The 1997 Lilo Orphaned Source Radiation Incident 1997 | Short Documentary | Plainly Difficult

this video is proudly sponsored by nordvpn more about that later on it is 1996 and a soldier presents himself to medical doctors from the georgian army he has been working at the lilo training base around 25 kilometers east of the nation's capital tibilisi he has unexplained burns and marks on his skin odd thinks a doctor but he is sent to tbilisi for burns treatment however in 1997 over a few months more men report with similar unexplained injuries worrying levy's symptoms are remarkably similar to radiation burns but surely that can't be right the mystery of the patient's illnesses would be tracked down to where they worked hinting at months of prolonged exposure to which the victims were well unaware but the more they find the bigger the mystery as to where they come from becomes apparent today we're looking at the lilo radiological event and i'm going to rate it here free on my disaster scale and here free on my legacy scale but let's see if my ratings are correct [Music] our story like many covered starts with the collapse of the soviet union georgia is a transcontinental country located between eastern europe and western asia the country had become under the influence after the soviet union's rise to power and fell behind the iron curtain throughout most of the 20th century as such the red army had postings throughout the country one such place was in the village of lilo this small and relatively unknown village does have one big claim to fame as it was the birthplace of berezin jugishvili who is that you may ask well you have most certainly heard of his son joseph stalin as the soviet union began to disintegrate at the end of the 1980s the georgian government sensing the change in the air declared independence on the 9th of april 1991. in 1992 the russian soldiers based in lilo handed over the site during their vacating of the area they didn't tell the georgian authorities what the base was used for instead leaving a semi-disused compound the lilo military base will be repurposed for border force training in the new independent georgian army although a bit of a dump site to begin with the lilo complex seemed okay pretty much what you'd expect for an abandoned old army base there were three main areas the management and living area which included several buildings for soldiers and officers the living quarters where some of the officers lived with their families and the empty buildings used for training in total the centre covered approximately 150 000 square meters as far as the new owners were aware nothing strange presented itself about the base until 1997 when a number of soldiers began to report some strange ailments the first of soldiers to report to army doctors had experienced burns on his body similar to an extreme kitchen burn as early as june 1996 the doctor confused by these injuries and knowing where the soldiers worked lilo sent the man off to tabilisi for burn treatment but only the symptoms were looked at rather than the cause when more soldiers with similar issues came to see army doctors the unexplainable burns and contact dermatitis couldn't be written off as just one oddity strangely most of the men had a characteristic burn on their chest this pointed at the soldier's environment as all have been based in lilo upon reviewing the soldier's injuries the medical staff all pointed to one thing radiation exposure but how the military are trained for the effects of nuclear war but it didn't add up a second opinion was sought from a hematologist and an osometrist from the institute of biophysics in moscow in august 1997. the diagnosis of the burns was confirmed to be that of a radiation exposure and a prolonged one at that one of the soldiers had been recruited as early as 1995 with many others joining in 96 could they have been exposed all of that time on the 27th of august a radiation hotspot was discovered at the lilo base near an underground shelter the survey was carried out by officers from the chemical radiological biological protection division of the georgian army this was later double checked on the 5th of september and the dose rate was measured at roughly 45 milligrams an hour the georgian authorities contacted the safety and radiation protection department of the center of applied research of the institute of physics this along with the army secured the required monitoring equipment needed to survey the hotspot a working group of physicists was established to assess and survey the radiological situation on the site on the 10th of september they started close to the underground shelter and localized the source of the radiation but due to the team having no suitable container recovery was delayed until the 13th of september the source was found inside a pocket of a winter army jacket that was used by the georgian soldiers during guard duty once extracted it was then placed inside a leg container but this wouldn't be the end of lilo's contamination but before we come on to that let's talk about this video sponsor nordvpn as you may know i like my anonymity hence you only ever see my hands or more likely to see my dog's face saying that i think most people would prefer to look at her face and mine anyways i've been using vpns for a number of years now and for around 18 months specifically nord being in the uk this is really vital for my youtube channel as it allows me to access websites that are region logged because some of my research sources are only available in certain countries i've also found it very useful now that lockdown restrictions are lifted for travel as it allows me to securely use public wi-fi nor vpn is useful to change your virtual location and find cheaper deals on flights and other travel tickets i'm not gonna lie being able to watch tv shows and films available in different countries is also pretty sweet i have no vpn set up on my mac as well as my iphone and the app is pretty easy to use and is compatible on windows android mac os ios iphone ipad linux chrome and firefox and you can use nordvpn on up to six devices per account if you're interested check out norvpn by going to www.nordvpn.com plainly difficult to get a two-year plan plus one additional month with a huge discount it's risk-free with nords 30-day money-back guarantee sponsorships like this really help the channel to stay financially independent especially with some of the more darker content i cover let's get back to lilo and the unfolding radiological nightmare facing georgian authorities after the initial source was recovered more radiation above background had been discovered located 130 meters from the underground shelter near some offices and buried 30 centimeters below the surface of the soil this was also recovered but more radiation was still present this led the team to near the smoking area where another source also buried was discovered in just one day three items of sizeable radioactivity were discovered and by now there's only one option available to survey the whole military base it seemed like the entire site had varying levels of contamination with one more source discovered on the 14th fremont 19th and one more on the 20th not only that but two more sources were found inside leg containers abandoned on site as well as something that would have made david han proud some 200 devices containing radium-226 used for gun sites once wood radiation items were collected and contained they were stored correctly on site next to the scrap yard to await proper disposal the radiological waste was still yet to be determined to the exact radionuclide involved but after gamma absorption measurements were carried out using a lead screen cesium-137 was determined to be amongst the waste on site a deadly gamma-ray emitter on the 9th of october 1997 the iaea were contacted by the minister of health of georgia stating that nine servicemen of the lilo training detachment of frontier troops had developed local radiation-induced skin diseases on various parts of their bodies in turn the iaea then informed the who and georgia then requested assistance and the iaea attended the site between the 11th and 14th of october 1997. they set out to survey the site and they concluded that no other sources were still around and the highest levels were recorded off the first discovery at 164 gigabls giving out 13 000 micro gray an hour one meter from the source when exposed to this for prolonged periods of time acute radiation syndrome can be experienced with that let's look at the exposed personnel and their experiences the total number of people affected by the orphan sources was actually 11 and they ranged from a dose of 1.6 to 0.1 grey for reference free gray or above could be deadly in a single dose before hospitalization all but one of the exposed persons experienced nausea loss of appetite tiredness and weakness the first patient was sent to tbilisi for care at the russian military hospital where he was diagnosed with a non-radiation condition in july 1996 almost a whole year before the discovery of radiation at lilo after receiving a failed skin graft and with other patients presenting with similar conditions he was readmitted in october 1997 and diagnosed with ars or acute radiation syndrome subacute phase and radiation berms of the fourth degree to both thighs treatment of the remaining overexposed persons was performed at the curie institute and the percy hospital of the armed forces both in paris and the dermatology department of the university of ulm at the armed forces hospital in olm germany this was arranged for by the who on the 22nd of october 1997 two patients were admitted to the curie institute and two to the percy hospital of the armed forces the remaining seven patients were hospitalized in the dermatology department of the university of volume six of the lesser injured soldiers were discharged from hospital and were allowed to return home in georgia each would still have painful movement and psychological issues for years to come however five of the remaining had to undergo a nightmare number of skin grafts amputations and multiple surgeries to remove necrosis of the skin one lament lost his fingers on his right hand and all five had to undergo multiple treatments to heal recurrent radiation-induced ulcers two had to keep on intermittent treatment all the way into the early 2000s and this was accompanied with lower t cell counts but there's still a big question why on earth was the army base at lilo so contaminated well when the russians pulled out they didn't tell anyone completely what they had been doing there instead of it being a usual army base it was actually used to train soldiers in the event of a nuclear accident or nuclear war the sources were used for calibration of survey equipment and for training in radiological monitoring the reason for the buried sources was to train soldiers on radiation detection resources rather than properly disposed of were just left in situ and the only possible outcome then played out on the unsuspecting georgian soldiers georgia apparently is one of the big dumping grounds of soviet-era nuclear devices as multiple rtgs and scrap radioactive sources kept on being found during the 1990s and one of these i've covered in a previous video it is thought that many ex-soviet union states still have hundreds of orphaned sources waiting to be discovered by some unwitting poor soul a big thank you to norvpn for the sponsorship if you're interested check out nordvpn by going to www.nordvpn.com plainly difficult to get a two-year plan plus one additional month with a huge discount their support really does help out the channel this video is a plain difficult production or videos on the channel while creative commons attribution sharealike license playing difficult videos are produced by me in a currently dark and cold corner of southeast london uk help channel grow by liking commenting and 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Channel: Plainly Difficult

Views: 615,808

Keywords: lilo radiation event, lilo Georgia, tammiku radiation event, Radiological accident, plainly difficult nuclear, Plainly difficult radiation, Radiation documentary, Nuclear history, Fascinating horror, Plainly difficult nuclear documentary, Plainly difficult disaster, Demon core plainly difficult, Qxir, Dark docs, Iaea, Soviet

Id: o0xNzLp5b3c

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 05 2022