Chernobyl Like You've Never Seen It Before...

[Music] [Music] foreign it is currently 6 a.m in slavootic ukraine slovetic is the satellite city for the chernobyl nuclear power plant that was purpose built after the disaster for all the workers we're in ukraine today because i want to show you what chernobyl is actually like the first thing that we're going to do to start our chernobyl excursion is we're going to suit up and we're going to get on the very same train as the workers at the chernobyl nuclear power plant the workers go to the power plant to continue monitoring decommissioning providing services to the people who still work at the plant security cafeterias that sort of thing we are going to learn and to observe and to have some sort of cultural exchange if you will we will be under a a careful eye for what we do how we operate how we carry ourselves what we're actually doing inside the plant so we will be mostly shadowing and checking out and following following the lead of all the other scientists for this day one [Music] [Applause] is yes [Music] [Music] so upon entering chernobyl the first thing that you have to do is go through a kind of airlock process but for radiation so on one side of this room back behind me are another set of lockers just like this this is where you put all your clothes your street clothes that you'll be wearing after you get out once you get in you come to this locker room you get in front of a lovely woman who sizes you up for the clothes that you need and then you put on clothes from the power plant these are clothes you can get dirty but these stay on this side of the radiation airlock so to speak so you come in to the power plant you do what you're going to do and then when you're done you put your clothes in a locker like this one so that you know that any contamination you may have accumulated is staying in one place and then you go back through the radiation airlock to your own clothes it's a very easy rudimentary system but it's clean and it works [Music] [Music] [Music] it's hard to overstate where i am behind this wall is reactor unit number four the site of the worst nuclear disaster in human history right behind this wall here you can hear the cacophony of geiger counters and scintillators going on our scientists with us in our team are now using this corridor as a test bed to test their methods and their tools they're checking the dust on all these pipes they're checking the walls the floors where some of these fission products have settled over time what better place to test your ability to measure radiation than just a few meters from an exploded nuclear reactor [Music] so [Music] inside of here are the main pumps that would have circulated the cooling water in unit number three if you want to get an idea for what happened when unit number four exploded inside of this room this gigantic cavity here when reactor number four exploded all of this this entire wall here would have collapsed on us and that's what happened to hodemchek the first fatality here at the power plant [Music] so [Music] this is the control room for reactor number three we're seeing it here today at chernobyl as kind of a before to the afterwards that is reactor unit number four this is where safety operations would sit this is where you would look at all of the pumps you know the cooling where all the control rads are how deep they are in the core this is what and where went wrong in unit number four and we'll be seeing that next [Music] [Music] [Music] shortly after the reactor operators in control room 4 began their low power test things went awry shocks explosions numbers on the screen that wouldn't make any sense they attempted to press this button right here it's called a scram button and this button would initiate all the control rods shoving themselves all the way into the core to absorb neutrons to stop the nuclear chain reaction but when they pressed this scram button the fate of the core was sealed [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] as one of our guides lucas hickson was telling us it's hard to even imagine the magnitude of the destruction that happened in reactor unit number four which this of course is not we cannot go in to reactor unit number four not just because the radiation will be because of the mountain of rubble this is what number four would have looked like if it hadn't exploded below you see the top of the reactor this is where fuel is loaded in by a large crane like structure this shielded tube that will take up fuel rods move over and place them down into the core below this giant circle is a 2 000 ton biological shield so it is 2 million kilograms that serves as protection for all of the humans above it now when reactor unit number 4 melted down so much steam so much energy was generated that it lifted the 2 000 ton object that is this radius it lifted this with enough force to keep it in the air for a full 10 seconds now in real time just imagine that okay 2 000 tons okay and the explosion happens can you imagine the energy released by the nuclear fuel that would be required to lift that object in that time through the air collapsing back down it's kind of unthinkable [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] um [Music] so that was day number one inside of the chernobyl exclusion zone it's a hell of a thing it's really a hell of a thing it's a wholly unique area with a unique experience and to experience all that with scientists and experts who can provide me so much additional context it's really incredible i'm about to get dinner with my new ukrainian friends my feet are killing me because we've been standing on concrete all day we'll see what happens day two [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Kyle Hill

Views: 1,243,373

Keywords: because science, engineering, kyle hill, learning, math, physics, science, stem, the facility, chernobyl, pripyat, nuclear, nuclear reactor, nuclear power plant, nuclear disaster, chernobyl disaster, nuclear energy, chernobyl documentary, chernobyl nuclear power plant, urban exploration

Id: 3qEC-qDG0Bo

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/hiNputti]

I don't buy the claim made in the video that Elena spent 10 seconds in the air.

A time of 10 seconds means that the lid shot up over 100 m in the air, and then miraculously landed at exactly the same spot.

Also, think of the damage a 2000 ton chunk of steel and concrete would have done. There's no way the lid could be perched on the edge of the reactor pit like that if it really fell down from 100 m.

[u/Cs1981Bel]

Saw it, waiting for part 2.

[u/TenaciousHearts]

This was awesome. So excited for part 2. Thank you for sharing with us.

[u/vannapoiss]

Would be nice to go to special rooms in unit 3 like the room under reactor