That chernobyl plant was running well how many tests did it have before failure is beyound me something tells me it was operation failure due diligence caused it

@@jonathanoxlade4252 The problem with the Chernobyl accident is the transparency of the Soviet government. One of the ironies of the HBO Chernobyl miniseries is it spent all its time criticizing the Soviets for their lack of honesty and yet relied almost exclusively on the testimony of Legasov - who at the time was nothing short of a pariah within the scientific community after he flat out lied about the extent of the accident when he submitted his report to the UN. Chernousenko was one of the few close to the accident who managed to write an independent investigation into the events which took place that night and his assessment of Legasov and his report is scathing. Everything from the total amount of material ejected from the core, how local doctors were bullied by the government into not committing to record any symptoms which might possibly be attributed to radiation exposure, right up to the actions of the reactor operators is hotly disputed. One thing is certain, if the reactor operators were at fault then their fault was a small one next to the people higher up the food chain who KNEW that reactor was extremely dangerous within certain parameters which they may or may not have been aware of. I strongly suspect there's a lot more to this story which has never been shared ... and never will be.

They pulled more control rods than safely allowed

It was a freak accident as stated in Soviet documents "Freak accident created by human errors" But of course, western morons wants to blame Communism and the ghost of Marx for this, and somehow Stalin is also to blame (no joke they literally blamed Stalin in the news) And God knows what else they blame it on, its never about what happened, its always fault of everyone they do not like.

Simulator isn't reality He even says so at 24:40. It's like being an experienced drifter then going into a driving sim and trying some techniques and discovering they dont work as well, and others that don't really work in reality work well in the sim

causing meltdowns?

Thanks for the comment! Indeed, as in many accidents, it was not just one thing

even orchestrated (cold war)

Without Graphite tipped rods none of this would have happened. Oh also basic shit like containment and other failsafes were missing.

​@@paulemann1999*soviet anthem starts blaring*

"from design through construction, policy, planning, and operation" you just expressed all your brainwashing about the soviet union

Keep flow in through the core ;)

@@argilaga"There is no core!" 😱

​@@Lufex_to the infirmary with you, you are delusional!

Yes, I didn't believe it until I tested it by myself. Molten salt reactors are another story! very sable by themselves, it's a pity that there is no much industrial interest to develop them.

isn't main problem with molten salt reactors fact that you can turn it in to bombs more readily? I don't mean by accident i mean by intent. As i understand the fuel is disolved in salts so all it would take would be a process to reverse that and suddenly you are not dealing in nuclear fuel but you are dealing with potencial weapon grade material. I don't know much though, so am probabbly wrong :) @@argilaga

@@user-jap84tlv24sq Actually no. The reason why uranium reactors became mainstream was because they produce plutonium by neutron bombarding of fertile material. This makes them interesting for weapon grade Pu production. On the other hand, molten salt reactors are even being considered as a tool to get rid of weapon grade plutonium stockpiles by using it as fuel. Please someone correct me if this is not accurate

Thank you man, i knew there was some weapon problems mixxed in the discussion. I thougt it is industrially perhaps cheaper or more at least theortically available to extract the needed weapon grade material from the salts (which you would be selling on internation market perhaps) and that was the reason why but as i said before am 99% wrong on this. @@argilaga

7:06 minor point: you say "_pull rods below the allowable limit_" but the text on the chart says "_pull rods BEYOND allowable limit_".

Imagine to see the neutron flux going from 6% to out of scale in 3 seconds... 2 more seconds of uncertainty...

Thank you Ivan! I’m glad you liked

Thanks Andy! Yes the main negligence was loosing controllability by going below 15 rods inserted. At the end positive void cx., graphite displacer geometry, poisoning and everything else was already accounted in the design of the reactor.

@@argilaga I doubt it has anything to do with design blaming me for the accident it was dyatlov I warned that slappy barracuda NOT to pull up those control rods after they were lowered

Sorry to necro this post, Hi Andy P from Starmade

@@Hermes.Trismegistus. hey, yes, exactly that is who I am 😁

Català? Gràcies pel comentari!

De valencia ^^ en serio eso, youtube me recomendó tu video y flipé de la cantidad de controles que tenía el simulador. Y puse el video por curiosidad y acabé metiéndomelo enterito jaja yo soy programador, npi de nada que tenga que ver remotamente con tema nuclear, pero ha sido interesante. Te dedicas a eso no?

@@neorogertube Mis disculpas por engancharte hasta el final jaja! En realidad no trabajo en esto, sólo es un pasatiempos. Soy ingeniero de caminos y trabajo en métodos numéricos. Éste video está pensado para gente que ya conozca el simulador, si te dio curiosidad puedes ver los tutoriales del canal cómo por ehemplo “start up tutorial 3.0”. Un saludo!

Claro! Pegaré un ojo. Aunque ayer ya pensé k si fuese a ver algun video más del tema vería uno de como funciona un reactor nuclear jaja en plan, a nivel teorico y practico como funciona. Y luego ya entendería mejor la parte del simulador. He mirado en tus videos y no me ha parecido ver ningun video asi (igual lo hay, tienes un montón!), igual podría ser interesante xa tu canal. Rollo k empieces con una lista de videos xa k alguien que no sabe NADA pase a entender tus videos de simulador. En plan el primero de como funciona la energia nuclear, otro de como funciona una central nuclear aprovechando ese principio, etc. Perdona, menudo rollo estoy soltando y encima te estoy dando trabajo jajaj en fin, muy guays tus videos. Un saludo!! 👏👏

@@neorogertube Es una buena idea! me lo apunto en mi lista de tareas pendientes.

OMG, I hope my video had nothing to do with you withdrawing from classes!

Dunno if you've already look into it but you might want to investigate if you have ADHD. As someone who does, this is EXACTLY the sort of thing I do all the time, and many people with ADHD struggle getting through school for similar reasons.

@@wiegraf9009 it’s worth looking into. I do have a lot of trouble sitting down to start coursework. The motivation is an issue. Many of my classes that I have to take I feel are uninspiring and really just a hassle instead of enjoyable or even interesting.

Sounds like ADHD @@TheFoodieCutie yeah! I can relate!

@@wiegraf9009 we had enough attention span to play final fantasy tactics though!!! And that was a meticulous and long game! 😂

You are very kind! I will try to make new videos soon!

Thanks for the comment! I doubt restarting the turbine would be a good idea, since you need to wait for it to stop spinning which takes a long time. Not sure if in reality they can override the rules and send steam to the turbine without restarting it, but in the simulator it is not possible. Instead, connecting the MCPs that were attached to the generator to the grid bus, or connecting the two MCPs left in standby would help in reducing boiling. But the first thing I would do would be to insert control rods following the main sequence until controllability was recovered. I will try in a future video!

You are welcome!

@@MattPD when I read this comment I so want to belt him with an comment he not going to like

Thank you very much for the kind comment!

Nope.

@@karisabnyi3137 awwww. The video was too complex for your single-cell reptile brain to understand the contents huh? 🤣🤣🤣

Muchas gracias colega!

None of them was told that there is a power increase the first moments of inserting control rods, this was kept secret by the soviets. Also, there is a part missing in this simulation.... the power increased (due to only 8 inserted control rods) already fast before they pressed the button. There is a reason RBMKs got after the accident automated bor-injection.

Right, they got many updates after the accident. Removed graphite tips, reducing overall reactivity so they had to operate with higher uranium enrichment, among others.

As comrade @harrison00xXx points out, they did not know about the initial power spike when inserting totally withdrawn rods. But if they had left a minimum of 15 rods inserted as it was mandated, they would have kept enough controllability to avoid the disaster. It is also true that a command to compute equivalent quantity of rods inserted was sent to the SKALA computer minutes before the accident, but the computation result did not come in time. A cautious person would wait before withdrawing more rods until there is certainty about the margin above 15, but they did not and went ahead to keep the reactor alive.

@@argilaga funnily enough they did NOT remove the graphite tips, just increased the overall length of the control rod and removed the water pocket between the graphite tip and the main control rod. In addition to the other main changes especially more enriched fuel the RBMK would have been pretty safe, the main issue would just be the missing confinement around the pressure vessel allowing practically still radioactive steam to exit on top of the reactor in case of a very few (2+) pressure tube ruptures. When it comes to some sources, the said some RBMKs didnt use the specified 2-3% enrichment but even going down to 0,5% and less making the reactor even harder to control.

I dont believe it was the grahite tipped rods it ran well for many years no explosion even the other reactors worked it was operator error they all fucked up one way or another they starved the fuel and caused it to go into stall and then they tried going from stall to back to full power if they just cancelled the test instead off Rushing it

Unintentional dark humor haha

Right, local criticality was a problem in the design, because of the size but also because of the positive void coefficient. Indeed, the critical runaway likely started locally in Chernobyl. Copy from world-nuclear.org: "The slower flowrate, together with the entry to the core of slightly warmer feedwater, may have caused boiling (void formation) at the bottom of the core. This, along with xenon burnout, could have resulted in a runaway increase in power. An alternative view is that the power excursion was triggered by the insertion of the control rods after the scram button was pressed (at 01:23:40)"

Thanks so much! Enjoy my videos

Don't call me Shirley.

Grazie tifoso, ora Aston Martin mi permette di fare video dei reattori nucleari tra un gran premio e l'altro

In the full game (port version) there is the video! You can find in in my more recent videos

Thanks! Happy to se Russian people commenting here

@@argilaga :)

Крутой Чувак. Подписался на него😎

Thanks! I will make more videos in the future, I promise!

Muchas gracias!!! Es normal que no se entienda la operación del reactor. El procedimiento para operar un RBMK requiere un poco de tiempo para ser explicado en detalle, los tutoriales que tengo en el canal para ponerlo en marcha son de una hora más o menos. Por eso decidí no incluir las explicaciones en este vídeo que se centra más en el accidente en sí.

These VVERs are such a sleek piece of engineering, I mean, mounting the heat exchangers horizontally was such an interesting solution.

If this reply arrives one year late it's because of my computer delay ;)

@@argilaga wow. That’s some delay, it happened in 2022, but got logged in 2023 because of the delay

@@Thxtnt Damn, that SCALA computer needs to be updated asap if the delay got crazyer we might have a reply in 2 years next...

@@jab3rwock unironically, the delay was so long my game I’m making that simulates an RBMK (made in unreal engine) went from having only 3 buttons, to having a proper full control room

@@Thxtnt That's great! will you post some videos or make it publicly available?

Who knows, in the exam they might ask what happened in the previous moments before pressing AZ-5 in Chernobyl control room 4

@@argilaga didn't happen :(

I'm glad to have awaken this interest on you!

btw, can i share this on my discord server?

Thanks! sure you can share it!

@@MattPD That is true lol

Hey, thanks for the comment! I am not a nuclear physicist, but from my limited knowledge, I don't think the fizzled explosion is a likely scenario, mainly because of the thermal neutron nature in nuclear reactors. In the early development of nuclear bombs, scientists quickly realized that fast neutrons were needed for big explosions to happen.

Thank you! You are very kind

I was starting to get nervous ;)

No puedo evitarlo... jaja Gracias!

Good question! If the reactivity was slightly above 0 it would run away, if slightly below it would stall. A good action would be to insert some individual rods one by one until at least 15 are inserted, by then sure the reactivity would be pretty negative, but if still needed SCRAM button would act as intended

@@argilaga That's actually about the same thing Dyatlov said in a later interview. He said that if they had any idea at all that the AZ-5 button was flawed, that's how they would have done it. But they were told by the higher ups that the AZ-5 was basically 100 percent failsafe.

@@argilaga So there actually was, in theory, a way to carefully get the reactor safely powered down out of this unstable arrangement? Very interesting!

Displacer and control rod are one piece, they move toguether

The rod had graphite tip (about 0.5 m if I remember correctly) but the rod was shorter than the whole height of the reactor so there was water below the rod when the rod was in high position. When the rod was pressed lower, the water got replaced with the graphite and the bottom of the core and graphite increased the reaction. That's the design failure in this reactor. If the rods had been longer so that graphite part would have always filled the reactor without water below it inside the core, there wouldn't have been any situation where pushing down the control rod could increase power in any part of the reactor but only keep the power constant in worst case.

Gràcies! ens coneixem?

Thanks!!!

They simply had no time. First of all they should not pull all those control rod out. From that point they were lost.

@@karisabnyi3137 They could have re-inserted the control rods just fine as long as there was enough xenon poisoning. The problem was pulling the control rods off and waiting for the reactor to rapidly burn the xenon off and go highly critical.

They were trying to reduce reactivity by introducing absorber rod group G just before pressing AZ-5. My guess is that if they had kept introducing absorber rods "group by group", controllability would had been recovered before power got too high. But who knows

Yes that is correct. But I want to stress out that it is as a result of poor design (clearly for economy reasons, not incompetence) and reckless operation.

Thank you@@argilaga

@@argilaga I think the reckless operation was the biggest problem. If they had followed the official operating limits and kept minimum safe amount of control rods in the core, AZ-5 button would have been able to stop the reactor. I guess nobody explained to the operators that running the reactor with less than minimum amount of rods was so dangerous that it could explode.

You got me!

Thank you!

very true!

A wild guess is that without doing anything there was a 50-50 chance of a critical runaway or a reactor stall. This is assuming that the reactor was exactly critical. What is your idea?

@@argilaga I'm not a nuclear engineer, I'm just a dumbass on the internet, so my ideas should be taken with that in mind. Seems like the reactor was just balancing and not really increasing reactivity. I think the xenon 135 would have slowly dissipated, and the operators would have started inserting rods to keep the increasing reactivity at a sensible rate.

@@MikeF1189 haha, I am a dumbass in the internet too... Several people is asking this question, after analyzing the trends just before the accident, you can see that MCP flow decreases because of the test and boiling increases as a consequence. Meanwhile, they insert rod group G to try to keep reactivity constant, but probably group G alone is not enough, so they pressed AZ-5. My opinion after studying the trends is that if they had kept pushing rods they would have eventually regained controllability, they just needed to have the equivalent of 15 rods inserted and the power was still just 6% with an apparently constant neutron flux. They also had the power to turn on two MCPs that were left in stand-by during the test.

My apologies… haha

Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Hello, I don't know why, KZfaq does not allow me to generate auto subtitles in this video. It's strange since they are enabled in most of my videos. I will try to find a workaround and come back to this comment. Sorry for the inconvenience!

@argilaga No problem, even if you don't manage to get it, I appreciate the time :) Other youtubers must run into this issue too, as huge channels seem to have one or two big videos with the auto subs disabled

De nada, me alegra que te gustara!

Thanks mate!

As far as I know yes. But you can also try the newest port version (full game) in the latest videos of the channel.

This version is a bit crashy, do not use the refueling feature, it causes it to crash. You can also try the full version by comrade Full-Battery which works in a virtual machine: archive.org/details/ChernobylTLC

@@argilaga Thx will try that sims

@@argilaga I tried on my pc it's say "This app can't run on your pc"any ideas?

@@MattPD omg! Just erased my comment, sorry about the confusion!

@@MattPD Thanks for the short note 😂 Such a responsibility being the biggest voice in this RBMK sim! I have been working to put together a video showing the 3 versions available and when it was ready I realized that computer sound was not recorded, too bad since one of the nice things of the full game are the explanations and alarms, together with Windows 95 sounds. I will repeat it tomorrow because now people is already sleeping. I remember that I disabled desktop audio after many people complained about the background music in some video, anyway... The set up of a VM in Virtual box seems a bit difficult now, I put it on the to do list, but I don't have much free time recently, let's see how the "three version video" goes and if it attracts interest I will find the time for the VM tutorial, I may need your help for that, don't want to fry my register 😂

Tengo un tutorial en castellano si te sirve: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/i5ydlayi18mspKs.html&lc=UgzH9dsKsw2IZp5DqXx4AaABAg Si tengo tiempo en el futuro voy a hacer tambien el accidente y otros videos, pero la verdad es que hay muy poca demanda comparado con los videos en ingles.

me pillaste jajajaja

HAHA u made me laugh dude

I am just a civil engineer

I add Giovanni Giorgio to the list, other suggestions are Electroboom and Fernando Alonso. Thanks!

Correcto!

Me pillaste! jajaja