Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Kyle Hill 'The Lia Radiological Accident - Nuclear Bonfire'

Nuclear Engineer Reacts to Kyle Hill "The Lia Radiological Accident - Nuclear Bonfire"

[AexisRai]

Kyle's recent video about Fukushima's current water release plans demonstrates his journalistic integrity as much if not more so than the quality of his education on nuclear safety.

[GameDesignerJDG]

I know that losing track of 1000 orphan sources is entirely unimaginable, but also, the reason why it happened was unprecedented. The idea of a national government with full nuclear capability, the USSR, dissolving over the course of months is hard to grasp. The amount of bureaucratic paperwork, knowledge, and oversight that just evaporated overnight is terrifying. So much invaluable information, such as the location of these estimated 1000 orphan sources, was simply lost. I don't know what could have been done to prevent this. No government ever plans ahead for what happens after it has dissolved.

[amyg]

Your explanation of absorbed vs. equivalent dose finally made it make sense to me. Thank you for this! It's incredibly important for experts like you to talk about incidents like this for the same reason I listen to pilots talk about flight incidents--knowing how these incidents are handled and how much has been learned from them greatly reduces anxiety around them. I'd love to see you react to a video about Three Mile Island, since it's closer to home for you. Kyle and Plainly Difficult both have excellent videos on the subject, though Kyle's emphasizes the PR aspect more.

[beansnrice]

“We've arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.” -Carl Sagan

[madmax]

If I'm out and about and see a smallish device out in the middle of nowhere and everywhere is snow packed except where the device is and is steaming I'm getting nowhere near it.

[Muspellsheimr_]

A lost nuclear weapon is an Orphan Source.
It is **also** a Broken Arrow - an unexpected event involving nuclear weapons that result in the accidental launching, firing, detonating, theft, or loss of the weapon.

There have been 32 publicly known Broken Arrows, six of which have never been recovered.

[ldkmelon]

I imagine it would be the DROP AND RUN sign that the caesium type sources in medical equipment often have to try to prevent a repeat of the brazil incident, if these orphan sources were labelled.

[windhelmguard]

interesting story about one needing to know what you're dealing with:
back in the olden days, there was a horrific condition common among east german silver miners, which was essentially a combination of radiation poisoning and lung cancer.
this was because the soil in the southern mountains of east Germany wasn't just rich in silver ore, but also uranium ore, the value and danger of which was unknown to people of the time, this meant that miners were digging through uranium ore trying to get to the silver, not knowing what it was, inhaling dust particles, getting them on their clothes, going home in these clothes and spreading the contamination to their homes, resulting in nearly constant exposure.

when the east german government began mining uranium ore in earnest after WW-II under the supervision of the soviet union, the mines became much safer, anyone working there knew what they were dealing with, they had two locker rooms and a shower room in between, they'd leave their street clothes in locker room one when arriving, go through the shower room into locker room two to change into their work clothes.
after the shift they would leave their work clothes in locker room 2, hose each other down in the shower room (nobody washed themselves as that involved the possibility of you missing a spot) and then they would put on their street clothes again in locker room one, the work clothes never even left the mine, they had washing machines inside and the waste water was dumped back into the mine.

[shag]

So if it was Pu238 instead of Sr90, they would have fine since Alpha vs Beta assuming the source wasn’t exposed.

[Canthus]

Yep. 'Slow is smooth - Smooth is fast" It's faster to go slow and steady than it is to rush and screw up.

[zoomzabba]

You would be astounded at the greenhouse gasses from dams. Not just the obvious CO2 from decomposition of submerged organic materials, but the underlying permeability which allows methane to seeping up at far greater rates than natural lakes as well as conditions which encourage more local methane off-gassing from biological processes.

[theheresiarch]

Tyler, have you seen the Thought Emporium video from a few years ago where he discovered sketchy radioactive products on Amazon were full of Thorium being sold as "negative ion" snake oil? He had to get the NRC involved and everything, he ended up making two videos about it.

[Loki_Trickster]

Can always know Soviet Era, nuclear stuff is going to be worst anytime something can be done "Cheaper"

[TheLastLogicalOne]

The way the smile faded at @8:19 when strontium 90 was mentioned

[LogicalQ]

The channel plainly difficult has a few gems covering radiological events. Would be worth checking out.

[Luckydog]

I may be late to the party but in the US military, there is a term for nuclear explosives that are unnaccounted for that has been used since the Cold War. They are called "Broken Arrows", or the inadvertant loss of a nuclear warhead outside of conventional use. The US has since released documents since that time and from the early 50's to the late 80's there were 30 broken arrows. All have been recovered, except one. It is known where that one is and precautions were made for the prevention of detonation to include a 200 ft think concrete cap over the buried warhead and cordoned off to this day. Got any ideas where it is? I'll tell you! It's in a farmers field in South Carolina (this is public released information).

[laurdy]

One of the other problems with Sr90 is it get incorperated into the bones where it tends to stay

[thenecromorpher]

There's something about people who know their stuff politely saying something along the lines of "you don't really want to do that" (like entering a reactor's sheilding while it's on) that makes me laugh (not in a "ha ha" way)

[hellhoundable]

I’d love a collab video or interview video with you and Kyle together. Love both channels. Keep it up bro!

[nathnathn]

The one part that gets to me is they were just tossed aside and left laying there. Not inside an abandoned building or even hooked up to anything.
Or covered with any form of shielding to reduce the radiation exposure.