It’s honestly amazing how we as humans harnessed this. From discovering fire to this. Breathtaking.

That's the power supply you need for the new Nvidia card.

Watching this charged my phone.

After the tv series Chernobyl it's been frustrating having to explain to my friends that fission plants don't blow up like nuclear bombs.

0:01 _"Starting a nuclear reactor is a stressful task. There's a lot on the line, if a mistake is made, or if there is a malfunction."_ These are all research reactors, which are both incredibly fail-safe, and incredibly simple to operate. The TRIGA reactor, one of the most common research reactor designs, was described by Edward Teller (one of the inventors of the first hydrogen bomb) as able to _"be given to a bunch of high school children to play with without any fear that they would get hurt."_ Some, like the SLOWPOKE-2, are even licensed to be run overnight without any personnel on site. If anything does go wrong, it shuts itself down, without any human intervention, by fully passive means (no control rods need to be inserted, no water pumps are needed to provide cooling, etc.). And many of the reactors shown in the video are pulse reactors, which don't go through a "startup" being slowly ramped up to full power and sustained - they release their energy in a short pulse then automatically switch off.

Look up Cerenkov radiation. The blue glow you are seeing is electrons, produced by the fission reaction. They leave the core at near light speed (C). When they hit the water they slow down to 75% of C (speed of light in water) and the interaction with the water molecules releases blue photons. The blue light is the energy of slowing the electrons to the speed limit in water.

An American author, a scientist, wrote a book answering questions. One of the questions was how long would I last if I swam in the water that surrounds the nuclear material in an atomic power station. He asked a friend who actually worked in one. The answer was …… seconds…. What, you mean the radioactivity is that strong? No, the guards would shoot you

3.6 Roentgens... Not great, but not terrible.

I like the part where they didn't blow up.

Beautiful...but kinda scary as well...

0:22 Never before I've heard a sound that's soo cool, amazing and dangerous. I'm in awe, I could watch that thing start up for hours.

This is epic. People tend to take the technological achievements as given, but I still feel awe when I see something like that. The sheer power of the nuclear fission is breathtaking.

Great stuff. Thank you for not ruining the video with overpowering or cheesy music.

Drink that waters and then u can join marvel agent's

I hope those tips are not made of graphite.

Gordon, we have complete confidence in you!

Most of the science fiction stuff is always blue and the fact that it actually is in real life is amazing

1:22 Tesseract Found

Cherenkov radiation is hauntingly beautiful.

After watching this video I now understand why flies are attracted to the light.

Reading the comments, it appears that most people expected a green light. The blue glow is known as Cerenkov radiation. It is produced when electrons travels through the reactor water faster than the speed of light in water. This is similar to a sonic boom from jet aircraft. At 1:45 in the video, you see the reactor suddenly get brighter. We call this a reactor pulse. During a pulse all control rods are momentarily removed from the core in a safe and controlled manner. Its as close as you can get to an atomic bomb detonation without being in one yourself. I've stood on top of a reactor during one of these events. Pretty cool stuff.

0:24 insert windows xp startup sound

*It looks like the Tesseract!* 🤯

I used to make the endcaps for nuclear reactors on a swiss cnc lathe. Definitely interesting but boring to make for sure! I've made well over 300,000 endcaps.

Cherenkov radiation is absolutely beautiful, and awe inspiring. Maybe I just need to get out more.

Does anyone find the glow very soothing

I've done dozens, maybe hundreds, of reactor startups. The last one was as exhilarating as the first.

1:25 that looks like the teseract

What a wonderful work by those engineers!

That's alot of angry pixies...

When the reactor is activated, the deep blue color it gives off is really dope 😮💙

2:36, you can really see the radiation messing with the camera.

tfw you watch chernobyl then youtube recommends this

Not sure if someone else explained this, so here I go. First, all 5 videos of reactor startups are at various US reseach reactors. 4 of 5 of the videos are, as you can tell, for reactor pulses. The reactor is brought to just being subcritical by pulling all but one control rod. This last control rod can be shot out of the core to give a shot of reactivity resulting in the reactor to go prompt critical with the resulting blue flash. The reason it is only a flash is the nuclear fuel is designed in such a way that such a rapid event causes the fuel to heat up, expand just enough to leak more neutrons than needed to keep the reaction going, shuts itself down, and the operators reinsert all control rods to go back to a completely subcritical condition. Such a pulse is useful in it gives various material and nuclear experimentalists a large number of neutrons to study prperties of matter and chemical reactions on very small time scales. I believe Oregon State University used neutron burst like this to film the combustion process in a motorcycle engine.

I really like videos of modern reactors. The show that modern nuclear reactors really aren't as scary or dangerous as people make them out to be.

yall cant fool me on the second video. I know the tesseract when I see it

Everybody Gangsta Until Everyone tastes metal

01:08 How all startups should sound so your stomach sinks and warns you of impending doom.

The lights are beautiful but chernobyl and fukushima had fireworks..

1:47 ... that Cherenkov radiation tho!!!

That last reactor was a MONSTER! Hellz yeah!

I love the popping noise when they start

Thank you very much for sharing this, we would have never know how this magnificent machines start and work!

I had the opportunity to visit a nuclear reactor back in october and i was able to see the cherenkov effect in the flesh , it was one of the most beautiful things ive ever seen

I've been lucky enough to see that glow in real life, it's truly mesmerizing!!!! 😲

Very pretty, I'm going to make a simulated reactor lamp based on this

Number 5 is scary. That blue glow though is very hypnotic.

Stressful but soooo satisfying

0:53 gives me PTSD about that one area in half life

The only true reactor startup is number 4, all of the others are reactor pulses. It even says on the last one. The reactor is running at low power, then the control rods are yanked out super quickly and then they fall back in. This causes a jump in power resulting in the blue flash! :)

Number 5 is the best one out all of them

So pleasing to observe as my favourite colour is electric blue!!!

Very nice one, never seen this.

Creative, I dig it

This is my new favorite video on the internet. Holy shit. I wish it was longer.

I love how on the last one it shows the radiation messing with the camera

I feel like this would be way more cool if i could fully understand what is going on threw all the start up stages and why they happen

I feel like the bugs in a bugs life! The blue light looks so amazing! 😂

Love the Cherenkov light

I wouldn't wait for Vnimanie. As soon as I hear a V-word I'm running for my life. "We're gonna start very sl- hey where did he go?"

Cherenkov Radiation! beautiful and terrifying.

First one is from Slovenia :)

This is spine tingling

Igor, Pull the switch.......yeeeeeees maaaaaster

2:42 i would have become hulk over there

I love the gamma ray interference its so powerful it screws with everything even a camera lens.

That gamma ray effect on the camera was so amazing

This is so cool it feels like alien technology, I never thought to search this up before

WOW . . . simply WOW

Looks almost otherworldly

Number 4 was fascinating to watch. 👍

Man, I think my whole Household has been powered by this.

That power down sound at 2:10 is so cool

1:39 INSTANT

That "sweeet" in the background of startup #1 was cool.....

So first of all I was SOO stressed after after every startup, and second of all I had no idea the reactor was underwater. Oh also, thurt thing, thanks for the amazing vid!

I think nuclear energy is absolutely amazing and it really should be a big part of future energy plans more than it is now. We should use a combination of nuclear, loads or solar, wind, hydro, geo and bio in combination with battery based storage to get away from oil, coal, gas etc. I think a good idea would be to only construct nuclear plants in areas of the world that have a low risk of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis etc and every country should come to some kind of agreement to only build one type of plant that is highly reliable and low risk with a proven track record. Right now we have a mix of plants with some of them being massively old and built in areas subject to natural disasters which puts risk through the roof. Also a huge part would be to replace everything with a bad energy rating eg in the EU anything below a grade b/c for grade a/a+/a++ etc as it would save tons of energy. I replaced every light bulb in our house a few years ago which was all very low rated old style bulbs numbering about 80 in total for grade a+ LED lights and our electricity bills dropped massively, we’re talking about an 85% saving on lighting, the house is still as bright if not brighter, I’ve only had the odd one or two bulbs die as we used high quality Philips bulbs almost everywhere and only the Chinese bulbs died and everywhere is cooler without the extra heat from the old bulbs. Also we replaced any appliances that died with only grade a energy efficient products and that saved loads of energy. Last year we installed a 6KW solar array on the roof which produces massive amounts of power, in the summer we can pull in 45KW some days, and even on the worst days in winter with completely cloudy sky’s we can cover a big chunk of our electricity needs. Sorry to go on but I just think 100% renewable clean energy is easily in our grasp and we should get it done worldwide.

Graphite : exist Dyatlov : I've never met this guy !!

The first one sounds awesome

Neat clean and cheap source of energy

Thought this was going to show me young companies getting into the field of Nuclear Reactors

Those crackbrained comments about 3.6 Roentgens in every Cherenkov radiation video **eye-rolling**

Such a nice pretty blue

Stunning

When i watched too many videos of chernobyl youtube recommended me this video

Somehow it is fascinating

I already feel my eyes irradiating by such beauty

Love those control rods

I'd like to be there again. That light is magic. It casts no shadow. As I closed my eyes it was everywhere, even in me

All of those but one was an excursion test. Anything but normal reactor starts.

Beautiful Compilation 😊

Fascinating stuff!

This is beautiful yet so scary knowing what happened at Chernobyl

That Cherenkov radiation is fascinating

That second video made me increasingly anxious, this is truly I credible

The first one where the control rods are entered is so fascinating

I would like to clarify that these aren't showing reactor startups so much as reactor pulses. Startups are much less exciting

A lot of these are research, training, or medical-use radioisotope production reactors. Also, #4 and #1 were TRIGA reactors, if I'm not mistaken.

Solid!

I have no idea what I’m looking at exactly, but it’s pretty cool.