1 00:00:00,985 --> 00:00:03,280 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:03,280 --> 00:00:04,670 Commons License. 3 00:00:04,670 --> 00:00:06,880 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,880 --> 00:00:10,970 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,970 --> 00:00:13,540 To make a donation or to view additional materials 6 00:00:13,540 --> 00:00:17,500 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,500 --> 00:00:18,380 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:21,427 --> 00:00:23,760 MICHAEL SHORT: We've actually got a special guest today. 9 00:00:23,760 --> 00:00:26,430 It's Jake Hecla, one of the seniors at NSE 10 00:00:26,430 --> 00:00:30,060 who's gone on to Chernobyl for the second time, just returned 11 00:00:30,060 --> 00:00:31,450 from there two weeks ago. 12 00:00:31,450 --> 00:00:33,060 So if you remember on Tuesday, we 13 00:00:33,060 --> 00:00:35,160 went through all of the physics and intuition 14 00:00:35,160 --> 00:00:36,630 about why Chernobyl happened. 15 00:00:36,630 --> 00:00:39,280 And we left off on what does it look like today. 16 00:00:39,280 --> 00:00:41,905 So Jake is going to tell you what does it look like today. 17 00:00:41,905 --> 00:00:43,530 JAKE HECLA: All right, so first off I'm 18 00:00:43,530 --> 00:00:46,020 actually going to go over a bit of the reactor physics involved 19 00:00:46,020 --> 00:00:46,980 with the Chernobyl accident. 20 00:00:46,980 --> 00:00:49,050 I realize you guys have already covered this to some extent. 21 00:00:49,050 --> 00:00:50,500 But I didn't plan for that. 22 00:00:50,500 --> 00:00:51,697 So it's in my presentation. 23 00:00:51,697 --> 00:00:53,280 MICHAEL SHORT: It'll be a good review. 24 00:00:53,280 --> 00:00:54,990 JAKE HECLA: Yes, also I am a little sick. 25 00:00:54,990 --> 00:00:59,040 So I'm probably going to start coughing, apologies. 26 00:00:59,040 --> 00:00:59,970 I'm not dying. 27 00:00:59,970 --> 00:01:00,870 It's just a cold. 28 00:01:00,870 --> 00:01:02,152 AUDIENCE: Radiation poisoning. 29 00:01:02,152 --> 00:01:04,319 JAKE HECLA: I have heard that joke about eight times 30 00:01:04,319 --> 00:01:05,194 in the last two days. 31 00:01:05,194 --> 00:01:06,210 And I'm so done with it. 32 00:01:06,210 --> 00:01:08,233 But yes, it's not radiation poisoning. 33 00:01:08,233 --> 00:01:09,150 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 34 00:01:09,150 --> 00:01:13,820 JAKE HECLA: Yeah, all right, where is Chernobyl? 35 00:01:13,820 --> 00:01:14,790 Ah, dang it. 36 00:01:14,790 --> 00:01:18,260 Come on, no, go the other way, the other way, yep. 37 00:01:18,260 --> 00:01:19,930 OK, there. 38 00:01:19,930 --> 00:01:21,960 OK, so one of the first questions 39 00:01:21,960 --> 00:01:24,720 I got when I said I'm going to go and visit Chernobyl is wait, 40 00:01:24,720 --> 00:01:26,280 isn't that a war zone? 41 00:01:26,280 --> 00:01:27,180 Not quite. 42 00:01:27,180 --> 00:01:31,800 So the Ukrainian, the war in Ukraine 43 00:01:31,800 --> 00:01:35,880 is mostly in this portion over here. 44 00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:39,180 It's not entirely under Rebel control in that area. 45 00:01:39,180 --> 00:01:40,830 And I say "rebel" in quotation marks 46 00:01:40,830 --> 00:01:44,310 because rebel means Russian. 47 00:01:44,310 --> 00:01:46,440 However, if you notice those arrows, 48 00:01:46,440 --> 00:01:48,990 Russian forces are built up all along that border. 49 00:01:48,990 --> 00:01:52,530 So while it's not an active war zone, 50 00:01:52,530 --> 00:01:54,540 it's certainly not a place to be spending 51 00:01:54,540 --> 00:01:56,820 a large amount of time. 52 00:01:56,820 --> 00:02:04,770 That said, Chernobyl is north of Kiev by about, 53 00:02:04,770 --> 00:02:10,449 I don't know, let's see, 200, 250 kilometers. 54 00:02:10,449 --> 00:02:14,670 So it's not completely out in the sticks, right. 55 00:02:14,670 --> 00:02:18,940 Hopefully this gives you good sense of roughly where it is. 56 00:02:18,940 --> 00:02:22,310 All right, so what is the Chernobyl nuclear power plant 57 00:02:22,310 --> 00:02:23,630 look like? 58 00:02:23,630 --> 00:02:26,420 It consists of four finished reactors. 59 00:02:26,420 --> 00:02:28,940 There are two unfinished reactors, unit 5 and 6, that 60 00:02:28,940 --> 00:02:30,710 are not shown in this image. 61 00:02:30,710 --> 00:02:34,640 Units 1 and 2 are located at the right. 62 00:02:34,640 --> 00:02:39,290 Those were constructed in the 1970s and early 1980s. 63 00:02:39,290 --> 00:02:43,090 All of these reactors or the RBMK type. 64 00:02:43,090 --> 00:02:46,560 Units 1 and 2 operated with some success-- 65 00:02:46,560 --> 00:02:48,530 I'll go into that later-- 66 00:02:48,530 --> 00:02:55,110 for a number of years before the accident that happened in 1986. 67 00:02:55,110 --> 00:02:56,900 We also had some call outs up here that 68 00:02:56,900 --> 00:03:00,560 show the, some of the incidents that I'll 69 00:03:00,560 --> 00:03:02,870 talk about here a little bit later in the presentation. 70 00:03:02,870 --> 00:03:05,670 But this just gives you a general idea of the layout. 71 00:03:05,670 --> 00:03:11,060 So it's two separate buildings for units 1 and 2. 72 00:03:11,060 --> 00:03:14,690 And then units 3 and 4 are in one building, all connected 73 00:03:14,690 --> 00:03:16,640 by this turbo generator hall. 74 00:03:16,640 --> 00:03:19,490 So this is where the generators that 75 00:03:19,490 --> 00:03:23,420 turn the steam from the RBMK into power, r. 76 00:03:23,420 --> 00:03:25,420 This is one giant-- 77 00:03:25,420 --> 00:03:30,420 well, before the accident, this was one giant, not separated 78 00:03:30,420 --> 00:03:31,660 hallway, basically. 79 00:03:31,660 --> 00:03:36,130 So you could walk from one end to the other, theoretically. 80 00:03:36,130 --> 00:03:38,135 All right, so what is an RBMK? 81 00:03:38,135 --> 00:03:43,210 An RBMK is a light water-cooled, graphite-moderated, 82 00:03:43,210 --> 00:03:44,900 channel-type reactor. 83 00:03:44,900 --> 00:03:47,860 This means that it does not have a giant pressure vessel 84 00:03:47,860 --> 00:03:51,430 like you would see in a VVER or an equivalent American 85 00:03:51,430 --> 00:03:53,590 light water reactor. 86 00:03:53,590 --> 00:03:54,860 Why does that mean anything? 87 00:03:54,860 --> 00:03:58,120 Well, building giant pressure vessels is very difficult. 88 00:03:58,120 --> 00:04:00,490 If any of you've done research on manufacturing 89 00:04:00,490 --> 00:04:02,980 of nuclear reactors, you'll find out 90 00:04:02,980 --> 00:04:05,772 that the equipment necessary to construct a reactor 91 00:04:05,772 --> 00:04:07,480 pressure vessel is not actually something 92 00:04:07,480 --> 00:04:09,850 we even have in the US anymore. 93 00:04:09,850 --> 00:04:11,820 Is it Korea that does it for us now? 94 00:04:11,820 --> 00:04:13,195 MICHAEL SHORT: Japan Steel Works. 95 00:04:13,195 --> 00:04:15,550 JAKE HECLA: Japan that does it now. 96 00:04:15,550 --> 00:04:18,790 In the Soviet times, it was very, very difficult 97 00:04:18,790 --> 00:04:23,860 for the Soviet Union to produce such pressure vessels 98 00:04:23,860 --> 00:04:25,480 at any kind of reasonable rate. 99 00:04:25,480 --> 00:04:29,680 So the RBMK got around this by using 100 00:04:29,680 --> 00:04:32,500 individual channels that were their own pressure vessel, 101 00:04:32,500 --> 00:04:33,650 so to speak. 102 00:04:33,650 --> 00:04:36,700 So the way this works is, let's just start on the cold side. 103 00:04:36,700 --> 00:04:40,240 You take in cold water, goes here through these things. 104 00:04:40,240 --> 00:04:42,340 These are main circulating pumps-- 105 00:04:42,340 --> 00:04:43,990 MCPs, as you'll see them referred 106 00:04:43,990 --> 00:04:45,760 to later in the presentation-- 107 00:04:45,760 --> 00:04:47,930 goes up through the bottom up the core. 108 00:04:47,930 --> 00:04:50,440 These are the hot fuel rods. 109 00:04:50,440 --> 00:04:55,060 The water goes from liquid to steam phase as it's 110 00:04:55,060 --> 00:04:59,290 flowing through the channels, comes out the top, 111 00:04:59,290 --> 00:05:02,260 goes to the steam water separators. 112 00:05:02,260 --> 00:05:04,810 Steam goes to the turbines, turns the turbines, 113 00:05:04,810 --> 00:05:06,460 makes electricity. 114 00:05:06,460 --> 00:05:08,860 The important thing to remember here 115 00:05:08,860 --> 00:05:11,950 is that we've got a giant graphite core. 116 00:05:11,950 --> 00:05:13,840 The graphite is what is doing the moderating 117 00:05:13,840 --> 00:05:15,010 in this circumstance. 118 00:05:15,010 --> 00:05:18,220 It is not the water. 119 00:05:18,220 --> 00:05:20,990 This allows you to run very low-enriched uranium. 120 00:05:20,990 --> 00:05:24,880 So you could theoretically run an RBMK 121 00:05:24,880 --> 00:05:30,340 on I believe it was 1.2 percent was as low as they could go. 122 00:05:30,340 --> 00:05:33,150 But regardless, extremely low-enriched uranium, 123 00:05:33,150 --> 00:05:35,650 which is convenient if you don't want to waste a lot of time 124 00:05:35,650 --> 00:05:36,400 enriching uranium. 125 00:05:39,910 --> 00:05:44,110 The problem with this is that you have a giant core. 126 00:05:44,110 --> 00:05:47,150 If you recall the scattering cross-section for graphite, 127 00:05:47,150 --> 00:05:48,880 it's pretty small. 128 00:05:48,880 --> 00:05:51,040 And the amount of energy lost per collision 129 00:05:51,040 --> 00:05:53,470 is likewise also fairly small. 130 00:05:53,470 --> 00:05:58,360 So the core on this thing is, let's see, 11, yeah, 131 00:05:58,360 --> 00:06:01,030 11.5 meters across. 132 00:06:01,030 --> 00:06:04,480 The core for an equivalent American reactor-- 133 00:06:04,480 --> 00:06:07,180 so well, there is no real equivalent to this-- 134 00:06:07,180 --> 00:06:10,720 but for, let's say, an AP 1000 reactor 135 00:06:10,720 --> 00:06:14,680 of equivalent electrical output, is about four meters across. 136 00:06:14,680 --> 00:06:16,705 So the core is huge. 137 00:06:19,660 --> 00:06:24,520 As I already discussed, this is what the individual pressure 138 00:06:24,520 --> 00:06:25,540 channels look like. 139 00:06:25,540 --> 00:06:29,020 So cool water comes in the bottom, goes by the fuel rods, 140 00:06:29,020 --> 00:06:32,240 pops out the top. 141 00:06:32,240 --> 00:06:34,720 The RBMK had some serious design flaws. 142 00:06:34,720 --> 00:06:36,610 So as I said, the core is huge. 143 00:06:36,610 --> 00:06:38,590 This allows local power anomalies 144 00:06:38,590 --> 00:06:41,950 to form really, really easily. 145 00:06:41,950 --> 00:06:43,900 If you look at the core, one portion 146 00:06:43,900 --> 00:06:46,690 can be kind of neutronically separated from the others 147 00:06:46,690 --> 00:06:51,010 because neutrons just don't make it all that far when 148 00:06:51,010 --> 00:06:52,150 diffusing across the core. 149 00:06:52,150 --> 00:06:54,400 So you can have very, very high power in one corner 150 00:06:54,400 --> 00:06:58,060 and very low power in the other, which is not something that 151 00:06:58,060 --> 00:07:02,170 can develop in a physically smaller core, which 152 00:07:02,170 --> 00:07:05,410 has a characteristic scale equivalent to that 153 00:07:05,410 --> 00:07:06,790 of the neutron being free path. 154 00:07:09,860 --> 00:07:13,460 Further, the encore flux monitoring on the RBMK 155 00:07:13,460 --> 00:07:15,530 is seriously deficient. 156 00:07:15,530 --> 00:07:18,260 So there are a variety of neutron detectors 157 00:07:18,260 --> 00:07:20,630 that exist around the periphery of the core. 158 00:07:20,630 --> 00:07:23,510 But they're wholly insufficient to catch these local power 159 00:07:23,510 --> 00:07:24,920 anomalies. 160 00:07:24,920 --> 00:07:27,170 Chernobyl actually found out the hard way on this one. 161 00:07:27,170 --> 00:07:32,420 In 1982, unit 1 suffered a quote "localized core melt," 162 00:07:32,420 --> 00:07:36,410 not really something that can happen in LWR, really 163 00:07:36,410 --> 00:07:38,000 any other type of reactor. 164 00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:39,800 But a couple of the fuel channels 165 00:07:39,800 --> 00:07:42,320 actually experienced one of these local power 166 00:07:42,320 --> 00:07:44,060 anomalies and ended up melting. 167 00:07:44,060 --> 00:07:47,660 So if you go into the control room of unit 1, 168 00:07:47,660 --> 00:07:51,760 you can see that on the fuel channel cartogram on the wall, 169 00:07:51,760 --> 00:07:53,870 there are two of them that are just Sharpied out. 170 00:07:53,870 --> 00:07:56,810 And those are the ones that melted. 171 00:07:56,810 --> 00:07:59,917 Further, it has a positive void reactivity coefficient. 172 00:07:59,917 --> 00:08:00,750 What does that mean? 173 00:08:00,750 --> 00:08:03,950 Well, when the water boils in the core, 174 00:08:03,950 --> 00:08:06,380 the density of the water there goes down. 175 00:08:06,380 --> 00:08:08,660 And the power of the reactor ends up 176 00:08:08,660 --> 00:08:10,940 going up because the water is primarily 177 00:08:10,940 --> 00:08:13,910 acting not as moderator but as a neutron absorber. 178 00:08:13,910 --> 00:08:18,230 This is bad for a whole variety of reasons. 179 00:08:18,230 --> 00:08:20,570 And they found out quite catastrophically 180 00:08:20,570 --> 00:08:22,400 in 1986 exactly why. 181 00:08:22,400 --> 00:08:26,390 Further, the system is extremely unstable at low power. 182 00:08:30,470 --> 00:08:34,580 So how did the 1986 accident happen? 183 00:08:34,580 --> 00:08:39,700 It was part of this thing called a turbo generator rundown test. 184 00:08:39,700 --> 00:08:44,200 The general idea is that if you have an off-site power failure, 185 00:08:44,200 --> 00:08:47,650 and your main circulating pumps are no longer 186 00:08:47,650 --> 00:08:49,447 have off-site power, you somehow need 187 00:08:49,447 --> 00:08:51,280 to keep water flowing through the core, such 188 00:08:51,280 --> 00:08:53,950 that the fuel does not melt. 189 00:08:53,950 --> 00:08:57,580 The problem is that the backup, large diesel generators, 190 00:08:57,580 --> 00:08:58,180 are just that. 191 00:08:58,180 --> 00:08:59,030 They're large. 192 00:08:59,030 --> 00:09:00,040 They're diesel. 193 00:09:00,040 --> 00:09:01,600 And therefore they're very, very slow 194 00:09:01,600 --> 00:09:04,720 to come online and come up to full power. 195 00:09:04,720 --> 00:09:06,790 The way that you can bridge this gap 196 00:09:06,790 --> 00:09:10,360 is by using the energy that you've stored in the turbines 197 00:09:10,360 --> 00:09:12,760 to effectively power the main circulating pumps 198 00:09:12,760 --> 00:09:15,940 until the diesel generators can come up online. 199 00:09:15,940 --> 00:09:19,840 When unit 4 was fully constructed in 1983 200 00:09:19,840 --> 00:09:21,410 and turned on for the first time, 201 00:09:21,410 --> 00:09:23,250 they had never actually done this test 202 00:09:23,250 --> 00:09:25,210 where they did a turbo generator rundown, 203 00:09:25,210 --> 00:09:27,970 despite the fact that it was required by law in the Soviet 204 00:09:27,970 --> 00:09:30,670 Union that all new power stations should 205 00:09:30,670 --> 00:09:32,370 have this test performed. 206 00:09:32,370 --> 00:09:35,890 It was delayed until 1986. 207 00:09:35,890 --> 00:09:43,940 And yeah, it was delayed until 1986 is the long story short. 208 00:09:43,940 --> 00:09:46,720 The test procedure-- sorry for all the text on this slide-- 209 00:09:46,720 --> 00:09:48,440 is basically as follows. 210 00:09:48,440 --> 00:09:50,320 So you would ramp the reactor down. 211 00:09:50,320 --> 00:09:52,810 So you would bring it from a normal thermal output 212 00:09:52,810 --> 00:09:56,230 of up to 2,400 megawatts thermal, 213 00:09:56,230 --> 00:09:59,240 down to 600 or 700 megawatts. 214 00:09:59,240 --> 00:10:01,378 You'd bring the turbo generators up to full speed. 215 00:10:01,378 --> 00:10:02,920 So you'd store as much energy in them 216 00:10:02,920 --> 00:10:06,910 as you possibly could, then cut off the steam supply such 217 00:10:06,910 --> 00:10:09,760 that now you are just extracting energy from the spinning turbo 218 00:10:09,760 --> 00:10:11,242 generator. 219 00:10:11,242 --> 00:10:13,450 This would then be used to power the main circulating 220 00:10:13,450 --> 00:10:16,930 pumps, each of which took about 40 megawatts. 221 00:10:16,930 --> 00:10:19,180 There are eight of them total. 222 00:10:19,180 --> 00:10:23,950 I believe six could be used for normal operation. 223 00:10:23,950 --> 00:10:26,080 The rundown would take somewhere in the range 224 00:10:26,080 --> 00:10:27,940 of 60 to 70 seconds. 225 00:10:27,940 --> 00:10:30,010 And hopefully by this time your diesel generators 226 00:10:30,010 --> 00:10:31,690 would be turned on, pumping water, 227 00:10:31,690 --> 00:10:33,740 and everything would be fine. 228 00:10:33,740 --> 00:10:36,940 What happened in the test was decidedly quite different 229 00:10:36,940 --> 00:10:37,840 from that. 230 00:10:37,840 --> 00:10:43,420 So on April 26, 1986, they attempted 231 00:10:43,420 --> 00:10:46,390 to begin this test about six hours behind schedule 232 00:10:46,390 --> 00:10:49,360 because there was an incident in another part of Ukraine, 233 00:10:49,360 --> 00:10:51,550 in which a coal power plant went offline. 234 00:10:51,550 --> 00:10:55,450 So what happened was the authority 235 00:10:55,450 --> 00:10:58,450 for the grid in the area ordered that Chernobyl 236 00:10:58,450 --> 00:11:03,970 should stay online at full power for an additional six hours. 237 00:11:03,970 --> 00:11:06,730 They began the test by bringing power down. 238 00:11:06,730 --> 00:11:11,470 But as a result of running for an extra six hours, 239 00:11:11,470 --> 00:11:14,260 they'd built up a significant amount of xenon precursors 240 00:11:14,260 --> 00:11:15,290 in the core. 241 00:11:15,290 --> 00:11:17,890 So when they started turning the power down, 242 00:11:17,890 --> 00:11:21,160 the power started going down, and down, and down. 243 00:11:21,160 --> 00:11:26,050 And they were unable to arrest its drop. 244 00:11:26,050 --> 00:11:29,680 What ended up happening was that the power dropped all the way 245 00:11:29,680 --> 00:11:31,870 down to 30 megawatts thermal. 246 00:11:31,870 --> 00:11:35,330 And the reactor operators kind of panicked. 247 00:11:35,330 --> 00:11:38,350 Their response to this, instead of canceling the test, 248 00:11:38,350 --> 00:11:40,570 was to pull out as many control rods 249 00:11:40,570 --> 00:11:42,220 as they could get their hands on. 250 00:11:42,220 --> 00:11:42,940 They did so. 251 00:11:42,940 --> 00:11:46,840 And this managed to rescue the thermal output of the reactor. 252 00:11:46,840 --> 00:11:50,170 And it bumped up to around 200 megawatts thermal. 253 00:11:50,170 --> 00:11:53,440 At this point, the reactor was in an extremely unstable state. 254 00:11:53,440 --> 00:11:56,170 Mind you, almost all of the rods that they could get their hands 255 00:11:56,170 --> 00:11:58,150 on were out of the reactor. 256 00:11:58,150 --> 00:11:59,950 The only thing keeping reactivity 257 00:11:59,950 --> 00:12:01,600 at a reasonable level was all the xenon 258 00:12:01,600 --> 00:12:04,660 that was built up in the core. 259 00:12:04,660 --> 00:12:08,410 At this point, they began the turbo generator run down test. 260 00:12:08,410 --> 00:12:14,110 They shut off steam to the main turbine, or one of the turbines 261 00:12:14,110 --> 00:12:17,560 after it was run up to full power, 262 00:12:17,560 --> 00:12:20,350 and then attempted to run the main circulating pump. 263 00:12:20,350 --> 00:12:23,500 The main circulating pump started drawing down the energy 264 00:12:23,500 --> 00:12:27,040 from the spinning turbine. 265 00:12:27,040 --> 00:12:29,590 And as a result, it ran slower and slower, 266 00:12:29,590 --> 00:12:31,360 meaning that the flow through the core 267 00:12:31,360 --> 00:12:36,100 was less and less, more water boiled, going into steam, 268 00:12:36,100 --> 00:12:39,310 which increased the reactivity. 269 00:12:39,310 --> 00:12:43,210 As a result, the power output of the court went up. 270 00:12:43,210 --> 00:12:44,830 It burned out more xenon. 271 00:12:44,830 --> 00:12:47,200 And the cycle continued. 272 00:12:47,200 --> 00:12:49,900 They noticed a power excursion, about 40 seconds 273 00:12:49,900 --> 00:12:53,440 after they began the test and at this point 274 00:12:53,440 --> 00:12:55,210 recognize they were in bad territory 275 00:12:55,210 --> 00:12:57,430 and hit the scram button. 276 00:12:57,430 --> 00:13:00,220 This would jam pretty much all of the available control rods 277 00:13:00,220 --> 00:13:02,530 into the core, including some emergency extras, 278 00:13:02,530 --> 00:13:04,330 and shut everything down. 279 00:13:04,330 --> 00:13:07,060 In most circumstances, this would be a fairly safe move. 280 00:13:07,060 --> 00:13:11,830 But in the case of the RBMK it was most certainly not. 281 00:13:11,830 --> 00:13:16,150 RBMK control rods have a graphite tip on them. 282 00:13:16,150 --> 00:13:19,570 When jammed into the core, they caused a localized power 283 00:13:19,570 --> 00:13:22,990 increase because the graphite is a great moderator. 284 00:13:22,990 --> 00:13:26,055 And it is displacing water, which is a great absorber. 285 00:13:26,055 --> 00:13:28,180 And as a result, after they made it a couple meters 286 00:13:28,180 --> 00:13:32,260 into the core, the increased pressure 287 00:13:32,260 --> 00:13:36,280 in the core from the power output, which 288 00:13:36,280 --> 00:13:38,530 was localized around the tips the control rods, 289 00:13:38,530 --> 00:13:42,490 ended up shattering the control rod drive mechanisms. 290 00:13:42,490 --> 00:13:47,290 And instead of turning off, the cycle basically just continued, 291 00:13:47,290 --> 00:13:49,990 power continued to ramp up over the next couple of seconds. 292 00:13:49,990 --> 00:13:52,630 It eventually reached somewhere around 10 to 20 293 00:13:52,630 --> 00:13:55,720 times the maximum rated thermal output of the system. 294 00:13:55,720 --> 00:13:57,490 And a massive steam explosion ended up 295 00:13:57,490 --> 00:13:59,800 ripping through the facility. 296 00:13:59,800 --> 00:14:03,310 It tossed the 2000 ton biological shield 297 00:14:03,310 --> 00:14:07,150 on top of the reactor through the roof of the facility. 298 00:14:07,150 --> 00:14:09,970 It injected a significant portion of the fuel, 299 00:14:09,970 --> 00:14:12,460 as well as the moderator in the core. 300 00:14:12,460 --> 00:14:15,717 And it started a massive fire around the facility. 301 00:14:18,200 --> 00:14:19,825 Just to give you a good sense of scale, 302 00:14:19,825 --> 00:14:22,810 let's see, if I've got the virtual laser pointer. 303 00:14:22,810 --> 00:14:27,040 That's a person right here, this little guy. 304 00:14:27,040 --> 00:14:29,980 This is the top of the biological shield, 305 00:14:29,980 --> 00:14:32,380 Elena shield. 306 00:14:32,380 --> 00:14:37,420 And then this is a model, a cutaway model of the Chernobyl 307 00:14:37,420 --> 00:14:41,410 reactor facility with the shield, 308 00:14:41,410 --> 00:14:46,140 and with the flipped shield that went up through the roof 309 00:14:46,140 --> 00:14:47,760 and came back down. 310 00:14:47,760 --> 00:14:50,780 So as you can see, it was an utterly massive explosion. 311 00:14:53,860 --> 00:14:58,480 So the damage to the reactor was immediately quite catastrophic. 312 00:14:58,480 --> 00:15:00,340 Moderator blocks, fuel was spread 313 00:15:00,340 --> 00:15:02,290 all around the immediate area. 314 00:15:02,290 --> 00:15:04,910 If you look in this photo, it's rather difficult to see. 315 00:15:04,910 --> 00:15:07,330 But at the bottom of that column of smoke 316 00:15:07,330 --> 00:15:11,410 you can actually see the bottom up the biological shield. 317 00:15:11,410 --> 00:15:13,660 Kind of gives you a sense of the scale 318 00:15:13,660 --> 00:15:15,840 of the damage to the reactor. 319 00:15:15,840 --> 00:15:18,340 After the explosion happened, actually none of the operators 320 00:15:18,340 --> 00:15:21,713 believe the reactor breached confinement in any way. 321 00:15:21,713 --> 00:15:23,380 They didn't really have an immediate way 322 00:15:23,380 --> 00:15:25,120 of seeing what had happened. 323 00:15:25,120 --> 00:15:27,580 So they open the door and went to the main turbo generator 324 00:15:27,580 --> 00:15:29,320 building to investigate the damage. 325 00:15:29,320 --> 00:15:32,590 They believed it was perhaps one or two ruptured fuel channels. 326 00:15:32,590 --> 00:15:34,683 As it happened at, I believe the Leningrad, 327 00:15:34,683 --> 00:15:36,100 I think it was the Leningrad power 328 00:15:36,100 --> 00:15:38,333 station a few years earlier. 329 00:15:38,333 --> 00:15:40,000 In the few seconds that they were there, 330 00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:42,760 they received fatal doses and died in the hospital 331 00:15:42,760 --> 00:15:45,040 in May of 1986. 332 00:15:45,040 --> 00:15:48,040 This is a photo from control room of reactor 4, 333 00:15:48,040 --> 00:15:51,760 showing a jammed control rod drive at the 6 meter position. 334 00:15:51,760 --> 00:15:54,520 So this was probably a rod, let's see, 335 00:15:54,520 --> 00:16:00,340 this is probably a rod coming up from the bottom, in that it, 336 00:16:00,340 --> 00:16:02,020 seven meters would be all the way out. 337 00:16:02,020 --> 00:16:03,520 Zero meters would be all the way in. 338 00:16:07,010 --> 00:16:09,230 The initial response to this, despite the fact 339 00:16:09,230 --> 00:16:11,780 that the reactor operators were not 340 00:16:11,780 --> 00:16:13,610 yet dead, did realize that it was 341 00:16:13,610 --> 00:16:15,500 a full breach of containment, was 342 00:16:15,500 --> 00:16:18,300 the response was to an accident that was non-nuclear in nature. 343 00:16:18,300 --> 00:16:21,740 So when the fire department got a call from the authority 344 00:16:21,740 --> 00:16:25,580 at Chernobyl, the message that they received 345 00:16:25,580 --> 00:16:28,490 was there's a fire at the reactor complex. 346 00:16:28,490 --> 00:16:31,400 As a result, what they showed up with 347 00:16:31,400 --> 00:16:38,510 was not equipment suitable for a hazmat situation in any way. 348 00:16:38,510 --> 00:16:40,160 That said, there's pretty much nothing 349 00:16:40,160 --> 00:16:43,778 that could shield anyone from the extremely high radiation 350 00:16:43,778 --> 00:16:45,320 field that one would encounter around 351 00:16:45,320 --> 00:16:47,820 the reactor in the immediate aftermath of the accident. 352 00:16:47,820 --> 00:16:54,200 But nonetheless, they were extremely vulnerable. 353 00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:56,240 It was night when this accident happened. 354 00:16:56,240 --> 00:16:59,870 As I mentioned, this happened at 1:23 in the morning. 355 00:16:59,870 --> 00:17:02,960 They actually couldn't see the extent of the accident. 356 00:17:02,960 --> 00:17:05,060 And they initially believed that it was just 357 00:17:05,060 --> 00:17:07,585 a fire on the roof of the turbo generator building. 358 00:17:07,585 --> 00:17:08,960 They attempted to fight the fire. 359 00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:10,619 And some of them actually succumb 360 00:17:10,619 --> 00:17:14,000 to acute radiation poisoning, or acute radiation syndrome, 361 00:17:14,000 --> 00:17:16,910 almost immediately. 362 00:17:16,910 --> 00:17:18,810 A number of firefighters went up on the roof 363 00:17:18,810 --> 00:17:19,893 and just didn't come back. 364 00:17:24,400 --> 00:17:26,589 The aftermath of the accident, the cleanup 365 00:17:26,589 --> 00:17:29,380 was handled by the Soviet Army. 366 00:17:29,380 --> 00:17:31,330 The people that were involved in this 367 00:17:31,330 --> 00:17:33,910 were known as the liquidators. 368 00:17:33,910 --> 00:17:37,450 They would spend several minutes on the rooftop of the turbo 369 00:17:37,450 --> 00:17:40,840 generator building, or up near where the reactor was, 370 00:17:40,840 --> 00:17:42,730 the reactor containment building was. 371 00:17:42,730 --> 00:17:48,440 And they would receive a, effectively a lifetime dose, 372 00:17:48,440 --> 00:17:52,750 which I believe was, I believe their limit was 50 REM. 373 00:17:52,750 --> 00:17:56,230 And that would be a couple of minutes up there. 374 00:17:56,230 --> 00:18:01,060 Let's see, this photo doesn't show much evidence of it. 375 00:18:01,060 --> 00:18:03,498 But I suppose it shows a little bit of evidence of it. 376 00:18:03,498 --> 00:18:05,290 If you look around the bottom up the frame, 377 00:18:05,290 --> 00:18:06,970 you can actually see a little bit 378 00:18:06,970 --> 00:18:09,310 of hazing in kind of a periodic fashion. 379 00:18:09,310 --> 00:18:15,440 Let's see if I can get my pointer on it here, here, here, 380 00:18:15,440 --> 00:18:16,570 here, and here. 381 00:18:16,570 --> 00:18:19,810 That's the gear that moves the film is actually 382 00:18:19,810 --> 00:18:23,590 shielding the film from radiation 383 00:18:23,590 --> 00:18:25,360 exposure at those points. 384 00:18:25,360 --> 00:18:27,880 The radiation dose rate was so high up there 385 00:18:27,880 --> 00:18:30,070 that most of the pictures that were taken just 386 00:18:30,070 --> 00:18:32,590 didn't turn out whatsoever. 387 00:18:32,590 --> 00:18:36,160 A few smarter photographers used a whole lot of lead 388 00:18:36,160 --> 00:18:38,060 and were able to capture photos like this. 389 00:18:38,060 --> 00:18:40,990 But nonetheless, the dose rates were tremendous. 390 00:18:43,940 --> 00:18:47,780 The reactor structure itself was entombed in this thing 391 00:18:47,780 --> 00:18:50,000 that we call the sarcophagus. 392 00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:51,940 People in Ukraine call it the object shelter, 393 00:18:51,940 --> 00:18:53,330 or the shelter object. 394 00:18:53,330 --> 00:18:56,810 It was constructed in starting almost immediately 395 00:18:56,810 --> 00:19:01,790 after the accident, basically to keep radioactive graphite 396 00:19:01,790 --> 00:19:05,300 and fuel fragments from leaving the reactor structure 397 00:19:05,300 --> 00:19:07,800 and contaminating any more land. 398 00:19:07,800 --> 00:19:11,750 This is a photo from when it was under construction. 399 00:19:11,750 --> 00:19:15,080 Basically what it consisted of were steel and concrete walls 400 00:19:15,080 --> 00:19:18,290 that were erected around the reactor, 401 00:19:18,290 --> 00:19:20,360 using a variety of technologies. 402 00:19:20,360 --> 00:19:24,290 They at first attempted to use robots, 403 00:19:24,290 --> 00:19:27,860 that were almost immediately rendered useless 404 00:19:27,860 --> 00:19:30,350 by the high radiation field. 405 00:19:30,350 --> 00:19:35,000 Later on, they ended up using quote "bio robots," people, 406 00:19:35,000 --> 00:19:38,720 to move things into place. 407 00:19:38,720 --> 00:19:40,820 As I've said before, a whole lot of people 408 00:19:40,820 --> 00:19:46,250 died in this accident both immediately and after, 409 00:19:46,250 --> 00:19:49,550 many during the construction of the sarcophagus. 410 00:19:49,550 --> 00:19:51,560 Actually during the initial firefighting, 411 00:19:51,560 --> 00:19:53,930 or yeah, the initial firefighting measures, 412 00:19:53,930 --> 00:19:56,780 as the core remained burning for a number of weeks 413 00:19:56,780 --> 00:20:00,470 after the accident, they attempted 414 00:20:00,470 --> 00:20:04,610 to put it out with bags of sand dropped from helicopters. 415 00:20:04,610 --> 00:20:08,090 And during that effort, a helicopter actually 416 00:20:08,090 --> 00:20:09,680 ended up hitting one of the cranes 417 00:20:09,680 --> 00:20:11,600 that they were attempting to use for this 418 00:20:11,600 --> 00:20:14,360 and falling into the reactor, and a good portion 419 00:20:14,360 --> 00:20:17,390 of its remains remain entombed within the sarcophagus, 420 00:20:17,390 --> 00:20:21,130 from what I understand. 421 00:20:21,130 --> 00:20:24,710 All right, so my visit to Chernobyl, why would anyone 422 00:20:24,710 --> 00:20:26,360 ever want to go there? 423 00:20:26,360 --> 00:20:27,980 The primary focus was to learn about 424 00:20:27,980 --> 00:20:31,220 radiological decontamination at the site, 425 00:20:31,220 --> 00:20:34,250 basically how is contamination control managed, 426 00:20:34,250 --> 00:20:35,588 how do workers stay safe. 427 00:20:35,588 --> 00:20:37,130 Mind you, there are 3,000 people that 428 00:20:37,130 --> 00:20:40,160 go to work there every day. 429 00:20:40,160 --> 00:20:41,630 And what are the strengths? 430 00:20:41,630 --> 00:20:44,495 And what are the shortcomings of their radiological program? 431 00:20:44,495 --> 00:20:49,010 It was seven days total, four of which were on site. 432 00:20:49,010 --> 00:20:52,970 Other days were spent in Pripyat as well as 433 00:20:52,970 --> 00:20:57,320 in some classroom training, which I've got great photos of. 434 00:20:57,320 --> 00:21:00,260 So this is a slide stolen directly from the PowerPoint 435 00:21:00,260 --> 00:21:02,730 that I was sent on day one. 436 00:21:02,730 --> 00:21:06,650 But this was organized by three people, Carl Willis, 437 00:21:06,650 --> 00:21:08,810 Erik Kambarian, and Ed Geist. 438 00:21:08,810 --> 00:21:10,400 I've known Carl for a few years now. 439 00:21:10,400 --> 00:21:13,070 He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico 440 00:21:13,070 --> 00:21:15,530 and is a radiation safety officer at a company 441 00:21:15,530 --> 00:21:20,030 that, I think they do advanced energy storage technologies. 442 00:21:20,030 --> 00:21:22,070 I'm not exactly sure. 443 00:21:22,070 --> 00:21:26,300 Erik is a firefighter and specializes in radiation 444 00:21:26,300 --> 00:21:27,500 emergency response. 445 00:21:27,500 --> 00:21:30,830 And Edward works at the Rand Corporation 446 00:21:30,830 --> 00:21:33,935 and does nuclear history and nuclear security research. 447 00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:39,760 This is the team this year. 448 00:21:39,760 --> 00:21:41,880 So we've got, let's start here. 449 00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:42,570 This is Lucas. 450 00:21:42,570 --> 00:21:45,300 He does environmental radiation monitoring. 451 00:21:45,300 --> 00:21:48,990 That's me after having no sleep because I did a 22.611 p-set 452 00:21:48,990 --> 00:21:50,770 the night before. 453 00:21:50,770 --> 00:21:51,270 I know. 454 00:21:51,270 --> 00:21:53,160 I looked so happy to be there. 455 00:21:53,160 --> 00:21:54,360 This is Nathan. 456 00:21:54,360 --> 00:21:59,340 Nathan builds organs, as in the musical instrument. 457 00:21:59,340 --> 00:22:00,900 He was along because he's always been 458 00:22:00,900 --> 00:22:03,720 interested in Chernobyl but didn't really have 459 00:22:03,720 --> 00:22:06,480 any experience in the field. 460 00:22:06,480 --> 00:22:08,070 This is Stanislaus. 461 00:22:08,070 --> 00:22:11,670 Stanislaus was our guide from the Chernobyl authority. 462 00:22:11,670 --> 00:22:13,860 He's been working at the plant since 1991 463 00:22:13,860 --> 00:22:17,400 and is a fantastic resource for information. 464 00:22:17,400 --> 00:22:20,240 This is Ed, who I believe I talked about earlier. 465 00:22:20,240 --> 00:22:22,260 And this is Ryan Pierce. 466 00:22:22,260 --> 00:22:23,670 I'm not really sure what he does. 467 00:22:23,670 --> 00:22:29,310 This is Iris, who is a friend of Carl's and works in, 468 00:22:29,310 --> 00:22:31,500 believe radiation oncology. 469 00:22:31,500 --> 00:22:37,240 And then Danell Hogan, who's an educator based in Phoenix, 470 00:22:37,240 --> 00:22:38,610 Arizona who works with the DOE. 471 00:22:40,857 --> 00:22:42,690 By the way if you're wondering why we're all 472 00:22:42,690 --> 00:22:44,760 wearing those absurd robes before we 473 00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:48,060 were going to go in to another room 474 00:22:48,060 --> 00:22:52,350 and change into basically coveralls, which 475 00:22:52,350 --> 00:22:55,295 are easy to decontaminate. 476 00:22:55,295 --> 00:22:56,670 One of the activities that we did 477 00:22:56,670 --> 00:22:58,890 was real decontamination training. 478 00:22:58,890 --> 00:23:02,610 So that is a truck from the Novarka work site, 479 00:23:02,610 --> 00:23:06,300 which, by the way, that is me with a Geiger counter. 480 00:23:06,300 --> 00:23:08,970 I'm surveying for contamination. 481 00:23:08,970 --> 00:23:11,357 We then pressure washed the truck. 482 00:23:11,357 --> 00:23:13,440 As it turns out, there's a very specific technique 483 00:23:13,440 --> 00:23:15,815 one needs to use for pressure washing when you're dealing 484 00:23:15,815 --> 00:23:19,650 with a contaminated object, so as to not blast contaminated 485 00:23:19,650 --> 00:23:22,180 dirt up back onto the truck. 486 00:23:22,180 --> 00:23:24,480 This was a very interesting experience and also 487 00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:27,120 one that was very entertaining for the workers involved, 488 00:23:27,120 --> 00:23:30,300 because they don't actually wear that when they're 489 00:23:30,300 --> 00:23:35,100 doing decontamination because their respect for safety 490 00:23:35,100 --> 00:23:38,220 protocols are, shall we say, a bit different. 491 00:23:38,220 --> 00:23:40,950 So they got to see us where the absurd rubber 492 00:23:40,950 --> 00:23:46,890 ducky suits while they stood by smoking and laughing at us. 493 00:23:46,890 --> 00:23:49,810 I believe you can actually see the corner of that guy's jacket 494 00:23:49,810 --> 00:23:50,310 back there. 495 00:23:50,310 --> 00:23:52,860 And he's just wearing everyday clothes. 496 00:23:55,700 --> 00:23:58,640 We also went on the new safe confinement work site. 497 00:23:58,640 --> 00:24:01,160 So I haven't talked about it earlier in this presentation, 498 00:24:01,160 --> 00:24:03,440 but I suppose I should have. 499 00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:07,640 There is a object called the New Safe Confinement 500 00:24:07,640 --> 00:24:12,890 Arch that consists of basically a giant stainless steel 501 00:24:12,890 --> 00:24:16,940 structure on rails which is being slid over reactor 4 502 00:24:16,940 --> 00:24:19,490 so as to prevent the spread of any sort of contamination 503 00:24:19,490 --> 00:24:20,780 from it. 504 00:24:20,780 --> 00:24:25,550 This is known as the New Safe Confinement, or NSC, arch. 505 00:24:25,550 --> 00:24:28,430 It's been under construction since 2007. 506 00:24:28,430 --> 00:24:31,580 And it just moved for the first time, 507 00:24:31,580 --> 00:24:36,860 actually while I was there, so on the 12th of November. 508 00:24:36,860 --> 00:24:40,940 It's supposed to last for 100 years. 509 00:24:40,940 --> 00:24:42,830 And hopefully in that kind of time span 510 00:24:42,830 --> 00:24:46,430 they'll be able to take apart what remains of the reactor. 511 00:24:46,430 --> 00:24:51,770 So actually what you see here is the corner of the sarcophagus. 512 00:24:51,770 --> 00:24:55,430 And then if you were to pan over this way a little bit, 513 00:24:55,430 --> 00:25:00,350 you'd see the right set of tracks for the New Safe 514 00:25:00,350 --> 00:25:03,040 Confinement Arch. 515 00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:05,803 We also did some classroom training. 516 00:25:05,803 --> 00:25:07,220 Admittedly, the classroom training 517 00:25:07,220 --> 00:25:10,490 was the most disappointing part of this. 518 00:25:10,490 --> 00:25:13,130 The instructors were not particularly 519 00:25:13,130 --> 00:25:15,740 interested in showing us really anything 520 00:25:15,740 --> 00:25:21,380 other than YouTube videos and other things that would just 521 00:25:21,380 --> 00:25:22,760 waste our time. 522 00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:26,267 That was the one part of this trip that I did not enjoy. 523 00:25:26,267 --> 00:25:28,100 Regardless, we did get to learn a little bit 524 00:25:28,100 --> 00:25:32,240 about the various hazmat getups that folks would 525 00:25:32,240 --> 00:25:36,280 wear when working on site. 526 00:25:36,280 --> 00:25:41,050 As I mentioned we also got to visit Pripyat, 527 00:25:41,050 --> 00:25:43,090 which I have more photos of later, 528 00:25:43,090 --> 00:25:45,970 as well as the reactor 4 control room, which 529 00:25:45,970 --> 00:25:50,290 is inside the sarcophagus, which is quite a treat to visit. 530 00:25:50,290 --> 00:25:52,870 The reactor 4 control room is not 531 00:25:52,870 --> 00:25:56,080 terribly contaminated as a result of the decontamination 532 00:25:56,080 --> 00:25:57,190 efforts. 533 00:25:57,190 --> 00:25:59,050 During the accident, the dose rate 534 00:25:59,050 --> 00:26:03,100 would have been somewhere in the range of 5 to 10 rem an hour. 535 00:26:03,100 --> 00:26:06,580 But today, it's in the range of 10 mrem an hour. 536 00:26:09,078 --> 00:26:10,620 This is the New Safe Confinement Arch 537 00:26:10,620 --> 00:26:11,828 that I've been talking about. 538 00:26:11,828 --> 00:26:15,390 This is actually a photo from 2015 with a clip art Statue 539 00:26:15,390 --> 00:26:18,210 of Liberty on it, but to give you an idea of how huge 540 00:26:18,210 --> 00:26:24,240 it is, 5 meters taller than the Statue of Liberty. 541 00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:26,680 And it's on rails, which is interesting. 542 00:26:26,680 --> 00:26:28,530 It's actually too big for wheels. 543 00:26:28,530 --> 00:26:31,560 So it's not on rails like with wheels on them. 544 00:26:31,560 --> 00:26:33,585 It's on rails with giant Teflon scoots. 545 00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:39,355 This is the inside of the turbo generator hallway. 546 00:26:39,355 --> 00:26:41,230 Remember that long building that I showed you 547 00:26:41,230 --> 00:26:44,980 that connected reactors 1 and 2 and 3 and 4? 548 00:26:44,980 --> 00:26:47,530 This is right outside the reactor 3 part of it. 549 00:26:47,530 --> 00:26:50,680 There are-- I think I'll show you these photos later. 550 00:26:50,680 --> 00:26:55,870 There are chunks of the turbine from reactor 4 551 00:26:55,870 --> 00:27:01,090 that are down here in this area that are quite visibly 552 00:27:01,090 --> 00:27:05,080 radioactive and are very easy to detect if one swings a Geiger 553 00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:06,340 counter about. 554 00:27:06,340 --> 00:27:10,490 Within Pripyat we also visited a hospital 126, 555 00:27:10,490 --> 00:27:12,970 which is where the firefighters went immediately 556 00:27:12,970 --> 00:27:18,010 after the accident, that is, the ones that made it off the roof. 557 00:27:18,010 --> 00:27:21,352 This garment here, we're not exactly 558 00:27:21,352 --> 00:27:22,810 sure what it was because none of us 559 00:27:22,810 --> 00:27:24,130 were going to really touch it. 560 00:27:24,130 --> 00:27:27,250 But we think it might have been part of a cover-- 561 00:27:27,250 --> 00:27:28,720 it would go under one's helmet-- 562 00:27:28,720 --> 00:27:31,120 was extremely radioactive. 563 00:27:31,120 --> 00:27:34,680 It was contaminated with alpha, beta, and gamma, 564 00:27:34,680 --> 00:27:35,680 which is fairly unusual. 565 00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:39,550 Alpha contamination is fairly rare around the Chernobyl site, 566 00:27:39,550 --> 00:27:43,390 and was somewhere around 50 to 75 mR an hour on contact. 567 00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:50,090 I think I already showed you photos the control room. 568 00:27:50,090 --> 00:27:51,920 Yep, unit 4, that's the cartogram, 569 00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:55,890 so that would display various parameters of the reactor 570 00:27:55,890 --> 00:28:00,570 for each fuel channel, depending on how one configured it. 571 00:28:00,570 --> 00:28:02,550 That's an external photo of the sarcophagus. 572 00:28:05,610 --> 00:28:09,540 And I think that's it for the PowerPoint slides. 573 00:28:09,540 --> 00:28:11,750 I do have a bunch of photos though that I think 574 00:28:11,750 --> 00:28:13,320 you will find interesting. 575 00:28:13,320 --> 00:28:15,300 I apologize if it's a little disorganized. 576 00:28:18,270 --> 00:28:22,890 This was put together relatively recently because, well, I 577 00:28:22,890 --> 00:28:24,930 just got back from Chernobyl. 578 00:28:24,930 --> 00:28:26,520 And then I went to a conference. 579 00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:29,250 And then I came back here and tried to get work done. 580 00:28:29,250 --> 00:28:33,270 Right, so these are in chronological order roughly. 581 00:28:33,270 --> 00:28:35,370 I'll go through and hopefully tell you guys 582 00:28:35,370 --> 00:28:38,015 a little bit about what the site's like. 583 00:28:38,015 --> 00:28:39,140 MICHAEL SHORT: [INAUDIBLE]. 584 00:28:39,140 --> 00:28:42,000 JAKE HECLA: OK, so this is on day one. 585 00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:46,470 We're driving to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant site. 586 00:28:46,470 --> 00:28:48,630 That blue and white bus is pretty much 587 00:28:48,630 --> 00:28:50,610 what everyone uses for transport around there. 588 00:28:53,370 --> 00:28:55,030 All right, so we're not really supposed 589 00:28:55,030 --> 00:28:56,350 to be taking photos in this area. 590 00:28:56,350 --> 00:28:57,850 So everything is tilted because it's 591 00:28:57,850 --> 00:29:00,610 taking them out the window with the camera like that. 592 00:29:00,610 --> 00:29:03,130 That's the New Safe Confinement Arch. 593 00:29:03,130 --> 00:29:04,630 It's in considerably better shape 594 00:29:04,630 --> 00:29:06,580 than it was last year at this time. 595 00:29:06,580 --> 00:29:09,190 They have done a fantastic job of putting it together. 596 00:29:09,190 --> 00:29:13,290 It's actually almost a year ahead of schedule. 597 00:29:13,290 --> 00:29:14,140 There it is, again. 598 00:29:14,140 --> 00:29:17,230 You can see the sarcophagus with the new support wall, 599 00:29:17,230 --> 00:29:20,730 which is that right there. 600 00:29:29,910 --> 00:29:32,280 All right, so this is our excursion into Pripyat 601 00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:33,990 on our second day. 602 00:29:33,990 --> 00:29:37,020 So this is the group led by Stanislaus. 603 00:29:37,020 --> 00:29:40,500 As you can see, there's not very much left. 604 00:29:40,500 --> 00:29:42,780 Just in comparison to what we saw last year, 605 00:29:42,780 --> 00:29:45,990 the number of buildings that had been taken apart 606 00:29:45,990 --> 00:29:51,210 for scrap metal, illegally, of course, was pretty huge. 607 00:29:51,210 --> 00:29:52,925 In, I don't know, 5 or 10 years, it's 608 00:29:52,925 --> 00:29:55,300 going to be very difficult to see much of Pripyat at all, 609 00:29:55,300 --> 00:29:56,850 frankly. 610 00:29:56,850 --> 00:30:00,210 So this is a standard apartment block in Pripyat. 611 00:30:00,210 --> 00:30:03,180 As you can see, a lot of broken windows. 612 00:30:03,180 --> 00:30:04,793 A lot of bricks have fallen off. 613 00:30:04,793 --> 00:30:06,210 These things are pretty dangerous. 614 00:30:06,210 --> 00:30:07,950 A lot of tourists do go into them. 615 00:30:07,950 --> 00:30:11,060 If one decides to do a tourist expedition to Chernobyl-- which 616 00:30:11,060 --> 00:30:13,290 I don't particularly recommend-- don't 617 00:30:13,290 --> 00:30:14,415 go in the apartment blocks. 618 00:30:17,370 --> 00:30:20,370 This is on the way to one of the schools. 619 00:30:20,370 --> 00:30:24,250 This is Lucas who has more detectors than anyone I've ever 620 00:30:24,250 --> 00:30:24,750 met. 621 00:30:24,750 --> 00:30:26,710 He was wearing 7 at the time. 622 00:30:26,710 --> 00:30:29,340 So I had to take a photo of him. 623 00:30:29,340 --> 00:30:32,040 This is Iris imitating some of the graffiti, which 624 00:30:32,040 --> 00:30:34,830 unfortunately has popped up all over the place. 625 00:30:34,830 --> 00:30:38,230 Pripyat itself is really decaying quickly. 626 00:30:38,230 --> 00:30:42,180 As I've said, there's a huge problem with looting. 627 00:30:42,180 --> 00:30:43,680 In addition, there's a huge problem 628 00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:46,230 with graffiti and vandalism. 629 00:30:46,230 --> 00:30:48,330 It's really depressing, honestly, 630 00:30:48,330 --> 00:30:54,090 to go there and see how much has changed just in a year. 631 00:30:54,090 --> 00:30:55,920 So despite my earlier warning, we 632 00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:57,150 did go in an apartment block. 633 00:31:01,830 --> 00:31:03,780 This is just a measurement showing 634 00:31:03,780 --> 00:31:06,570 that the background up there actually is not terribly high. 635 00:31:09,330 --> 00:31:13,240 Yeah, that's Iris, not particularly safety conscious 636 00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:15,960 at times. 637 00:31:15,960 --> 00:31:17,710 This gives you a good idea of how far away 638 00:31:17,710 --> 00:31:19,233 Pripyat is from the reactor. 639 00:31:19,233 --> 00:31:21,025 That is not very far, about two kilometers. 640 00:31:21,025 --> 00:31:23,050 So you can see the New Safe Confinement Arch 641 00:31:23,050 --> 00:31:26,650 to the top left of the detector. 642 00:31:26,650 --> 00:31:29,650 Background there is about, in this particular apartment 643 00:31:29,650 --> 00:31:32,530 block, at this particular time, was about four to five 644 00:31:32,530 --> 00:31:36,292 times what you would see in downtown Cambridge. 645 00:31:39,740 --> 00:31:42,000 There are wild animals in Pripyat 646 00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:44,160 and the rest of the exclusion zone. 647 00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:45,570 This is a huge problem. 648 00:31:45,570 --> 00:31:48,300 So despite the fact that the cats are very cute 649 00:31:48,300 --> 00:31:51,770 and the puppies are very cute, they also have rabies, 650 00:31:51,770 --> 00:31:54,630 not all of them, but a very large number of them. 651 00:31:54,630 --> 00:31:58,140 In 2009, five workers were injured by, I kid you not, 652 00:31:58,140 --> 00:31:59,412 a rabid wolf. 653 00:31:59,412 --> 00:32:00,870 There's a YouTube video of this you 654 00:32:00,870 --> 00:32:04,320 can look up on your own time if you so wish. 655 00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:07,300 This is because Ukraine doesn't have a lot of money. 656 00:32:07,300 --> 00:32:11,320 So they have not been able to continue with their vaccination 657 00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:11,820 program. 658 00:32:11,820 --> 00:32:17,700 They actually use baits that have a rabies vaccine in them 659 00:32:17,700 --> 00:32:22,290 to normally suppress rabies in wild animal populations. 660 00:32:22,290 --> 00:32:23,820 But Ukraine doesn't have any money. 661 00:32:23,820 --> 00:32:26,410 They killed the program about five years ago. 662 00:32:26,410 --> 00:32:29,220 And as a result there's a huge, huge problem with, 663 00:32:29,220 --> 00:32:30,870 especially rabid foxes. 664 00:32:30,870 --> 00:32:36,360 Because everyone thinks foxes are cute, especially tourists. 665 00:32:36,360 --> 00:32:38,700 And foxes, when they get rabies, some of them 666 00:32:38,700 --> 00:32:41,400 go through a stage in which they appear to be very friendly. 667 00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:43,230 As far as I know, no one has gotten 668 00:32:43,230 --> 00:32:46,770 rabies from a rabid animal at Chernobyl. 669 00:32:46,770 --> 00:32:50,250 But it's certainly a possibility. 670 00:32:50,250 --> 00:32:54,540 So Stanislaus was being a very bad example by feeding one 671 00:32:54,540 --> 00:32:57,480 of the wild cats. 672 00:32:57,480 --> 00:33:00,425 So that's why I took a picture of it. 673 00:33:00,425 --> 00:33:01,800 This is one of the many memorials 674 00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:03,450 that you'll find in downtown Slavutych. 675 00:33:03,450 --> 00:33:05,880 We stayed in the city that was built, effectively, 676 00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:07,530 as a replacement for Pripyat. 677 00:33:07,530 --> 00:33:09,660 It's actually a fantastic town. 678 00:33:09,660 --> 00:33:12,900 I really enjoy Slavutych. 679 00:33:12,900 --> 00:33:15,780 And as one might expect, there are memorials 680 00:33:15,780 --> 00:33:18,810 everywhere because the entire population is basically 681 00:33:18,810 --> 00:33:24,060 the folks that were removed from the town of Pripyat. 682 00:33:24,060 --> 00:33:26,700 This is the train we would take every day. 683 00:33:26,700 --> 00:33:30,750 Slavutych is separated from Pripyat 684 00:33:30,750 --> 00:33:34,240 by a little isthmus of Belarus that drops down. 685 00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:38,040 So that's bad, because you can't get a visa to Belarus. 686 00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:41,240 It's not really a thing you can do as an American. 687 00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:42,490 I mean, you can apply for one. 688 00:33:42,490 --> 00:33:44,310 You'll just never hear back. 689 00:33:44,310 --> 00:33:46,710 Belarus is Europe's last dictatorship. 690 00:33:46,710 --> 00:33:50,830 And it's not some place one wants to go for any reason. 691 00:33:50,830 --> 00:33:54,267 So when we would get on this train, the doors would shut. 692 00:33:54,267 --> 00:33:56,100 We would go through Belarus and we would all 693 00:33:56,100 --> 00:33:58,535 pray that didn't break down because then we 694 00:33:58,535 --> 00:34:00,660 would have to spend some time to Belarus in prison. 695 00:34:00,660 --> 00:34:02,790 But yeah, this is the train yard, bright and early. 696 00:34:06,560 --> 00:34:10,130 The various zones on the reactor site for cleanliness, 697 00:34:10,130 --> 00:34:11,929 so to speak, radiological cleanliness 698 00:34:11,929 --> 00:34:15,325 are separated by these benches effectively, 699 00:34:15,325 --> 00:34:18,409 that you have to step over, so that it reminds you that, hey, 700 00:34:18,409 --> 00:34:20,120 this is the clean area. 701 00:34:20,120 --> 00:34:23,330 You need to be wearing boot covers and at least 702 00:34:23,330 --> 00:34:24,800 these garments in order to go here. 703 00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:32,745 Sideways, for some reason, this is part of the-- 704 00:34:32,745 --> 00:34:34,870 all right, I don't know why these are all sideways. 705 00:34:34,870 --> 00:34:37,810 But regardless, you get the picture. 706 00:34:37,810 --> 00:34:40,030 If you notice on the top of the screen, which 707 00:34:40,030 --> 00:34:41,409 should be the left of the screen, 708 00:34:41,409 --> 00:34:43,120 let's see if I can rotate it. 709 00:34:46,150 --> 00:34:48,130 That's a giant puddle of water. 710 00:34:48,130 --> 00:34:49,929 This place is falling apart. 711 00:34:49,929 --> 00:34:51,520 Despite the fact that they have money 712 00:34:51,520 --> 00:34:56,139 from the European bank on reconstruction and development 713 00:34:56,139 --> 00:34:57,970 for the New Safe Confinement Arch, 714 00:34:57,970 --> 00:35:01,760 the Chernobyl site itself does not have a lot of money. 715 00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,210 And as a result things are falling apart. 716 00:35:04,210 --> 00:35:05,710 And the amount of contamination that 717 00:35:05,710 --> 00:35:08,290 is getting into places where it very much shouldn't be, 718 00:35:08,290 --> 00:35:11,290 like this quote "clean area," is fairly high. 719 00:35:11,290 --> 00:35:14,300 That puddle of water was pretty toasty, something like 5 to 8 720 00:35:14,300 --> 00:35:17,670 mR an hour on contact. 721 00:35:17,670 --> 00:35:19,060 That's generally quite bad. 722 00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:24,140 As I said, water is coming in everywhere. 723 00:35:24,140 --> 00:35:28,480 And in this case they were using leg covers to catch the water. 724 00:35:31,578 --> 00:35:33,870 Another one of the hallways that had water leak into it 725 00:35:33,870 --> 00:35:36,976 and therefore all the lights are out. 726 00:35:36,976 --> 00:35:39,170 That's the footwear which we were issued, 727 00:35:39,170 --> 00:35:43,030 which breaks after walking about a kilometer, which is not 728 00:35:43,030 --> 00:35:47,440 particularly encouraging if one wants to take their boots back. 729 00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:49,750 Again, walking down the hallway, you 730 00:35:49,750 --> 00:35:51,760 notice this gold corrugated material 731 00:35:51,760 --> 00:35:53,680 that you see on the sides? 732 00:35:53,680 --> 00:35:56,350 It's aluminum that is anodized. 733 00:35:56,350 --> 00:35:58,150 And it's placed there because it covers up 734 00:35:58,150 --> 00:36:02,350 all of the sheets of lead that were affixed to the wall. 735 00:36:02,350 --> 00:36:05,680 What happened is in the aftermath of the accident, 736 00:36:05,680 --> 00:36:08,710 the entire facility was just hopelessly contaminated. 737 00:36:08,710 --> 00:36:11,860 And you can scrub all you want, but ultimately it's 738 00:36:11,860 --> 00:36:14,500 very difficult to get radioactive contamination off 739 00:36:14,500 --> 00:36:15,360 of things. 740 00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:17,110 So what they ended up doing was getting it 741 00:36:17,110 --> 00:36:19,300 down to a somewhat acceptable level, 742 00:36:19,300 --> 00:36:21,460 and then fastening sheets of lead over it, 743 00:36:21,460 --> 00:36:24,520 and then fastening this stuff over the top of that. 744 00:36:27,510 --> 00:36:29,160 This is unit 2's control room. 745 00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:31,260 So this is what a fully fleshed-out control 746 00:36:31,260 --> 00:36:32,010 room looks like. 747 00:36:35,010 --> 00:36:38,940 Unit 2 were shut down in 2000. 748 00:36:38,940 --> 00:36:41,160 The reactors actually continued operating 749 00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:44,070 after the 1986 Chernobyl accident 750 00:36:44,070 --> 00:36:47,580 because Ukraine was in such desperate need of power. 751 00:36:47,580 --> 00:36:50,730 As a result, the fuel is still fairly hot. 752 00:36:50,730 --> 00:36:53,640 It's producing a reasonable amount of decay heat. 753 00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:57,120 And there is a crew that sits in the control room 754 00:36:57,120 --> 00:37:00,440 at all times monitoring it. 755 00:37:00,440 --> 00:37:03,000 That's Nathan. 756 00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:04,750 This is actually, I took a picture of this 757 00:37:04,750 --> 00:37:08,230 because it's a very good diagram of the Chernobyl reactor 758 00:37:08,230 --> 00:37:10,570 that's simplified. 759 00:37:10,570 --> 00:37:13,750 It shows the core and the relative locations 760 00:37:13,750 --> 00:37:19,260 of these steam, water separators. 761 00:37:19,260 --> 00:37:23,870 OK, as I said, there is a team that stays in there. 762 00:37:23,870 --> 00:37:27,670 So there are people that work on site and work in the reactor 763 00:37:27,670 --> 00:37:29,980 control rooms, which I have to imagine 764 00:37:29,980 --> 00:37:34,040 has to be a bit of a surreal job. 765 00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:40,340 This is inside the main, inside the turbo generator hall. 766 00:37:40,340 --> 00:37:46,970 Those chunks that you see here are from the turbo generator 767 00:37:46,970 --> 00:37:49,370 of reactor 4. 768 00:37:49,370 --> 00:37:52,370 So they're quite contaminated and quite easy to detect. 769 00:37:52,370 --> 00:37:54,620 Actually, there is a good story behind this. 770 00:37:54,620 --> 00:37:58,370 So we were trying to figure out exactly what was 771 00:37:58,370 --> 00:38:02,930 making the dose rate so high in the area when we were up there. 772 00:38:02,930 --> 00:38:07,170 So we got a group of us to stand in a circle, minus one person. 773 00:38:07,170 --> 00:38:08,060 So there's a gap. 774 00:38:08,060 --> 00:38:10,780 We got a person in the center with a scintillator. 775 00:38:10,780 --> 00:38:12,860 And we all kind of rotated around 776 00:38:12,860 --> 00:38:14,422 until we found in which direction 777 00:38:14,422 --> 00:38:16,880 the scintillator reading was high enough, so basically made 778 00:38:16,880 --> 00:38:20,180 like a 2 pi meat shield. 779 00:38:20,180 --> 00:38:21,350 It worked fairly well. 780 00:38:21,350 --> 00:38:25,170 It thoroughly baffled all of the guides that were with us. 781 00:38:25,170 --> 00:38:27,920 They were like, what are you doing linking arms 782 00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:29,900 and spinning around. 783 00:38:29,900 --> 00:38:32,240 Regardless, that is a good way to find sources 784 00:38:32,240 --> 00:38:33,230 if you're in a pinch. 785 00:38:35,790 --> 00:38:37,410 This is looking the other direction 786 00:38:37,410 --> 00:38:41,250 from that same vantage point as in the last photo. 787 00:38:41,250 --> 00:38:44,010 Behind those walls with a little radiation signs on them 788 00:38:44,010 --> 00:38:49,440 are chunks of the ventilation stack, which is fairly iconic. 789 00:38:49,440 --> 00:38:51,870 They've been fairly well decontaminated. 790 00:38:51,870 --> 00:38:56,040 At that fence area, the dose rate or more accurately 791 00:38:56,040 --> 00:39:00,030 exposure rate, was 10 mR an hour. 792 00:39:00,030 --> 00:39:02,760 And yeah, that's another close up photo of it. 793 00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:05,670 And I managed to sneak by phone over the top of it 794 00:39:05,670 --> 00:39:07,050 and get a good shot. 795 00:39:07,050 --> 00:39:09,210 Unfortunately, none of the pieces are uncovered. 796 00:39:09,210 --> 00:39:12,060 I would really like to see the orange and white 797 00:39:12,060 --> 00:39:14,490 of the ventilation stack. 798 00:39:14,490 --> 00:39:17,740 But I did not. 799 00:39:17,740 --> 00:39:19,740 Again, same shot, slightly different 800 00:39:19,740 --> 00:39:22,140 shot of the turbo generator hallway looking in the unit 801 00:39:22,140 --> 00:39:25,570 1 2 direction. 802 00:39:25,570 --> 00:39:33,380 More detritus, oh here's a slightly better close 803 00:39:33,380 --> 00:39:35,672 up of those components. 804 00:39:38,020 --> 00:39:40,520 One of the interesting things I found out about the facility 805 00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:42,480 is way that access is controlled. 806 00:39:42,480 --> 00:39:46,110 So instead of having an RFID card or something like that, 807 00:39:46,110 --> 00:39:47,940 they've got cameras and operators. 808 00:39:47,940 --> 00:39:53,360 So what you see here is a camera. 809 00:39:53,360 --> 00:39:57,500 So Stanislaus would scan a badge that would automatically call 810 00:39:57,500 --> 00:40:00,020 someone who is an operator. 811 00:40:00,020 --> 00:40:02,270 Stanislaus would say, hey, I'm at this door. 812 00:40:02,270 --> 00:40:04,938 I want to go into this location. 813 00:40:04,938 --> 00:40:05,730 Will you let me in? 814 00:40:05,730 --> 00:40:07,355 And then they would look at the camera, 815 00:40:07,355 --> 00:40:09,500 determine that yes, that is Stanislaus. 816 00:40:09,500 --> 00:40:11,545 He does want to go into this area. 817 00:40:11,545 --> 00:40:13,670 And then they would approve it and let him through. 818 00:40:17,010 --> 00:40:19,800 Walking through the corridors of the sarcophagus. 819 00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:21,960 You can actually see up here those lead sheets 820 00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:24,032 I was talking about. 821 00:40:24,032 --> 00:40:25,740 I don't know how thick they are on there, 822 00:40:25,740 --> 00:40:28,110 or how close they are to falling off, for that matter. 823 00:40:28,110 --> 00:40:31,170 But I'm sure several thousand pounds of lead 824 00:40:31,170 --> 00:40:33,840 is right there alone. 825 00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:37,440 These are main circulating pumps, about one-half 826 00:40:37,440 --> 00:40:43,080 of the main circulating pumps for reactor 2. 827 00:40:43,080 --> 00:40:44,700 And each one of these things takes 828 00:40:44,700 --> 00:40:47,970 something around, something around 40 megawatts 829 00:40:47,970 --> 00:40:50,790 to actually operate. 830 00:40:50,790 --> 00:40:54,420 These are aligned differently and are 831 00:40:54,420 --> 00:40:57,870 of a different type than the ones used in reactor 4 832 00:40:57,870 --> 00:41:01,440 because reactors 1 and 2 were of an earlier design. 833 00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:03,930 Ironically enough, reactors 1 and 2 actually 834 00:41:03,930 --> 00:41:05,700 don't have all of the safety measures 835 00:41:05,700 --> 00:41:10,050 that reactor 4 does, which is a bit terrifying to think of. 836 00:41:12,770 --> 00:41:18,260 Yet more photos, right, as I said, dog problem at Chernobyl. 837 00:41:18,260 --> 00:41:20,960 This is right outside the entrance to a clean facility. 838 00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:22,910 And occasionally these dogs would wander in. 839 00:41:22,910 --> 00:41:27,500 Unfortunately dogs are large furry piles of easily airborne 840 00:41:27,500 --> 00:41:28,800 contamination. 841 00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:30,710 So they would walk in. 842 00:41:30,710 --> 00:41:32,210 People would go to shoo them out. 843 00:41:32,210 --> 00:41:33,980 They would shake their coats or whatever. 844 00:41:33,980 --> 00:41:36,440 And then clean up on aisle three, 845 00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:41,300 because now there's contamination everywhere. 846 00:41:41,300 --> 00:41:44,330 More sad looking puppies. 847 00:41:44,330 --> 00:41:47,750 New Safe Confinement, yet again, to give you an idea of scale, 848 00:41:47,750 --> 00:41:49,355 let's play find the workers. 849 00:42:06,560 --> 00:42:10,400 Those are workers right there. 850 00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:11,720 Can you guys see them? 851 00:42:11,720 --> 00:42:12,980 AUDIENCE: Barely. 852 00:42:12,980 --> 00:42:17,810 JAKE HECLA: Yeah, they're really, really small 853 00:42:17,810 --> 00:42:20,324 next to this facility. 854 00:42:20,324 --> 00:42:22,280 AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. 855 00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:27,170 JAKE HECLA: Yeah, I think I've got a slightly better shot 856 00:42:27,170 --> 00:42:27,670 here. 857 00:42:31,390 --> 00:42:33,970 That's a guy right there. 858 00:42:33,970 --> 00:42:37,550 There's also another dude right here. 859 00:42:37,550 --> 00:42:40,300 Yeah, this place is, or this structure 860 00:42:40,300 --> 00:42:41,343 is absolutely enormous. 861 00:42:41,343 --> 00:42:42,760 It's really hard to wrap your head 862 00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:45,430 around exactly how large it is. 863 00:42:45,430 --> 00:42:49,117 So this is in an area called the local zone. 864 00:42:49,117 --> 00:42:50,950 So it's the immediate several hundred meters 865 00:42:50,950 --> 00:42:52,870 surrounding the reactor. 866 00:42:52,870 --> 00:42:54,612 As you can see, the hazmat equipment 867 00:42:54,612 --> 00:42:56,320 that we're wearing there is significantly 868 00:42:56,320 --> 00:42:58,700 different from what we would wear inside the reactor 869 00:42:58,700 --> 00:43:00,880 or inside the sarcophagus, mostly 870 00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:03,940 because the threat from dust in this area is pretty huge. 871 00:43:07,510 --> 00:43:09,190 As you can see, we're walking on fill. 872 00:43:09,190 --> 00:43:11,110 It's actually meters and meters of fill 873 00:43:11,110 --> 00:43:12,820 because the ground was so contaminated 874 00:43:12,820 --> 00:43:15,970 that they scraped it away, put fill in there, 875 00:43:15,970 --> 00:43:19,120 put fill on top of that because just the residual contamination 876 00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:22,180 was enough to make it hazardous to use as a work site. 877 00:43:22,180 --> 00:43:24,820 Though they're not shown in this image, 878 00:43:24,820 --> 00:43:29,105 or I believe any images here, there 879 00:43:29,105 --> 00:43:31,480 are little concrete and lead structures 880 00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:34,270 that these workers take breaks behind 881 00:43:34,270 --> 00:43:38,500 because you have a dose limit that is enforced 882 00:43:38,500 --> 00:43:39,910 while you're working there. 883 00:43:39,910 --> 00:43:41,620 And if you're going to take a smoke 884 00:43:41,620 --> 00:43:44,110 break, as a huge fraction of the population of Ukraine 885 00:43:44,110 --> 00:43:49,522 smokes, or you're going to take a break of another sort, 886 00:43:49,522 --> 00:43:51,730 they don't want you racking up dose during that time. 887 00:43:51,730 --> 00:43:54,400 So you basically hide in a little concrete shack 888 00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:56,200 for a while with a few inches of lead 889 00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:59,140 between you and the reactor. 890 00:43:59,140 --> 00:44:03,940 Yet another shot inside the sarcophagus, 891 00:44:03,940 --> 00:44:06,710 Ed explaining something about which I'm not sure. 892 00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,040 As you can see these places are not exactly 893 00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:14,930 in the best condition on the inside. 894 00:44:14,930 --> 00:44:16,820 And one thing that did concern me a lot 895 00:44:16,820 --> 00:44:19,400 was the amount of dust that was very, very 896 00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:21,920 easy to kick up in the area. 897 00:44:21,920 --> 00:44:26,290 This is inside control room of reactor 4. 898 00:44:26,290 --> 00:44:29,260 Selfie, which I didn't mean to have in this album. 899 00:44:33,460 --> 00:44:37,060 Control room 4 hasn't changed a whole lot since last year. 900 00:44:37,060 --> 00:44:40,150 But there is a dividing wall that 901 00:44:40,150 --> 00:44:42,520 actually separates reactors 3 and 4 that's 902 00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:43,780 being put together. 903 00:44:43,780 --> 00:44:47,190 And it cuts right through the edge of the fourth control 904 00:44:47,190 --> 00:44:47,690 room. 905 00:44:47,690 --> 00:44:50,685 And for a while, we actually didn't know whether or not 906 00:44:50,685 --> 00:44:52,810 we were going to be able to visit it at all because 907 00:44:52,810 --> 00:44:53,920 of ongoing construction. 908 00:44:53,920 --> 00:44:57,640 I'm very glad that we were able to. 909 00:44:57,640 --> 00:45:00,280 Most of the instruments have been removed. 910 00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:02,590 It's unclear as to why. 911 00:45:02,590 --> 00:45:05,350 We've been told that some of it was because of contamination. 912 00:45:05,350 --> 00:45:09,160 But the pattern doesn't really make sense. 913 00:45:09,160 --> 00:45:15,320 This is the reactor control room cartogram, excuse me, 914 00:45:15,320 --> 00:45:17,480 reactor core cartogram, which, as I said 915 00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:21,020 was lit and could display various parameters regarding 916 00:45:21,020 --> 00:45:24,420 the various fuel channels. 917 00:45:24,420 --> 00:45:30,080 There is only two control rod indicator, well, yeah. 918 00:45:30,080 --> 00:45:34,870 There are really only these control rod indicators left. 919 00:45:34,870 --> 00:45:36,620 And we believe that actually some of these 920 00:45:36,620 --> 00:45:37,580 might not be original. 921 00:45:37,580 --> 00:45:39,163 Someone might have stolen the real one 922 00:45:39,163 --> 00:45:42,493 and put another one back. 923 00:45:42,493 --> 00:45:44,160 I don't have any evidence to support it. 924 00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:45,980 But I suspect that there's significant looting that 925 00:45:45,980 --> 00:45:46,647 happens in here. 926 00:45:51,970 --> 00:45:54,370 This is a rather entertaining photo. 927 00:45:54,370 --> 00:45:57,760 That means smoking area. 928 00:45:57,760 --> 00:45:59,048 That's in the control room. 929 00:45:59,048 --> 00:46:00,090 You shouldn't be smoking. 930 00:46:00,090 --> 00:46:02,290 You shouldn't take your mask off for any reason. 931 00:46:08,470 --> 00:46:11,010 That's a high gamma radiation warning sign. 932 00:46:11,010 --> 00:46:13,140 It was in fact, not that high of a dose rate, 933 00:46:13,140 --> 00:46:14,880 somewhere in the range of 30 mR an hour. 934 00:46:18,900 --> 00:46:24,930 We also explored a little bit outside of the more formal part 935 00:46:24,930 --> 00:46:28,530 of the reactor premises, namely we 936 00:46:28,530 --> 00:46:31,410 went to this place called Buriakivka 2, which 937 00:46:31,410 --> 00:46:37,020 is a burial facility for waste from the reactor, 938 00:46:37,020 --> 00:46:40,590 not waste as in nuclear waste but waste is in chunks of metal 939 00:46:40,590 --> 00:46:42,900 and other things that are contaminated and therefore 940 00:46:42,900 --> 00:46:45,900 removed when the New Safe Confinement Arch was being 941 00:46:45,900 --> 00:46:49,950 built, or when, let's say, they were building the separation 942 00:46:49,950 --> 00:46:52,232 wall between reactors 3 and 4. 943 00:46:52,232 --> 00:46:53,940 And there were some incredibly hot spots. 944 00:46:53,940 --> 00:46:58,950 So I might, I think I have some more photos later. 945 00:46:58,950 --> 00:47:02,340 But just under that little triangle, 946 00:47:02,340 --> 00:47:08,850 the dose rate was 150 mR an hour, so 0.15 rem an hour. 947 00:47:08,850 --> 00:47:10,420 It's extremely high. 948 00:47:10,420 --> 00:47:16,830 And that was just in a field basically, not controlled, not 949 00:47:16,830 --> 00:47:19,180 patrolled, no warning signs. 950 00:47:21,840 --> 00:47:25,570 Getting dressed up, lots of fun. 951 00:47:25,570 --> 00:47:29,547 That was the truck we were sent to decontaminate. 952 00:47:29,547 --> 00:47:31,380 Honestly it wasn't particularly contaminated 953 00:47:31,380 --> 00:47:32,172 in the first place. 954 00:47:32,172 --> 00:47:35,870 They weren't going to give us real fun things to play with. 955 00:47:35,870 --> 00:47:36,790 That's all of us. 956 00:47:36,790 --> 00:47:39,100 And then as you notice, the real workers 957 00:47:39,100 --> 00:47:42,580 here are not wearing even a fraction of what we are. 958 00:47:47,220 --> 00:47:56,450 More decontamination, yeah, see, barely anything. 959 00:47:56,450 --> 00:47:58,950 These are chunks of metal that have come out of the reactor. 960 00:47:58,950 --> 00:48:03,270 We're not exactly sure what part, what parts they are. 961 00:48:03,270 --> 00:48:06,300 No one was really able to answer our questions about them. 962 00:48:06,300 --> 00:48:08,430 But they were also rather contaminated, 963 00:48:08,430 --> 00:48:10,740 somewhere in the range of 50 to 75 mR 964 00:48:10,740 --> 00:48:15,160 an hour on contact in some spots. 965 00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:18,952 More photos of Chernobyl, or of Chernobyl from Pripyat. 966 00:48:18,952 --> 00:48:21,160 MICHAEL SHORT: Dr. Jake, I want to take a quick break 967 00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:24,610 and ask folks if they have any questions on what 968 00:48:24,610 --> 00:48:26,584 the experience was like [INAUDIBLE].. 969 00:48:31,823 --> 00:48:32,490 JAKE HECLA: Yes? 970 00:48:32,490 --> 00:48:34,282 AUDIENCE: Did you suffer any adverse health 971 00:48:34,282 --> 00:48:35,620 effects or anything? 972 00:48:35,620 --> 00:48:39,880 JAKE HECLA: Only the cold I picked up on the way back. 973 00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:43,450 The total dose that I received on this entire expedition, 974 00:48:43,450 --> 00:48:47,840 minus the flights there and back, was 0.6 millisieverts. 975 00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:52,090 So effectively, nothing. 976 00:48:52,090 --> 00:48:53,710 MICHAEL SHORT: [INAUDIBLE]. 977 00:48:53,710 --> 00:48:57,190 JAKE HECLA: Well, all of the high radiation areas 978 00:48:57,190 --> 00:49:01,160 that we were in, we were encouraged to walk quickly, 979 00:49:01,160 --> 00:49:03,880 is basically what it comes down to. 980 00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:05,980 The time portion of time, distance, and shielding 981 00:49:05,980 --> 00:49:09,300 was emphasized. 982 00:49:09,300 --> 00:49:11,010 Further questions? 983 00:49:11,010 --> 00:49:12,112 Yeah. 984 00:49:12,112 --> 00:49:15,290 AUDIENCE: Are there [INAUDIBLE] radiation area versus 985 00:49:15,290 --> 00:49:16,232 [INAUDIBLE]. 986 00:49:16,232 --> 00:49:17,940 Do they use the same levels [INAUDIBLE]?? 987 00:49:17,940 --> 00:49:21,570 JAKE HECLA: No, radiological control in Ukraine 988 00:49:21,570 --> 00:49:25,950 is a totally different game than it is in the US. 989 00:49:25,950 --> 00:49:29,190 There are the same types of controls 990 00:49:29,190 --> 00:49:34,650 that exist in the US just don't exist at that site. 991 00:49:34,650 --> 00:49:38,850 For areas that are immediately dangerous to your health, 992 00:49:38,850 --> 00:49:41,250 you know, 10 rad an hour, something 993 00:49:41,250 --> 00:49:44,130 like that, from what I understand that there 994 00:49:44,130 --> 00:49:47,850 are locked doors that prevent one from accessing those 995 00:49:47,850 --> 00:49:48,930 accidentally. 996 00:49:48,930 --> 00:49:51,250 And there are warning signs in a variety of locations. 997 00:49:51,250 --> 00:49:55,560 But I don't think that there is a the same standardization 998 00:49:55,560 --> 00:50:01,726 of 5 mR an hours is a radiation area, et cetera, et cetera. 999 00:50:01,726 --> 00:50:02,226 Yeah. 1000 00:50:05,530 --> 00:50:06,573 Further? 1001 00:50:06,573 --> 00:50:08,240 MICHAEL SHORT: And are folks still going 1002 00:50:08,240 --> 00:50:10,200 to be running these tours pretty continuously? 1003 00:50:10,200 --> 00:50:10,940 JAKE HECLA: No. 1004 00:50:10,940 --> 00:50:14,240 You won't be able to see the sarcophagus itself because it 1005 00:50:14,240 --> 00:50:17,870 will be contained within the New Safe Confinement Arch 1006 00:50:17,870 --> 00:50:19,890 pretty much now. 1007 00:50:19,890 --> 00:50:22,550 It's 75, right, let's see. 1008 00:50:22,550 --> 00:50:24,470 Last I checked, the New Safe Confinement Arch 1009 00:50:24,470 --> 00:50:29,660 was 75 percent of the way over the reactor itself. 1010 00:50:29,660 --> 00:50:32,030 Regular tourist visits to Pripyat 1011 00:50:32,030 --> 00:50:34,850 will continue to happen. 1012 00:50:34,850 --> 00:50:37,640 This program that I went on is something very special. 1013 00:50:40,370 --> 00:50:45,800 Carl, Ed, and Erik have done this type of thing once before. 1014 00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:47,910 That was the trip I went on last year. 1015 00:50:47,910 --> 00:50:53,417 And they intend on doing it once a year as long as they can. 1016 00:50:53,417 --> 00:50:55,250 But that's pretty much your only opportunity 1017 00:50:55,250 --> 00:50:57,440 to get that kind of access to the reactor. 1018 00:50:57,440 --> 00:50:58,550 It takes a lot of work. 1019 00:51:02,840 --> 00:51:05,280 MICHAEL SHORT: Anyone else have questions for Jake? 1020 00:51:05,280 --> 00:51:08,520 It's rare to meet someone that's actually gone to Chernobyl to 1021 00:51:08,520 --> 00:51:09,040 [INAUDIBLE]. 1022 00:51:09,040 --> 00:51:10,090 Yeah? 1023 00:51:10,090 --> 00:51:11,970 AUDIENCE: Do you think it's haunted? 1024 00:51:11,970 --> 00:51:14,500 JAKE HECLA: No. 1025 00:51:14,500 --> 00:51:17,080 There's a rather haunting location, though, 1026 00:51:17,080 --> 00:51:19,480 the Khodemchuk Memorial. 1027 00:51:19,480 --> 00:51:22,750 So when the accident happened there was one guy who was-- 1028 00:51:22,750 --> 00:51:26,080 depending on how you look at it, either lucky or unlucky-- 1029 00:51:26,080 --> 00:51:28,390 in that he wasn't killed by radiation poisoning. 1030 00:51:28,390 --> 00:51:32,770 He was killed by being flattened in the explosion. 1031 00:51:32,770 --> 00:51:35,650 And his remains are within the reactor 1032 00:51:35,650 --> 00:51:39,162 and within the sarcophagus, never really recovered him. 1033 00:51:39,162 --> 00:51:40,870 Better than dying of radiation poisoning. 1034 00:51:40,870 --> 00:51:44,800 But nonetheless, not a fantastic way to go. 1035 00:51:44,800 --> 00:51:48,220 The memorial that is within the sarcophagus 1036 00:51:48,220 --> 00:51:53,770 is pretty interesting to visit, and rather somber. 1037 00:51:53,770 --> 00:51:56,920 Makes you reflect a little bit on the enormous human toll 1038 00:51:56,920 --> 00:51:59,220 that the accident had.