The Secret Chernobyl Before Chernobyl 

For 50% off with HelloFresh PLUS free shipping on your first box, use code BRAINFOOD50 at bit.ly/3lEpOph

I had a buddy who worked at a nuclear plant in Ohio with an almost identical design to Three Mile Island. They had exactly the same accident as TMI did years before TMI did. They avoided a meltdown because their operators had years of experience and noticed the weird readings in time and shut the plant down manually (bit of an oversimplification, but...). However, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told them to fix the problem at their plant (the fix was actually very minor, a valve position sensor was on the solenoid, not the valve itself), but the NRC decided not to send out a change to other similarly designed plants (like TMI). When the same problem occurred at TMI years later, that unit was brand new and the operators were inexperienced. They didn't notice the valve stuck open because the water and temperature was continuing to rise in the pressure relief overflow tank controlled by the valve. So, they basically drained the coolant from the reactor leading to a meltdown. Oops.

Another reason the U.S. may not have wanted to tell the public about the disaster is that they may not have wanted the Soviets to know that they were able to spy so closely on them.

2:05 Three Mile Island is definitely not 4th, Windscale was significantly worse, and there were also the accidents in Lucens, Chalk River, Goiania, and Simi Valley that all released more radiation.

1:30 start of content

9:10 You know it has to be bad when the authorities tell you to Speed when driving....

If Chernobyl had happened deeper in the Soviet Union, they probably could have covered _it_ up too.

I remember hearing of this incident as a child in the early 1970s while we were visiting a friend of my father’s. He worked as an electrical engineer for Stone and Webster in the Boston area. One of his colleagues who had defected from the Soviet Union had told him about the incident. He also told about a supervisor at some type of nuclear facility that came down with leukemia. After this supervisor left his job it was found that someone had placed a radioactive source on the bottom of his office chair.

A look at the Windscale fire might be interesting, it would have been up there in the scale were it not for "Cockroft's follies," the filters on the vent stacks

Huh, from the title I was kinda expecting the Leningrad partial meltdown from 1975, since that was basically a preview of what was going to fail at Chernobyl.

Skip to 1:31 to skip the ad

Keep up the good work Factboi and crew and, as always, stay safe!

To put TMI in perspective. The radiation released at TMI is roughly equivalent to the radiation emitted by the coal piles of a single coal power plant in one year. Of course this event occurred over a couple of days.

Interestingly irradiating foods with gamma-rays keeps them fresh longer, that should be a good theme to tie your sponsor to this episode.

I've known about Kyshtym for about five years. I was doing research on nuclear disasters for a science class and dove deep into disaster.

Good video as usual!

It's oblast from the past!

This seems to be a common topic ATM, haven't watched a vid about it yet,but seen you posted so I may as well check it out 😊

"Warned people to not stop for the next 20 to 30 miles and drive through at maximum speed." LOL What is the maximum speed of a vintage Lada?

Davis Besse, in Oak Harbor, OH, came within an inch of meltdown. A boron leak had eaten through most of the reactor lid with the exception of a 1” stainless steel plate. Doesn’t get mentioned a lot but it would’ve dwarfed TMI in terms of scale.

Always good to take a trip into the Whistlerverse. Allegedly. Cheers

Hooray you found the volume control

The theory by the scientists from Los Alamos has a huge hole in it. All the injured individuals sequestered in the hospital.

A geezer? What did they do make some poor old man sit on the lid???

Episode idea: Sodium Reactor Experiment 1957 in California. Nuclear reactor testing site in Los Angeles including a meltdown and a improper disposal. Still not cleaned up and plenty of stories of radiation exposure. When I was a kid, I was hiking and unknowingly, was walking between the reactors. The backside of the facility is open via trails. I had no idea what I was walking through, seemed like a bunch of rusted mining equipment. Underreported story, "Plainly Difficult" is the only other RU-vidr with a video on it.

Zhores Medvedev wrote _Nuclear Disaster in the Urals_ (1979) before the collapse of the Evil Empire, so without access to sources available today. He deduced a steam explosion in a waste storage facility from published accounts of ostensibly experimental radiological contamination of lakes. Medvedev wrote that no sane experiment would have used the reported varieties of contaminants or used such large doses in commercially valuable lakes. We don't have to choose between long-term contamination or an explosion. Both.

Proper education and training are vital for any employees of a nuclear power plant.

HBO should made a TV miniseries about this.

Simon Loving the after a hard at work lol. Anyway I think this is the best of yours I've watched. Hope you can continue to deliver this level of craft

I'm sorry, this was a huge tragedy, but I laughed my ass off at the words "...A massive black GEEZER..." 🤣

whilst an early & one of the territorially biggest soviet radioactive events... the (what I believe was) series of explosoins and leaks forming Kyshtym, or Mayak II is nowhere near the biggest.... other events may include: - Leningrad State University Nuclear Reactor Runaway (a technically identical event to Chernobyl, but where the subterranian placement of the reactor meant a realitively low radiation escape into the atmosphere... [around 20x the norm north of the city])... - Schevchenko City Nuclear Desalination plant explosoin (Turkmenistan today)... flooded the nearby artificial oasis kneedeep in highly radioactive ammonium formed from the liquid Sodium coolant escaping into the stored reservoir of filtered sea-water for desalination... as many as half the cities residents suffering acute radiation poisoning - Zema VIII submarine reactor and fuel rod facility accident in the special-prestincts of the city of Severodivinsk (closed city)... where attempts to make the process more effective resulted in a criticality event of unclear, but seriouse proportions (all the workers nieghborhood surrounding the plant was evecuated and demolished by special teams) - in fact, it is possibly, not even the biggest event in the Chyelabinsk nuclear belt... though, because the other event was largley effecting the convict population of one of the enrichment-plant labor-camps, statistics for that are even harder to come by, possibly a number of the low tens of thousands recieving variouse forms of severe adiation poisoning... it is a little hard to destinguish it from other causes of contaminations & deaths though...generally, the death rate in and around these camps, being close to 100% (officially around 30% per year of the standardly 5+ year sentence)...

That moment when you instantly recognize Chelyabinsk from watching too much NFKRZ

"Massive Black Geezer" AKA Shaq when he is 90 years old.

If only they spent as much effort on safety procedures as they did covering everything up.

Great this is first historical event I've heard happening on my bday(Sept 29)

January 3, 1961 at the Idaho National Laboratory. 3 men died in a meltdown. One of them was impaled (from groin to neck I think) by the control rod and turned into a ceiling decoration.

After high school I got really into history. The disaster before the disaster is a good line. ✊😆

Would contamination from the production of plutonium without a disaster explain the exclusion zone?

The sound mixing on this episode is a bit off

They say kept secret but that name brings a cut scene from Metal Gear Solid 2 to mind when Rey was being stolen for the first time.

You guys need to do an episode on the Idaho National Laboratory (INL)

1:29 Grub Busters ad ends.

Simon playing that algorithm with this title 😂

So not only did Chernobyl happen and showed how incompetant the people in charge were where it comes to handling such disasters, but they had an earlier example and didn't learn anything from it other than nuclear reactor go bang - people die?

Is the background just for someone's anxiety?

It release a plasma gas cloud that was glowing. Two fishermen were near the river when it happened.

Friendly reminder that nobody died due to 3 mile island

Here I thought this was about the near-Chernobyl like meltdown the Leningrad reactor had back in the 70's

Imagine driving and seeing that dead land and a sign saying to haul ass if you wanna live!

So early there’s no picture!

Hi Simon can you please do a video Sir Nicholas George Winton MBE was named a British Hero of the Holocaust by the British Government. Winton was awarded the Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Fourth Class, by the Czech President Václav Havel in 1998. he was a British humanitarian who helped to rescue jewish children who were at risk from Nazi Germany just months before the start of World War II he saved 669 children all of them would’ve probably have been killed by the Nazis if he hadn’t got them out please do a video on this man thank you Paul.

Rocky Flats, Colorado has entered the chat

I agree with the Los Alamos theory.

IIRC there was a similar near miss at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington back in the 90s. Sleep tight folks.

Analytics!

I have seen a detailed explanation why the Chernobyl reactor exploded, and the simple answer is that it was designed to explode when the emergency shutdown was used... not deliberately designed that way, but designed that way none the less.

I had thought there was two major incidents actually, one was the explosion mentioned. I think the other occurred during drought when one of their ponds dried up and may be responsible for the red dust.

Hold on now...u say the government lied to me! Noooooooo waaaaaaay!

A geezer of steam.

Hi, odd comment I know but is there a way I could send a message to this channel directly

The Chernobyl disaster di give us a culinary treat: Chicken Chernobyl is, essentially, Chicken Cordon Bleu with the cheese on the top.

Lake Karachay

Mmmm..... Radiation! 🥰 Hey Simon 😉

It's bizarre that anyone would consider Fukushima Daiichi worse than this.

9:24

simon, how do you know hello fresh tastes delicious? you always used to say how they don't deliver to prague. as you no longer say that can i assume the service is available in the c. republic now?

I'm so confused?!

Russia and nuclear tech, is like a baby with a box of matches.

Imagine how good a reputation near would have were it not for Russia. The word incompetent is no where near sufficient.

The massive meteorite that caused such damage in Russia from its glancing blow was over this part of the country too believe it or not. I now take no comfort when people say that nothing short of an extraordinarily unlikely meteorite impact could affect a nuclear power plant. Kyshtym seems jinxed bless it! They certainly did have a dust issue when the settling ponds dried out and wind would pick up the fine sediments. These have since been capped with clay. Beautiful place but terribly blighted.

Anyone up for a road side picnic?

Brought to you by the council for fossil fuels.

Interesting 🧐 very,very interesting

Sooo… how’s the beard oil thing going?

Does anyone else keep a chart of what Simon is wearing in which video with notes of any mention that suggests when the video was recorded?

Soo. To cover up incompetence an callous disregard for human lives they made up a disaster and ... covered that up. Yep, that tracks. Classic soviet.

“They argued it never happened” These people 😂

Just imagine what they withheld in recent times, say 2019...

I am putting my guess in for this being Mayak before i watch it.

And to think, youth are absolutely clamoring for this type of government…

I first heard about this in a Stephen King story.

0:34 - imagine having ovaries _SO_ tender, that you'd care in any way about such a detail.... Imagine....

It blew old people into the sky? Geezer?

🎉 more content!

It’s a good thing they got that better health care in these cities…they usually needed it!

In regards to the ad I would love to see the math on that carbon claim, not only actually a good science video I call BS. A good service but 1-1 on if you order them or grocery shop.

The real disaster before the disaster? An unexpected technical glitch prevented the nuclear technicians from ordering Hello Fresh. The staff went hungry and consequently lost concentration and mishandled the Chernobyl turbine test. The rest is history.

Chelyabinsk? Like, NFKRZ town?

Aye but HelloFresh try and sneak in a few veggie menus

Lol I don’t really think Fukushima really counts as either. That was due to an insane natural disaster. 1:35

To the soviets it was” you can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs”. We’re the same. We just polluted,killed and relocated thousands in someone else’s land in the pacific

The unfortunate part is that the failures were actually missed in the scientific process. What happened when the first wheel wasn’t perfect and didn’t work did they close the world down? Yes back in history we as humans didn’t understand what we had leaving us to see what happens in this experiment, it wasn’t done scientifically because if they had we’d still be using nuclear energy which would be cheaper. The next time you see you’re electric bill think of all the different possibilities that could make this better. Disappointed in the entire world’s governments for being involved

looks intentional

Geezer.

To the people complaining about the pronunciation of the word geyser, I have a few words to say. Even in the USA, not everyone pronounces some words the same. The English language isn't restricted to the USA (not even invented there), so trying to police the way people from different parts of the globe speak is as futile as being a grammar police type. Lighten up!

Oh, those Russians

I was aware of this incident, but it’s not really the Chernobyl before the Chernobyl. The soviets had a related incident on a similar design reactor years before Chernobyl, out of which a large report was produced with a whole lot of recommendations, as this was embarrassing to authorities the whole thing was withheld. The other thing you should be aware of was that the “routine” test that went wrong at Chernobyl was in fact experimental and have never been successful implemented before. To make matters worse the people performing it were electrical engineers not nuclear engineers so had no clue as to how dangerous the experiment they were performing.

No person. No problem.

Plz do a video of Slavomir Rawicz the polish citizen who escaped the gulag he wrote a book called Long Walk"

Maybe if they hadn't covered this accident up, Chernobyl might not have happened, but given the couldn't care less attitudes, that were part of Soviet life amongst government officials and management, maybe not. They also covered up a fatal rocket failure that killed, people at a rocket launch site for years and the lost cosmonauts, plus even after the fall of the Soviet Union, Putin tried to play down the accidental sinking of the submarine Kursk. The old Soviet ways die hard.