Pre-Chernobyl History: Trouble Under the Surface (1975-1986)
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- čas přidán 11. 05. 2024
- Before the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant existed, there was a power struggle. A struggle between engineers and politicians, scientists and engineers. And at the center of it all, the rise of a reactor type that would go on to be the most infamous of them all. This is the second half of that story.
This script was written by Bobby, who has also crafted an incredible history paper exploring how misinformation and disinformation continues to impact the story of Chernobyl. You can read it here: docs.google.com/document/d/1m...
The only nod to this information in the HBO series is in one of the trial scenes when Legasov says "No one in the room that night knew the shutdown button could act as a detonator. They didn't know it because it had been kept from them." He goes on to admit he wasn't the only one to keep the secrets. Then he blames the KGB and the Central Committee but given the information in this video it looks like it was very much the fault of Legasov and the Kurchatov Institute. It was one of those of moments in a movie where I wondered why they didn't explore such an admission more deeply.
That's why the show received so much hate among the liquidators and people interested in the topic. It represented Dyatlov as a villain and Legasov as a truth teller, while in reality it was kinda the other way around.
@@user-dt9xb7sn2q Perhaps this knowledge is why he killed himself.
It would be entirely standard for something like this to go through the KGB for approval before being disclosed more widely. Seems highly unlikely that the nuclear institute itself decided nuclear engineers couldn't be properly informed.
Also don't think Dyatlov is presented as much of a villain in the show, more so as a natural product of a system allergic to incontinent truths.
@@christianovergaard1081 Disclosing is one thing. However, the institute ignored the need to make necessary fixes (which didn't need any disclosure) while actually implementing other "improvements", which made the new reactors even more dangerous.
@@user-dt9xb7sn2qyou're right, but thinking too logically. The Soviet Union didn't do "logical".
@30:38 “he threw people under the bus and didn’t realize the bus would come back for him too” 😂 love the graphic haha another excellent enlightening video, thank you!
Your willingness and ability to compare multiple documents from multiple sources and sieve through the differences for the truth is incredible.
You make serious investigative journalists look like hobbyists, not to mention certain documentarians, too many of whom are looking for a single villain and a hero to tell the story rather than giving the facts as they happened.
Thank you for making such incredible work so easily available to the public.
Oh what an interesting subject! I've always wanted to hear more about pre chernobyl events. Keep up the good work bud! This is definitely my favorite chernobyl channel now!
I'm sure there will be a lot more in the future :)
The amount of research that goes into your videos is unparalleled, and this video is a prime example. Even something as seemingly-simple as the dimensions of the reactor control rods turns out to be a fog of misinformation, misdirection, or both.
My main take-home from this is that the culture of blame and blame-avoidance in Soviet officialdom played a more significant role in the disaster than anything the operators did in the control room in the small hours of 26th April 1986.
I love the detailed research you do.
In terms of cultural impact of the cleanup on the USSR. Despite the scale of the disaster, I don't think it was psychologically enough to end the soviet union.
1.The clean up of the Exxon Valdez increased the US GDP. This is sometimes called a war time boom.
2. In 1986, most people had heard the word radioactive, but all they knew was it was some complicated thing they would never understand, like rocket science or brain surgery. They knew radiation was bad, but so was smoking, and everyone smoked. Since it was a regional explosion, the bulk of the soviet union didn't know enough to worry about it.
There were so many other problems in the USSR, its collapse fate was inevitable, At most Chernobyl may have sped things up.
Point 1 has no reference, point 2 is the opinion of an 8yr old growing up in the cold war in Canada.
The social aspect is just one aspect, and the psychology of it wasn't just about danger. Serhii Plokhy's book on Chernobyl discusses this. In terms of the collapse of the Soviet Union what is relevant is how Chernobyl related to separatist/independence movements. According to Plokhy, who is supposed to be an expert in the history of this region, the relation was serious. I would have to reread his book for more detail. In essence, people in the vicinity were upset about both the disaster and about the system as well. Chernobyl may well have been both a social and economic catalyst for the collapse of the USSR. The leader of the Soviet Union at the time himself thought so, although perhaps people would argue he was merely looking for an excuse.
@@markusw7833 Chernobyl certainly informed the Ukrainian nationalist/independence movement a great deal, but it still doesn't mean much in terms of direct causality. Gorbachev could have decided to crush said movements with a flick of his wrist. The USSR collapsed because he was ideologically motivated not to do so.
The expense of the clean up and the removal of the Vaillancourt of the perfection of the State didn't help
I think it was a big deal: they already had the war in Afghanistan, so Chernobyl added a second front. And: it killed all the remaining trust people had in the government and in the whole state structure.
@@michaelmoser4537 Afghanistan wasn't a big deal; Gorbachev just negotiated a peace deal and pulled the troops. Did the end of the Vietnam War make the U.S. collapse? One event like Chernobyl doesn't make people 'wake up' and distrust the government. The majority never trusted them in the first place. Nevertheless most of them still didn't want the union to dissolve. Chernobyl changes little in this regard.
Thank you for the time and effort put into researching and making these.
Dear TCG, I wanted to thank you for a wonderful piece of work, and for all you personal efforts. Like any airline disaster, modern systems that we ALL depend upon for Life, Safety, Food, and Health are dependent upon tens, hundreds, even thousands of interlocking processes. Any one failure could be overcome, but lashed together they create a raft of disaster.
"....Nuclear Power is Not For This Generation..." is perhaps the most interesting statement in this entire piece, a statement emerging from a deeply insightful nature of the economic and political forces that existed at the core of the desire to possess such power, and a knowing of them to be too immature to manage properly or safely.
Like an good crime novel, the reader looks for one culprit or villain, and disappointingly Chernobyl NP 4 does not have one, instead it has at its roots a system and an army of individuals who all bear a portion of the blame.
It is important to look deeper into this, the Western capitalist based systems that are generating nuclear power have their own limitations and faults, and to some degree they are even more complex and less visible, but mostly defined not by power, or politics, but by shareholder profitability.
"Any one failure could be overcome, but lashed together they create a raft of disaster."
As will be discussed in future videos, this is what Soviet nuclear experts tried to sell, the Swiss cheese concept of disaster. The actual disaster comes down to two factors - the positive power coefficient of reactivity and the positive scram effect. There is complexity there we don't know about, but the many holes aligning half-nonsense is the picture Soviet experts deliberately painted to scapegoat the operators.
Fuckujima reactor accident also occurred because of cost cutting during construction. We never learn. See Boeing
I love your channel ! i find nuclear history super intresting and find your videos on of the most detailed secondary sources there are. keep up the good work love it
Too bad I can only give this one "like". What an absolute banger of a video! Filled to the brim with all kinds of detailed RBMK goodness in terms of technical information. Thanks to your always present source list, my RBMK library has grown substantially over time. The only thing I would really like to get my hands on are these 2 Russian RBMK books, but thus far I have come up empty. On to the next video!
elib.biblioatom.ru/text/istoriya-atomnoy-energetiki_v3_2003/p0_o/
elib.biblioatom.ru/text/dollezhal_kanalnyy-yadernyy-reaktor_1980/p1/
Here are those two books.
I'm so glad you enjoyed, and I'm happy to see people are also researching! Thank you so much for your support :)
@@thatchernobylguy2915
You, sir, have just made my entire weekend. Thank you so much! While I can read/write Cyrillic, it is not fluent so it will take some doing before I will have fully read them. But this is awesome! You have given me a great gift with these links🥳
@@swokatsamsiyu3590 You can use ya.n.dex (remove the periods) for image translation.
Good job. This is an important video.
Control rods were shortened to maximise breeding of Pu-239 in the lower zone of reactor... Soviet Union had enough concrete, but never enough plutonium. Even Mr. Brykhanov said that there were rooms in which he had no access at Chernobyl NPP. The cause of chernobyl disaster was deliberately dangerous design for simultaneous production of weapons grade plutonium end electricity. Maybe someday we will read the documents about Pu-239 production on RBMKs reactor, there were many secret experiments.
The two explanations for graphite displacer shortening we've encountered are presented in this video. The military dual-use topic was touched on in the preceding Pre-Chernobyl History video. It is unknown whether RBMK reactors were ever used for plutonium production, and as far as any layperson knows there wasn't a need. Early military dual-use considerations may well have affected RBMK design adversely from a safety perspective, as was mentioned in the preceding video, but your unsubstantiated and extremely brief youtube comment assertion is the only time probably any of us have encountered the suggestion that graphite displacers were shortened after some RBMK units were already in operation for the production of plutonium. On what basis do you claim to know this?
My apologies, but I do not think that is correct. In all my reading, I have never once come across what you state. Yes, in theory the RBMK could be used as a dual-mode reactor, but I have yet to find the first evidence that Unit 4 was indeed used as a plutonium breeder. If you have credible sources/good info proving this, feel free to share it with the rest of us.
@@markusw7833 I dont have any documents on weapons-grade Pu-239 production at Chernobyl, they are all still classified and remain in russian archives. It is just what I heard as Ukrainian, from old engineers that worked in Chernobyl. Designers deliberately created active zone with different characteristics at the bottom, so that the bottom of the fuel rod will worked in different conditions, and after U-235 burn up can be extracted and cut off for reprocessing. It might have been an analogy of a blanket in breeder reactors... I just feel that it might be true, too many black areas why control rods were shortened and how many sections they had. Inconsistency. In Soviet Union everything was working for military industrial complex. I believe some day we will get the documents about weapons grade Pu 239 breeding in RBMK reactors. Just last fact - Leningrad NPP was in the Minsredmash ministry for a reason.
@@swokatsamsiyu3590 I am afraid my friend I dont have documents on this issue. I hope that some day we all get them published. The only small hint is Brykhanov's interview where he confirms that there were rooms at Chernobyl NPP where he himself had no access to.
@@pavlovezdenetsky7824 Old engineers that worked in Chernobyl have mentioned a graphite displacer reduction? It is known that at the reactor peripheries there was less reactivity. That appears to have been the reason why graphite displacers generally didn't cover the entire core - these areas of less reactivity were deemed unproblematic and insignificant in terms of neutron flux so the water columns weren't doing much absorption in most circumstances. If old Chernobyl engineers have claimed something different we would very much like to learn what and why.
Very interesting topic! I became hooked on your videos :)
Only thing I would suggest is not putting white text on top of mostly white photos. Maybe add text shadows to increase contrast?
Will the real design of Chernobyl unit 4s control rods please stand up
Hopefully someday documents will come out with more information about this subject, but the depths of cover up and lies will continue to astound me. Who knows if we will ever get answers.
Also, thank you so much for your super thanks, it goes such a long way in allowing me to continue making these videos! :)
Your dedication to research is mesmerizing! Your channel is perfect!
great video :) hopefully views come with it,found this channel 3 weeks ago and I already saw them all vids
Babe wake up, new Chernobyl Guy video just dropped
How could you write the comment beeing sleeping? 😂
I love the vid keep it up
I'll try :)
It’s a good day when Chernobyl Guy drops a video. ❤
Your videos got me into Chernobyl, thanks for all the information and research!
The operation of all the cooling pumps was a destabilizing effect of the rundown test. As per INSAG-7 5.2.3: "The reactor was operated with boiling of the coolant water in the core and at
the same time with little or no subccoling at the pump intakes and at the core inlet.
Such a mode of operation in itself could have led to a destructive accident of the kind
that did ultimately occur, in view of the characteristics of positive reactivity feedback
of the RBMK reactor."
Are the exact dimensions of the water column in the reactor control rod channels +/- 20cm more of a contributing factor to +beta then the lack of subcooling caused by the rundown test conditions present at the time of the accident?
Video covering this in June. Be on the look-out for part two of "Masters of Weaponized Narration". Also, pause at page 36 of INSAG-7 in this video. The coefficients were found in conditions of relatively high power and ORM, and I would bet greater subcooling. According to the chairman of the commission writing the report there was even a secret experiment at Chernobyl npp to confirm the high positive void coefficient and it was indeed 5 and greater.
Excellent work. Exceptional research. The best Chernobyl resource. Thank you
Hi mr Chernobyl guy. I have somewhat recently discovered your channel, and I gotta say, exceptional knowledge. From that one question from me arises. I’m a programmer, and also a person who adores nuclear power, I have somewhat recently started writing a nuclear reactor simulatior, and the reactor I decided to simulate is the RBMK1000, it’s just so unique in its design, it’s hard not to love it haha. However, from your videos you seem to posses a much more complete knowledge on the functionality and design of the reactor than most people, so I wanted to ask, could you point me in the direction on where you get all that information? I’d greatly appreciate it, it’d help me make a more complete and realistic simulation. Thank you!
For the scripts I've written so far (Unanswered Questions and Pre-Chernobyl History), you can find all sources with specific reference points in the paper linked in the description. But be cautioned, this research wasn't done from a scientific perspective of trying to understand nuclear physics or the RBMK. After all, the reactor ultimately exploded because Soviet experts themselves had trouble understanding the nuclear physics of the RBMK. The bent is more so historical. I'm familiar only as far as I need to be. That Chernobyl Guy can probably point you to some other sources relating to a simulation, but I'm not at all sure how realistic any simulations are. There may be some properly technical and inaccessible stuff around, but I haven't really come across it or been interested in more than the conclusions or any really salient details.
I absolutely love your channel and the no nonsense truth telling, I would like to see a episode or more of the miners, they get shoved to the side I feel........please
What a mess. One wonders two things: (1) If they knew that lowering control rods could add reactivity, why wasn't there a little bit of computer code that would lower only some of the rods at a time? and (2) Why not some warning alarms implemented in software that would warn and prevent the easy insertion of all the rods all at once?
I think the lesson to be drawn from all of this is humans are too fallible to be relied upon to operate such a comlex machine, they all have their speciality but they dont know the full picture and the risk of operating on guess work was unacceptable. the pool of knowledge available operating these reactors was widely dispersed and not easily available when making decisions, a core program is essential to any complex machine and as time went on they must have realised this was a very complex machine. PS ( well done again for the amazing insight by your research).
Alternately, if the designers had just done their math better and changed the size of the graphite blocks by 5cm, no fallible humans ever would have been able to blow it up...
In May 1986, during planned shutdown of reactor No.4, electrical scheme of action of AZ-5 button supposed to be changed. Being depressed, it should initiate not only movement of 211 control and safety rods from top position down, but in addition 24 shortened boron rods should to move up from bottom position ( reverse mode of servomotor operation ) to compensate " positive effect of reactivity " when water is being displaced on bottom zone by graphite displacer. Also, some fresh fuel rods should replace burn out fuel rods and, as result, side absorbers supposed to be installed in addition to the existing one, that would automatically made working of reactor more stable on low loads. After fulfillment of these actions, Toptunov could press AZ-5 ten times, nothing bad would happen. April 26 1986 was the last day when reactor No,4 could be killed.
Side absorbers? Those being different from additional absorbers that were no longer added?
It would be nice if there were some documents to confirm that the USP rods were supposed to be connected to the AZ-5 signal after the planned maintenance. Some fairly trustworthy individuals repeat this story, but I wish there was some contemporary evidence as well. How many ДП were they supposed to install before restarting in May?
@@MinSredMash Number of absorbers to be installed was over one hundred because almost all fuel rods supposed to be replaced. But prior, all " tests " must to be completed on this last day of April 26. Even after conclusion of "Rundown of turbine " test new test supposed to be performed. After shutdown of reactor ( it was the reason why Toptunov didn't do it at 01:23:04 when first test was launched) reactor supposed to be tested for " natural cool down of active zone " . Thermal power of reactor on shutdown state is about 1% (30 MW). Remaining 4 main circulation pumps supposed to be shutdown and reactor supposed to be cooldown by natural ventilation of piping system above and down of reactor, all ventilation channels were already open for performing of this test. But reactor exploded before this test was launched and "Dontechenergo " was unable to take measurements, unlike "Turbomotor " which made all measurements of vibrations of turbine during first test.
@@nyckhusan2634 Where are you getting this stuff from? The Soviet report to the Vienna Meeting includes a paragraph stating that additional absorbers were removed, replaced by more fuel assemblies, and then the fuel assemblies were gradually replaced with fresh ones. The additional absorber period of operation is stated everywhere as transitory at the beginning of a new reactor's operation. This video shows you a document with all additional absorbers being removed from every Chernobyl reactor. Likewise, in Politburo notes where Dyatlov and Akimov are referenced directly not stopping the reactor at the beginning of the test is described as miscommunication. The theories about other tests being the reason why the reactor was intentionally not shut down are unsupported. The turbine vibration measurements were performed before the final rundown test, not during it. Furthermore, it didn't matter if the reactor was to be shut down at the beginning of the test as the test itself didn't matter.
@@nyckhusan2634 Can you provide any documents showing that all fuel rods would be replaced? This seems like it would have been very wasteful and unnecessary, especially given that the Additional Absorbers had only just been removed, in the name of fuel efficiency. Or at least can you say which person with connections to the station provided this information?
Normally I'd believe government experts however reactor went BOOM.
:P
i wish you guys could go over the whole hbo show, minute-by-minute and explain everything wrong with it and most importantly, say what they should've showed instead smh
Wow.
Not great, not terrible.
I think my biggest question in all of this is why before the disaster did the soviets have so much faith in the rbmk design was it propaganda or were people lead astray. I genuinely want to know why they had so much faith in this
Propaganda, sure (in general people are inclined to spin things in a positive light across cultures and systems), but I think key figures thought it was safer than it was. It's interesting that in Politburo notes you find Dollezhal - the director of NIKIET and chief (surviving) designer - having voiced misgivings about placing RBMK units near populated areas. He was apparently rebuffed for doing so by others in the expert community. The Minister of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building Slavsky and the director of the Kurchatov Institute Aleksandrov were the two most powerful people in the sphere. It is clear there was scientific misunderstanding, much less so what key figures actually knew or thought. One of the things that wasn't included in this video was a lack of research being done mentioned in multiple places like INSAG-7 and Politburo notes. Yet some was done, but apparently suppressed.
Actually, toward the end of this video there is an anecdote mentioning lack of research, which is kind of neither here nor there.
The truth about Chernobyl: HOW THE 4th UNIT OF CHERNOBYL NPP WAS BLOWN UP (channel-KS).
Well i know this, I know we don't know the exact changes/ modifications that were in the #4 reactor. Therefore to assume xenon poisoning And/or the shutdown.
What's the direct cause of the chernobyl, I'd say that's clearly not the case! God know!
The more of your content I watch, the more I begin to think that Legasov was actually at fault for Chernobyl. I don’t have any evidence of this per se, but all of the various narratives that have come out, all paint Legasov as a hero. And all of these narratives are blatantly false. Do the actual tapes that Legasov made still exist? I would love to see a video on them
The tapes are available online; there's an English translation here: legasovtapetranslation.blogspot.com/?m=1
There's not a whole much about the accident, it's more him recapping the events of the liquidation, and a couple interviews he decided to burn to the cassettes as well.
Worth noting here they did not contribute to getting the reactors repaired like in HBO, because the fixes were complete a year before he died, and it was those fixes that prompted new investigations into the causes.
Nuclear reactions are a million times more energetic than chemical reactions! BE VERY CAREFUL
Idk about that, see Centralia Pennsylvania coal fire. A quarter of the state is still on fire right now underground, will likely affect the Midwest for centuries.
@@DGTelevsionNetworko.O
@@DGTelevsionNetwork That's a carbon-oxygen fire, BTW the heat of combustion is a million times less energetic, then nuclear reactions! Forget that combustian thing, nuclear energy occurs naturally, BTW the core of our planet is full of the heaviest Actinides, guess what? Everthing is nuclear, the sun, the earth core (11,000 degrees) You would be a frozen popsicle at absolute zero, otherwise. It's ALL NUCLEAR!
I wonder just how much time and effort he put in to basically saying what they said in the hbo miniseries
You were paying close attention to neither.
he has brain damage
Savages!
lol
no views
Not anymore :)
@@thatchernobylguy2915 love the videos i have been watching for a while for someone to make videos of Chernobyl like his i thought i knew almost everything Chernobyl turns out I'm wrong!
Yeah a crappy Soviet reactor
Blame it on Xenon-135?... No! Blame it on stupidity, sorry Russia, but you tried your best! But you couldn't resist that political cronyism/favoritism, kinda like what we're facing today within the echo's of Affirmative Action in America!
587 views bro fell off
Some viewers are apparently so attentive they haven't noticed the release time or date. That bodes well. lol
@@markusw7833No one ever looks around at the information at hand. This will pick up. There are a lot of people who enjoy these videos.
2.5K views now....
people with basic understanding of nuclear engineering know how inaccurate his videos are@@Transberrylemonaid
@@NionXenion-gh7rf Elaborate.
Hey, I have a tangential question for you. There seemed to be a fairly intense debate on if Chernobyl Unit 4 reactor went prompt critical or if or if it managed to blow up in a purely delayed critical state. With all of the Chernobyl interest spawned by the mini-series, the intensity of the debate seems to have faded, but its still difficult to find much in the way of nuclear pundits stating that the reactor went prompt critical. You are pretty unambiguous that it did. Do you think that the issue of prompt vs non-prompt warrants its own video?
Also is Beta Effective the same as the units of Dollars for reactivity?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_(reactivity)
I feel like I've probably biased myself on the grounds of too much theorising. But from the nature of what's left (or what isn't) of Chernobyl Unit Four, whatever took place was extremely violent to say it had to happen in a matter of seconds. Most studies and models agree that Chernobyl went prompt critical, it's just a question what went on immediately following that.
I do intend to do a video on my personal theory of how Chernobyl exploded, just not for a while, due to upcoming exams :)
Will the real design of the RBMK reactor 4 please stand up.
@@thatchernobylguy2915 Have you actually noticed that I am talking about and if so do you have any insight into why the "it was only steam" crowd was/is so adamant? I could have sworn the Wiki page had a paragraph on this and linked to a nuclear expert with the highly dismissive take of "a LEU power reactor can't go prompt critical, that's just silly" and Google searches at the time led to many similar takes. I recall at the time being disappointed as a prompt critical RBMK would have been way cooler than the alternative.
Nerd😅