SL-1: America's First Nuclear Disaster

The grisly details of America's deadly first nuclear disaster, SL-1.

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[kylehill]

*The next in my [HALF-LIFE HISTORIES] series.* Enjoy our deepest dive yet. Thanks for watching.

[NATESOR]

It's incredible to me that seemingly every single nuclear disaster has a "oh, these detectors must be broken!" part in the story.

[thenextprodigy]

"Just exercise the nuclear rods" is the most Army response I could imagine when your scientists and engineers report an issue with the nuclear equipment

[alichamas]

The fact that you could pull the rod out that far to cause criticality without some kind of lock or limiter is unbelievable from an engineering point of view.

[Schaden-freude]

The idaho and chernobyl events are both interesting because both nuclear reactors were the equivalent of doing fission in a trashcan with the thin aluminum lid as your safety

[Matticitt]

Wait wait, let me get this straight. There was a nuclear reactor so poorly maintained that it was literally falling apart, so poorly designed it'd explode from a slight misalignment of just one control rod, which was so poorly designed it got stuck often, and which had to be moved by hand and that reactor was operated by just three people who were also inexperienced? Just WTF did I just watch.

[DarthRane]

As a former soldier I couldve told you from the beginning that putting nuclear anything in the hands of military standard soldiers is a HORRIBLE idea

[sgtkasi]

"The men didn't know it, but this minuscule moment... much faster than the blink of an eye, was the rest of their lives."

I don't know how much effort you put into this line, but *holy shit*.

[microfighterz]

This story was a lot more horrific than I thought it would be. I can't imagine how the first responders felt seeing all of that first hand

[jamesh]

"He would set off alarms intentionally just to startle his crewmates"
Me, a former navy nuke and electrician's mate: "Yep, sounds about right."

[MAJROCELT]

Honestly, these half life histories need to win some form of award. Not sure what categories exist for the webbies or whatever, but the writing and effort Kyle puts into these deserves a larger scale recognition.

[EvilMoW]

"My Geiger counter must be broken" I've heard that often in these videos. If I was doing ANYTHING that had to do with nuclear radiation, I would really hope the counter is broken. I'd still run right back out of the area and be extra careful going in.

A machine is designed to do its job. If it doesn't turn on, then its broken. If its screaming at the top of its lungs/ the dangerous edge of its meters, its probably working fine... and I'm in danger.

[derekbloom]

My great uncle was Richard McKinley so I’ve heard of this incident for many years growing up and I really appreciate the detailed coverage in your video.
There’s still people in my family that believe it was murder/suicide but they were from rural Ohio with limited education to understand what occurred. Unfortunately it’s unlikely I’ll share this video with them as the details of his death may be too disturbing. They’re aware that at least his hands were removed before the rest of his remains were interred at Arlington, I don’t believe they understood the brutal nature of the incident though. I at least had a chance to visit him at Arlington about 20 years ago.

[croesuslydias]

“Our radiation detector is going crazy, it must be broken. Let’s keep going!”

Something you will never hear me say lmfao

[frostyomnic]

Spoiler Warning:








The man who was impaled to the ceiling makes this seems like a proper horror story, imagine being one of the firefighters and first realizing what you were seeing

[caseyhamm]

imagine being the one guy who survived for like 2 hours, just knowing you’re finished

[MDO]

This is utterly fascinating. My grandfather was one of the army reactor technicians operating on that reactor. Luckily he wasn’t there that night! Hell of a job.

[rowanjones]

I haven't seen a lot of comments talking about how one of the men was still alive when the team found them. He probably lied there conscious and paralyzed for well over the nine minutes it took the response team to even arrive. That's the part I couldn't stop thinking about.

[kenclive]

"Jilted lover bent on nuclear revenge" is the perfect Fallout quest name

[niksooxyz]

I literally saw that body on the ceiling in that illustration and thought, “Is he not gonna address that?”

Then he did, and I instantly wished he didn’t