak when in reality the reactor would stabilize itself. The reason they didn't want the water level too high is that changes in pressure can cause water hammer (like when you turn off your sink or shower too fast and the pipes move in the walls). This could cause a breach in the system. Number 5, the sticky gauge. This is an example of worst case scenario, a small equipment failure. The biggest threat isn't a pump blowing up or a line bursting, but rather, a valve getting stuck open, or a small piece of equipment failing and operators being unable to compensate or notice the issue. This is dramatized as they should be using and cross-referencing all level gauges they have. In a high stress environment, this is a cause of human error. Number 6, the low water level. Low water level would uncover the core and with lack of ample cooling, the reactor would have a "meltdown" where the core would get so hot the fuel rods would melt. Meltdowns are what the reactor vessel and containment buildings are designed to contain. Outside of Chernobyl, a meltdown has not caused the mass spread of radiation. The closest we got was radioactive feed water leaking from Fukishima since they had to resort to pumping sea water in. Number 7, opening the relief valves. The part where the high pressure injection system is down for maintenance is something that would never happen when the reactor is online, and the system is usually automatic with manual overrides. Being on auxiliary feed water, it likely didn't get injected fast enough, so he opened all manual valves to relive steam pressure so water could be inserted faster. As soon as the level stabilized he shut the valves so the reactor would fill as normal. This is a worst case scenario that was partly brought down by human error and partly due to faulty equipment. The movie shows the disaster was averted, however, in real life there were several instances where meltdowns occurred, most of which were a combination of design flaws, and some human error.

@@nobettername562 Do you know that prior to TMI, there wasn't an indicator of the water level in the reactor vessel? It was assumed that if there was water in the pressurizer, there was water in the reactor vessel. Primary water from the Pressurizer PORVs and the code safeties dump into the Pressurizer Relief Tank, not a condenser. If there's radiation alarms in the containment, I would guess that the relief disk in the PRT has blown out, which would be cause for an Alert classification due to loss of a fission product barrier. The NRC and INPO aren't gonna like that. (Of course INPO wasn't invented back then either. I'd like to address other things in your comments, but I gotta run.

@@wolfpat It's a BWR control room subject to a PWR accident - so, utter nonsense. However BWRs have always had a reactor water level indication. One does not drain perfectly good water from a BWR during a transient - there's no reason to and no mechanism either. This document (and some back-of-envelope calculations) tells me that if a generator trip happened and the feedwater control failed so that it continued providing enough flow for 100% power, it would take about 15-30 seconds for the situation to play out. A high water trip would shut down the feedwater pump, probably before operators could troubleshoot. The reactor would then slowly boil off through the relief valves (in automatic position) and operators would have plenty of time to start high-pressure emergency core cooling. www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1125/ML11258A315.pdf

Utter drivel! Thousands of actors can convey emotions. I am sick of these simplistic comments and a hankering for a supposed golden era.

@@kingy002 Well, today is no golden era. Writers have been devalued.

3.6 Chernobyl comments, not great, but not terrible.

Perfectly normal phenomenon

@Phoenix Nah, Chernobyl was just a chain of bad events all of which could have been dealt with differently, and which shouldn't have happened. In almost all cases catastrophes were *always* due to the human factor. The operators were tired, one was inexperienced and they were under immense pressure to "kick-start" the reactor which in turn made them set in motion an unlikely scenario they never would have expected in the first place. It was quite bizarre but made perfect sense afterwards when it was all too late. Ever heard of the 1977 Tenerife Airport disaster when two jumbo jets collided on the runway killing 583 people in the worst airplane disaster in history? Same thing. A chain of unfortunate events all interlinked and with both the air controllers and the pilots of the two aircraft not being fully aware what they were doing - or what the other were doing - led to this. A lot of things could and should have been dealt with differently but weren't. The world's largest ocean liner sinking in a dead calm night by hitting an ice-berg on its maiden voyage? Paranoid people think it's bizarre. Reasonable people know it's a simple equation of: Captain Edwards under immense pressure from White Star Line president Bruce Ismay to arrive in New York mid-day rather than at dusk for a "perfect arrival" and hence choosing to go through an area with reports of huge icebergs + Titanic *already* being late following a coal workers strike + the rudder of the ship being too small for a ship that size and ancient in design even in 1912 + the center propeller being powered by the turbine which couldn't be reversed thus severely restricting the turning ability of the ship + the lookout in the mast not having access to the binoculars in a locked case + the dead calm water not breaking off at the iceberg making it easier to spot + the overlying trust on "a safe design with water-tight compartments" + ancient regulations on how many life boats the ship of a certain tonnage should carry (from the 1860's when ships the size of Titanic were unimaginable) + no ships being in the vicinity to assist the people from the sinking ship = bad catastrophe. Sure as heck wasn't some incredibly contrived "insurance scam". The Bhopal chemical industry disaster in India in 1984 is another example of people just "screwing up". "I know these intelligence rats, they are lobotomized criminals, no creativity whatsoever even in criminal activities. Yet, they are called heroes and being paid with your tax dollars to manage stolen Trillions in Tax havens!" Well, what the intelligence units do is far from moral or ethical but they operate in a reality in which regular laws, rules and beliefs don't matter or are secondary - as tragic as that is. You know the ultimately truth about reality is that sometimes you need criminals to beat other criminals. Sometimes you need monsters to stop other monsters. In love and war everything is allowed so what goes on behind the scenes is more often than not nasty and unglamorous. I don't think *anybody* calls THEM "heroes". Most of them know they aren't themselves but realize they're blunt tools or "necessary evil". I agree that the real criminals are those hoarding away mountains of money in tax havens while their people get the scraps from their tables and barely survive. You however don't have a balanced view of the whole thing. Going to opposite extreme, crying wolf and crudely bundling everybody together as some "great, evil cult" does nobody any favors.

@@jamesshunt5123 Are you from the planet Rantor?

@@jamesshunt5123 That was glorious. I read the whole thing!

Amazing coincidence and similarly.

@@rivotrich7 Render an area the size of Pennsylvania permanently uninhabitable. Not to mention the cancer that would show up later. [sic]

cpufrost if it got outside of the containment/ shielding

@@rivotrich7 That was a direct quote from the movie in which the casual viewer that knew nothing about nuclear tech learned what the "China Syndrome" was and why it was called that.

Yes I’m sure it would do just that if a meltdown happened and a significant amount of radiation escaped the containment building. That’s what actually happened at Chernobyl.

There's a novel and the ending is ghastly.

The Soviets actually used this movie along with three mile island soon after to proclaim how much safer and advanced their nuclear plants were compared to the West’s…as you noted boy how much egg they had on their face a short time in the future!

In actuality, this movie was released in 1979. Ironically, that same year saw the accident at 3 Mile Island. Both scared the hell out of me. This video clip was released only 8 years ago.

A brilliant film - and worth seeing!

2 weeks before 3 mile island where the same thing happened turbine trip

I've always been a huge fan of this movie, and the fact that it doesn't beat you to death with cheesy background music makes it even more of a masterpiece. Sorry, but I applaud the OP's efforts in any case.

aburg10s Actually, the alarm IS used in the soundtrack. I sampled it and used it during the ending passage - several alarms lifted from the audio were sampled and processed to make the soundtrack.

It seems like they’ve incorporated the alarm into a Shepard Tone to create constant tension.

@@Westsoid2009 Read the description, you fucking idiot.

Yeah. Saw an interview with John Carpenter in which he talked about how the studio execs didn't think "Halloween" was the least bit frightening when he screened it for them without the score. Then he wrote the now famous piano music, overlaying it with the action and they said it was scary as hell

Andromeda Strain!

Something very similar almost started WWIII. TTY bell was supposed to ring when time to recall bombers.

It makes him look like a walrus.