Do Go On - 28 - Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

Episode Date: May 3, 2016

A botched safety test in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's fourth reactor will change the world forever. 30 years on, Dave explores the worst nuclear disaster in history. How and why did it happen? Also Dave tries to be all sciencey and explain how a nuclear reactor works... So that's fun. #MegaTrotsTwitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] the show and get rewards like bonus episodes:www.patreon.com/DoGoOnPod  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serengy Amarna 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there. Canada, we are visiting you in September this year.

If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. He says your name. Shut your hairy mouth. I'm definitely keeping that in. Hello and welcome to another edition of the show called Do Go On.

My name is Dave Warnocky and I'm here. I forgot my surname there. I was going to throw in the middle name. David James Warnocky. What's up, everyone? I'm here with Mr. Matthew Stewart. This is your introduction, Matt. Matthew James.

Yes. I am Matthew James Stewart. Good to be here in the podcast. It is a studio. It is good to be here. Hey, do you mind if I open up the floor? It's quite rude, but okay. To my favourite member of the team. She's about to go out on tour. Actually, she'll be out on tour right now, touring Australia.

So if you're anywhere around Australia, please check out Jess Perkins. Hello, Jess Ann Perkins. Thanks for having me in my own podcast. This is the show where we have a... Report prepared. Well, one of us does. The other two have to just listen to that report. And this week it is my turn to... Go on. Go on. It's your turn to go on. And these are our favorite episodes because Matt and I just get to sit back, relax.

You're the best presenter for the three of us, but then we just get to riff. I'm a bit self-conscious about my voice, though. It doesn't sound too good and I'm going to be the one doing the majority of the talking. No, I think your voice sounds great. This is what you always sound like. Maybe even a little bit better than normal. Yeah, I think so. Oh, so you think I should get sick often? Yeah, you know when people... Sick offman.

That was a classic hottest 100 track from the late 90s. Is that for real? You know when people get a bit sick and they sound a little husky or they sound kind of sexy? You don't sound sexy, but you sound great. Yeah, I thought I sounded a bit nasally, to be honest. Oh, now I can hear it, yeah, no, it is obnoxious. Yeah, we should probably cancel the episode. Is it too late?

Nah, it's never too late. What I like about Dave's reports are that they normally go for what about 10,000 words? 4,000. This one, 4,200. I don't know, every time I get to the end of the, like I don't aim for 4,000, I just look at the workout and think,

oh, you've done it again. God, I'm good. Boom, and I'm gone. I'm gone. Yeah, you're 4,000, and word just shuts down. You've done enough. Mate, you're done. Mate, you nailed it. That's your word document talking to you.

Okay, so we usually start with a question to get on topic. So this time next week, from the time of recording, it's actually last week, but when it goes out, on April the 26th. Yes, six, there it is. Is this Left Handers Day? No, that's in August. It's 30 years since one of the biggest events of the 20th century. April, 30 years ago. April 26, 1986, 1986.

I wasn't alive yet. Matt, this is all the new. I was a couple years old. So what was the thing? It's just a massive event. Okay, 86. 86. I was two.

I got to go back to... And when I say, like, you're probably imagining, like, big party. It's not a big party or in it, like, a celebration. It's a not good thing. Yeah. 86. 86. Not a big party.

April 26. The wall came down in 89, I think. Yeah, I was thinking. That's 89. It's in that area. It's in Europe. Okay. 86.

Is it a Cold War related? Yes, very much so. Okay. Is it a USSR country? U.S.S.R country. U. Slavia. No, I don't want you to guess the country.

I want you to guess it. Is that even a... It happened. It was in the Ukraine. Oh, the Ukraine. April 26th, 1986. Oh, it feels like I'm going to feel dumb when I have no idea what this is. I have like...

Was it some sort of... Has it been made into a movie? Yeah, there was a horror movie that was set around. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yes, it is. In Texas. In the Ukraine. All right.

John me... Just tell us. Maybe I'll just get into it and you know what I'm going to talk about. April 26th, 1986. It was a beautiful sunny spring day for the 50,000 residents of Pripyet, a town in northern Ukraine that borders Belarus. Nearly all of the town's population worked at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Oh, I know what this is.

It's about Chernobyl. No, that's not where I was going. Hindenberg. Yes, in the 1930s. What are you thinking? I think it might be. Was it the invention? of the light bulb.

I was thinking of the Ninja Turtles. Yeah, okay, light bulb. Great, cool. I swear to God, I thought the light bulb was older than 30 years. Yeah, I know. I hand on my heart. 100% celebration. I know.

You would think that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It just feels like it's something that's always been around. It does feel, I mean, it has for you. Yeah, true, true, true. Born in 90. Anyway, I was born into darkness. I am not talking about the light bulb. I am, of course, talking about the Chernobyl nuclear disaster

of April 26th and 1986. When I was in year 11, the year 12's their drama ensemble piece because like in VCA drama the first half is your ensemble so like a group and then the second half as you sold it

and their ensemble was all about Chernobyl. Really? So I know like a tiny bit about it based on their reenactments and offensive access. Was it a musical? No. Was it an interpretive dance piece?

It was a serious piece. Okay, have some respect. ours the next year was about Hurricane Katrina. So teacher like to give us nice light topics. The only thing I know about Chernobyl is an episode of The Simpsons, Mindy and Homer Simpson, like, at some sort of a fair, an energy fair. No more Chernobyl. Someone yells out, yeah, no more Chernobyl. And they're like, get banned.

And I never knew what that meant until just now, right now. Have you not heard of the Chernobyl? No, I definitely. I'm sorry. I was playing that for human. Oh, good. I wish I committed myself to it. I had just billed it as one of the biggest events of the last century and you're like,

never heard of it. But as a kid, I'd know what, I knew what that meant. I would have definitely laughed because it sounds funny. No more, Chernobyl, it does. So it's April 26, 1986, 1986. These people are, the residents of Pripyat, as I said, the town in northern Ukraine bordering Belarus. And nearly all of the population worked at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The plan had four nuclear reactors and was capable of powering 10% of the Ukraine's electricity needs. Only 10%. Lift your game, Chernobyl. Come on. Well, they're going to attempt to lift their game and it's not going to go so well. Spoilers. Spoilers. I did bill this as the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. When the power plant was under construction in the 70s,

Pripyat had been especially built as a town where the workers could live. On April, sorry, on September 9th, 1982, a partial core meltdown occurred in reactor number one at the Chernobyl plant. The extent of the accident was not made. public until several years later, so they sort of swept that one under the rug. The reactor was repaired and put back into operation within months. But that was a fraction of the world's worst nuclear disaster that was to occur no less than four years later. Do you know how nuclear power works?

Yes. Because I had... Obviously. I had no idea, because I'm not a big sciencey guy, and this episode I'm going to attempt to be quiet sciencey. We all have arts degrees. Yeah. I work in a call centre.

Great. learned from the Simpsons. It's got something to do with glowing green rods. Yeah. Rods are important. Yeah. They are very important. And they make little explosions of love explosions

and they harness that energy. This is pretty good. Love explosion is definitely not in the guidebook. But do they harness? They harness energy. Is energy harness Dave? Yes or no? Well, yes, it definitely is.

Thank you. Thank you. I rest my case. No more to noble. Also, I'll explain it as I understand it. Great. If you are a nuclear scientist, why are you listening to this podcast? Basically, just like fossil fuel plants,

nuclear power plants are powered by steam. That makes up by steam. Water is turned into steam, which then turns a massive turbine, sort of a spinny thing connected to a generator. It generates electricity. Right. Spinny thing. Spinny thing.

Technical term. So just imagine like a giant drill spinning around. And it's moving because of steam is making it move and then that's connected to a generator. And the more it spins more electricity it makes. But the difference is the source of heat that turns the water into steam. In nuclear power plants,

the heat to make the steam is created when uranium atoms are split. Here we go, this is a sciencey bit. When large atoms split into one or more smaller atoms, they give off other particles and energy in the process. And that's called nuclear fission. So each time an atom is split, it creates energy and heat has released, and when you do that billions and billions of times, it creates a huge amount of energy, and therefore a lot of heat. So everything in the world is made up of tiny atoms, you mean everything in this room.

But some atoms are really stable and happy to stay as they are, but other atoms exist in unstable forms called radioactive isotopes. Pretty much nuclear power plants split these atoms on command by firing neutrons at them, so there's fire them at the atom, and then, radioactive isotopes will go on splitting themselves automatically. So you fire one at an atom and then they create a chain reaction, which which creates lots. That's why it's so efficient because unlike fossil fuels,

you don't have to burn a lot of shit. You just sort of fire, peo, peo! I don't know how they do that. It's like tiny and minuscule, but that's what they do. The brilliant part is when these atoms split will produce spare neutrons that crash into other atoms. So you fire one and it splits and then it goes, oh, I'm going to run into other shit now.

and then they just make this massive chain reaction, which I've seen described as a runaway nuclear avalanche that releases a huge amount of energy in the form of heat. This then turns water into steam that turns the turbine and powers the generator. Ah, is there going to be a test? There will be a test at the end of the show. That bit at the end sure sounds like something's being harnessed.

Yes. How long were you sitting on that? I feel like you didn't listen to Dave. Did you listen to why you? I would know. I mean, did he say something at the end that could have been? Yeah, probably. I don't know.

I really zoned out. I was really hoping you were paying attention. Now, the two things when people talk about nuclear, they think about either a bomb or a power plant. The difference between a bomb and a nuclear power plant is that the bomb, they also have a chain reaction, but it's not controlled, and it just multiplies in like a fraction of a second, and suddenly it releases so much energy that it just flattens everything.

But in nuclear power plant, the chain reactions are very carefully controlled, so they've proceeded a relatively slow rate. So it's a slow burn. So it sounds real safe, right? Real safe. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly go wrong? End of episode.

And that is how nuclear power works. Okay, so on a very basic level, that is how it works. What they do is they load up a nuclear reactor with lots of pallets of uranium in rods. Thank you. Green rods. And it makes heat very efficiently. The only other thing you have to know in this story is that nuclear material like uranium, when not properly looked after, is extremely dangerous.

Okay. So when not properly looked after. When not properly, you look after it, probably give it a nice little bath. Yeah. And you tuck it into bed, nice and early reading the story. Yeah. Good night, uranium. Good night. Go to sleep. And he had a baby brother also made of uranium. And it lasts forever, right? It just doesn't break down.

It's very efficient. After a while, every few years they have to replace these uranium because they get depleted by uranium. Where do you get uranium? It's mine. Outback Australia. Yeah, it's mine. in like rocks. And then they have to crush up the rock

and it's like a tiny percentage, like, you know, 0.5% or something. So I have to dig up a lot of shit to find out. They can't just get it at like office works. Definitely not. It's very, because it is so dangerous. Yeah, you have to go to... Office works.

I'm looking for uranium. No, I need six pack of highlighters. I need a pack of A4 paper and some uranium, please. Oh, sounds to me like you're doing a drama solo. That was very funny, Dave. Thank you. Off the cuff.

Now that's in the script. This whole show was scripted. You're reading the script right, Matt? Harness. That was your key word for the episode. So it was real dangerous uranium if you don't look after it properly. And the very sad irony in the story is that the accident at Chernobyl occurred during an experiment to test a way of cooling the core of the reactor in an emergency situation. So it's a safety test going wrong.

The test was incorporated into a scheduled shut-stableness. down of reactor number four. Number four. So we've had a problem in reactor one a couple of years ago, but now we're talking about reactor number four. So at Chernobyl,

they kept the reactor, the thing that's full of the uranium, cool with water. Water pumps in water, so it doesn't get too hot because it gets really hot, then you can have a meltdown. In an emergency,

the reactor can be shut down very quickly, but still very hot and needs water to keep flowing in to keep it cool all the time. Otherwise it becomes like a giant kettle that boils itself dry and then you're in real trouble. in the event of a power failure

or if someone takes out if there's an attack or something where they cut the power to the reactor Chernobyl had three backup diesel power generators that would kick in to keep that water flowing to keep it cool all the time the problem is that these diesel bad boys

took 60 seconds to warm up before the water would start flowing again and that's a lot of time in this situation the worry was that in the time the reactor could get really really hot so it was theorised that because the steam is already turning the

turbine, if the power fails, that turbine's going to keep spinning for a little bit. It's got a lot of momentum behind it. So they thought, oh, why don't we just use the energy of that powering down, the spinning turbine, to sort of bridge the gap between the 60 seconds and where the diesel has to sort of fire up? That makes sense. That seems to be quite efficient. You know what that is?

That's harnessing the power that they already had. That's good. I'm glad they did that, and it sounds like it went well. I just want like it feels like a funny thing to go yeah we'll just maybe we'll just use that see how that goes don't just see how that goes surely it was more than just a hunch that they were going off

well I will say they tried it a couple of times in the early 80s early on it didn't have enough momentum to keep the pump going so they modified the way the machines work and in 1986 they were ready to test it again so they've done a couple of tests and reactor number four was already going to have a maintenance shutdown was already going to be shut down for the test so they're like, oh, well, just do it there, and that makes sense. It does make sense.

And no detrimental effect on the safety of the reactor was anticipated. They, I have read that one of the engineers estimated that they thought that it was a one in ten million chance every year that there would ever be a meltdown. One in ten million. So they thought it was pretty much, they thought it was theoretically possible, but also like, come on. I'm okay with those odds.

odds. One in 10 mill. Yeah. Not bad. I mean, unless I'd bought a lotto ticket. What would you equate those kind of odds to? You know, I'm great at maths. What's something else that you think would be one in ten million? One in ten million.

You know, it may be something to do with Dave Warnocky. What about a, or one in ten million maybe like an asteroid hitting your street? Really? Like if it hit you, that would probably like one in, 100 million. An asteroid hitting your street is one in ten million. That's my guess. Having a really good podcast. One in ten million?

One in ten mill. That means there's probably one good podcast out there. And it's this one. You're very lucky to be hearing it. Yes, that's lucky. God, we're lucky. I'd say Dave Warnocky is a one in ten million chance of ever wearing a dud t-shirt. Yeah, he's got great t-shirt.

A great t-shirts. One in ten million. And I don't think I've ever seen a repeat. No, he does, he chucks him in the I throw him away. I'm very inefficient. I'm the opposite of nuclear power. That's me.

One in ten million, so I have to live like a hundred thousand lifetimes before you'll see me wear the same shirt twice. Or before you see a dud shirt. Dud shirt. Dud shirt, yeah. You can repeat if you want to. It's fine. There's no judgment here.

Thank you kindly. Because I thought nothing was going to go wrong, the test program was not formally coordinated with either the chief designer of the reactor or the scientific manager of the plant. Oh, they didn't think to run that by them. Yeah, instead it was just improved by only the director of the plant. And this approval is not consistent with established safety procedures.

Because they thought it was like a little thing. Oh, we'll just give it a go. It's cool. We don't have to tell you one about it. Carl? Carl. We're just going to do a test. Yeah, right.

Yeah, right. That classic Ukrainian name, Cal. Thanks, Carl. I'm not going to do an accent because I don't know a Ukrainian accent. Is that like a Lennian cow chatting? No, I just like the name Carl. Carl. I, yeah, because it was the director.

Like, that's the, I'm imagining that's the boss of the whole place. But he has bosses too. Yeah, and he is not necessarily an expert on this. No, it feels like he maybe should have gone, look. Oh, yeah. It's fine with me. But do you mind if we check with someone who knows about this sort of stuff? Yeah, but he was like drunk on power.

Like, they'd asked him, they never spoke to him in, like, they never included him in the tea room. Right. Social situations, it's excluded. It's hard when you're the boss because you've got to have that boundary of like being a leader but also like being a friend. You want to be a friend. And so they never really come to him with things. So then when they finally came to him like, hey, Carl, do you mind if we just do this test?

He was like, oh my God, they're talking to me. They're including me. He got really excited. He was like, yes, a thousand times yes. What was the question again? Did you ask me, was it about going to the soccer this week? Because yes. Oh, it was a test for...

No, no, still yes. Yeah, no, so far, yes. I still... I stick with my first answer. Yeah. I love you, guys. Yeah, what if I was... I'm going to make a cup of tea.

Anybody else want one? Okay, I see. Was his defense when he was on trial after the accident? Like, oh, I thought they asked if I wanted to go to the soccer. Yeah. I didn't want to make a scene when I realized. Well, you joke about that, but we'll get to why sort of safety wasn't a big concern. Because soccer.

Because soccer Alright a bit more science The plan was to get the power output of the reactor Up to 700 megawatts Science So they wanted to be between 700 and 1,000 megawatts And then they would have an emergency shutdown And then the energy from that 700 megawatts

Would keep the turbine spinning long enough To keep the water flowing So that's the key number They want to get to 700 Matt's yawning Oh man This is fucking boring Well don't worry

Tell me more about the 700 Megatrops or whatever. I can't, I could not give less of a shit. Megatrons. Hashtag Megatrods. And it's just a really big horse. Oh, the one that was designed by Da Vinci? Yeah, Megatrots. I am Megatrot.

Yep. Got to laughing. Megatrot wears a cape. Oh, that is funny. Dave is not on board with megatrots at all. Well, I just know that we are about 19 minutes away from the worst nuclear disaster. So let us have our fun now. Oh, okay.

Mega trot. But it is important. The 700 megawatt thing is actually quite important. Oh, megawatt. Mega watt. Mega what? We can go on megatrots if you like. Sorry, Dave.

Do you go on. No, there's... Yeah, at this stage, I'm just hoping no one loses their life. life in this thing because that would make this feel very inappropriate. We look very insensitive. Mega what! So, I have to get it between

700 and 1,000 mega, what? And if test conditions had been as planned, the procedure would almost certainly have been carried out safely. But we know it wasn't. What? Mega what. And, okay.

At 1 a.m. with the first steps that the test were starting to take place, another regional power station unexpectedly went off line and the Kiev electrical grid controller requested more power from Chernobyl so they had to delay turning off the reactor. So it was delayed. At 11pm the shutdown was allowed to start, which is like nearly 24 hours later, 22 hours later. This long delay had some serious consequences. The day shift had long since departed. The evening shift were also preparing to leave and the night shift would not take over until midnight well into the job. The night shift at very limited time to prepare for

and carry out the experiments. It was kind of like, these guys in the day were supposed to do it, but then at night, suddenly you were like, oh, what? We're going to do a shutdown, ah.

Oh, I just wanted to catch up on that TV show. Yeah, and people don't need as much power at Nars. It's usually like a pretty cruisy shift. Yeah. He's going to watch season three of Family Tires on Netflix. Family Tires.

Part of that was definitely... Part of that worked and then part of it did not. Didn't. That was, was that important, invent a back then I don't know the light bulb wasn't oh it's about to be so the light bulb comes about in this

like it's one of those often that happens in science isn't it you know they're trying to find something else and then there's a weird side effect they invent a light bulb it's always a light bulb it's very strange yeah everybody just keeps inventing light bulbs over the year we've been in the thousand chug it in the pile

yeah out the back there's a path I can't cure cancer I made six light bulbs how many how many megawatts megatts How many? Mega what?

700 normal trots. You get a lot of small room. Good on you. Fuck Ed, get out of here. Alexander Akamov. That's a good name, isn't it? Akamov. Akamov was the person in charge of the shift, the night shift.

Akamov opposed conducting the test in such conditions, but he was ordered to continue by his supervisor. I do not think we should do the test. Serfetim. No, that's fine. That was pretty accurate, I meant. I imagine, well, that was the most offensive thing so far. I imagine.

Well, in the documentaries they all spoke like that. Yeah? Yeah, genuinely. English, English. Some were speaking English, some were being translated. The reactor, he was telling his boss, it was unstable, unsafe for the test to be run, but his supervisor, Anatoly Diatlov. Oh, great day.

Threatened to fire him if he didn't shut up and continue the test. Oh, well, that, yeah. You don't want to lose your job. That'd be awkward. I'm going to just go ahead and do one of the worst things of all time. Yeah, because he knows it's going to be the worst thing of all time. Yeah, he does he really? Yeah, he knows.

Well, that's a whole new piece of information I wasn't aware of. He knew? And just to save his fucking job, this piece of work. Get out of here. Well, Di Adelof was later... You're a dick, hit! But the Adelaev was a dick and he was later found guilty for criminal mismanagement of potentially explosive enterprises and were sentenced to 10 years in prison. He also died.

No, he lived. He lived, he went to jail five years. So people survived this, but did he grow extra things? There is. Well, we'll get to, we'll get to that. I don't, I don't need to know about that. I feel like when we get to that bit, I'm going to be very very. very disrespectful and you need to keep me in line because they're real people.

For free to put down Anatoly Diatalov. Diatalov. It is a lot. Can't be blamed on that guy. Okay. Then we have a third guy. There's not too many names in this story, but Leonid... What?

Lenned... Lenned... It's spelled in a different way that I'm used to. But I imagine it's Leonard Toptenov. Toptonov. I wish I had pen and paper to write these names down. It was the... Toptonov.

It's fine. I'll remember. No, I'm great. Okay, remind you. Topton off is the operator responsible for the reactor's operational regimen, including movement of control rods. Now, final science bit, control rods, they're not, they don't have nuclear stuff and then.

They're rods that are inserted into the reactor to control the fission. They're both the brakes and the accelerator. So the further you put it in, the slower, the splitting is. Did you, are you laughing at, you finding putting a rod into a reactor, quite sexual? No. A reactor. What's the reactor in this?

I'm laughing at something I also heard earlier today. Shut up. But the reactor you're picturing is like someone's butt, aren't you? You think a reactor is another name for a butt. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. I knew it. I knew it.

It's pretty funny. When you talk about inserting a rod? Oh, my reactor. I got an... Ouchie. Get your rod out of my rear. Control your rod, mate. That's a pretty fun.

That's a thursday. fun word for butt. A nuclear reactor. Yeah. Yeah, man, I had a big carry last night. The nuclear reactor is not responding well. Get the control right down there.

There's a plug. It's just plugging up your asshole. That's what this whole story is about. We're back to that. It's like his burial one all over again. It all comes back to our own. Yeah, I just want to talk about plugging people up. This does feel like our lowest common

denominator episodes are far. And we're normally pretty low. I know. But we're trying to explain science to the people. It's hard. We're trying to bring it down to the people's level. Laman's terms. Well, let me explain it. So you insert these control rods to slow or stop

nuclear fission. So if your atoms are going crazy and splitting too much, causing too much heat, you send in the control rods who gate crashed the party and ruin it for everyone. They're kind of like cops. Or Dave Walachian. Like for a noise complaint? Like they go in there and then they, you know, everything's getting a little bit crazy. The number's called

the police. They put the control rods. They turn the lights on. Yeah, the lights are on and you're like, oh my God, where am I? Yeah. That's it. But I would turn the lights on. I was at the closing night party of the comedy festival. When they did turn the lights on at 5.30 at the morning, it kicked everybody out. That was the control rod.

That's the control rod. You were a uranium particle splitting way too much. I was a uranium particle. Splitting. Bloody splitting everywhere. Fishing on the dance floor. Nah, I was quite responsible. No, I just went home.

See, these control rods are pretty good, aren't they? They do the job. Keep you in check. Keep you in check. Topped in off. the operator I just mentioned, Leonard Toptenov, he was a young 26-year-old engineer who'd worked independently as a senior engineer for only three months, so he's not very experienced. He inserts the control rods too far into the reactor, and...

Ouch, geez. My reactor! So he wanted to slow down the process, but he put the rods in too far, and now it's only outputting 30 megawatts of power. Remember, it's supposed to be 700, that's right. Megatrods. And then he put it in even further. Wait, so it's supposed to be 700.

It's only doing 30. Only doing 30. And then it stalls altogether. So all the reaction stops. There's no energy. Oh, that's not bad, though. It's not good if you want to do an experiment. Yeah, but it's not going to lead to an explosion or anything.

No, it's just stopping everything. No, no. But so now it's got no power. They've got to do something about it. Diathlov, the guy who I imagine who's going to go to jail later on, he ordered everyone to restore power and get the party started again by disabling the automatic system governing control rods. and manually extracting the majority of the reactor control rods out of the reactor.

So what's happened is Matt's falling asleep. I'll explain. So what happened is you've had too much rod going there so it's stopped. So he's ordered, let's get all the rods out of there to get it going real quick. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. The problem is now he's taken all those out. You've essentially taken your break out. You've taken any control out?

Yeah, and also the safety backup ones. Yeah. Oh, okay. And Diadlov did this despite the young man topped enough protesting this, was considered unsafe in his training, but Diattelov wanted to get the test done that night and ignored his subordinates. No one really wanted to lose their well-paid,

respected jobs as nuclear engineers, because they get paid to work at the power plant, and they also get their rent paid, and it's quite a prestigious thing. Sure. So everyone's like, all right, he's the boss. We'll just do what the boss says. Hocking hell.

Alarms started going off about core temperature and were ignored, apparently because they wanted to preserve the power, because it was being outputed by the reactor. So the power's getting more, but alarms were like, This is a little too much. And they were like,

nah, keep going, keep it going. Dave, I'm just trying to think there was a little bit of human error involved. Matt, that's an interesting pickup you have there. Thank you. You're a very observant young man. They started hearing sirens, and people were like, oh, the cops are coming.

Should we turn the music down? And they're like, fuck them. Fuck them. I only turned 16 once. Keep it going, yeah. Woo! That was David. He's 16.

Yeah, I was yelling. Let's keep the nuclear reactor rocking. Yeah. Fuck those control rod pigs. Still talking about your butt? Yeah. Yeah, fuck those control rod pigs in my butt. Power got up to...

Power got up to 200 megawatts. I was getting back towards 700. That's a lot. And the experiment continued. By this day, nearly all control rods were had been removed manually, including all but 18 of the 211 fail-safe control rods.

I'm no nuclear scientists, but I really don't think you should be removing anything that says fail-safe. Yeah, probably not. So they had 211 to these fail-safe things. and they pulled out all but 18 of them. The automated system that inserts all the rods in an emergency had also been disabled to maintain power level,

and many other automated and even other passive safety features of the reactor had been bypassed. And yet the experiment continued. At 1.23 a.m., the steam to the turbines were shut off and rundown of the turbine generated again. So that's when the minute of where you're trying to get the turbine making, power while the diesel stuff fires up so they're starting that bit. As the momentum of the turbine generator decreased

because it's got no steam powering it anymore, the water flow rate decreased, so there's less water going into the reactor now, leading to increased formation of steam bubbles in the core which increased the reactor's power output even more. This output increased, caused more water to turn into steam, giving further power increase.

Now they've got this weird loop where the more power they have, the more steam is increased, and the more steam is increased and more power. And it keeps just sort of self-fulfilling itself. Too much power. Too much fucking power. Is that your impression of a nuclear reactor? One more time, sorry?

Well, my next bit was people in the next to the reactor remember hearing a sound that night that sounded a lot like, that's not true. I just made that up. Oh, that's not true. That's not true. Oh, was that Dave just being a little bit funny? Hey, Dave, just all we ask is,

you to commit. All right, mate. Stop bailing on your sweet gear. No, leave him to do the facts. Leave the jokes to us, mate, okay?

We're gonna, I'm, yeah, I've been searching a episode for a joke. I will find one. But it's tricky. It's tricky.

It's a tricky game. I really got you with megatrots. Oh, yeah. Well, you said megatrots, but then I really elaborated. I took,

yeah. I took, I ran with it. It was like we're in, it was like, you were in, you know, you were the steam and I was the heat thing. And then we made bubbles.

The more power and the bubbles. It just creates more and more. Jokes are very similar to nuclear power. Yeah. It's all fission. It's all fission, baby. So I remember hearing that after. Everyone's a fission, baby.

That's the truth. That's the truth. So they've got this crazy loop going on where it's getting hotter, more steam. Oh, it's getting hotter, baby. More steam, all this stuff. It is hot and steamy in there. Usually, this would be controlled by inserting these. emergency control rods.

When it gets hot and steamy, we insert the rods. But guess who's disabled those? Remember they turn those off. Trotsky? No. No. Lennyn Moy. Lennymoi and Diatolov.

It's like telling the police to piss off when they come over for a noise complaint. But then bikeies rock up and you're like, oh no, come back. Come back. Oh, shit. Oh, fucked it. The nuclear power has gone off. Explosion time. At 123 a.

m. And 40 seconds, an emergency shutdown of the reaction. That's the most insensitive this has ever been described. Boom, explosion time. So cold. That was the coldest. We're talking about cold wartime. You really are.

At 123 a.m. and 40 seconds, an emergency shutdown of the reactor. They started panicking. They're like, we've got to shut this bad boy down. This party's over. Someone just got out of gun and fired into the air. Farted into the air. No, fired into the air. You get out of gun and I was like, he's going to shoot anyone?

and people left that fucking party in five seconds. This emergency shut down, inadvertently triggered an explosion. It is pets. It's like they have followed through. They have definitely followed through. Oh, fuck. Well, at least everyone's left the party.

Probably going to clean myself up. That was when you went too far. I was happy with it. An emergency shuts down of a reactor is called a Scram, S-R-A-M, which apparently stands for, I love this. Safety Control Rod Axeman. Oh, okay. So you're the safety control rod ax-man.

You'd be like, boo! And you, like, try and insert these rods to shut it down. Booh. I think it's the best acronym I've ever heard. Safety control rod ax-man. Put that on my resume. It does feel like, like, and so many of those, I like that. but they'll get close to a word,

and then they'll have to like shoehorn another word or two in to make... To make scram. Scram sounds awesome. Yeah. And easier to remember. Safety control rod, man. Ax man.

Yeah. Yeah, just to imagine a guitarist like playing a secret riff that turns on the reactor shut down. And the reactor's like, shut down, initiated. Yeah. But then he plays the wrong one and it calls the cops. That's where the explosion happened. Yeah, it orders a pizza.

Pizza ordered. Oh, damn it. Shit, what is it? No, do, do, do it, no. I want a no anchovies. Yeah, it's a different riff. The Soviet Union was a strange time.

It's a weird system. Everything controlled by guitar riffs. It would have been easier. Just press a few buttons. A few buttons, no. But we've got a safety control right ax, man. We need to make that bloody initialism. No, acronym, it isn't an acronym.

an inscram. Basically the scram, you want to get your rods in there to stop the reactor ASAP. You want to get your rod in there. ASAP, that's deep as you can. As an initialism. ASAP? That's right. You want to get your rod in quick. You want to get your rod in quick and you want to leave it in there real deep, real deep, just to stop

everything. But a few seconds after the start of the scram, a massive power spike occurred. The core overheated and seconds later, the overheating resulted in the initial explosion. Oh. It's going to be fuel these. Oh. Some of the fuel rods in

which is the stuff with uranium in it, fractured, blocking the control rods and stopping them from being able to be inserted, so you can't put them in anymore. So there's been an explosion, the rods are now blocked, so you can't get it in there to stop it all. So the power spiked within three seconds,

three seconds, the reactor rose above 530 megawatts, which is doubled in three seconds, the power output. Wow. The power spike caused an increase in fuel temperature and massive steam buildup, leading to a rapid increase in steam pressure. Then according to some estimations, the reactor jumped to around 30,000 megawatts.

30,000. But they just wanted it to be at 700. 700, I know. Now they've gone way too far out of the direction. Earlier they had bloody 30. Now they got 30,000. 30,000. That's two bloody, many megatrons.

There's too many of megatrots. Megatrots are my... That's ten times the normal operation. Too much. That is crazy. But suddenly everyone's internet was really full. Yeah. Unfortunately it's 1 a.m.

So no one's online. It's a real waste of... Off-peak. Off-peak. Is anyone else picturing when they're talking about, when they, thinking about

inserting rods and stuff, that they're just standing right at the top of those cooling towers, you know, and just like dropping them in. Is that like it's a cauldron or something? Yeah, but I'm imagining them very careful

like, easy. Easy. Yeah, and a string, lowering it in. Is that kind of how it was? It's more of a robotic sort of system. Disappointed.

Oh, a robot at the top of the cooling tower dropping in, I think, bar a string. I get it. Now I'm imagining C3PO, like that kind of robot. Beep, pop, beep. With the guitar. Do you do, loo. That's C3 with a guitar at the top of the nuclear reactor. I'm glad that I'm painting such a vivid picture.

Such vivid pictures. And explosive steam pressure from the damaged fuel channels escaping into the reactor's exterior because it's sort of cracked a bit now. It's going everywhere. It caused a detonation that destroyed the reactor. casing, which is the thing that holds everything together. We know what casing's out, Dave.

That was the one word you didn't have to explain today, but thank you. I do have a dictionary definition of every word in here. Taring. Do you want to tear? No, it's 4,000 words. Yeah, because every single word has a footnote. Which it tore off and blasted the 2,000 ton upper plate, so the roof of the thing, it just explodes off from the steam, and it

fires into the air. The entire reactor assembly is fastened to this, and it goes through the roof of the building. It just goes... Shit. So, like, real bad. A second more powerful explosion occurred two or three seconds later. This explosion damaged the core even more. The reactor's containment vessel, the thing holding all in, was ruptured, and burning lumps of material and sparks shot into the air above the reactor.

This nuclear excursion released 40 billion joules of energy. equivalent of 10 tons of T&T, and uranium and graphite, which is really, really poisonous now, is spread hundreds of metres around the plant, so it just goes everywhere real quick. When I was working in retail at a big shopping centre, similar story. Similar story. When it used to rain really heavily, sometimes the roof would leak and we were on the top level and we'd get bits of water coming into the store.

And I remember sort of like the panic because we didn't know what to do. imagine this situation like imagine being there just like shit is literally exploding something just went through the roof of the fucking plant yeah

it's so big a spray of fire charged with radioactive radioactive particles shoots 100 so 1,000 meters into the sky what?

So it's massive explosion straight up above the reactor Is that high enough to hit a plane? I was just right is that would that have gone over the realto? Yeah Wow.

Yeah. For the Realtes, Rialto was a tall building in Melbourne. It's like, not even the tallest. Used to be the tallest. Used to be. But maybe in 1986 it probably would have been. It would have been. It would be.

Great 80s reference, man. Thank you. So good. So now there's just a massive gaping hole above the reactor. Big gaping hole for the day. You're talking about these things. Didn't even think about any of this when I wrote that. Explosions, gaping holes.

Sounds like my weekend. Not a lot. at all. I'm very lowly. Oh my gosh. I just don't want to say anything anymore. So, it's easy to blame these dudes in the control room, but also later on, after the USSR was dissolved, KGB documents

from the time... It dissolved the whole USSR? Bloody hell! That's how big this is. Documents were released stating that authorities, when they were building the nuclear power plant, ignored warnings in the 70s and 80s that Chernobyl had design flaws, but Chernobyl's director received big bonuses when he rushed the building

to the plan, and reactor number four in particular was completed ahead of schedules. He was getting all these bonuses for getting it done. For example, contrary to safety regulations, bitumen, which is a combustible material, had been used in construction of the roof of the reactor building, even though in the plan it was supposed to be something that couldn't combust. Right. And this resulted in when the material was blasted through the roof, it's all on fire because it's so hot.

It starts five fires on the roof of the adjacent reactor number three. So you have to worry about two nuclear reactors. It was imperative these fires were put out to protect the cooling system of reactor number three. So first on the scene, when you have a fire, you call the... Police! Firefighters! They had no idea... Pizza man. Wait, I'll keep guessing, I'll get it.

Pizza got... Postman. Do-d-d-d-d-l-d-oo! You do the... You do the roof. Your mum! You call your mum. I probably would call my mum, but that's because I know nothing about nuclear power plants.

And, well, she doesn't either, but I need a bit of reinforcement. There's just something kind of comforting about your mum when you're a bit stressed. Need a bit of comfort. Need your mum. It's starting to sound like there's a few things went wrong and it all culminated in a disaster. Thanks for that, Matt. Great. Good contribution.

I'm glad you are realising that. Yeah, fuckhead. Do you feel like that's an accurate thing to say? No, I don't. Because you think, like, I always figure, you know, it's like, oh, just one bad thing happened. But it's like, oh, it was designed poorly and they had idiots running it. It's like so many bad things had to happen. And they were out of time, so they did it when they weren't planning to do it.

Yeah. And then they're not ready for any of this kind of stuff to happen. You've got a nuclear power plant. You think that you'd be ready. First on the scene of the firefighters, they had no idea how they thought that there was just a fire. No one told him that it was from the reactor. So they thought they was putting out of fire. So they're not wearing any safety gear.

They're getting as close as anyone ever gets. And they had no idea how... There's radioactive smoke all around them. Also, because it's on the roof, right? So I'm imagining this is quite high as well. It's on the roof, but then inside the reactor is so hot that it's like molten magma. So they're just pouring water onto it, pouring water,

which actually does nothing. Oh, shit. Which doesn't work. It doesn't put it out this type of fire. They thought it was an electrical fire. Because that's probably what they used to. No one at the time thought, even the people in the control room thought there'd been something else had happened. They didn't realize they'd had a meltdown.

Right. How do you not realize? Well, the power had shut off as well, so like a lot of their safety stuff's gone out. Plus they were ignoring the alarms anyway. Yeah, exactly. They were ignoring the alarms. And so the big boss, the guy that would go to jail, he stays behind. He doesn't die.

But the two people that I was talking about before that were objecting, they go to see what's gone on. And they would later die of radiation poisoning. because they had not, they either thought that had been an explosion. They're like, what's going on? And then they went there. Oh. But the radiation is so intense

that two of the firefighters died that night, so it just kills them almost straight away. What? Now, the nearby town of Pripyat, where everyone's living, only three kilometers away, it's not immediately evacuated. They hear the explosions that night,

but they're not told of the disaster and they're completely oblivious as to the danger they're now in. Oh, that sucks. Some people start to fall ill within hours, and they're like, what's going on? Because there's radioactive, sort of pollution going throughout the air.

What kind of, like the firefighters who died of radiation poisoning, like what sort of symptoms are attributed to radiation? So if you have radiation poisoning, you start feeling sick, and then you have vomiting and diarrhea, and then intense. And then there's this latency period where everything seems okay, and then it starts to get worse again, which is really, really bad. You start developing radioactive burns. Oh.

Yeah, like really, which are really, really bad. Yuck. And, yeah, and it also, it changes the composition of your blood. Really? Because it's such an intense thing. Yeah, so it's really, really bad. And if you get really close, the burns can kill you within hours or days. That's incredible.

Or it can also affect you and you can develop sicknesses later on, which we'll, unfortunately, talk about it. Do you think it's possible that one day there'll be a human that can withstand that, and it'll actually make them super-eastern. human? Probably not. Okay. Okay, no, but good question though. Thank you.

Interesting. Good question. A commission was set up on the same day, sort of in the daylight hours, to investigate the accident. It was headed by Valerie Lagasov, an internationally renowned nuclear physicist who would commit suicide of the guilt over the way the disaster was handled two years later. Oh, boy.

So it didn't handle it very well. In the town of Pripyat, it's discovered that the radiation levels that next day, are already 15,000 times more than usual. Shit. And by that evening, by the evening 24 hours later, the levels of it's 600,000 times their natural occurrence. Oh. So in that first day, the inhabitants received 50 times

what is considered an acceptable dose of radiation. If they'd stayed, they would have all died in just four days. So the commission made it to the plant that night, and by that time two people had died, 52 were in hospital, these firefighters and stuff, and they were like, okay, it's bad. We fucked up. They didn't realize how bad it was straight away,

but then when they're getting these levels, they soon realized that the reactor was destroyed, and extremely high levels of radiation had caused a number of cases of radiation exposure. The levels of radiation at the reactor four itself, like ground zero, are so high that they would give a human being a lethal dose in 15 minutes. Wow. So you can't go pretty much near it. And the radiation levels are getting higher every second.

It's getting worse and worse and worse. In the early hours of April 27th, 24 hours after the blast, they ordered the evacuation of the town. So they're finally getting everyone out. 24 hours later, though. Yeah, so about this time, people have been exposed to quite a lot of radiation. Residents were told they would only be gone for three days, but they never went back.

Like, it's still abandoned now. So, you can, like there's documentaries and stuff, the town is pretty much as it was on that day. Oh, wow. Because people were told you'd be back in three days, and they didn't have enough time to pack things. They had to get out straight away. So they pretty much took the clothes on their back

and the rest of their houses and furniture. It's still like sort of pristine 30-year time. So people have gone in with cameras and stuff. Yeah, cameras and stuff, yeah. The next day, talks began for evacuating people from a 10-kilometer zone around the area. Then 10 days later, they decided, no, it's not enough, so they evacuated 30 kilometers around the head.

It's called the exclusion zone. It's still intact. There's a 30-kilometer exclusion zone. And 130,000 people are evacuated. So it's a big operation, massive. 130,000. Yeah. Wow.

So this evacuation began long before the accident was publicly known throughout the union and let alone the world. On April 28th, two days after the disaster, radiation levels set off alarms at a nuclear power plant in Sweden, a thousand kilometers away. And they panicked that they'd had a, they were like, what's going on? Like their instruments started going off.

And then they call up the nuclear commission. and they're like, something's going on, do you know? Has anyone... And USSR has tried to keep this quiet because it's the Cold War. They don't want to look weak. They don't want to tell anyone's going on. So American spy satellites

discover the smouldering plant. So they see a photo of it. And then the Soviet Union are forced to publicly admit that a small accident has occurred. We had a little whoopsie, but everything's fine. And it's crazy. Like at 9-02 that night, a 20-second announcement was read in the TV news.

And this is all it said. There's been an accident that Chernobyl nuclear power plant. One of the nuclear reactors was damaged. The effects of the accidents are being remedied. Assistance has been provided for any affected people. An investigative commission has been set up. And that is the only mention that they make of the disaster. Was it, had anything like this happened before?

Like, were they aware of how deadly it could be? So this is still considered the worst nuclear disaster in history. And before that point, there'd been a few sort of, Littleer things, but not many people have sort of died or been exposed to lots of radiation. This is definitely like the worst thing. And all this time, the reactor is still burning and radiation is still spreading because it's such a hot fire down. It's like 3,000 degree fire. There's 1,200 tonnes of white-hot magma at the bottom of that reactor and 195 tonnes of nuclear fuel burning in that.

So that's why the radiation levels are getting higher and higher. And because of the radiation and the heat is impossible to get closer than a few hundred metres above using helicopters. so they try to put the fire out by shielding the reactor by throwing sand bags into it. They hope to smother the flames and fill the reactor with sand and boric acid which neutralises radiation. So they're throwing hundreds and hundreds of bags. The area above the reactor is 15 times the lethal dose, and some of these 600 pilots make 33 trips in a single day. And it is estimated that they are all severely poisoned and die.

It's really, really bad. But the sand starts melting from the intense heat of the fire, and cracks begin to appear in the air. in the makeshift plug in the sand, which caused the temperature to rise. Oh. So it's getting... So they've sealed it,

but because it's sealed, that it's getting hotter in there. Jesus. So scientists were worried that have got to a certain temperature, a second explosion much worse than the original would happen. So sand wasn't working,

so they started dropping lead into the hole, chunks of lead. The heat was enough to melt the lead and it sealed the hole. But some lead vapors start going into the atmosphere, and guess what? Lead is also very dangerous. Really?

So now they're adding... They've replaced nucleus stuff with lead going into the air, and that's not good for people to breathe in either. The fire is still burning under the lead seal, and the cement block underneath the magma is in danger of cracking and letting it drip through, the magma and the radiation. And the water, the fireman poured during the first hours of the disaster, has pulled below the slab,

and if the radioactive magma makes contact with the water, it will make a chain reaction and set off an even bigger explosion. So now they're worried. Holy shit, there's water under there, and there's magma dripping through, and if it touches through, the explosion would be 3 to 5 megatons and I'll explain I had no idea what that meant

meaning that a city, the city of Minsk 300 kilometres away, that would have been destroyed if this explosion goes off and much of Europe would have been uninhabitable so real, real bad. Holy shit! Like people talking about Chernobyl, I had no idea... Destroying a town 300ks away.

Yeah, and I had no idea how bad it potentially could have been. Let's say for example, so like in Melbourne 300 K's would wipe out like all of Jalong's gone All of the towns along the Great Ocean Road That's just one direction Holy crap I didn't really thought 300 kilometres is such a long way

Like Apollo Bay where I have to be a beach house If Melbourne went out it would be like half way You know a third of the way into the all of Victoria Yeah yeah So that's so they're really freaking out about this Wow Very very scared So what they do is they drain the water from under

underneath, which actually is a crisis averted. They can do that remotely. No, what they do is they get guys travel into the reactor via tunnels where big power cables have been, walking there and they have to navigate through the rubble and stuff, and they examine the scene using a camera, put a camera through, like one of those tiny little peephole cameras, and find that magma has cracked the cement and is seeping into the dirt below the plant. So now there's no water there, but below that dirt is a waterway that supplies the entire

country with water. Great. So now radiation might drip into the water, and this is also connected to the Black Sea, and it could like poison. Oh my. Like a lot of ocean. Fuck sake.

So 10,000 miners are shipped in from around the Soviet Union. It's decided they will dig a big tunnel underneath the plant where they build a room two metres high and 30 metres wide. And the initial plan is to put a liquid nitrogen cooling system to set up to try and cool it all down. The men walk around the clock in a tunnel with no ventilation at the temperature is 50 degrees Celsius. years.

Oh my, my, because it's too hot for them to wear protective gear, so they dig without masks. And they dig really deep to try and keep away from the radiation, but they still go to be. It is. It's like digging in Bikram Yoga. Yeah, I know, Dave. I said Bikram Dgging. I didn't feel the need to explain any fucking. Anyway, do go on.

I thought it was, it might have been missed by Matt, so I've repeated it for him. Well, it wasn't. So, yeah. Fuck off, Dave. Do fuck off. Hey, I, I feel like everything they've done has been a mistake almost. Literally everything. It's not a good idea.

It's pretty bad. So they're digging without masks. And they're not told how dangerous it is at the time. Oh, why don't they tell anybody anything? I don't think they'd do it. Yeah, I think that most people would be like, oh, probably not. Yeah, run away. That's awful though.

Yeah. But I have also read interviews with survivors of these miners. And they're like, oh, we were aware that it was pretty bad. But it was our duty. So there's some incredibly brave men. Well, do you know what it is? It's like, well, you know, you'd be in the mindset of it's better that I get sick rather than this destroying everything. Yeah, exactly.

Well, it will probably kill us anyway. Exactly. Like, it will kill everybody. Well, that's pretty great from those people. Oh, I'd be a big old coward there. Yeah, me too. I'd be like, oh, is that, did you want us to start today? I've got the flu.

Yeah. If I was a minor, I'd be digging a hole somewhere else and hiding in it. You could probably just do that anyway. You don't have to be a miner's a dig a hole to hide in. No, dig in a hole. All right. Yeah, okay. Digging holes.

Yeah, right. Jess, after the show, we're going to go watch you dig a hole and hide in it. Big enough to live in. Okay. Dig yourself out of this hole, Jess. Yeah. I think you've, well, you've proved to be quite good at digging holes, haven't you? As Dave just said.

See, two can... Two can play the repeat game. The jerk game. Thank you. So these 10,000 miners, in a little over a month, they dig a 150 metre tunnel. Wow. Which a job, but if they weren't working under those conditions,

would usually take three months. So they're just working around the clock. Really, really hard stuff. But the liquid nitrogen system has never set up. Instead, they just fill that tunnel with concrete, and that stops the radiation dripping through to the water below. Great. That's a huge win.

So that's a big win. That's a win. Great. It's the first win they've had so far. Good job, everybody. But those miners, one in four of them, won't make it to the age of 40. Oh, boy. Big sacrifice by those guys. So now you have to clean everything up.

So you sort of stopped the, you've sealed the hole, you've got concrete underneath. It's not going to explode anymore, but everything around that area is covered in radiation. So 100,000 Army Reserve soldiers and 400,000 civilians, including medical staff engineers and miners They're called in to help with the cleanup. So 500,000 people, these people are dubbed the Chernobyl liquidators. They're called liquidators. Because they all became liquid within three years of the disaster. Matthew.

Is that true? That's not true. Okay. Sorry, Jess. I said that like it was a fact. Is that what upset you? No, it was, they became liquid. These people are heroes.

What have you done? I was under the impression that you... Congratulations. You're a hero. No respect for the dead. I don't know where you got that input. Listen to many of our previous episodes for such references. Man, it would be so good now in the edit I just chop in clips of you going,

fuck the dead. I will tell you that some of these 500,000 people may have been accountants. Wow. It's possible. I mean, there's half a million people. What are the chances that not one of them is trained in accounting? Yeah. What are the chances?

I'm just sort of lining there for you, Jess. Fuck them. All of them. Bloody hell. You're associating. with an accountant. So you see one accountant, you'll take out 500,000 people. No problem.

I'm glad it exploded. Oh, no. Is that the sound of the reactor again? Jesus, really whirring his head over there. Sounds like Tim Allen. Oh. Everything is covered in radioactive dust, so everything in this exclusion zone

is cleaned and washed, which is a massive job. Houses are either cleaned of radioactive dust or simply knocked down and just buried. From the sky helicopters drop thousands of tons of a sticky liquid that coagulates and plasters radioactive dust to the grounds. But it's not going up in the air anymore. It's pretty clever. Sticky liquid.

Okay, so we've got... Sticky liquid. We've got rods. Gaping holes. Gaping holes. Explosions inside of... My pants. I mean, I react a core.

I mean, their reactor core. Oh, no. All right. So they're cleaning stuff up. stuff's getting a bit better, but eight weeks after the explosion, the liquidators have to tackle the heart of the problem. The reactor itself, which has been covered up by lead, but it's still very unstable, has to be isolated by a giant, what they call sarcophagus, where they're going to build a massive room around and just encase it. But the first, the roof of the plant must be cleaned of thousands of pieces of radioactive graphite.

They're all tiny little pieces of like little rock-looking things, but they're all highly radioactive. First, the cleanup is done by remote control-operated robots, but the radiation is so strong it starts messing with their circuits. It's too radioactive for robots, damn it. So they decide that people must be used. Yeah, sure. If the robots can't handle it, people can. Yes, but one piece of this graphite kill gives off enough radiation

to kill a person in less than one hour, so the soldiers chosen for the job are nicknamed bio-robots. No human has ever worked in zones as radioactive as this, It's the most radioactive sort of work zone ever. They ascend onto the roof with hastily made hand-sowned lead suits for 45 seconds at a time, because that's all your body can sort of take. You run up there with your shovel. You've got 45 seconds.

You're in a team of eight. You pick up one piece of graphite with a shovel. You go to the edge and you throw it off, and that's your job, 45 seconds. And then you die, so that's... Like where are they throwing it off to? Oh, they just don't want it on the roof anymore, so they put on the ground. so like, you know, bulldozers can clean it up. Why didn't anybody just get a leaf blower?

Well, I was looking at it, and I've watched video of them do it. They get up there with a tiny shovel. They do a tiny, it would have been much better if someone ran out with a bucket, someone came with a shovel, filled the bucket for 45 seconds, ran to the end, tossed the bucket off. I should have been doing this thing. Or a leaf blower. No wonder that person committed suicide.

Yeah, he was, um, felt a lot of pressure up because it was not handled very well. Graphite blower? Because I don't have a leaf blower quite blow the graphite. If they're tiny little bits Oh they're tiny little bits Turn it up to your maximum setting Okay Alright

Alright yeah okay You get heavy leaves sometimes You do too And I want to talk in an electric one We'll get one of those Diesel powered ones Oh diesel okay Maybe nuclear powered

Nuclear powered Oh now we're talking about Nuclear powered leaf blower To blow off the nuclear material Imagine if the blower Could harness the nuclear power It took three and a half thousand Of these bio robots

Two and a half weeks of shoveling around the clock And every interview I read or watched in documentaries the people that were exposed to radiation speak of having a metallic taste in their mouths. Have you ever had a metallic taste? Yeah, but not from radiation. You're not in a good place. I think the spoon might be radioactive. No wonder me, NutraGrains been tasting weird.

The problem is the spoon just was talking about was plastic. That's the real problem. Yeah, that's the real problem. I'm only allowed to eat with plastic cutlery. As a reward, each of these bio-robots for their very brave, efforts received a liquidated certificate from the army the fuck

and they all died and a 100 ruble bonus which is equivalent to 100 US dollars 100 bucks not very much for putting your life on the line and a fucking participation certificate and they probably all died later am I right or a lot of them did

fuck you keep your hundred roubles get fucked and also in hindsight yeah fuck your roubles that's my Matt Stewart impression Fuck off. Fuck your rubles, man. Fuck your rubles. Fuck your rubles. Overall, their effort reduced the level of radiation of the roof by 35%.

Great. So it worked quite a lot, but in hindsight, experts claim the level of radiation was unacceptable for any human being to ever work in. Oh. Over the next seven months, the reactor is completely covered in a big building, the sarcophagus, all up the building and clean up. So what they do is they build it off-site and with these thousands of pieces and then put it together on site because they can't be near it from. very long and if any piece, it's like a jigsaw is off, it'll fuck the whole thing, but incredible engineering makes it so it all works perfectly. Yeah, but they've made some good choices in the past, haven't they? So let's trust their engineering. Yeah, well, I definitely do not. All up the building and clean-up cost 18 billion rubles, but overall damage

caused by the Chernobyl disaster is estimated at some 235 billion US dollars. It's nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars. All because this guy wanted to get the test done in the middle of the night. What a dick. 400 times more radioactive materials released from Chernobyl than by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. 400 times. Due to radioactive

fallout, Belarus, which is next to the Ukraine and got a lot of the sort of smoke blown across it, lost one fifth of all agricultural lands. It's also led to contamination of around a quarter of Belarusian forests. A rehabilitation

of the areas is still ongoing. Since 1986, Belarus has spent $18 billion on this purpose. Annually, Belarus still spends 5% of their GDP on cleanup. 30 years later. Wow. Still 5%. Human damage of the accident was 2 million people who suffered from its consequences, with over 1.3 million people, including half a million of children and adolescents

who still live in contaminated areas. So still cleaning it up. Medical effects of the disaster saw a dramatic growth of cancer. thyroid cancer being the bulk of most cancer cases. But the USSR only ever acknowledged a certain amount of people died from Chernobyl disasters, and then other people have estimated that many more thousand. So they didn't really own it there, which is not really cool. So Chernobyl now, 30 years later, the 30-kilometer exclusion zone is still in place,

but 197 people are estimated to still live in the zone. living in the same. Yes, mostly older people that refused to leave. And for a while that was illegal, but now the Ukraine government accepts that they're allowed to live there. But it's very, very dangerous to live there. This absolutely blew my mind. The nuclear power plant itself, Chernobyl,

continued to be used for 15 years after the disaster. What? Because they had three other reactors. So people still would have to work and keep that going. For 15 years, it was only shut down in the year 2000. What? So that's just unbelievable. Wouldn't you just be like, no, this is,

Terrible, let's shut it all down. 15 years later. No, that doesn't make sense. I know. Why would you still work there? Yeah, so some people would go into work every day, yeah. And some people still work there every day because the original hastily built sarcophagus was had to build in a few months.

It was only designed to last for 30 years, which now it's been 30 years. In 2010, the construction of a new casing began. It's a giant art shape that covers the reactor and the old sarcophagus. Oh, my God. It's just going to get bigger and bigger. I imagine that it's just going to have to get bigger. Like, you'll have to be like... Because you can't knock down the old one, so you just build a new one.

Yeah, it's so strange, they can't do anything with it. Like, they have to just cover it up. Yeah, just cover it up. You can't get rid of it. You've just got to cover it up. In the future, it's hopes that technology will come along that sort of gets rid of radiation, but so far we don't know how to do that. Oh, my God.

Can you... So, like, can you... You can't go there, can you? You can go on tours. You can't go right up to the reactor. Is it sick that I'd be interested? You will be sick. Yeah, probably

No, I'd be very interested Especially the abandoned town As it was like the time capsule It would be real cool to see That'd be fascinating And very eerie I'm gonna, that'll be on YouTube right? Yeah, yeah, it's probably just YouTube

It's probably easier Yeah, I know, good call I mean, you're gonna be in Queensland So Same thing So while you're in Queensland Matt and I have a couple of weeks off We'll visit the Mongolian giant horse

We'll go to the Birkenwills cafe Megatrotsky Megatrotsky The name of the horse And we'll, of course, visit the town of Pripyat. Yeah. Guy, you guys have got a big couple of weeks coming out. Yeah, well, you know, you're off gallivanting, we might as well.

We're not just going to sit here and wait for you, Jess. Fair enough, I wouldn't ask you to. I wouldn't you live your life. It's very nice. I was going to sit here like a dog waiting for its owner. Oh, you do get very excited when you see me. I do. And I will be podcasting around the clock, so if you want to listen to that two-week-long podcast,

We'll release it on a separate channel coming up. Just of Dave being very hungry. Just me going, fuck, I'm bored. I really should have thought of that. I didn't bring a charger, either. My phone's dead. My phone's dead. Laptops dead.

Got a packet of nuts found. Just literally told me not to wait and to go home and live my life. But I'm here anyway. I'm just trying to become her favorite member of the podcast. Yeah, that won't happen. Don't try, mate. Don't even try. I'll give up.

I'll give up. Yeah, it's probably for the best, mate. The tomb that they're building over the old tomb is predicted to be completed by the end of next year, 2017. So people still have to work there, obviously. Everyone employed to build the tomb is monitored for radiation these days. So it's a safer place to work now. Yeah, sure.

What happens is every day you go into work and they scan your body and at the end of the day they scan your body and if you have met your radiation dose for that year, they can estimate how much you can have in a year without being affected, then you can't come to work again. Do they still pay you? I don't know. That'd be cool.

It'd be annoying if you got fired. Yeah, that's unfair. Yeah, that sounds horrible. But it also, if it's the other way around, then you just be like, oh, I'm just going to lean over into this radioactive corner of the room. So we can just get just enough. Just that tiny bit more. Not enough to kill me, but just enough to get some annual leg.

Rub it in your gums. That should do it. Oh, no, I've overdone it. Oh, no. My gums, oh, my teeth are falling out. No, not again. I'm still got to get to work tomorrow. Say not again because it happened when I was a baby.

I lost my baby teeth. But that was a different time. That was just a natural thing. That was not from radiation. Do you think that's weird that happens, that we lose our teeth? It's so creepy. When I think about it, it really freaks me out. It creeps me out.

Have you ever seen the skull, photo of a skull with the baby teeth and the adult teeth waiting? Oh, waiting to come down. Oh, yeah, gross, right? Not into it. Where do they come from? From? Ugh. Anyway.

Ugh. Oh, that's bad. They must just grow. Like, they're not always there, right? So they have to grow. Yeah. Don't they? This conversation is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

Like metallic? Metallic taste, that's right. I think I might be being poisoned by this microphone. I put a little on there. Your smug face is the best thing I've ever seen in my life. It's so good. My smug face, which is always there. Okay, your face.

The remains of Reactor No. 4 will remain radioactive for 1,000 years. You're kidding. People still like the idea of using nuclear power. I know it's a lot safer now, but I mean... This isn't the best poster boy for it. I've got a list of the places still having nuclear power. We'll talk about that at the end, maybe. It's likely that no further decontamination of work will take place until the gamma-ray dosage at the site

has reduced to background levels in about 300 years. Oh shit. But different rate of elements. Mega one. Mega one. Yeah, it's difficult to get a blanket rule on when it's going to be safe again because so many different chemicals were released. Some are safer after 30 years and some continue to be deadly in 300 years.

That's so fascinating though that at some point in 300 years time, people are going to have to be cleaning up a mess that we made in the 80s. I know. It's just crazy. There's nothing that we're still dealing with. That happened 300 years ago. Nothing I can think of. Do you know what I mean?

In like a chemical sort of way. Or like what else are we, what else? Still building like Grada familiar in Barcelona, the Gaudi design 150 years later. Yeah, the big cathedral. But that's obviously a lot more fun for people. Because they're building like a really cool building. They're not having to deal with like a terrible decision that someone made at 1 a.m. in the morning 30 years ago.

He fucked up big time. He fucked up. That's a big fuck-up. And I saw an interview before him with he, before he died, and he said he didn't take responsibility. He said, if it hadn't happened then, because of the bad safety there, it was inevitable. So don't blame me. You blame the power plant.

Maybe that's a point. But I think you've got to take a bit of responsibility, Matt. Come on. I guess you sort of have to, if you want to live on, and you'd have to have to have some answers for yourself, right? Otherwise... Otherwise, you couldn't live with yourself, could you? But yeah, he's full of shit.

He's believing his own bush. Bouch. So... Believing his own bouch. Yeah, and people still continue to face health stuff from it. People are dying young. People have conditions, digestive, circulatory, nervous respiratory, diseases, cancers, other stuff from that.

Kids are born with defects, stuff like this, all because it's really, it's really an awful situation. Kids are being born still. Yeah. With defects. 30 years later. What do you hell. Oh, because the parents got, as kids got contaminated and their junk was messed up.

And then a lot of kids like, yeah, this thyroid cancer is the one thing that a lot of people have. Interesting. Oh, and are they going to pass that on? So is this like, this is what I was asking for? Is there going to be like a mutant species? No, I think it's going to, I think it will. get better as it goes as time passes but like yeah it's just such an awful thing that people have to deal with there's no way you're saying there's no way possible that this is going to help

leap the evolution of man forward yeah no because then the what was the guy's name who's all in top then he'd be like yeah well yeah i did that i mean i know he's dead but oh yeah that guy could clam it it'd be like yeah well you're welcome well the only reason we built beat the machines was because i fucked up in the 80s yeah No worries. I remember to get t-shirts made and say, I fucked up in the 80s. Oh, who didn't?

If you didn't, you weren't there. You're probably... We were definitely not there. We were not there. We were born literally the first year of the 90s. Literally. Wow. 1990.

Bang on. We missed it. We missed all of the 80s. Missed the entire thing. And after reading about this, I'm happy about that. Me too. I really, really are.

Although leg warmers would have been pretty fun, but 90s had saved by the best. So, you know. Pretty cool. Pretty cool. When I wake up in the morning and I think I'm going to make it on. I also didn't know that sentence in the middle. Oh, no, I'm going to get the book in and a tunnel and they're kind of just to be in a time.

It's all right. Because I'm saved by the bill. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, fuck. I hate capricosa. Many people point to the disaster at Chernobyl is the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union

That was like one of the first times They had to be open with the world about stuff Because they had like big investigations And sort of a bit like You know how in North Korea stuff happens behind the scenes now And you don't hear about it Yeah but like at least something good came of it You know they worked on their communication skills

And they were open with the rest of the world It's like a relationship Slightly open with the world Yeah well it's better than nothing They still won't be like For like the first 15 years They were like yeah only 90 people died from it Like those people that died in the first day

Only 90 people. Only 90. But then other people like, oh, no, I think it's in thousands. And they're like, that's cool. Coincidence. Yeah, it's something else. Something else.

Probably bad, a lot of food poisoning at the local Taco Bill. You guys always blame us for everything, but you know what? Taco Bill has been well, well known to have radioactive tacos. Come on, guys. Cancer food.

Cancer food. I knew I shouldn't have got the cancer taco. Matt, you ordered it. But have we learned? And I will tell you, the answer is simply no. 57 accidents have occurred since the Chernobyl disaster at nuclear power plants. About 60% of all of them have occurred in the United States of America.

But Americans don't learn. The worst accident happened in Japan at the Fukushima Power Plant in 2011, which they're still dealing with. I will tell you that that and Chernobyl are the only nuclear disasters ever to register a 7 on the nuclear disaster scale. How high does that go? It only goes to 7. And some people estimated that if it went high,

Chernobyl would have been a 9. though. Oh shit. So 9-7, that's how bad it was. Jeez. Fukushima's got an exclusion of them as well, right? Yeah, and Japan have, uh, since they've shut down all their nuclear power plants. Yeah, you get rid of it. Well, 31 countries still have nuclear reactors, totaling 439 reactors worldwide. The USA have 100. France has 58. Japan's 48.

Russia still has 34. France isn't that big. Why do they have 58? There's a lot, isn't it? No, well, it's the majority of their power is nuclear. I went for a ride through France a couple of years ago, and I've never seen one live, but they look like the Simpsons, you know, the big cooling tower. It's crazy. The Simpsons got it right. Yeah.

But yeah, so many places have them. It's Spain, Germany, Sweden, Ukraine still has 15. Slavakia, Finland, Pakistan, Bulgaria, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Slovenia, Netherlands, Iran. So many places have. And just need one idiot. Oh, no. I mean, they've probably got better safety procedures now, but it's just, you know, human error. It's so, I don't know.

And they don't fix it soon enough. And it does just take out 300 kilometers. It's like, oh, my God. We don't have any? No, Australia is one of the, um, a few countries that have said actively, like, against them. Good. Yeah, so we are opposed. So is, New Zealand, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Denmark, Malta and Portugal.

Very good. But people still try and talk about. how great they are. I think because unlike fossil fuels, they don't affect CO2 levels as much. They're much safer in that respect. But after reading about this, oh, I don't know. It's a very, very, they're potentially dangerous.

I still just cannot believe that we aren't all just going gung-ho at renewable energy. Yeah. It just seems crazy. It's the keys in the title. Yeah. Renewable. Just go with the body. Oh.

Let's just go Just has got the renewable Play of an energy It just gets stuck into it It just feels like Everyone decided This is all we're going to do From now on

It would advance so much quicker And it's like It's just It's there, the sun It's already given us the Anyway I don't know enough About it to rant

Why don't you just do It feels Like that's an obvious thing I'm guessing There's a reason why It hasn't happened Sun, wind, water, fire, heart, go planet.

Now your parents combined. I am Captain Planet, Captain Planet. He's the hero. Gonna take nuclear pollution down to zero. Gonna help him put asunder. Bad guys who like to luke and plunder. Very good. You'll pay for this Captain Planet.

I put two nuclear things in there so we could keep that in. This is on brand for this week. You really don't have to, that's fine. I'm always happy to edit out the... Songs? You don't like sing songs? I enjoy it. I like Jess singing.

Well, I'm sorry, that is the story. I'm sorry if that was a depressing story. It's not very upbeat or... It was no DB. No DB, but it's still, I feel like I knew very little about that. And I'm very happy that I know more about it. Yeah, I really knew nothing about it, apart from it was a big bloody disaster.

And some people say that, oh, it's 30 years on now, people are starting to forget how bad it was. Because obviously, Jess and I, and Matt, you were so young that at the time, you don't realize how bad the disaster is. Yeah, you've heard of it, but you've got no idea. Yeah, you're like, oh, yeah, but they fixed it. It's all good. It's all good now.

So good on you for spreading the word through our widely received podcast. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We'll be up. Back next week with possibly a more upbeat topic from you, Matt Stewart. Oh, me. We'd be going into the hat for yours?

Yeah, always into the hat for me. There are a few disasters in the hat now, but I'll... Maybe we'll take a week off from disaster. No, I think... As long as the story is interesting, I like learning. To me, it's the hat rules, so whatever the hat gives me, I respect it. Okay, okay. The hat knows what the people need.

The hat wants what it wants. That hat wants one or once. That's what I say. If you want to get into that hat, you can tweet us at DoGoOnPod. Email us, do go on pod at gmail.com. It's always good to hear from you guys. But yeah, until next week, stay out of trouble. And go say hi to Jess in Queensland.

Do a road trip. Yeah, come visit me at Queensland. Matt and I'll be in Mongolia, the giant house. Send me pictures, please. All right. Okay. We'll do one of those ones where we're here. standing in front of it making it look quite a way pattern on the head.

Classic. Classic. Classic horse play. So good. So good. All right. Thanks everyone. Bye. Bye.

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