The Soviet Union's Deadly Abandoned Nuclear Generators

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or RTGs (sometimes incorrectly called Nuclear Batteries) are usually utilized in deep space exploration.
But during the 1970s and 1980s, during the height of The Cold War, The Soviet Union manufactured over 2500 terrestrial RTGs to power its unmanned Lighthouses and Radio Navigation Beacons on the Northern Arctic seaboard, or deployed in the USSR's remotest hinterland rural regions.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, all these highly dangerous, intensely radioactive devices were simply abandoned in situ, and left to rot for the next 2 decades.... until they started to kill people in the 21st century, with Acute Radiation Exposure. This finally caused the international community to start to take the hazard they posed seriously.

This 30 min video is a documentary on the reasons the Soviet Engineers chose to use dangerous Radioisotope Thermal Generators to power equipment, the technology and nuclear physics behind them, with the help of Matt Damon in the movie ' The Martian' (2015) .
We explore some Abandoned Places in the Former Soviet Union that are still home to decaying RTGS , such as Aniva Lighthouse, on Russia's Sakhalin Island.
Finally the video tells the story of the Lia, Georgia Radiation Incident of 2001, when 3 Georgian woodsmen, accidentally stumbled upon an abandoned, highly radioactive RTG core. Which sadly killed one man and seriously injured the others.
An incident that needed human radiation clean up techniques not seen since the 'bio-robots' of the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster.

Despite several years of The Russian Federation and the EU/US West cooperating to decommission and make safe many orphan Soviet RTGs after the Lia Incident, since 2014 Vladimir Putin's government has withdrawn this international cooperation, leaving 100s of these highly radioactive and deadly devices unaccounted for across Russia, posing a deadly threat to its unsuspecting rural population.

Chapters:

00:38 Intro
01:02 Space RTGs (featuring Matt Damon)
02:48 Soviet Kerosine Lantern Radios
05:50 Soviet Terrestrial RTG Technology
15:20 The Post Soviet Years
20:15 The Lia, Georgia Radiation Incident - 2001
29:36 The present situation and ominous future

#coldwar #soviet #nuclearphysics #abandonedplaces

[fredricgreenblott]

This was such an excellent video. The real footage of the 2001 incident was extremely compelling and seeing the actual Strontium-90 heat source being handled very quickly by those men and seeing the snow boil and produce steam from its heat is terrifying. You can hear the beeps of the geiger counters from the videographer standing a good distance away from the action, so you can imagine how much radiation was being put off up close where the disposal team was rushing to contain it.

[iraklisivsivadze]

I am Georgian and heard this story multiple times, but this is the most accurate description so far.

[festro]

The idea of gas lanterns makes a lot of sense if you consider the climate of the region, we might look at it as a waste of resources in modern standards, but to them it was light, and through the inefficiencies of electrical conversion, heat; so to them (back in the day) this was a triple win.

[johnathankain]

I have a person deep fascination with what I think of as "remote infrastructure" like Dams, Lighthouses, Abandoned places, etc. This is simply terrifying and amazing.

[minacapella]

The story of the 3 mountaineers always makes me sad... they had no clue what it was, they had no way to know, and they just wanted to keep warm on a horribly frigid winter night while doing their work... one died horrifically, and the other two suffered terribly for months, and probably even years, later... for trying to stay warm...

[kynetx]

Watching that team secure the loose source was amazing. I hope those men got the recognition they deserved.

[chrisbusenkell]

Those are some really unselfish, brave people who cleaned up the remains of that last generator. They're heroes. I hope it doesn't come back to haunt them.

[Vile-Flesh]

Seeing the snow boiling off of that cylinder during the Lia recovery was God damned scary.

[greggoog]

Plutonium is simply amazing. Just imagine how incredibly crazy this is: you have a little clump of metal just sitting there, and it gives off huge amounts of immediately usable energy, for a lifetime, without any maintenance or energy input. The stuff that the wildest dreams are made of! 🤩

[slayer]

This is the most soviet thing I've seen.

[celebgil_silverstar]

Dear goodness, I've read about the Lia incident before, but I've never seen pictures of the poor guys, nor footage of the recovery operation. This was fascinating, thank you!

[Shishou_Shi]

Nevertheless, those RTGs seem a fine source of independent, maintenance free power.
If only they hadn't completely neglected safety checks.
Had they only reduced their checks instead of abandoning them they might have been operable and safe for much longer than they were, much like everything the Soviet Union left behind.
Lots of wasted potential in resources and abandoned infrastructure.

[beastehful]

I've read about RTGs and the Lia incident before but had no idea there was footage of the recovery operation. That was fascinating. Thanks for putting this video together, you did a great job

[lonewolfhamradio]

My first reaction was “what a great idea”, the recovery film was fascinating as well, the bravery and dedication of the civil defence volunteers deserves far greater recognition as well.

[samebeans]

Oh wow Andy, the amount of detail you've put it in this video is practically equivalent to historians work. Great work and props to you!

[maxprtn]

I did my dissertation on RTG's in USSR, it is a VERY unknown story, thanks for doing it justice.

[vczqxhe]

The Georgian RTG recover operation is like a Nuclear Olympic game, you can only do it once and everybody get a gold metal.

[ZGryphon]

Man alive, that training and recovery footage brings a whole new meaning to the old saying, "I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole."

[ForestNUT]

There is a Russian movie "Как я провёл этим летом"(2010) with an episode, when a man poisoned fish by RTG and fed it to a meteo station worker. Also according to wikipedia there is a list of lncidents with RTG'S, such as "accidentally dropped in the ocean from helicopter" and "found on scrapyard".

[paul]

17:06 that is amazing that after all those decades and thousands of visitors, the generators never had an incident and nobody got sick or died. I imagine the radiation warnings had a big role in that, nobody wants to suffer that way for sure. Never seen the full footage of the Georgian recovery operation. Man that is some good stuff thank you for a great video.