A Brief History of: The Leningrad 1975 & Chernobyl 1982 Meltdowns (Short Documentary)

#Chernobyl #Nuclear #Atomic

In 1975 & 1982 a Soviet designed RBMK reactor would experience a fuel melting event, and would signal the dangers of a flawed design, but these signals would fall on deaf ears.

This one is a double bill and an intro to the RBMK reactor. It will form part 1 of a new series of videos on Chernobyl. Think of this as the hobbit is to the lord of the rings that was the Chernobyl disaster in 86.

This is the Last video before Christmas, happy holidays!

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Sources:

Leningrad 1975

Chernobyl 1982

[rickgrendel]

I like it that the RBMK reactor is now a character in the Plainly Difficult universe.

[NPrinceling]

"What's your disaster plan?"
"Don't have a disaster."
"Genius!"

[cris_]

"Easy to build, " and "cheap." Two things you never want to hear when building a reactor.

[nameofthegame]

Imagine having procedures and parameters to work by but when the shit hits the fan you are forced to ignore that or you’ll have to go to the unemployment center the next day. The biggest problem wasn’t the RBMK, it was the work mentality of the USSR.

[agenericaccount]

Trainee who later worked at Chernobyl: OH NO NOT AGAIN

[JakusLarkus]

From someone who studies reactor design and operation for a living, I've gotta say your videos are spot on. All the details are correct and you've clearly done a loootttt of background research into the topic. Love the use of the word 'bugger' too... in the real world that word's usually followed by either a spicy blue flash or the complete destruction of some very expensive machinery.

[petergray]

Two precursor accidents involving the RBMK reactor.
Soviet technocrats: Two accidents, not great, not terrible.

[HyperionGamingTOPKEK]

Last time I clicked this fast the xenon was still iodine

[thegoodsr]

and that is how an rbmk reactor explodes

[Lrr_Of_Omikron]

Disasters are always so inconvenient. Going off during shift change, how rude.

[lostmymarbles]

I can literally count on my hands how many times I've been to Chernobyl..

13 times.

[johnladuke]

I love the way that they FINALLY pressed the SCRAM button in the first incident. Because all those times the reactor tried to SCRAM on its own all night long, that was clearly just a series of annoying false alarms. Great job, Soviet reactor operators.

[_KRose]

Smooth, black mineral - graphite. There's only one place in the entire facility you will find graphite: inside the core. If there's graphite on the ground outside, it means it wasn't a control tank that exploded, it was the reactor core. It's open!

[Cybonator]

Could do a separate vid on the different types of radiation exposure? milliRem, Roetgens, etc
Would be helpful to understand the severity of the accidents

[KingOhmni]

Last time I clicked this fast there was twice as much U236 in existence...

[drboze]

I remember reading about the startup of the B reactor at Hanford. After it successfully went critical, all the big-wigs went home to dinner. Shortly thereafter, it shut down by itself. They later realized it was the xenon poisoning. Fortunately, DuPont had ignored the engineers ideas on the number of fuel rod cavities and had extra ones available to rid the reactor of the poison. Imagine running a machine based on a theory and having to write the operating manual as you go. Fun fact: There was a sign on the main control saying, "Don't bump the control panel!"

[Falchieyan]

~9:35 mentioning that the only disaster account is from a tech that went on to work at Chernobyl. THAT GUY. I feel like he would end up with a personal vendetta against RBMK reactors. The Batman of RBMK reactors.

[nicholas_scott]

It is amazing that the flaw that led to the Chernobyl disaster had nearly led to disaster in 82 and 75.

[Killerean]

The graphite "tips" were actually rods of almost equal length to the boron control rods. The idea being that this reactor should run very low enriched fuel, thus needing all the acceleration it could get. However, this design have also proven lethal in 1986, as the scram procedure causes the reactor to briefly accelerate. That occurs due to a design quirk where the graphite moderator rod is purposely slightly shorter than the core itself to maintain equal reaction, using light water as an inhibitor. Unfortunately, as control rods are a two-part rods, the boron inhibitor rods cannot be inserted in to the core unless the graphite moderator rods are pushed out of the reactor. When this happens, water is pushed out of the channel, leaving the bottom of the channel to be accelerated to more than 100%. In 1986 Chernobyl, scram procedure was initiated too late, and the graphite rods jammed themselves in to the bottom of the core, leaving the reactor in full throttle. Hypothetically, identical incident could have happened in 1975 and 1982, however, the operators were, it appears, in "luck" as the insides of the reactor gave up first, triggering the alarm.

[MrJokkoma]

What makes the Rbmk reaktors so interesting is how they can act like they have their own life. Notoriously unstable at low power, xenon poison, hot spots, and not to forget that positive void coefficient, all these words we never had heard before, and how that design whit the grafite tiped boron rods made the whole event a complete runaway, so dangerous that no man can control it. It's fascinating in a scary way.