Reactor Hall of Unit 2, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

November 17th 2016 and we're on our way westbound in Chernobyl's deaerator corridor this gold paneled hallway on the 10 meter elevation ultimately on our way to the central hall or reactor hall of the unit 2 here is unit tunes control room on the left we just passed its doors we are going to try to ride the elevator up to plus 20 meters where the central hall is located and that may not be the best idea because it is a beater I've let Stannis on if we don't hit anything no I wouldn't hit anything so we're not going we haven't given it a command to go anywhere so we elevators they pressed yes yes duh see ok what button is for the foot alright possessed so we'll work our way up this stairwell to the 20 meter elevation get off there to go visit the central hall this is our escort here Stanislav shake still Oh up on the long-term employee here in the information department at Jan peeping he's he's been here since the days that this was an operational nuclear power plant he's been he's been very good to us we uh we frustrate him sometimes I think asking to do things like Oh visit the elephant's foot and things like that he's he plays right along on the left here going to be the compartments for these drum separators in this type of reactor and then we'll come here to the inter room to the central hall where people change clothes and so forth to work in the at the reactor fueling face so we'll come on in here there's some radiation detection gear because the central hall is a fuel handling area and this potentially radioactive there's a bench for changing boots and gloves and so forth I'm not going to show you the whole process because it's pretty boring watching people put on boots and gloves but will speed up here and then look at some other stuff once we go in so be attentive this you an hour so being here with the real power P perhaps usually as usually yeah maybe back through [Music] whoa ready we're heading in the central hall is not only a contamination area but also a giant hot sell for fuel handling because when the fuels out it's it produced a lot of radiation in this area so you'll note we go through this little dogleg of the concrete that acts as radiation shielding and then we'll step into the central hall itself and here we are [Music] fuel handling machine like a rock the RBMK reactors constructed from graphite blocks that are penetrated vertically by pressurized tubes that carry the nuclear fuel and other incor devices like control rods and what we're looking at here is the top plate of the reactor where it's been penetrated by all of these channels and there is a protective heavy metal cap over each of the channel penetrations to protect it from mechanical damage the reactor is empty right now there's no fuel it's all been taken out and there's also no water so actually there is a little bit of radiation up here and it's due to radioactive material down in the channels and the radiation is streaming up through the empty channels and up to the fueling face where we are now over here on the side are a bunch of heavy steel plates that cover up the steam water pipelines from the upper part of the reactor and they will go under the wall on either side of the central hall and bring steam to the drum separators over here are some caps for the technological channels they're a little bit radioactive just because of their proximity to you know dirty stuff but they again provide mechanical cover to the to the channels up here on the core face we're gonna go ahead and pass between the two spent fuel pools there is no fuel in these pools that's all been taken out to ice f1 what you see there we'll take another look out later those are what I call stringers through the holder's for things that are inserted into the technological channels and there's some other ones these are presumably not used they're not being held in the in the spent fuel pools but you can see the little fixture by which the refueling machine grabs the stringer and pulls it out and ordinarily there would be fuel on the other ends there's two three and a half meter long bundles and to end and here's where fresh fuel is stored in preparation for use also down at this end of the reactor Hall is the the transfer corridor for fuel it's just to our left here and this is where new fuel is brought up from below when it shipped in and also use fuel can be taken out in a cask a good view here the the the stringer assemblies this is the top end of the stringer where the machine would grab it we'll go take a look at some other stuff and here in the central hall so I'll go ahead and cut the cut the clip here this is the spent fuel storage area in the number two reactor and I want to be clear there is no fuel remaining here in fact there's no water in the pool at all what we have in the pool now are the upper assemblies the the stringer assemblies that would hold fuel in the technological Channel if you had the fuel in there but these stringers are obviously as I said not loaded with fuel but they are radioactive which stands to reason because they're so close to the operating parts of the reactor and so Lucas has called me over with the ion chamber to look at a hot spot he found here and we're gonna we're gonna see just how hot it is Punk you let it don't you let it hang there and that's the one right there you'll notice all of these stringers have a nose on them a little catch that the refueling machine can grab on to in order to drag it out of the channel it's really it's quite a clever way of doing things and this spot right here that we're measuring we're measuring two roentgens per hour and you know this is a power plant that's known for having a lot of spicy stuff around so to renkins really not that high but it's something and this is I should be clear this is very localized this is not coming from the bulk of all of these these stringers that are parked here it is it's some sort of fuel flea or just a local bit of leakage or contamination on that one spot and so yes the dose rates a little bit high but it's at least as far as this power plant is concerned it's it's really not much at all Stanislav how many times have you been in in here many yeah is it okay if I walk up on the scaffolding now that everyone is down you see Buster Siva this is incredible yes so now we're gonna go up and look at the refueling machine operators room and as mentioned before the central hall of these reactors is basically a large hot cell because when spent fuel comes out of the core into the refueling machine there's a lot of radiation in here and so the operator sits in a little booth behind a leaded glass window and we'll go take a look at that shortly but right here while we're up and up on the balcony and have a good look down at the core I'll just mention a few things there are about 2,000 penetrations vertically through the RBMK core and some 17 of the hundred of them carry nuclear fuel these are the so-called technological channels and and then we have about 200 more that contain control rods of various types the control and protection system has rods that descend from the top of the core it has short absorber rods that come from the bottom of the core there are rapid shutdown rods the BA z system rods that come from the top and there are their regulating rods as well as emergency shutdown rods and multiple systems it's really quite a complicated arrangement and in this reactor at least and in the number-three unit at here Chernobyl one channel that belongs to the control and protection system has actually been set aside for radio for Neutron doping activation doping of silicon and we saw that channel in the control room it's it's servo indicator indicated that it was being used for silicon rather than a normal control and protection system channel and here in the photo you can see exactly which one that is now we're going to go into the booth here where the refueling machine operator sits and you can see the window that that operator looks through when he's when he's working [Music] [Music] so Lucas is getting photographs of literally everything in here and now we'll head back out through the shielding maze back out onto the platform here and this is a good view of the central hall in the distance behind the reactor we have the two spent fuel pools on the left and on the right and then behind them along the central axis of the room here is the fuel transfer corridor which is a round hole in the floor and it is through this hole that fresh fuel is loaded into the central hall and ultimately the spent fuel is is taken out in casks anyway I think that is a good overview of the reactor fueling face in Chernobyl unit 2 this reactor has been offline since the since the accident in 1991 that that basically destroyed all of its it's number four generator and it's it's feed water pumps and it was a political decision not to restart the number two reactor but to leave it shut down and it's been that way ever since so the history of this place even though the lights are on and it's quite quite pretty in here this this has been a shutdown nuclear reactor since before the Soviet Union came apart so there are many people alive who who have been alive for a shorter period of time than this reactor has just been sitting here and so in the nuclear decommissioning business things take a long time and the number two reactor here at Chernobyl has been just sitting in this D fueled state now for for quite a long time

Channel: Carl Willis

Views: 11,305,115

Rating: 4.7974944 out of 5

Keywords: Chernobyl, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, RBMK, nuclear reactor, radiation, reactor hall, nuclear energy

Id: Oe_zzTQFV3o

Length: 18min 2sec (1082 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 11 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Lev_Astov]

And since I was really curious about the details of the refueling mechanism in an RBMK reactor, I found this excessively detailed video on the subject: https://youtu.be/NPWMZ8wbqkI

[u/FuzzytheSlothBear]

a fun fact about the Chernobyl reactors that not a lot of people realize is that 3 of the four reactors at the site continued to operate and produce power until 1991, and one remained operational until December of 2000.

[u/slowbrohime]

Great video, thanks for posting. I love this stuff. This is an amazing look into the working of the RBMK

[u/xentralesque]

The elevator shenanigans at the beginning is both terrifying and hilarious.

[u/noreceptionplease]

Do you have move videos like this?