The Stupid Mistakes That Lead to Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was undoubtedly the worst nuclear disaster in history. The Chernobyl disaster claimed 30 lives directly and, according to many experts, thousands indirectly. How could a disaster of this magnitude have even happened? Check out today's epic new video to find out everything you need to know about the Chernobyl disaster.

🔖 MY SOCIAL PAGES

💭 Find more interesting stuff on:

All videos are based on publicly available information unless otherwise noted.

[tomsmith]

I will never get over the irony that the worst nuclear power disaster in world history occurred during a safety test

[LoneTiger]

_"If you can't understand how a stalled nuclear reactor could lead to an explosion, I don't blame you. After all, you don't work in the control room of a nuclear power plant. But as it turned out, the men who did, didn't understand it either."_
Valery Legasov - HBO Chernobyl ep5.

[eaglescout]

The HBO mini-series (which they use a screen shot of instead of an actual picture of Valery Legasov) did a really great job covering the facts and I especially liked the breakdown Legasov does with the red and blue tiles. It really helps explain what went wrong.

[brokenbridge]

Chernobyl a fine example of how Not to Operate a Nuclear Power Plant.

[iBridgee]

A tragic reminder of the devastating consequences of human error.

[rocketi]

3.6 Roentgen. Not great, not terrible.

[pacogonzalez]

As a chemical engineer this kind of accidents shows how important it is to have safety procedures and personal that knows the process by hard and is capable of taking decisions on what to do in the heat of the moment. Such a tragedy to learn and be better from.

[RetroBerner]

I was a kid in Germany when that happened, it was scary. We weren't allowed to play outside or eat locally produced food.

[MrRezRising]

Nice graphic, but Ferdinand's wife wasn't crying in the back of that car, she was dead too.

[worldwanderer]

"50, 000 people used to live here. Now it's a ghost town."
- MacMillan, then SAS Captain now Director of Special Force

[dinesmidtgaard]

I just wrote a 20 page essay about the chernobyl disaster this week, could've used some help from this video😫

[Switcharoo]

I know way too much about RBMK reactors and this accident. It's fascinated me since it went down back in '86. I remember watching it unfold on the news, it was wild.

[wmxx]

"To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for truth, we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there, whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn’t care about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?"

[statisticalanomaly]

I remember doing a presentation on Chernobyl, and everything that was mentioned in this video was in it. The Soviet RBMK reactor design was horrendously bad. The combination of the graphite as a moderator, in addition to the graphite-tipped boron control rods, was the death knell for that reactor design. Everything that could’ve gone wrong with it, did go wrong.

[johnharris]

When admiral Rickover was asked why the Navy has never had a nuclear accident his explanation was simple "I got a guy watching the dial. Then I got a guy watching that guy. Then another guy watching that guy. Now if a light comes on, go down and look and see why that light is on. Find out why it says that pump is over heating, don't try to fix it from the control room."

[denisruskin]

Just watch the HBO show, it’s easily 10/10.
Despite some fictional stuff, the last episode had the greatest explanation of what happened happend in any media.

[nhall]

YouTube Adverts are becoming excessive and annoying. Enough

[johnharris]

Chernobly and Three Mile Island set nuclear power back decades. Now Nuclear power is making a comeback with safer and smaller plants. Nuclear is really the only clean energy we have right now and you do not have to plow under thousands of acres of farm land like you do solar or wind.

[shezmu]

17:30 The reason the power went sky rocket high after the AZ-5, is because the rod's tips were made of graphite which increases reactivity, almost all rods were out and when the button made them go all in at the same time, all the graphite tips made the reactivity go insanely high.

[regorn]

50, 000 people used to live here. Now it's a ghost town.