foreig This is a cold war story that didn't become well known
about in the West until after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In this video
we're going to take a look at the deadly Legacy of the USSR's abandoned Terrestrial Radioisotope
Thermal Generators or RTGs for short ,first though I'm going to hand over to Matt Damon
in the 2015 movie 'The Martian' to give you an introduction into RTGs.. ".. good news I may
have a solution to my heating problem bad news it involves me digging up the radioisotope
thermoelectric generator now if I remember my training correctly one of the lessons was
titled don't dig up the big box of plutonium Mark I get it RTGs are good for spacecraft
but if they rupture around humans no more humans which is why we buried it when we arrived
and planted that flag so we would never be stupid enough to accidentally go near it again
but as long as I don't break it I almost just said everything will be fine out loud look
the point is I'm not cold anymore and sure I could choose to think about the fact that
I'm warm because I have a decaying radioactive isotope riding right behind me but right now
I got bigger problems on my hands although The Martian is science fiction the RTG that Matt
Damon is digging up isn't. These are NASA RTGs that were used on the Cassini spacecraft
and this is a photo from 1997 where a technician is measuring the external radiation on the
RTG. RTGs have been used to power long-range spacecraft since early 1970s but generally
they're not used for manned space travel or satellites due to the risk to humans. It was
of course the 1986 Chernobyl disaster that disclosed to the Western World the woeful
state of the USSRs nuclear facilities and the Soviet state's Cavalier attitude to radiological
safety; and poor nuclear engineering. So if the West only used RTGs for long-range space travel
due to the risk they presented to humans, how on earth did the Soviet Union end up littering
their Countryside with over 2 500 devices, every bit as radioactive as an RMBK reactor
The story begins well before the invention of nuclear power , in the Years immediately
after World War II. Before the war throughout the Soviet Union the farms and Rural communities
had been collectivized and were now run by the state as a socialist enterprise. The Peasants
now toiled the fields in remote areas supervised by communist commissars as part of a great
socialist endeavor. These Shiny Happy People (that's where the REM reference comes from)
needed organizing; and they needed educating politically and motivating; and one of the
tools to do that then as it is now, was by the mainstream media. Strictly censored and
vetted printed material and state-run newspapers had a major role to play in propaganda but
one of the best devices in the early 1950s bearing in mind that a lot of the Soviet population
in the rural areas were illiterate was the use of the radio. With the use of shortwave
radio Moscow could effectively talk to the whole Soviet population at once with a very
strictly controlled narrative; and therefore State constructed radios like this one were
rolled out across communities throughout the USSR [Music] [Music] there was one major problem
to all of this, rural communities across the Soviet Union did not have electricity.
So Engineers had come up with a solution to that these radios will be powered by a thermal
electrical generator powered by kerosene lantern that you can see to the rear right of this
photograph. These kerosene lantern electrical generators relied on very simple technology
which took advantage of the Seebeck Effect Discovered in 1821 by Thomas Johann Seebeck
applying heat to a semiconductor and cooling the inverse side of that conductor induced
a electrical cover between the two, this was a very inefficient way of generating electricity
as over 96% of the energy was lost. The Soviet kerosene lantern generators relied on the
heat from the lantern flame to heat the hot side of the semiconductor, whilst a crown of
cooling fins attached to the top of the lantern would dissipate the heat out into the room
thus inducing enough current to run the shortwave radio. By the mid-1960s most Soviet rural communities
had diesel generators installed, and this type of thermal generator fell into obsolescence.
Although the lanterns became obsolecent in the early 1960s, it would be less a decade before
the Soviet Union required Thomas Johann Seebeck's technology again. By the late 1960s the Soviet
Union had an engineering problem on their hands, the Soviet coastline was over 10 000
miles long, three-quarters of which was located within the Arctic Circle. the Northern sea route
was hard to navigate and treacherous but the Soviet government required it for sea trade
but also more importantly at the height of The Cold War for the passage for the Soviet Navy.
Starting in the early 1970s The Soviet Union began constructing a chain of over 1 000 lighthouses
and radio navigation beacons along its entire coastline, a project that would take well over
a decade to complete. There was only one problem many of these lighthouses would be hundreds
if not a thousand miles away from civilization and during the Arctic winter months could
not be visited. so conventional power supplies such as diesel generation were not practicable.
In looking for a solution to the power supply problem Engineers recalled the success of
the kerosene lantern generators used for domestic radios in the 1950s. But now what was needed
was enough power to supply a lighthouse and a radio beacon that could be left for years
without resupply or maintenance, so now kerosene lanterns would not be enough something altogether
hotter and more reliable was needed . Step forward Radioisotopes. This is a pressed ceramic Ingot
of Plutonium 238 oxide as used on the NASA space probes that I show you the beginning
of the video. it is glowing red hot due to self-heating and is around 800 degrees Centigrade
the self-heating is caused by the release of radioactive decay heat plutonium-238 has a half life of 88 years that means that this particular Ingot will be glowing red hot at 800 degrees Centigrade for the best part of a century. A very brief look at the physics behind this radioactive atoms are unstable and nature abhors instability, so unstable
atoms seek to become more stable by shedding either highly energetic particles or energy
or both and this is known as radioactive decay the particles are either alpha particles which
are two protons two neutrons or beta particles which are highly energetic electrons both
are forms of ionizing radiation and are bad for humans the excess energy shed can be in
the form of highly energetic waves known as Gamma rays which are ionizing or as heat . Different
radioactive atoms decay in different modes that is either alpha decay, beta decay or gamma
decay and it should be remembered not all decay modes are accompanied with the generation
of heat. So the takeaway point here is as well as generating 800 Degrees of heat which is
useful to us, this slug of Pu238 is emitting a fairly horrific level of ionizing radiation
that you can't see. Pu238 decay is an alpha mode so it's emitting a storm of alpha particles
and maybe a bit of Gamma. The red glow here is due to incandescence that is non-ionizing
photons being released from the material due to its high level of heat, no different to
putting a piece of Steel into a furnace. An important myth I think I need to kill at this
point in the video which will be relevant later is that radioactive materials do not
glow in the dark, this misconception is not helped because certain materials will glow
if subjected to ionizing radiation, such as phosphor in gaseous treatment light sources
or night sights and instrumentation all the Cherenkov effect, the blue glow seen surrounding
water in nuclear reactors. Why is this important because human senses cannot detect ionizing
radiation no matter how intense and hazardous to the health it is. For example this is an
intensely radioactive cylinder of Cobalt 60 a very intense Gamma source. Note the
ominous warning that says Drop and Run. Now if you were to be unfortunate enough to pick
this up and hold it in your hand it would feel cold to the touch, it would not glow in
the dark, you would not feel anything. If you held it in your hand for more than 30 seconds
you would lose that hand! If you held it for more than 10 minutes or you're in the same
room as it for more than 10 minutes it would kill you! Contained within his 1988 whistleblowing
Memoir written just for his death, the Chief Scientific Advisor for the Soviet Chernobyl
commission Valerie Legasov gave a very chilling description of the effect of acute radiation
syndrome on the human body, narrated here by British actor Ade Edmondson: "if its damaged
severely enough all this radiation will escape it'll travel through almost anything, drift
with the Wind, odorless, indiscriminate and it takes life in silence.! Severe exposure
to radiation begins a decline that is untreatable, and atrocious! After initial dizziness and
vomiting, sensitive tissues like the tongue begin to swell, skin blackens, detaches itself, the
cells of your body begin to break down, but your DNA is also grotesquely transformed, so
that in the days following exposure you're gradually robbed not just of your life, but
of the very thing that makes you the human being you are!" Despite the very real risks of deploying highly
radioactive material to completely unsupervised and insecure remote locations the Soviet Engineers
designed this terrestrial radioisotope thermal generator to power their lighthouses and radio
beacons. This is called a Beta-M , it is a mid-1970s designed Soviet terrestrial RTG it is about
1.5 meters wide and 1.5 meters tall and it weighs just over one metric ton. The Russian
words stenciled that are on the crown of the cooling fan say: Осторожно, радиоактивность
or in English: Caution Radiation the body of the BETA-M unit is a very heavy cast steel bulkhead
about 10 centimeters thick, and this acts as the outer radiation shield. A heavy 20 centimeter
thick machine steel lid seals the unit but in a very serious design flaw, this is secured
only with normal industrial bolts; not intrinsically safe / safety interlocked or tamper-proof bolts
something that will come back to haunt this design in the future. Inside the bulkhead sits
an inner tungsten liner which is the primary radiation shield, above that the thermal
generator and heat exchanger to the cooling fin crown. The heart of the unit of course
is the Radioactive Heat Source indicated in red in this diagram which is about the size
of a paint can or a large food can. The power output for the whole unit was 250 Watts thermal
equating to electrical wattage of 10 watts which really doesn't sound much but you have
to remember these units were usually deployed in pairs and also they charged a battery. They
didn't connect directly to the lighthouse the Beta M radiation heat source looked like
this.. unlike spacecraft RTGs Soviet terrestrial RTGs used the strontium-90 as their isotope
not plutonium-238. Why ? B ecause it's cheap! Plutonium is very very expensive and difficult to produce
Strontium 90 can be refined from civil nuclear reactor waste. But this comes with some serious
downsides. The heat output is much lower and the half-life much shorter. This unit would
put out about 400 degrees Centigrade but with a half-life of just 28 years. Meaning every
two decades the heat source would need to be replaced. Strontium 90 is also very very
hazardous to humans, it mimics calcium in the environment and is a bone seeker and is readily
absorbed into the human body for that reason the heat source is sealed into a stainless
steel two centimeter thick flask and hermetically sealed due to the Bremsstrahlung Effect the
X-ray radiation being emitted from this unit would be about 2 Sieverts an hour and this
is a BETA-M RTG unit out in the field in the present-day Russian Federation, looking very
sorry for itself and neglected; but trust me on this this one is in quite good condition
this appears to be a defunct Soviet Radio Beacon site, the collapsed radio mast is along
the ground behind the unit and the RTG Transit case is very rusted; quite often you'll find
the RTGs deployed in these steel framed cases this was to enable them to be under-slung
from a military helicopter to be deployed from the 1970s to the late 1980s over 1 000
Soviet lighthouses and nav beacons were equipped with RTGs often deployed in pairs for redundancy
During the Soviet years there were no issues the technology worked well and Soviet military
maintenance teams had a rolling visit program to check the RTG safety and functions; in fact
so successful was the RTG technology for the Navy that other Soviet Ministries adopted the
technology for any application that required remote electrical power such as seismic sensors
or radio rebroadcast or repeater stations in the remote Soviet Hinterland by around
the year 1989 some 2500 terrestrial rtgs had been deployed across the whole Soviet Union
Then in 1991 it all came crashing down! In a few short months the USSR collapsed both
politically and economically shattering into 16 various independent states. The Soviet Ministries
that regulated and maintained the RTGs ceased to exist overnight and the new Russian Federation
that now took over most of the old Soviet land mass where most RTGs were cited was bankrupt
and they had neither the will nor the money to maintain the infrastructure. if a Lighthouse
or Beacon worked all well and good, but if it broke down it was simply abandoned and the RTG left
a rot for the next decade nobody really cared about these legacy radioactive devices not
the Russian government nor the International Community as most RTGs were deployed in remote
locations away from governmental and environmental NGO scrutiny, with the exception maybe of the
most famous RTG site Aniva lighthouse in Russia's far east, built in 1939 and abandoned
in 1991 because of its creepy Gothic abandoned style it became an unlikely tourist attraction
for tourists and urban explorers. but an Aniva Lighthouse was powered by two IEU 2 type RTGs
At least the Russian authorities put out some Health and Safety signage to warn off tourists:
Осторожно, радиоактивность - Caution Radioactivity and on the steps leading up to the lighthouse
and the sea: Радиация - radiation because of Aniva lighthouse's popularity in the
media it was one of the first to be decommissioned and the RTGs were removed in 2006. Fortuitously
having never leaked or been tampered with by tourists. High profile sites like an Aniva
Lighthouse with its well-behaved urban explorers and tourists was never the problem, it was
elsewhere in the former Soviet Union particularly in the remote rural Russian Federation where
after 20 years in service and 10 years of neglect some RTG sites were degrading rapidly.
Like this now defunct and really rusty radio navigation Beacon site, the RTG unit would
have been housed in this rusty equipment shed completely unsecured and unsupervised by the
authorities, elsewhere in exposed areas storm weather destroyed woefully inadequate wooden
protective enclosures exposing the RTG unit to Arctic storm conditions which in turn damaged
the unit itself something that should have been discovered by a maintenance inspection
that never came, unbelievably some RTG units were intentionally deployed out in the open
disclosing a shocking level of engineering incompetence, this for instance is a lighthouse
seemingly constructed of waste timber and then hooked up to an early generation RTG
left out in the elements, these type of slap dash timber lattice RTG powered lighthouses
are not that uncommon in the Soviet wilderness built by Engineers presumably under time constraints
but with little or no thoughts to the safety and the risks of the RTG unit that powered
them, eventually and inevitably the exposed neglected units began to fail, with this RTG
the outer case has been split open by water penetration and freezing in the harsh Russian
Arctic, the label пов is Russian for Gully or crack, this unit would now be leaking significant
amounts of radiation and would be a danger to anyone unfortunate enough to approach it,
but weather alone was not the greatest safety threat to the abandoned RTGs that was as always
is human stupidity and greed, the abandoned Lighthouse and Beacon sites provided potential
rich pickings for metal thieves and scavengers who cut away the valuable copper and stole
electrical equipment , some were wise enough not to go anywhere near the RTGs but many
were not , this RTG unit has been attacked by a metal thief presumably with a Sledgehammer
who lacked the tools to open the case . On occasion metal thieves would be stupid enough to open
an RTG case, which as I described earlier in the video can be done with just a domestic
spanner set this is a BETA-M unit that has been fully dismantled by metal thieves and the
radioactive heat source and tungsten inner radiation shielding removed, according to the
international atomic energy Authority the Russian authorities found the radioactive
heat source unit about 100 meters away from this BETA-M unit and recovered it using a bomb
disposal robot, the metal thieves that did this were never caught but they would almost
certainly have suffered very serious radiation sickness and possibly would have died, by the
late 1990s even the Russian government had to admit they had a serious problem on their
hands, but with sad inevitability it would take a serious incident and of death and injury
to innocent parties to galvanize the International Community into dealing with the Soviet RTG
problem and that incident was the Lia Event in 2001. Lia is a small town in the caucus
country of Georgia. Georgia was once part of the Soviet Union but gained independence in
1991. Our story takes place in December 2001. three men from the town took a flatbed truck
up into the mountains above Lia intending to cut wood from the forest to sell on as
firewood; towards the end of the day gathering wood one of the men found an area in the forest
about five meters in circumference where the snow had completely melted in the center of
this circle was a silver metal cylinder that was sizzling like an iron as the snowflakes
fell on it and boiled off.... sadly viewers I'm pretty sure you've already guessed what this
unfortunate Woodsman has found, but how would a poorly educated Woodsman have any comprehension
of the danger he was in? fascinated by this magical natural heater the Woodsman decided
to make a makeshift snare and drag the cylinder to the Forest track, to the area where he and
his friends were intending to camp for the night the hot cylinder was propped up against
a pile of rocks to reflect the heat back onto the sleeping area, the other Woodsman lit a
fire and as night fell the three of them sat around the fire drinking bootleg vodka, after
about two hours all three Woodsmen began vomiting, they had intense headaches something
they attributed to contaminated vodka, they attempted to sleep but sleep was impossible
as the sickness got much much worse during the night, eventually in the early hours they
could take no more and decided to strike camp and drive back into Lia. Back in Lia all three
men began to suffer burning sensations across their entire bodies, woodsman 1 who
had found the cylinder, lost the use of his hands as his fingers had swollen up and
it was painful to make a fist, all three sought medical attention and within seven days all
three were hospitalized. Local Medics could not deal with the severity of their symptoms
so we're transferred to a military hospital in Triplisi. At the military hospital radiation
exposure and acute radiation syndrome was diagnosed, And this is footage of all three
being treated for serious radiation burns four weeks now after the incident patient One was The Woodsman who found the
metal cylinder and he was the one that slept closest to it, by the pile of rocks at the
campfire that evening p Patient Two, the second Woodsman had slept
the second closest to the metal cylinder but about a metre further away than Patient One and it was this metre that probably saved his life. He had radiation burns to his legs
buttocks and upper back. Patient Three the third woodsman, had slept the furthest away, about
three and a half metres away from the metal cylinder and he had patchy burns to his upper
back. Due to YouTube Community standards thankfully I cannot show you any more of the
medical condition of the 3 woodsmen, but Valerie Legasov's description was completely accurate
earlier in the video... their decline was horrendous! Radiation Burns do not heal like normal burns
and all three woodsmen required multiple skin grafts, also because her immune systems had
been destroyed by the radiation all three needed bone marrow transplants thankfully
Woodsman 2 and Woodsman 3 survived their treatment after months at hospital , sadly Woodsman one
patient one the guy who found the metal cylinder and slept closest to it did not live and he
died after months of treatment. Once the woodsmen were diagnosed with a severe radiation
exposure and recounted their story about the mysterious hot cylinder that they found in
the woods, the Georgian authorities declared a major incident and physicists began to scour
the mountain paths for the lost radiation source, this wasn't difficult because the radiation
was detectable miles away, but the isolation took some time; the source found more or
less where The Woodsmen described they had left it . The physicists found that the mysterious
cylinder was indeed a radioactive heat source from a BETA-M type RTG that unknown metal
thieves had dismantled on a nearby Mountain Top radio relay station, presumably discarding
the RTG source cylinder near the mountain track. Having located the highly radioactive orphan source
the Georgian Army sealed off the mountainous area and the International Atomic Energy Authority
were called in as advisors and trainers to help train a Georgian Civil Defense Corps
radioactive source recovery team for what would be a difficult and hazardous operation
Because of the snow and the mountainous terrain it was not suitable for remote robot recovery
of the source, so in scenes similar to the Chernobyl disaster.. humans would have to perform
the recovery work using improvised long-rich tools. Each Man would have only 45 seconds
to approach the source and perform his task the plan was simple to drag the source from
behind the rocks where the Woodsmen have left it onto the mountain track , get it into a two-handed
bucket and then tip it into a makeshift two-ton Lead Shield mounted on a flatbed truck After a week of training the civil defense
team were ready to deploy, and conduct the operation, but getting up to the Georgia Mountains
in the middle of winter would not be easy This is footage of the actual live recovery
operation of the radioactive heat source that I just put three Georgian Woodsman into Hospital stay behind the rock [Applause] [Music] 40 Microsieverts The Lia event and the recovery
operation woke the International Community up as to the dangers of orphan Soviet RTGs
and the risks they posed to International safety. Over the next decade the Russian government
co-funded by the EU and the USA removed over 1 000 Legacy RTGs on its territory, other former
Soviet States removed all of theirs. But in 2014 as a punishment for invading Crimea, Russia
was expelled from the G8. In retaliation they withdrew all International cooperation in
tracking down and making safe orphan Soviet RTGS [Music] [Music]
