Chernobyl Ep 2 - Full Reaction

You can find a nuclear scientist PHD candidate talking about his tour to Chernyoble just a few years ago. He has pictures of the control room and some other places. In fact, Chernoble still has 2 reactors operating to this day. They also just finished building the contaiment unit a few years ago to fully seal it off.

Reed James

That is interesting. I guess in my mind I thought that if you stepped into the city or town nowadays you would still be getting eventually lethal amounts of radiation.

Cassie

Wow! I aldo was told the whole city is exactly how it was left, is that true? People who lived there could never go back and get their possessions?

Cassie

One thing to note when asking if we really need Nuclear Power or not, is that the area that is still the "exclusion zone" is not significantly more dangerous than anywhere else. The only remaining issue is the Reactor 4 room as the massive amount of radioactive material there will keep decaying for a long time (the same issue we have with already spent radioactive fuel of all reactors). There are a few places which is still highly contaminated due to the wind in 1986 and the absorption by plants and trees, and some leftover items laying around. Some of these items have become turist attractions, as they are way more radioactive than anything else in the area, but as long as you do not lick it or live right next to it for 30 years then it is not more harmful than travelling in a plane in terms of radiation exposure. The only reason the exclusion zone still remains unchanged in size, and is even still an exclusion zone, is because governments that are elected by the public do not want to KNOWINGLY let a few people get a slightly higher % chance of getting cancer. It is a lot more psychological than actual health risks, as people are unknowingly living in places with a higher than average background radiation and also get the same small % increased chance of cancer. There is basically no way to survive in your public image if you as a government delibrately does something that COULD POTENTIALLY be any kind of unhealthy for people, unless it is so defined in culture like alcohol.

Mikio

The benefit of Nuclear Power as long as properly maintained is significant. Nuclear Power is the same energy that powers the Sun. Although not perfect, it needs to be harnessed for energy.

Brandon Dague

The firefighters boots and jackets that were dropped in the basement of the hospital in the beginning are still down there. They have been found on many trips to Chernobyl documented on Youtube.

Brandon Dague

Nuclear plants are amongst the safest form of energy generation, short of something like wind turbines and solar panels. You will find through the course of this show how exactly an RBMK reactor explodes (and thusly, why they are the least safe). Please do not fear nuclear power- fear everything that lead up to the Chernobyl incident instead.

so my comment is about the sounds of the meter... the faster the sounds... the more radiation.... the more tiny bullets moving at the speed of light....

Joseph Smith

Spoilers bro

Jake H

Cassie has said so but we should be careful not to press her too hard. Let her do things at her own speed. That will get the best result.

Björn Von Knorring

Are you planning to react to the rest of Chernobyl?

Spoilers Logan!

Shawn Anderson

Nuclear power, when controlled properly, has zero carbon emissions. Its a huuuge amount of energy from such a small amount of fuel, as opposed to gas or renewables. Coal actually releases more radioactivity that nuclear power plants from natural radioactive isotopes in the coal itself. We could have all the power from such a small amount of Uranium fuel. However, you have to not only make sure the plant is designed and operated correctly, but have a very robust plan if there is a worst case scenario. Chernobyl had non of these aspects. Chernobyl literally had no containment building around the core, let alone a backup containment, unlike modern reactors. It was such a terrible design operated by bureaucratic lies and deceit. Who knows if human kind can be trusted with such power, but it may be necessary for future power needs.

Logan Sandoval

Between Patreon and YT it is impossible to reply to every single msg, and comment without it becoming a chore, especially with a fan base that's growing as quickly as yours. You're only human Cassie, so don't feel bad if you can't talk to everyone

Ronny Boss

In the beginning of the episode the scientists are in modern day Belarus which at the time was the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Timothy Burrows

Also lets just remind ourselves that the estimated death toll just keep falling and falling, and while it is the greatest human disaster created in terms of scale of impact, it is not the deadliest by any means. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190725-will-we-ever-know-chernobyls-true-death-toll The worst power plant accidents are hydroelectrity if a dam fails. The official death toll of a dam failure in China in 1975 is 171,000. So while being right next to a melting or open nuclear reactor is very bad, being just 50 miles away makes it not so bad. Currently there are more people that are reported as impacted by the hydrogon explosions at Fukishima Nuclear power plant than the melt down of the reactors, however 3 unfortunate workers on the plant that day were heavily impacted. Nuclear Science rant over.

Mikio

I understand that, but it is basically just a small record of their actual actions as they are officially documented. Almost all the direct sources for it is in Russian. It just gives some insight in how the series first episode kinda messes with your sense of time so it feels like everything is happening within like 5 minutes, while it did not. The official report states that the chief fireman called into Chernobyl Power Plant roughly 2 hour after the explosion and asked Akimov what the hell was happening to his men. It is about this time that the firemen are sent up towards the roof at 3:30 am. Akimov and Toptunov went into the feedwater room almost 7 hours after the explosion. And the taller guy who held the door to let the others go in and see, was named Aleksandr Yuvchenko and he "only" died in 2008 at the age of 47. He did many interviews, and never once did he state that he got cut and was bleeding almost uncontrollably from his leg. Like it does try to dramatize it a little extra, which unfortunately makes people just extra frightened of nuclear power

Mikio

The current knowledge of acute radiation syndrome (ARS) is that it takes around 10-20 minutes before the symptomps shows with the amount of radiation they were exposed to, however the amount of radiation you get exposed to is very localized and your genetics in your immune system also have slightly different responses, so for some it can happen a bit faster and others a bit later. The 2 guys who went into the water to turn the pipes is measured to have received around 12 siverts. The person who went into the control room and told them that the core exploded and then threw up, was a real event. The show skips the detail of just how large the building is, and that they had actually moved to the emergency control room which is even a bit further away. The estimation report says that it took him around 7-8 minutes to walk all the way to the emergency control room because of the rubble in the half exploded building. The day-crew leader who went up on top of the roof to look at it is a legend/myth that has no detailed records of it, however we do have records of him walking around the building when he arrived and noticing the entire concrete wall had been blown open. The only way your face would immediatly start becoming red like his did, is if the amount of radiation he received was so high that he would have died within a day. However he survived. The official account of the different people inside the plant can be found on Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_involvement_in_the_Chernobyl_disaster The firefighters were fighting the fire for over 6 hours, so they were exposed for a very long time right next to the super contaminated Graphite (For which they wanted to use robots for to scrape off the roof because of the danger). The firefighters reported that the air tasted like metal (ionized air, which can be felt in a non-lethal way in old subways like the Berlin metro), and that after a while it was like they were stabbed with pens and needles in their face. The only firemen to directly die from ARS were the crew that went closer up the roof, but many others got sick but recovered. Many of them are expected to have a slightly higher chance of cancer, but many of them are still alive in their late 50's and 60's as most of them were under 35 expect the commander who died, as he was the first to arrive and the stayed there until he collapsed.

Mikio

On YouTube, some people are denying the portrayal of radiation poisoning occurring so quickly. I read Midnight in Chernobyl, which was exhaustively researched and yes, some people who were near the open core were vomiting and staggering around. One firefighter went temporarily blind. I don’t believe the naysayers who dismiss it as anti-Soviet propaganda. I’m not sure what their agenda is, as the USSR is defunct, but to deny the immediate effects of radiation exposure would also deny the effects of the same at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Catherine LW