 Can you believe, Plainly Difficult has been running for 4 years. In accordance with Plainly Difficult tradition, this video is an omnivorous of all the videos from the past year. So sit back, relax and enjoy a couple of hours or so of me talking about monumental disasters. Thank you so much for your support, I really appreciate all of you over the years for making the channel what it is today. There's some really exciting subjects due to come over the next year so stay tuned. On 28th March 1979, James Callaghan loses a vote of no confidence by one MP in Westminster laying the path for a facture government and in London Dairy Township, Pennsylvania, a reactor calling malfunction would cause the USA's most significant commercial reactor incident. As you may know, I've covered three of the four international nuclear event scale level five incidents on this channel and today you complete the set as we will look at the Three Mile Island incident. If you want to know more about the I-N-E-S then you can click here for a video I did about it. Don't worry, I'll wait for you. The accident would lead to cleanup efforts running well into the early 90s costing around $1 billion dollars. The incident, although not directly the cause, saw the end of the historic growth of the atomic energy industry in the USA and it was spur on a growing anti-nuclear movement. In a bizarre coincidence the event would take place only a number of days after the release of the film The China Syndrome which was based around a nuclear reactor accident. The Three Mile Island nuclear generating station or TMI for short up until just a few weeks ago at the time of writing this script was a nuclear power station based in Pennsylvania on a sandbar next to the Susakuhano River which is here on a map being just three miles downstream from Middleton Pennsylvania with a population of around 9,000. It was decided that a nuclear power station would be beneficial to the region being close to Harrisburg, York and Lancaster. Metropolitan Edison owned by general public utilities began construction of TMI-1 on the 18th of May 1968. A pressurized water reactor designed by Babcock and Wilcox with a net generating capacity of 819 megawatts going online in 1974. The reactor was built with a cost of around 400 million which is equal to around two billion in today's money. TMI-1 would have a relatively trouble free career up until 2019. Apart from a couple of incidents one of which was a radiation release into the reactor containment building with 20 workers being treated for mild radiation exposure. Another incident involved someone driving into the site eventually being apprehended in the turbine building which sounds like a great subject for a future video however this video isn't really about TMI-1 and instead the ill-fated TMI-2. Construction began on TMI-2 on the 1st of November 1969. Unit 2 was similar in design to the original reactor however it boasted an increased output of 906 megawatts. Construction was delayed due to running over budget at 700 million in 1978 money. Due to delays the reactor wasn't brought online until the 30th of December 1978. The combined power generating capacity of both TMI-1 and TMI-2 was around 1700 megawatts or enough to electrically supply 300,000 homes. The reactor was a PWR type like TMI-1 however just four months after commissioning disaster would strike. But before we get into that let's look at how the reactor at TMI-2 worked. Now I'm a fan of an IEA report. Most of my commute is spent reading either one of those or an RAIB report. I know I live an exciting life so because of my not at all boring reading habits needs to say much of this video is based on the IEA report but a three mile island incident. Right so TMI-2 reactor was of a pressurized water type and it produced steam from heat created from fission to drive a turbine to generate electricity to be distributed to the public. The reactor used uranium oxide as its fuel source inserted into the reactor core via fuel rods and the reactor also had control rods with a scram facility. TMI-2 used three cooling circuits. The first or primary circuit circulated water through the core acting as a moderator by letting neutrons undergo multiple collisions with the light hydrogen atoms in the water. The water used in the PWR is simply ordinary water but does not contain large amounts of deutrion making it distinct from heavy water used in reactors like the NRX in Canada. The primary circuit picks up heat from fission and carries it out of the core to two steam generators. Inside the 30 feet tall generators is many small diameter tubes of which primary water flows. The heat from the primary water inside the tubes is used to boil the secondary circuit of water inside the generators creating steam being sent to the turbines. After being used to turn the turbine blades the steam from the secondary circuit is condensed in a condenser called by another water circuit using the site's iconic cooling towers for use again. All the water circuits are kept separate to stop any radioactive cross-contamination meaning the primary circuit is the only one to have direct contact with the reactor core. Also to prevent the primary circuit from boiling the water is kept at a high pressure of around 2200 psi. Connected to the primary circuit are pressurizers filled about halfway full of water with a steam cushion on top. The pressure in the system can be controlled by either heating up the electric heaters or cooling down with a water spray on the pressurizers. This ability to change the pressure can be done either by the control system or the plant operators. To prevent overpressuring the pressurizer a pilot relief valve is provided. If this valve is open to relieve pressure steam and or water flows into a drain tank. To prevent the tank from overfilling a rupture disc is provided. The redundancy an extra valve is provided in case the relief valve becomes stuck. This extra valve is called the block valve. Several hours leading up to the accident the operators were attempting to fix a blockage in a secondary cooling system. The system uses eight condensate polishes to filter out any minerals from the water. Any impurities in the water loop can cause premature damage to the steam generators much like the rubbish you find in your kettle. It's not uncommon for the resin from the filters to cause blockages in the system and are usually cleared by compressed air. However this time the simple fix was providing more of a challenge. Compressed air was used to instead blow water through the system to try and clear it up and in doing so pushing water past an open check valve into an instrument airline. This would cause a vital piece of equipment to trip out. Right let's get on to the accident. On the 28th of March at around 4am TMI2 was operating at 97% whilst TMI1 was shut down for refuelling. A secondary cooling system condensate pump tripped out causing it to stop working. Lacking a water supply to the two feed pumps also tripped out. Due to the pumps on the secondary cooling system being shut down a safety circuit automatically shut down the turbine generators. Free auxiliary feed water pumps started up as designed. These pumps should have been enough to start the turbine generators. However a valve downstream had been left closed by an earlier test operation. Due to the auxiliary pumps not being able to pump water the steam generators were unable to remove enough heat from the primary cooling circuit. Due to a lack of heat reduction from the secondary cooling system the temperature in the primary system increased and subsequently expanded in volume. The expansion led to the pressuriser beginning to fill up, compressing the steam cushion inside leading to a higher pressure in the primary system. Four seconds after initial tripping of the condensate pump the pressure in the pressuriser had reached such a level that the pilot relief valve opened as it was designed to do. The pressure continued to increase leading to at around 9 seconds after the initial pump trip the control rods being inserted into the reactor shutting down the chain reaction. The shutdown caused the pressure in the primary system to decrease. Operators were expecting this to happen and in accordance with the rules and procedures turned on the high pressure injection system. With the reactor shut down and the relief valve open the pressure continued to drop off, so far so normal. However at a certain point once the pressure was sufficiently low enough the valve should have closed stabilising the pressure. On this occasion however the valve stuck open causing more and more pressure to be lost in the system as steam and water escaped through the stuck open valve. With not enough pressure in the primary system steam started to generate inside the reactor core which it was not designed to accommodate and in turn started to fill the pressuriser with water. Thinking that the system was filling with water and in accordance with their rules and procedures the operators switched off the pressure injection system as an attempt to prevent the overflow of water. However pressure continued to rise inside the system due to the steam build up inside the reactor core. With the pressuriser filling with water and pockets of steam forming inside the reactor core cooling channels the heat increased the fuel cladding temperature. The operators had a confusing event unfolding in front of them, something that they hadn't trained for, rising water level in the pressuriser and a decreasing primary system pressure. This was due to the lack of proper instrumentation inside the control room. The control room had some confusing design quirks one of which being the indicator light for the pilot operated valve. The one stuck open allowing coolant to escape. A light was provided to signify the status of the relief valve. Light on means open, light off means closed. Well that wasn't the case. The operators weren't aware that the light only signifies the state of the electronic solenoid as the bulb was wired to the circuit. When the valve was working correctly the light bulb would give an indication as lack of power to the solenoid reverting the valve to a closed state and the operators had been conditioned to think light off valve closed. Per this morning the valve had a mechanical issue meaning it was stuck open but power had been cut to the solenoid extinguishing the indicator bulb giving an assumed closed valve state to the operators. Whilst the confusion in the control room continued water had begun to fill up the drain tank eventually causing the ruptures to burst. Water and steam from the reactor was now being ejected into the reactor building. Unknown of this the operators continued to try and manage the rising water level in the pressuriser. At around 80 minutes into the incident the primary loops for pumps began to cavitate from the water and steam mixture. To try and counteract this the pumps were shut off. It was thought that the water would continue flowing through the core from natural circulation. However the steam build up in the core prevented this and in turn caused the trap water to boil itself creating more steam. With the pumps running there was just enough water pooling for the core. However without this forced flow of water there was nothing stopping the fuel from being damaged by overheating. The operators tried several different procedures to try and get a hold of the situation. However the stuck valve was still not discovered. The fuel and the steam filled regions of the core boiled dry heating to temperatures high enough to create a chemical reaction or deserve calorie cladding and the steam producing as a byproduct hydrogen which we will look at later. The failing cladding allowed uranium dioxide efficient product to escape and after mixing with hydrogen water and steam were expelled into reactor building via the stuck valve and broken rupture disc. At 6am a shift change over was undertaken. An operator just starting noticed excessive heat in the pilot operated valve and holding tanks and operated the backup block valve. Two and a half hours after the initial condensate pump trip the faulty pilot valve had been bypassed. By this time around 120,000 litres of coolant from the primary loop had escaped. However the discovery of this faulty valve did not end the incident. At 6.57am a site area emergency was called after contaminated water was recorded at 300 times the expected level. Contaminated water managed to escape the reactor containment building by flowing into the sump and was pumped into a waste storage tank in the auxiliary building which then overflowed onto the floor and the heating and ventilation system managed to vent radioactive gases into the atmosphere. However initially this was at a low rate as more water flowed into the auxiliary building the radioactivity rate increased. At 7.24am manager Gary Miller announced a general emergency. Plant owner Metropolitan Edison informed the Pennsylvania State Emergency Management Agency about the situation who then informed state and local authorities. During the next hour and a quarter radioactivity levels on the site varied from 3 to 9 milli-rems per hour. Radiation monitors off-site at the time of the declaration of the general emergency were only showing less than 1 milli-rems per hour. However as time went on this number would rise. Metropolitan Edison made multiple contradictory statements about radioactivity released to the government authorities. As staff at TMI2 were still in a state of confusion whilst they struggled to manage stable cooling for the reactor core. Throughout the morning the operators tried to force water into the core to condense the steam that had built up. However the attempts failed. It was then attempted to establish heat removal by pressurizing the primary cooling system however again this didn't achieve the desired effect. Over the next few hours the operators attempt to pressurize the system to allow flooding. In doing so some hydrogen was vented however the pressure in the reactor vessel remained too high. During this period of around two hours no effective method was in place for heat removal and the core reached temperatures of up to 2500 Fahrenheit. By 7pm a sustained effort to repressurize the coolant yielded some results. Force cooling was restored when one pump was able to operate. Which in turn allowed heat removal via a steam generator. Heat in the core began to fall however a large part had melted and was seriously radioactive. There was another worry on the horizon in the form of a potential explosion. To try and relieve the pressure the block valve was open periodically releasing hydrogen from the system to the reactor containment building. Eventually enough hydrogen was present to support ignition. Instruments within the reactor building recorded a dramatic increase of pressure at 25psi hinting of a hydrogen burn. Luckily this was well within the reactor building's capacity. After the core had been uncovered during the events of the morning of the 28th hydrogen had been produced and was discovered in the form of a bubble in the reactor vessel leading to fears of a hydrogen explosion from the NRC. Unlike the burn in the building the explosion inside the reactor vessel could be devastating releasing radiation into the atmosphere. These fears did not come to fruition as there was not enough oxygen present inside the vessel to support combustion. The operators managed to dissipate the hydrogen via the pumping of coolant water over the next few days. 28 hours after the initial turbine trip William Scranton the third lieutenant governor announced at a news briefing that the owners of the Three Mile Island had assured him that everything is under control. Unsurprisingly low later this statement was changed to the situation is more complex than the company first led us to believe. As precaution the schools were closed and residents were advised to stay indoors. On the advice from the NRC Pennsylvania Governor Dick Formbra advised voluntary evacuation of all pregnant women and children under the age of five within five miles of the plant. By Friday the 30th the area was extended to 20 miles. In total around 140,000 people had evacuated however most would return within three weeks. Within three weeks of the accident heat within the reactor core had decayed enough to allow coolant pumps to be switched off allowing coolant to be carried by natural circulation. Eventually the reactor would be powered down to 0.2 megawatts or 0.007 of its rated power. During the course of the accident 93 peta becquelles of radioactive noble gases and 560 giga becquelles of radiodine were released averaging around one millirem per resident living near the plant. In comparison a chest x-ray yields 3.2 millirems around twice that of the three mile island. In total 480 peta becquelles of radioactive noble gases were released into the atmosphere however most of these gases had a relatively short half-life. The TMI-2 was beyond repair and whilst investigations were undertaken TMI-1 remained out of service. Cleanup efforts started in August and oh boy there was a big job ahead involving around 1000 workers. The nearly brand new TMI-2 containment building was unsafe to walk in. All the contaminated water that had spilled in both the reactor and auxiliary rooms had to be cleaned up. However it wasn't until July 1980 that the first man entry into the reactor building took place. Some of this water had seeped into the building's concrete making it almost impossible to remove. All surfaces had to be decontaminated before any major defuelling work could be carried out. In the first months low-level contaminated items were sent to Richland Washington and works to completely sever unit 2 from unit 1 began. In July 1984 the reactor head was removed to prepare for fuel removal and for investigation into the actual state of the core. It wasn't until 1985 that the first fuel began to be removed and throughout the reactor core had to be kept underwater. Workers used long handled tools to remove fuel by lifting it into canisters. All of this was done from a platform above the reactor. 343 canisters full of fuel was removed by the end of the cleanup works and was shipped off to Idaho National Laboratory. Eventually all the fuel was dry stored inside concrete containers. In total 100 tonnes was removed from the reactor leaving 1% of fuel and debris inside the vessel. Talking about the water the cleanup efforts yielded over 10.6 mega litres of contaminated water which was treated and safely evaporated. In 1990 the main phase of the cleanup had been completed when the last of the radioactive waste was shipped off to Idaho and in 1991 the last of the contaminated water was pumped from the reactor. Finally in 1993 the cleanup had officially ended and the contaminated concrete in TMI2's building was left for when TMI1 was decommissioned. TMI1 would not restart until October 1985 and would go on to have a safe and successful career. In 1997 TMI1 completed the longest operating run of any light water reactor in nuclear history. 616 days and 23 hours. In all TMI1 became one of the most successful power reactors in terms of safety and reliability being shut down in September 2019 after generating 240 billion kilowatt hours in its 40 year career. In the six years it was shut down modifications were made to the reactor and procedures incorporating lessons learned from the TMI2 accident. We see this quite nicely into the investigation. In April 1979 President Jimmy Carter commissioned an investigation into the accident at TMI2 consisting of a panel of 12 people picked for their neutral stance on nuclear energy headed by John G. Kemeny the president of Dartmouth College. The completed study was released in October 1978 after six months of hearing depositions and document analysis. The commission didn't put blame for the accident solely at the door of operator error instead the finger was pointed at the training and rules and procedures in place for the operators. Criticism was laid on BNW, NRC and MET ED for poor maintenance, poor quality assurances, lack of operator training, failure to communicate vital safety notices and inadequate management. Littlefort was given to the human machine interface during the design of the control rooms at Three Mile Island. As within minutes of the turbine trip over a hundred alarms were sounded leading to operator overload. Many of these alarms were unimportant however no way of suppressing them was provided to the operators leading to unnecessary confusion. The report stated that an accident such as the one at TMI2 was inevitable due to the design of the control room leading up to misinterpretation of indications given by equipment. It was found that the particular failed valve had succumbed to similar issues on 11 previous occasions. Insanely, an almost identical incident unfolded around 18 months before at Davis-Bessie nuclear power station. However luckily the stuck valve was identified after 20 minutes instead of the TMI2's 80 minutes. BNW had failed to notify its customers on the potentially deadly fault. This with the poor interface in the control room and poor training of operators meant that an accident like this was inevitable. Due to the president's commission being released only six months after the accident proper evaluation to the damage of the core couldn't be included. This would come after the opening of the core vessel in 1984. Investigations into the core including inserting of a television camera in 1985 revealed at least 45% or 62 tons of the core had melted and 19 tons had made its way into the lower part of the reactor vessel without any serious damage to the vessel itself. Most of the melted core material remained inside the core region and after samples were taken in 1988 it was confirmed that the damage was not as bad as had originally been thought. Although the Three Mile Island accident didn't kill anyone directly it did become one of the nails in the coffin of the US nuclear energy boom and post accident reactor owner Metropolitan Edison had a few fines and compensation bills to pay with a $25 million class action settlement and an estimated $82 million paid out for loss of business revenue evacuation expenses and health claims. After TMI 2 many BNW reactors were cancelled with 51 reactor projects of varying manufacture being cancelled between 1980 and 1984. Much of the cancellations were due to increased construction costs and more stringent safety guidelines however 1986 was more of a blow with a somewhat well-known nuclear accident but the Three Mile Island at least for the USA was the fuel needed to keep the anti-nuclear lobby going with the largest demonstration in NYC's Madison Square Gardens in September 1979 having a turnout of around 200,000 people. The accident although gone down in the annals of history in infamy did see a change in working practices which improved the safety and reliability of world nuclear power as a whole as seen with the successful career of TMI 1. However as that reactor begins to be decommissioned the public will probably forget the safe production of power it created in its 40 year life in lieu of its more radioactive sibling but hey disaster is always more interesting than success hence why you have probably watched this video. Thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed the video did you know I've got a Teespring store check it out if you fancy some plainly difficult merch if you want to support the channel financially I have a Patreon and you can get early access to videos from just $1 per creation and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. The atomic industry puts a great deal of focus on the safety of nuclear reactors as is on the disposal of waste products from fission and on the whole this focus has created a safe clean source of energy however one part of the fuel cycle was much less regulated and this is the processing of fuel this is due to a lower potential for widespread harm because of this many countries historically have not been as far in the laws and checks required for such an operation and Japan was one of those countries in 1999 Japan's largest civil nuclear industrial accident took place at a fuel reprocessing plant in Tokaimura and it would hold the honor until 2011. Toka village is located 120 kilometers northeast of Tokyo about here on the map the village had become a center for the Japanese nuclear industry since 1956 with the opening of the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. There are several nuclear related sites in Tokaimura for example the Japan Atomic Power Company nuclear power plant, the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute establishment and a fuel reprocessing plant owned by JCO. The Japan Nuclear Fuel Conversion Company or JCO was a wholly owned subsidiary of Shumitou Metal Mining Company Limited and ran three reprocessing plants on the site at Tokaimura. Within 10 kilometers was a population of around 310,000 inhabitants with 150 residents living within 350 meters. In June 1984 permission for a change in the JCO licensing conditions to encompass a new conversion building was given by the Prime Minister after review by the Japanese Science Agency. In total the JCO operated three conversion buildings on the site at Tokaimura. The conversion building was on the western side of the site near its boundary with the municipalities of Tokaimura and Nakamashi. The building was commissioned in 1988 and had an annual capacity of around three tons of uranium-235 with an enrichment of up to 20%. This level of enrichment was much higher than needed for regular reactors but instead supplied various research and specialist reactors, one such being the Joyo Fast Research Reactor. The JCO plant had a particular approved method of fuel preparation. This involved dissolving uranium oxide powder into nitric acid in a tank and then transferred as pure-renal nitrate solution to a storage column for mixing, followed by transferred to a pre-separation tank. This tank was surrounded by a water cooling jacket to remove excess heat generated by the chemical reaction. The facility was not operated constantly but instead as and when needed for short production runs of less than 200 kilograms. The licensing conditions limiting the volume and mass of the facility production helped reduce the risk of criticality incidents, as well as the process itself. A key part of the design of the process was in the storage tank with a criticality safe layout, which allowed control of the amount transferred to the precipitation tank, due to the type of facility Japanese legal requirements didn't have a need for periodic inspections and obviously this would turn out to be a big mistake as corners would get cut. The allowed working procedures was modified in 1996 without the permission from the regulating authorities. Instead of dissolving uranium oxide in nitric acid inside a dissolution tank, stainless steel buckets were used. Further steel, the procedure was modified by the operators to speed up the process by pouring the solution directly into the precipitation tank, completely cutting out the mixing column and its criticality controls. A mechanical stirrer was used in the precipitation tank to mix up the solution. This also meant that there weren't proper controls for the amount tipped into the 100-litre precipitation tank. The tank's dimensions of 45 x 61 cm increased the chance of criticality. Also as a cherry on the glowing cake of screw-ups, the IAEA would later find that management provisions for the prevention of accidents showed no clear and specific qualification and training to have been established. This leads us on to the accident. On the 30th of September 1999, three staff members at a JCO facility had been preparing fuel for the Geofarcery actor and had been working to the modified unregulated process. Previously, when the new method had been devised, the fuel being prepared was at a level of around 5% enrichment, much lower than the 18.8% they were working on this time. None of the facility really understood the increased chance of criticality, clearly as they wouldn't have done what they had. The day before, around 26 litres of solution had been poured into the precipitation tank in four batches. And on the morning of the 30th, the workers carried on as they had before. By 10.30am, another three batches had been prepared and poured into the tank, resulting in about 40 litres residing inside, the equivalent of around 16kg of uranium. This was what was needed to create a critical mass. The nuclear fission chain reaction became self-sustaining and began to emit intense gamma and neutron radiation, triggering a number of alarms. The criticality incident didn't create an explosion. However, fission products were released into the building. The three workers evacuated and were treated on site by an emergency service worker, and the rest of the site workers gathered at the mustard zone. At around 11.40pm, a maximum gamma radiation was measured as 0.85mh in an area around the facility. And at 5pm, the maximum neutron dose rates at the site boundaries were measured to be around 4mh. Due to it being a wet process, the water in the solution acted as a moderator prolonging the reaction. For the next 20 or so hours, criticality continued intermittently, with monitors outside the building gradually recording levels down to background radiation. The reason why it lasted so long was due to the solution boiling, creating voids, halting the criticality. But as soon as it cooled down, the voids disappeared, starting up the reaction again. The reaction was stopped once coolant water was drained away as it was acting as a neutron reflector, enhancing fission. It took the opening of valves and the cutting of a pipe to get rid of some of the coolant water. However, argon gas was pumped through the system to get out as much as possible. At the same time as the water removal, efforts were taking place to repair for injection of aqueous boric acid into the precipitation tank, so it would remain subcritical. At 8.19pm on the 1st of October, the boric acid solution was pumped in, completed at 8.39am. At 09.18pm, after an inspection, criticality was confirmed over. During the initial response and boron injection, 27 workers were exposed to varying levels of radiation, after criticality had ceased, focus shifted to shielding the surrounding area from gamma radiation. On the 2nd of October, sandbags were placed around the facility and concrete walls were erected in other parts of the site. Due to no explosion, fission materials were not ejected from the room, and even more importantly, the building hadn't been compromised structurally. This meant that the facility's exhaust filtration system was still intact, and thus limiting contaminated particles from leaving the containment building. However, some noble gases did escape. Conversion facilities such as this one are kept under negative pressure, meaning that air leaks into the building rather than escape out. And it was found by workers pumping in the boric solution that the system was intact. It was confirmed with a smoke test on 5th October. It was later decided to stop the exhaust system and instead rely on the passive confinement of the facility building. Five hours after the initial incident, 161 people had been evacuated who lived in around 39 properties within a 350m radius of the JCO facility. However, these people were allowed to return after the installation of the shielding, and residents within 10km of the site were asked to stay indoors. However, the restriction was lifted the next afternoon. The three workers present at the time of the accident, Hisashi Auchi, Yutaka Yokokawa and Misato Shinohara were transferred to hospital, two of which were in a serious condition. Each worker received a full body dose of radiation, the worst of which receiving between 16,000 and 20,000mcv. A fatal dose is considered around 8,000. The second worker received between 6,000 to 10,000mcv, and the final worker received between 1,000 and 5,000mcv. His lower dose was due to being behind a desk, doing paperwork at the start of the incident. 24 more workers received a dose of up to 48mcv. It was also estimated that one member of the public received a dose of 24mcv, with several others receiving 15 or less. For the worse of the exposed workers, Hisashi the prognosis was not looking good, having drifted in and out of consciousness before getting to the hospital. Tests on Auchi's vomit showed signs of isotope sodium-24, confirming that he received a dose of neutron radiation. In October, he was transferred to the University Hospital Tokyo, where he received a blood stem cell transplant. However, on the 21st of December, he died after intensive treatment, including multiple blood transfers and skin grafts. I won't show them here, but the photos of Hisashi post-accident are absolutely harrowing. The second worker, Misato Shinohara, was not in the best shape, with radiation damage to his lungs, causing him to contract pneumonia. In the incident's IAEA report, it was stated that his prognosis was unknown. However, Shinohara sadly passed away on the 27th of April, 2000, due to multiple organ failure. The third worker, Yutaka Yokokawa, survived after six months of intensive hospital care. Examinations of activation materials in items such as coins in the immediate area near the facility showed that during the incident around 100 millisieverts of radiation would have been exposed to nearby residents, if it wasn't for the swift evacuation. It was estimated that around 160 terebecuels of noble gases and two terebecuels of gaseous iodine were released from the criticality incident. However, it was thought that not much had escaped the building. By October, IAEA measurements of the residential area around the facility showed levels on par with the expected natural background rate. Measurements of iodine 131 in the soil showed to be no problem for the levels allowed for food. The Japanese authorities classed the incident as a level 4 on the INES scale, essentially saying it was an event with no offsite significant risk. The IAEA report pegged the blame for the incident on operator error, which it essentially is. However, the lack of knowledge by the workers and shortcuts to the process were also important factors. The event had an economic impact on the area, affecting house prices and the cost of local produce. The accident was a wake-up call for the Japanese nuclear industry, with six JCO employees including Yokokawa, charged with negligence, resulting in death. All six pled guilty. The charges were issued due to the dangerous corner cutting in the licensed process for the creation of the solution. The JCO received 6,875 cases for compensation and paid out $121 million on 30 September 2000. The Japanese government created new laws and institutional changes to try and prevent such an accident from happening again, for example regular visits and more stringent checks on facilities, as well as giving the Prime Minister more power in calling a general emergency. The license for the facility was revoked by the regulator and in 2003 the JCO facility ceased uranium conversion activities. Moving forward, most reprocessing facilities are now automated and many used dry processes essentially ruling out the type of accident that took the lives of two workers in September 1999. Thank you for watching. What do you think should have the six JCO employees been charged? Let me know in the comments below. If you want to support me financially, I have a merch store and a Patreon page. If you want to help the channel money free, then like, subscribe and share my videos. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Thank you to my patrons for voting for this subject. If you'd like to vote on future subjects as well as get early access to videos, then check out my Patreon where you can support the channel from as little as just $1 per creation. Oh boy, this disaster is a horror show. Slightly different from my usual atomic related content, but the aftermath of Bhopal gives any nuclear accident a run for its money. Okay, let's go through some background information first. Bhopal is a city of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, which is about here on a map. The city's population had grown rapidly between the 1950s and 1980s from around 60,000 to 800,000. India's 16th largest city is situated 500 meters above sea level, and the area is famous for its surrounding hills, fields and forests. In 1984, the city's municipality covered 285 square kilometers, and due to its location in central India had become a major communications and transport hub. The old town of Bhopal consisted of tight twisting roads, markets, mosques and the railway junction, mainly inhabited by poorer families. The houses in the area were of two types. Kutcha houses had no doors or windows, and the more permanent Pukka houses. Moving south of the old town is the more affluent part of the city, with more modern housing and larger avenues. To the north of the old town is situated the Union Carbide Indian Limited Plant, surrounded by working class densely populated slums. The plant was built in 1969 for the purposes of making pesticides derived from concentrates from the US. In 1977, a production plant to make Sevinn was established. Sevinn was Union Carbide's marketing name for carabide or pesticide, created by the company in 1958. The chemical proved to be very popular for the company, as by 1976, over 11 million kilotons were used per year in American agriculture. Up until 1979, the plant had used imported methyl isocyanate, also known as MIC. However, it was decided that the Bhopal plant would benefit from being able to create its own MIC. The government of India granted the company a license to produce 5,000 tons of Sevinn per year, way above the predicted annual sales forecast of around 2,000 tons. However, management in New York sought to boost sales with a higher output, and went ahead with a plant boasting capacity close to its licensing restriction rather than actual demand. The increased output of pesticides from the plant did nothing to boost sales, in fact, sales reduced, mainly due to local droughts and poor performance of the chemical in the field. By 1982, sales were under half the plant's capacity, and by 1984 sales had dropped to a fifth. Because of its Union Carbide set out to make savings, the only way a big corporation knows how, by cutting back on staff. The barely broken in MIC plant, which was oversized for demand, struggled to make any kind of profit. The staff cutbacks increased, eventually laying off highly skilled workers. It was also around 1982 that the culture of the plant changed, as a safety first and expensive to employ American engineer in charge was replaced with a USA educated Indian national engineer, who is much more company focused. The new plant manager was tasked with saving Union Carbide as much money as possible, and was answerable to a financial controller. Union Carbide was looking into every avenue to rid themselves of the plant. One idea was to dismantle the whole operation and send it to South America. However, this was quickly abandoned as the plant showed signs of corrosion at several points. The story only gets worse, as throughout 1983, pressure was increased to make cuts. And since as much staff as possible had been laid off, the next thing to target was unsurprisingly maintenance. Stainless steel parts were replaced with cheaper regular steel and safety check intervals were doubled. Instruments as they failed weren't replaced. The company was really sweating the assets to beyond what would be considered safe. As we saw with Tokaimura, major changes to processes were brought in and modifications to methods led to a more hazardous working environment. Desire to buy this point was guaranteed. Before we get onto that, let's have a quick look at the process used in the plant for the manufacturer of Seven. Seven Manufacturer is a fairly cheap process and involves direct reaction of MIC with one NAPFOL. MIC was manufactured at Bulpal by reacting Methlamine and Phosgene. Both chemicals are colourless gases and the resultant MIC was then used to make Seven. The MIC needed to be stored after its manufacturer at the MIC plant on site. Three underground 68,000 litre tanks numbered E610, E611 and E619 were provided. In normal operation, two of the three tanks were used to store MIC of good quality, and the final tank was used to store rejected products for reprocessing later. Each tank had a diameter of 240cm and a length of 1200cm. From the plant to the tanks runs a common stainless steel line which branches off to each individual tank. Discharges from safety relief valves from each individual tank is taken to a common relief vent valve header. The RVVH was used to vent excess toxic gases to a vent gas scrubber. A rupture disc was provided at the end of the RVVH line to break at 40psi. Once broken, the gases would make their way to the scrubber. The MIC was stored under pressure from high purity nitrogen gas. This was provided by a common header made of steel. Nitrogen was needed to prevent MIC from being exposed to moisture. Excess nitrogen was taken to a common process vent header, PVH, made of steel and also sent to the vent gas scrubber. The reason why MIC couldn't be exposed to moisture was because of the risk of an exothermic reaction. Once the scrubber had processed the gases, it was sent to a flare tower for burning. Up until 1984, the RVVH and PVH were kept separate. However, it was decided in May by management that a connection between the two would help in the case of either valve being out of operation or maintenance. A jumper line between the two was used. Bizarrely but unsurprisingly, safety audits of union carbide plants in the US and Europe were undertaken yearly. However, elsewhere in the world, only received one every two years. In May 1982, one such of these audits was undertaken at Bulpal and the results were a worrying sign of things to come. Work and performance was below that of their American counterparts, mainly due to a high turnover of untrained staff and 10 major concerns were highlighted. It was also found that safety equipment, alarms and instruments were poorly maintained and not regularly tested. An action plan was written but never followed up. Mid 1984, after a visit to Bulpal, a senior engineer reported to UCC that what he had saw at the plant was worrying. However, again, unsurprisingly, this was not followed up. Bulpal's design was based on US plants, one such situated in Virginia. In September 1984, an internal UCC report highlighted a risk of a runaway reaction in the MIC storage tanks due to a number of defects. Moreover, response plans were not effective enough to prevent a catastrophic failure. Surprise surprise, the report was never forwarded to Bulpal. By 1984, multiple safety systems had either failed or were not in use, including the Vengas scrubber. Pipelines and parts of the storage tanks were corroded to a dangerous degree. On the 3rd of December, tank 610 contained around 42 tons of MIC. Bearing in mind that the tanks were meant to be kept under pressure, the unmaintained meters showed abnormally low PSI levels. Several days before, attempts were made to try and pressurize tank 610 to allow the transfer of MIC to the 7th plant. However, these failed. At 8.30pm on the 2nd of December, operators began to clean pipelines by inserting a hose into the system. During this operation, a slip line to stop water from getting into the tank was not used. Some water managed to make its way into tank 610, and at around 10pm an exothermic reaction began. The reaction was exasperated by contamination in the poorly maintained pipework. After a shift change, the pressure in the tank was recorded at 10.30pm at 2 psi. However, no temperature was recorded. The pressure over the next hour gradually rose to 10 psi. However, this increase was put down to a malfunctioning gauge. This assumption would be wrong, however, as the increase in pressure was hinting at something much more deadly. At 11.30pm, several workers near the Vengas scrubbers started to feel the first effects of exposure of MIC via irritation to their eyes. Workers began to search the structure for a leak. MIC and water were found coming out of a branch of the RVVH, where the safety valve had been removed and the open pipe had been blocked off. The leak was reported around midnight and bizarrely the supervisor decided that the operators should spray water at the tank and that no further action should be taken until after a tea break. Other workers were ordered to look for any other leaks during the break. Not long after the tea break, at around 12.30pm in the morning, the reaction in tank E610 reached a critical state, pushing pressure to 40 psi causing a noticeable rumbling from within. Concrete started to crack around the tank's emergency relief valve as it began to fail. Pressure indicator of the tank in the control room was now showing a reading off the scale at 55 psi at 25 degree centigrade. An alarm was sounded to alert the rest of the plant to a leak. Over the next 10 to 20 minutes, the alarm was suppressed. At around 1am, water was sprayed onto the Vengas scrubber structure to try and reduce the amount of gases being vented to atmosphere. However, lack of water pressure meant that the stream couldn't reach the height of the leak. Water was also sprayed on the storage tank, mounds and pipes from tank E610 to the VGS. The gas was being vented to atmosphere. As it contacted the cold air, it condensed and started slowly to rain down on the local area to the south-east of the plant, only to be evaporated again, spreading further into the residential areas. At around 1.30am, several workers had fled the plant. After this point, the safety valve on tank 610 reset indicating a drop in pressure and an end to the uncontrolled relief of MIC. Just after 2am, the public siren sounded. Tank 610 was warm to the touch and several pressure and temperature gauges were damaged giving an indication of the intense reaction that had taken place. In total, around 40 tonnes of MIC had been released to atmosphere, condensing and falling onto the earth around the densely populated streets of Bhopal. The cloud that engulfed the town was not solely made up of MIC, but instead a cocktail of various deadly chemicals. Some of them included chloroform, carbon dioxide and hydrogen chloride, as well as many other elements. Much of the cloud was dense of an air, causing it to hug closer to the ground, permeating its way into the densely populated slums. Many houses of which had their doors open, as residents woken up by the siren, went outside to investigate the commotion. Immediately after Union Carbide informed the authorities at around 3am, the state and Indian governments began to provide assistance. However, by this time, reports of fatalities had already been given to the police. At around 6am, the police took to the streets with loudspeakers mounted on cars, saying something has gone wrong somewhere. Everything is normal now, citizens are requested to return to their homes. This wasn't much help to residents of the window and doorless kutcher houses, where many of the owners of these properties died in their sleep. In the commotion, many residents fled their homes, some in cars but the majority on foot or bicycle. This would be a factor in the number of casualties, as out in the open, the risk of ingestion of the chemicals was greatly increased. The clouds effects on the human body started off with burning eyes, followed by vomiting, and eventually as the gases made their way inside the lungs, trouble breathing and a burning sensation in the throat. Many people ran in the same direction of the cloud, exposing themselves further to deadly levels. Popail train station was in the effective area. During the night, the station was busy with travellers, homeless and gypsies, many of whom were found dead by the morning. In the cold light of the morning sun, every cow, goat, cat, dog and buffalo around the plant lay dead. In the immediate vicinity, human bodies lay lifeless, both inside and outside their homes. And within a few days, all the grass had turned yellow and the trees had lost their leaves. On the 4th of December, the police started collecting the bodies and dumped them into the river. A proper count of victims was never really undertaken. During the initial days, residents from around the city rushed to help in any way they could, many using their own vehicles to help to transport the injured to hospitals and to remove the dead, at some risk to their own lives. The hospitals after the leak were swamped with blinded, foamy at the mouth and gasping for breath patients, many of whom had toxic chemicals embedded into their clothes and hair, spreading the effects to many healthcare workers. Around 170,000 people, 14,000 of which were severely injured, were treated in hospitals around Balpal and Madhya Pradesh. Many were treated outside buildings due to the overflow of people. Medical students, doctors, paramedics and nurses all helped with treating the wounded. Even more medical professionals from the rest of the country and even internationally either attended at Balpal or offered specialized advice to the humanitarian effort. UCC's Chairman and CEO Warren Anderson visited India in the aftermath of the leakage, however he was placed under house arrest and urged to leave the country. UCC organized a healthcare team to provide assistance to the overstretched local medical community. The MIC was believed to remain in the atmosphere for several weeks and because of its the number of the wider population affected is largely unknown. 5km away from the affected area, a mass grave for the rotting animal carcasses was dug and lined with lime and salt to try and reduce the risk of contaminating the ground. All throughout this time the bodies of the victims were either burnt in funeral pyres or buried in mass graves. Many dead went unidentified including children. There are some harrowing photos of the victims and the amount of suffering is truly horrible to see. This brings us on to Operation Faith. After investigations into the status of the union car by plant it was discovered that several more tons of MIC were still stored at the site in tanks 611. It was decided that the best way to rid of the potential second disaster was to power up the 7th plant to convert the MIC. December 16th was decided to enact Operation Faith, however before the plan could be put into action some remedial repairs had to be made to the safety systems at the plant. All staff were retrained for the operation and a land system was set up in case of a leak. The government set out to evacuate around 80,000 people nearest the facility, however many one trusting of the government and decided to leave the town completely opting not to use the official evacuation point. In total 22 tons of MIC were converted to 7 under Operation Faith. In March 1985 the Indian government passed the Bhopal Gas Act allowing legal action to be brought against UCC. After several years of litigation in both the US and India resulted in an out of court settlement of 470 million in November 1989. In 2010 seven Indian nationals were charged and convicted of causing death by negligence and were each sentenced to two years and a fine of 100,000 rupees. In 2006 the Indian government claimed a total of 700,000 people affected by the MIC leak. It is thought between three and 16,000 people died as a result with around 550,000 more injured and around 38,000 with temporary partial injuries and nearly 4,000 permanent injuries. Even today the long-term effects are felt with higher than average levels of birth defects and chronic illnesses including cancer and tuberculosis. The community of Bhopal still feel the emotional pain of the disaster and the sorrow runs deep. The factory closed down in 1986 and after anything of value was sold off the site has been left pretty much to rust away. Tragic is not a strong enough word to describe the Bhopal disaster. Even for a channel like this that pretty much only covers massive industrial disasters I am shocked at the carnage that was rained down on the city. Now for me this is a longer video how it barely scratches the surface of the disaster. I highly recommend reading number two and three in my sources section as both reports give an almost minute by minute breakdown of the event as it unfolded. Also check out this book Five Past Midnight in Bhopal it is well worth a read. Now what do you think? Could an industrial disaster on this scale happen again? Sadly I think it really could. Let me know what you think in the comments below. I hope you enjoyed the video and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Comic books have made us believe that contact with radioactive elements creates some kind of superhuman. We know this is completely untrue as well pretty much any nuclear themed video on this channel shows. Now gaining a nickname like the atomic man sounds great however it would make the recipient a social pariah. Today we're looking at chemical operations technician Harold McCluskey. Born on 12th July 1912 Harold McCluskey was a technician employed at Hanford plutonium finishing plant in Washington state around here on the map but in 1976 an event would unfold that would make him go down in infamy in history. In the early hours of the 30th of August 64 year old Harold was working in the United States energy research and development administration operated waste treatment facility. McCluskey was working the night shift extracting the plutonium byproduct American which was used in fire alarms among other things. As a side note around 1 ton of spent nuclear fuel would yield around 100 grams of am2 for 1 and because of this the price is pretty high for such a small amount with market price of around $1500 per gram. Four months before the 12th the lab had been closed due to industrial action. This led McCluskey to be a little bit apprehensive to carrying out the procedure to reclaim am2 for 1. However he did undertake the work as required. His $16,000 a year job involved working items inside an airtight glove box protected by lead lined glass and lead lined gloves. The operator would manipulate items inside the box via holes using the aforementioned gloves. The room containing the glove box was around the size of a 2 car garage. At approximately 2.55 am a chemical reaction caused the resin column McCluskey was using to recover the am2 for 1 to explode. He was only 5 feet from the column. The contents of the column were nitric acid, an iron exchange resin and am2 for 1. The explosion blew out the glass ripping his respirator from his face covering Harold's right side in glass, nitric acid resin and of course am2 for 1. At this time he also inhaled a large amount of materials. Entitle is believed that he was exposed to around 37mbq of a mixture of am2 for 1 and nitric acid. After the explosion Harold was assisted by several co-workers who also became exposed however to a much lesser extent. Two members of staff in protective clothing assisted Harold in removing his contaminated clothing and started to wash his face in an attempt to try and remove the contaminants. Immediately Harold was transferred via a special ambulance to the emergency decontamination facility some 25 miles away in Richmond Washington arriving around two hours after the initial chemical reaction. The EDF was built in 1963 as a specially designed facility to support Hanford in the case of any contamination incidents. It consists of a large windowless room with thick shielded walls and has everything needed to decontaminate and monitor a patient. Upon arrival one gram of calcium DTPA was administered to him and he was again washed however this time much more thoroughly. Debris was removed from his wounds and saline was used to wash his eyes. At this time an examination of Harold revealed burns to his face, scalp, neck and shoulder, mainly on his right side however his left was also affected. Doctors thought he had a 50-50% chance of survival being the only human in the world to have been exposed to such a high dose of am2 for 1 and to still be alive. For the next week he had two barbs a day reducing to one every day being shaved and scrubbed regularly. He was administered with calcium DTPA several times a day however later this was changed to zinc DTPA. Before each bathing session he was placed in disposable plastic clothing and made to sit in a steam filled shower room to encourage sweating, essentially turning him into a human shaped radioactive sponge. All of Harold's urine and fecal matter was tested every day and his burns were left undressed however antibiotics were used to treat his eyes. What sounds like a slow torture Harold's scabs were removed from his face when they appeared to allow deep embedded fragments of glass plastic and metal to be pushed out by his body as well as with the assistance of pliers. After five months in January 1977 Mr. McCluskey was discharged from the EDF to his home in Prussia Washington. His radiation count had fallen by 80% however he still set off detectors when placed near him giving the impression that his condition was very contagious. Because of this many friends abandoned him and he became somewhat the social pariah around his hometown. Throughout his life Harold was tested and checked as he was pretty much a walking talking test bed for the effects of high exposure and sadly he had his fair share of radiation based ailments. For example he had four heart attacks, cataract surgery on both eyes and a kidney infection. In 1977 Harold managed to gain a settlement of $275,000 and lifetime medical bills paid for by the government. Surprisingly he remained pronuclear during his lifetime putting down the event as purely an industrial accident. Harold passed away in August 1987 of a pre-existing heart condition at the age of 75. It is thought that if he hadn't of passed away that he ran a high chance of developing cancer later on in life. Although after his death the results of an autopsy surprisingly showed there was no signs of pre-cancerous cells in his body. For such a drastic life experience as being the person to have received the highest exposure of AM241 living to the age he did was a pretty good inning. Harold's story didn't end there however as the room where the accident happened would become known infamously as the McCluskey room. Not really knowing what to do with it the room was sealed up and the door well did shut as it was thought to be too dangerous to be cleaned up especially in the middle of an operational facility. It wouldn't be until more than three decades after the accident that a person would venture inside the McCluskey room albeit in heavily protected clothing. The first entry was to make preparations for the decommissioning and demolition of the room as part of the wider Hanford site clearing up project with the room being finally fully demolished in 2017. I hope you enjoyed the video. This one has been a little shorter than my previous video but Harold's story was suggested to me by some of you brilliant fellow industrial disaster Alficianados. If you want to support the channel I have a Patreon account as well as a Teespring store. I also have Twitter and as always if you want to help the channel grow like subscribe and share and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. The journey of atomic power has left many a disaster by the roadside as different designs and working principles were tried out as well as the odd human era. The subject of this video is an incident that would push forward reactor operation experience albeit at the expense of a partial meltdown. It seems that a certain place keeps on popping up in the comments sections of my videos. And after reading the title then you atomic Alficianados will have a pretty good idea of where I mean. Today we are looking at the Sodium Reactor Experiment at the infamous Santa Susana Field Laboratory. Trust me we'll be looking at this place as a whole in another video as there's too much to talk about in this one video about the SRE. The Sodium Reactor Experiment was a proof of concept for a type of reactor that made use of liquid sodium as a coolant instead of the more common water. The experiment sought to be able to provide enough heat for use in commercial electricity generating applications. The benefits of this type of reactor is that the coolant does not act as a moderator as well as not needing the coolant to be held under pressure as liquid sodium has a wider total temperature range to water, 785K compared to 100K. In a water cooled reactor the water has to be held under pressure to avoid the coolant boiling off. But before we get into the technicals let's have a brief history of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory which is where the SRE was located. The SSFL which is around here on a map was a government testing facility between 1949 and 2006. The site was used for testing of rockets, space program equipment most notably for the Apollo missions and what you are all here for nuclear reactors. The site was divided into areas called one to four and also had two buffer zones. The site was selected due to its remoteness somewhere away from the prying eyes of civilians and to reduce the risk of contaminating any populated areas due to the risk of explosions and the like. In total 10 reactors were opened at Santa Susana over the years and along with them came various atomic related endeavours for example a fuel fabrication facility, a hot lab used for cutting up a radiated fuel and possibly one of the worst ideas ever, an open sodium burn pit. Where radiated and chemically contaminated items or just burnt in a massive open fire pit. Oh and the hot lab also caught fire at one point as well. Pretty much a massive radioactive dumpster fire. The site's reactors which were considered experimental didn't have any type of containment in their buildings. So you know the big thick concrete walls and domes that most modern reactors have. So that was also a great idea. The site when it was wound down in 2006 created a horrendous headache that still continues today in terms of the cleanup efforts and as always with the internet the place has some pretty hilarious google reviews. Now that we've addressed the wider area that the SRE was placed in let's finally get on to the subject of this video. Now plans to test liquid sodium called graphite moderated reactors were announced in 1954 by the Atomic Energy Agency and construction began on an Atomics International designed facility. The reactor was designed to be a flexible test bed for various different types of fuel materials and different levels of enrichment as well as experimental types of cell cladding. Construction began in 1955 and local energy company Southern California Edison installed a 6.5 megawatt steam electric power generating plant to make use of the heat created by the experiment. The reactor building of the SRE consisted of a high bay area, a side bay area and a hot cell facility. The side bay contained the control room, administrative offices, electrical shop and air conditioning equipment. The high bay area, known because of its high roof, housed the reactor and its primary and auxiliary cooling systems, the new fuel storage, a radiated fuel storage, a fuel handling machine and a moderator handling machine, which handled the graphite moderator cans. The reactor undertook controlled fishing for the first time in April 1957 and in November a small town called Moore Park became fully powered from the reactor, albeit for just an hour. The design was different to most modern reactors as the whole unit was built in place instead of being prefabricated. The reactor containment structure consisted of three main parts and was below ground level. The first of which was the cavity container. The container was the outmost containment vessel for the reactor and was 23 feet high and 14 feet 8 inches in diameter and was constructed of quarter inch carbon steel. The cavity liner was bolted to a wall surrounded by four foot feet concrete, forming the biological shield and the support for the whole reactor. Next came the outer tank made of quarter inch thick alloy steel. This vessel was 18 feet 11 inches high with a diameter of 12 feet 6 inches. It was sealed to the cavity liner and underneath sat on insulated blocks. The space created by the insulated blocks is called the insulation cavity and was filled with nitrogen gas to prevent the coolant from coming into contact with the outside air in the event of a coolant leak. The outer tank's main job was to act as a secondary containment of the sodium coolant and finally is the core tank. This was where the reactor core was situated and was sealed to the outer tank. At the top of the tank helium was held under a pressure of 3 psi. This was known as the cover gas. Excess gas was sent to a waste gas decay tank. This is to stop contaminated gases leaking to atmosphere. The core tank was made of 1.5 inch thick stainless steel and had a diameter of 11 feet 3 inches. On top of this was the top shield plug which sat inside a ring shield. This was rotatable and weighed 75 tons. The top plug had 81 small plugged holes and two 40 inch and one 20 inch larger holes. The SRE used graphite as its moderator. This was used to slow down the neutrons to get more use out of the fuel elements. The graphite moderator elements consisted of hexagonal blocks just under 11 inches wide and around 10 feet high. These were known as cans. Each can was placed 11 inches center to center from one another allowing a small gap between each can for coolant to flow. The gap was approximately 0.013 of an inch. The moderator cans were wrapped in zirconium alloy sheets to help enforce spacing as well as protect the graphite from the sodium penetrating it. Inside the reactor core there was space for 119 cans however not everyone was for a moderator. Around the outside of the core were reflector cans. These were used to reflect strain neutrons back towards the center of the core. Through the reactor core ran 81 vertical tubes. These were used for fuel, safety and control rods and were accessible via the small plugs on top of the rotating shield plug. Right whilst we were on the subject let's talk about the fuel assemblies and how they were made up. Each fuel assembly is made up of seven fuel rods. Each rod was six feet long and had 12 fuel slugs inside. Each fuel assembly was lowered through one of the 81 openings in the reactor top shield and inserted into the core region of the reactor. Each assembly had a hangar rod connector on top of it. There were in total 43 fuel rods used during operation. Reactor had eight control rods. Four of these were safety rods which formed the automatic shutdown facility known as SCRAM. These rods contained a boron on nickel alloy. The SCRAM facility was controlled automatically but also had the ability to be activated by operators from the control room. To enable quick activation of the SCRAM facility the safety rods are held out of the reactor by magnets. If disengaged the rods would enter the core by the power of gravity and during normal operation the safety rods were not inserted into the core region. Next we have four more control rods. These were split into two groups of two but they did very similar actions and were limited in their total movement whilst the reactor was in operation. The first of these were called the shim rods. These were used for fine regulating adjustment of the power of the reactor. The next two were regulating rods and these were used unsurprisingly to regulate the power of the reactor. These were limited in their movement to only seven inches by the reactor control system. The four rods are used to manage the neutron population of the reactor core during operation. I didn't have a SCRAM facility but they did help keeping the reactor under control and were the main mechanism for safely bringing the reactor to initial criticality during start up. Like the safety control rods the regulating rods contained a boron nickel alloy. Right the final bit of the reactor I'm going to cover is the cooling system. Using liquid sodium had its benefits for instance not being a moderator however it had one big drawback. The liquid sodium becomes extremely dangerous when exposed to water or air by either exploding or catching fire. The liquid sodium coolant was split into two parts a primary and secondary loop. The reason for the two cooling loops is to prevent contamination due to the primary loop being in contact with the reactive materials inside the reactor. The primary loop circulated around the reactor vessel taking with it heat from fission and passed through a heat exchanger. Inside the heat exchanger the primary loop coolant passed through metal tubes. This in turn warmed up the liquid sodium inside the non-reactive secondary loop. After this the secondary loop coolant made its way for a steam generator which in turn powered a turbine connected to a generator. If a leak in the secondary loop became apparent the use of two loops reduced the risk of radioactive sodium being released. Reactor didn't operate continuously due to the experimental nature of the project. Instead it was operated in runs. In between each run data was reviewed and the reactor components were examined for potential improvements. The operation of such a reactor as the SRE meant that the operators were working to what could be done in theory. However theoretical and operational realities were not the same thing and this would be found out over each subsequent run. The first seven power runs between the 7th of July 1957 and the 25th of September 1958 saw the successful generation of electrical power as well as a number of tests involving checking out the effectiveness of the scram facility. Before run eight the primary sodium was pumped back and forth several times between the primary loop and its primary fill tank. This introduced sodium oxide to the primary loop and ran the risk of causing blockages in the system. During run eight operators noticed worrying inconsistencies in inlet and outlet coolant temperatures. This was put down to the oxide build up in the coolant channels and on temperature sensors. The reactor was shut down and the coolant was filtered and fuel rods nine and ten were removed for inspection as they had been running too hot. Upon removal the rods were contaminated with a black residue. They were promptly cleaned and reinserted into the reactor core. For the remainder of power run eight things didn't go to plan. Erratic temperatures, sodium oxide in the core and the eventual confirmation of tetraline in the primary loop showed that disaster was just down the road. Runs 9 to 12 continued to be plagued with erratic inlet and outlet temperatures and more black residue was found on fuel elements. This leaves us on to power run 13, the penultimate before disaster. The run took place between the 27th of May and 3rd of June 1959. On a 29th of May a scram was triggered due to poor sodium flow rate. The next day the reactor was restarted but things would go dramatically downhill from there. After run 13 again a number of fuel cells were examined and deemed to be contaminated enough to warrant cleaning. The tetraline on the cells had blocked drain holes allowing some sodium to become trapped. This would not have a great outcome. Whilst in the wash cell which was an area near the reactor around 18 US gallons of water came in contact with the trapped liquid sodium and the inevitable happened. The explosion lifted the wash cell ceiling plug 18 feet into the air. It was later found that no one had actually installed the hold down clips properly. Due to the explosion no more fuel cells were washed. Leading up to run 14 the confirmed tetraline contamination had to be addressed. This would be quite a large undertaking as nitrogen gas had to be bubbled through the primary sodium loop. In preparation for the nitrogen gas purge all helium inside the reactor had to be removed and replaced after completion. At 6.50 am on the 12th of July the reactor was brought into criticality for run 14. The operators were cautious during startup reaching only 500 kilowatts at 8.55. Small but outer spec temperature fluctuations began within the moderator. This was expected due to the tetraline contamination and operators saw similarities from runs 8 to 12. Fuel channel exit temperatures which normally should be similar began to diverge meaning that there were coolant blockages. The power level of the reactor was kept below 1 megawatt. However at 11.42 the primary system automatically initiated a scram. This was due to a loss of auxiliary primary sodium flow. Just over half an hour later the reactor was restarted at 12.15 and for the next few hours the power was increased to 2.7 megawatts. At around 3 pm something worrying was discovered an increased radiation level in the high bay area of the reactor building. The pressure on the cover gas was reduced to try and slow down any leak. A member of staff in protective clothing entered the high bay area to take readings to try and locate the source of the radiation. A measurement of 500 millirems an hour was discovered over the shield plug near channel 7. By 5 pm 25 grams an hour was recorded over channel 7 after the replacement of the shield plug and at 5.30 pm the reactor was shut down. The next day on the 13th the reactor started to act even more erratically by experiencing a number of excursions and rose in power without any operator action. At 5.28 pm the reactor was set at 1.2 megawatts and as the operators gradually tried to increase power the levels went higher than expected. The controllers were inserted to try and get back control. Over the next hour operators struggled to keep control over the fluctuating power. At 6.24 pm SRE's power level began doubling every 8 seconds. The operators manly scrammed the reactor at 6.25 pm. For the next few days the reactor was started up and shut down several times as power excursions and erratic temperatures were recorded. On the 23rd at 9.50 pm the reactor shut down automatically due to an indication that the power was increasing too sharply. It was restarted again at 10.15 pm. The 24th saw some rather dangerous behaviour as operators attempted to try and free up blockages in some of the fuel channels by jiggling the fuel elements up and down however four elements seemed to be stuck in place. Again the SRE was shut down automatically at 12.50 pm due to an uncontrolled increase in power however the indication of fuel cell damage was ignored by the operators who had been convinced it was a faulty signal. The reactor continued to act erratically and on the 26th it was shut down for inspection of the fuel elements that had shown the highest temperature increases. A camera was inserted into the travelled fuel channels and the results were worrying. The total 13 fuel elements had been damaged and whilst removal for inspection took place channel 69's rod broke off leaving over half of it stuck inside the reactor core. The damage had been done over the course of run 14 and numerous chances to prevent disaster were either ignored or avoided. Multiple missed opportunities meant that the experimental reactor released radioactive elements into the building housing unit. It would be later thought that the main fuel cell damage took place after the 22nd of July but signs were clear to see in the power runs leading up to the event. However it's easy to say this after finishing reading a report into the whole event 60 years after the fact. It's important to note that clearly unsafe practices by today's standards such as wiggling fuel rods were not really thought of like that in the late 1950s and whilst operating an experimental reactor. Radioactive materials were released from the damaged fuel cells to the sodium coolant and in turn to the helium cover gas. The cover gas was run through a filter and was stored into decay tanks before being vented to atmosphere. An internal document produced after the event stated that over a two month period around 28 curies of fishing gases were released into the atmosphere which was within federal government limits. However conflicting reports claim that up to 6500 curies of iodine 131 and 1300 curies of cesium 137 were released. But the poor data collection and recording at the time means it's very hard to note for certain. However Rocketdyne at the time claimed nothing was released which does seem a bit hard to believe due to lack of proper confinement that the SRE building had. Now you think this might have spelled the end for the SRE but if you did you'd be wrong as the whole reactor building was cleaned up and pressed back into work in 1960 albeit with a new and improved reactor core. The event damaged around a quarter of the reactor core and many lessons would be learned from this including improvements to the sodium circulation system, wash cells used steam instead of water, improved cladding alloys and better fuel geometry was utilized. The SRE was shut down and decommissioned finally in February 1964. The cleanup of the experiment was rolled into the wider cleanup efforts at Santa Susana Field over the coming decades. Due to the nature of the field laboratory so much contamination both chemical and radioactive has been reported over the last 60 years. I mean it's pretty much expected when open sodium burn pits were used at the site. This makes it very difficult to pinpoint the damage to the environment caused by just one of the reactor incidents on the site over the years. In 2006 a board made up of independent doctors and scientists ruled that over the years around 260 cancer related depths are linked to the Tesla laboratory as a whole. The same panel also concluded that the SRE Meltdown released 458 times the amount of radioactivity released into the atmosphere by the Three Mile Island accident. Even though the event actually created 10 times less contamination. This was due to lack of confinement buildings at the site and other experimental reactors. Bearing in mind that the TMI accident was fairly well contained within its confinement building. However this is widely disputed in several conflicting reports so you may have to believe what you want on this one. The cleanup efforts at Santa Susana as a whole still continue to this day as all sorts of nasty materials have to be safely removed and disposed of. But this will most likely be a subject of a future video as the SRE incident is only scratching the surface. Thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed the video. I wasn't expecting this one to be this long but there was just too much to cover. Would you like to see my videos before they are up on this channel? Then you're in luck as for $1 per creation on Patreon you can. Do you have any future video suggestions? Let me know in the comments. I've got a twitter so check me out on there and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Thank you to my patrons for voting for this subject. If you'd like to vote on future subjects and get early access to videos then you can from just $1 per creation. Link in the description below. The channel has hit the big time. This video is proudly sponsored by NordVPN more about that later on. The idea of a teenager attempting to create a burrito reactor in a garden shed is equally worrying as it is impressive. The story is a case of someone who clearly was very intelligent however not necessarily wise as he managed to turn his mum's property into an EPA superfund site. Of course today we are looking at David Hahn or better known as the Atomic Boy Scout. David was born in 1976 on the 30th of October in Royal Oak Michigan which is about here on the map. As a toddler his parents Ken and Patty Hahn divorced meaning that David would split his time living in both parents respective households. At an early age he discovered an interest in science when given a book called The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. Several experiments required corrosive hydrochloric acid as well as some other industrial solvents. I mean the book was from the 1960s and health and safety was kind of non-existent back then. I've had a brief flick through a PDF of it and I think the book is pretty cool and very trusting in some of the things it explains. However it was eventually pulled off the shelves for its slightly dangerous content. A lot of the timeline in this video is based off a secondary source in a form of Harper's Magazine from November 1998. Even though it's a secondary source the writer Ken Silverstein had interviewed directly many of the people involved in the whole Atomic Boy Scout story. I've also read the IAEA report on the cleanup and this has formed the basis of the information I have on the environmental impact of the incident. By the age of 12 David was reading college chemistry textbooks. It seemed he had been bitten by the science bug. In his early teens he set up a home laboratory in his bedroom at his dad's house. However multiple number of explosions and chemical spills sent his experiments to the basement. By the age of 14 he had managed to make nitroglycerin, showing both genius as well as a flagrant disregard for safety which would be a good indicator of things to come. The move to the basement allowed his experiments to go further unchecked as David dived into the world of chemistry even more. Although he did well in science classes the rest of his school career wasn't going well. However he did manage to find jobs outside of school mainly in retail and fast food. This was to bankroll his experiments and to fulfill his dream of owning every element in the periodic table, including and especially the radioactive ones. One particular incident would change the location of his operations once again. One evening an explosion left David's semi-conscious on the floor after he had been pounding on red phosphorus with a screwdriver. Leadless to say this got David's laboratory kicked out of his father's house needing somewhere to experiment he moved his lab to his mother's garden shed. Some worrying signs were not picked up by his stepdad and mum when David wore a gas mask for some of his experiments. David was enrolled into the Boy Scouts of America in an attempt to give him direction and something to aim toward the rank of Eagle Scout. Now to achieve Eagle Scouts you have to earn 21 merit badges. Some are compulsory such as first aid and community badges. However some others are up to the person to select and of course there was an atomic badge. Which as a side note was sponsored by Edison Electric so unsurprisingly the pamphlet was very pro-nuclear. He gained his atomic badge in May 1991 and during his studies he had got to know the workers at a local hospital radiotherapy unit. This would be important later on. David's ultimate plan after his research was to build a breeder reactor. However this was a rather far off ambition at this time due to him not having any plutonium or uranium to hand but he would try and change this. Let's have a quick overview of what a breeder reactor is. A breeder reactor creates more fissionable material than it consumes. This is great as it creates more bang for your buck when it comes to fuel. A breeder reactor uses uranium 238 which is much more abundant than the rare U235. In theory a breeder reactor can extract almost all the energy in the fuel. In comparison a conventional reactor uses only around 1% of the energy available. Such a reactor essentially solved the nuclear waste question. However this type of reactor fell out of favor due to being complex to operate plus in most cases the type of coolant used is a liquid metal instead of water. This is because water would act as a moderator slowing down the neutrons and this type of coolant can become dangerous when exposed to moisture. The first step would be to build a neutron source and see how far he could go from there. He planned to build what he called a neutron gun to bombard isotopes with neutrons. Easier said than done as he needed to get a hold of some radioactive material. Using the pamphlet he had gained from his atomic badge David started contacting the people listed within for example NRC and Edison Electric. And posing as a high school teacher contacting the NRC proved to be very helpful in his plight for some advice on how to locate what he needed. David was put in contact with Donald Erb director of isotope production and distribution. Erb was very helpful offering advice on how to isolate isotopes as well as providing a list of ones that would be the best to sustain a chain reaction. Well that would turn out to be a bit of a mistake. Now armed with everything he needed to know David made a list and set out to find the materials out in the world and surprisingly many were used in everyday items albeit in small quantities. But that wouldn't stop Mr. Han. Now our friend AM241 which was featured in the atomic man video was one of the isotopes on David's list and if you remember from my previous video that AM241 is used in smoke detectors. Whilst we're on a subject if you haven't yet check out my Harold McCluskey video aka the atomic man. Euronite contains U238 and U235 in small quantities a naturally occurring black ore with deposits in North America. Radium 225 is found out in the wild so to speak on old glow in the dark clock faces and hands. The reason why they are in old style clocks and not modern ones is that the people who used to paint on the radium tended to die of cancer and because of this it was phased out of use for less deadly glowing chemicals. I'm thinking I should cover this in a future video let me know in the comments. Thorium can be found in certain types of gas lanterns which again is readily available to find especially for a Boy Scout. However with all the isotopes listed each item only contains a minute amount. For the easy to find items such as the lanterns and clocks David accumulated these from anywhere he could buying from antique stores and camping supply shops. Claiming it was for a report David managed to get hold of a large amount around 100 broken smoke detectors at a fraction of the azine cost. Once he collected what he thought was enough AM241 he made a ball by heating it up with a blowtorch and placed it inside a block of lead. Inside said block he placed a tiny hole to focus the alpha rays containing protons and neutrons. David placed in front of the hole a sheet of aluminium. Aluminium absorbs alpha rays and admits a neutron. He couldn't detect that his contraption had worked with his type of Geiger counter until he introduced paraffin to measure the protons given off when hit by neutrons. This neutron gun was similar to the experiment that helped discover the neutron. He hoped to use his new neutron gun to make some fissionable radioisotopes. He set out to hunt for urinate as a source of U-235 in his car however he didn't have much luck on out front and decided to contact a supplier to see if they had just posted him some instead. After pretending to be a professor for a college to a Czechoslovakian supplier of radioisotopes David managed to secure a few ore samples. The samples contained very small amounts of U-235 and U-238. David attempted to extract these from the ore by using some homemade sulfuric acid and a coffee filter. Needless to say this didn't yield the intended results. Disappointed but not disheartened, David set his sights on thorium-232 which can produce U-233 if bombarded with enough neutrons. He sourced a thorium from gas lantern mantles he had bought and burnt them into an ash using a Bunsen burner. To purify the thorium in the ash David needed lithium. Lithium can be used to bind with the oxygen attached to the thorium dioxide meaning the thorium would be better for David's needs. To get hold of enough lithium he ordered around a thousand dollars of batteries and harvested from within by cutting them open. David filled an aluminium ball full of thorium dioxide ash and lithium heating it with a Bunsen burner. Purifying the thorium to around 9,000 times the level found in nature. The next step was to bombard the thorium-232 with neutrons to create U-233. However his current neutron gun was nowhere near powerful enough so David needed to make something a little more potent. Now this leads us rather neatly to the sponsor for this video NordVPN. Now if you look up various disasters and atomic incidents like me they're a little bit of anonymity is pretty handy especially when you're looking up how to build a neutron gun. Lead us to say if I didn't have NordVPN but I might be on some kind of watch list. I've used several VPNs over the past couple of years and have enjoyed the protection they afford and I think Nord has the best user interface making it really easy to jump from one server to another. It also allows you to surf on public wifi securely without the fear of your personal information being stolen. You can also bypass region locking for movie streaming sites which is an annoying part of living in the UK as you miss out on so many great shows. So if you're interested check out NordVPN by going to www.nordvpn.com slash plainly difficult to get 70% off NordVPN. This really helps out the channel allowing me to purchase more research material as well as travel to more disaster sites in the future. Thank you for listening about our video sponsor. Let's go back to David and his souped up neutron gun. For this David needed to get hold of a large amount of radium. Knowing that radium was present in vintage clocks making the time easier to be read at night. David searched junk yards and antique shops scraping off any paint he came across. Using barium sulfite sourced from the x-ray ward he had visited for his badge David liquefied it by heating it under a Bunsen burner. The liquid was then mixed with radium and strained through a coffee filter later dehydrating the solution into crystals which was then stuffed into another lead block to create his neutron gun. Instead of aluminium he managed to get his hands on a more potent neutron emitter, beryllium. He bombarded the thorium and uranium with his radium gun. However once again he didn't get the results he wanted. After another conversation with herb David realised he needed to slow the neutrons down. He could have used water but no that would have been too safe. Instead tritium a radioactive material was chosen. Tritium which similar to radium in vaticos in the dark was used on gun and bow sites. Again David set about collecting as much as he could from mail order magazines and hunting shops. The tritium was then applied to the beryllium and placed in front of the radium gun. Using the gaga counter David saw the radioactivity increase. This was the point that David set about trying to build his breeder reactor. However the method was rather crude. Mixing the radioactive elements from his neutron guns he encased them inside aluminium foil. This core was then wrapped in more foil with thorium and uranium powder. The whole arrangement was held together with duct tape. What little precaution for contamination at this point was out of the window as at least the guns were encased in lead. Again the creation was monitored with a gaga counter which again showed dangerous levels of radiation. David was worried that the pile would become uncontrollable and decided to make his own control rods out of coal bolt drill bits. But this yielded little effect. Starting to get worried David dismantled his contraption as there were too many radioactive items in one place. The thorium was stored in a shoebox at his mums. The radium and amoresium stayed in the garden shed and the rest was piled into the boot of his car. At 2.40am on the 31st of August 1994 David was pulled over by Clinton Township Police under suspicion of theft from a motor vehicle. The report came from residents concerned about David hanging around in the middle of the night. The excuse of I'm waiting for a friend unsurprisingly wasn't believed by the officers and his car was searched. The contents of the boot were rightly concerned for the officers as he had several balls of tin foil containing a mystery powder as well as a toolbox wrapped in duct tape. Not only that but there were fireworks, random chemicals and other partially dismantled artefacts in the boot as well. The police were extra alarmed by David's warnings that the box contained radioactive elements. Fearing that it was an atomic bomb the car was towed to the police station to be checked out by the bomb squad. Obviously this was a bit of a bad idea. After inspection by some rather worried bomb squad and State Department of Public Health officials the verdict was agreed that the box was not an atomic bomb. However the box did contain thorium not contained in natural amounts and this triggered the Federal Radiological Emergency Response Plan. The plan involved the NRC, DOE, EPA and FBI. David kept his lab secret from the police until Dave Minnard a radiological expert interviewed David. After the two David's spoke to one another and on the 29th of November a survey of the back gun lab took place. It was found that only the shed had to be condemned and it was sealed off to contain any dangers within. However during the intervening time between initial rest and admittance of the lab David's mum had thrown out much of the shed's contents into the public garbage collection. The EPA undertook its own survey in January 1995 five months after the initial vehicle search. The survey revealed a significant danger to the health of the local environment as well as the human population and petitioned the US government to set up a super fund to clean up the site. $60,000 was awarded and in June 1995 work was undertaken to safely clean the site. In total 36 sealed barrels of waste were sent for disposal at a facility in the Great Salt Lake Desert. Totalling 266.4 cubic feet of debris the waste was placed with other waste from government facilities such as industrial, atomic weapons factories and plutonium manufacturing plants. More items had to be recovered from the police station that had initially dealt with David's arrest. These included tin foil containing thorium-223, radium-228, parts of smoke detectors containing am-241, chunks of lead and lanterns and clock faces. After the clean up effort radiation levels were measured to be back to normal levels however it was thought that around 40,000 people were potentially exposed to some levels of radioactive elements during the years of David's experimentation. Now what David did achieve has been called a reactor however it was only really in the loosest sense but it did create a fair bit of radiation and this means it was no less than an accomplishment. After the dismantling of his laboratory David had lost a sense of meaning in his life. This was further compacted by the suicide of his mum in 1996. After attending Macon Community College for some time David enlisted in the Navy being posted on the nuclear powered USS Enterprise and after transferring to the marines he was honorably discharged a few years later. Unfortunately however David would have a run in with the law once again. In April 2007 the FBI took an interest in David interviewing him in regards to attempting to create a second breed of reactor. After some investigation he was deemed not to be a threat to the public however this led to an arrest a couple of months later for the last knee of smoke detectors. After a guilty plea David was sentenced to 90 days in jail suspended whilst he undertook mental health treatment. Unfortunately the story of the atomic Boy Scout doesn't end happily because on the 27th of September 2016 at the age of just 39 David Harme passed away from alcohol, diphenhygamine and fentanyl intoxication. Thank you to my patrons for voting for this subject and a big thank you to NordVPN for the sponsorship. Don't forget if you'd like to get 70% off NordVPN then go to www.nordvpn.com slash plainly difficult. Thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed the video would you like to see my videos before they are up on this channel then you're in luck as for one dollar per creation on Patreon you can. Do you have any future video suggestions let me know in the comments I've got a twitter to check me out on there and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Radioactive elements have found many uses since the first discoveries in the late 19th century they have affected almost every person for good and bad at least once in their life. Radio known for its eerie glow would play a part in not only scientific discovery but US employment law however like most subjects on this channel a few unwitting victims would pile up along the way. I alluded to covering this subject in my video on David Harme and after putting it to a vote to my patrons it found its way to what you are watching now. Now I know this subject has been covered a bit by other youtube channels recently but after reading up about it I just had to look into the subject. A hundred years ago things that glow in the dark were a serious novelty. Electricity hadn't made its way into everyone's home yet for example my nan's house in Sligo didn't have running water at this time either. So the idea of something that is luminous without any sunlight or power was pretty impressive. Particularly watch and clock faces were pretty useful for a bit of eerie glow as look at your watch at night or early morning proved pretty annoying if you can't see the time quickly and clearly. The discovery of radium and its luminous properties opened up a market for glow in the dark items and the radium girls. Before we get on to that let's look at the wider context of the radium craze of the early 20th century. After its discovery in 1898 by the curries radium permeated itself into the public consciousness very quickly as a wonder element. Its early uses were cancer treatment and it proved very effective. Now this kind of gave manufacturers a green light to put radium into everything. During the height of the craze radium was added to pretty much every consumable item you can think of from toothpaste to tonic makeup and even food such as the power of radium to the public consciousness that the radioactive material reached prices of around a hundred thousand dollars which ironically priced curry out of being able to purchase it for research which needed curry to tour the US to raise funds to purchase just one gram. She'd already been a Nobel Prize winner since 1903. One such deadly tonic was radi4. It consisted of triple distilled water containing a minimum one micro curie each of radium 226 and 228 isotopes. It was the pinnacle of quackery with claims like a cure for a living dead and perpetual sunshine. Although the tonic would kill athlete Eben Baez from radiation poisoning in 1932 he consumed so much over around 1400 doses but he needed to be buried in a lead lined coffin. Ingesting such an element in the early 20th century seemed like the norm and this neatly leads us onto the plight of the radium girls. The United States Radium Corporation was founded in 1914 in New York City and has started out producing uranium however the company changed its business model during the radium craze to creating luminous paint called undark. With the creation of undark in 1917 the company began to move towards the application of the substance. Undark was a mixture of radium 226 and zinc sulfide. The mixture made the paint luminous and US radium had a good market being a defense contractor in supplying paint for watches for the military but this left a middle man or in our case women and that is in the application of the undark to the clock. US radium set up a factory in Orange New Jersey and hired around 100 staff mainly consisting of women for the purpose of painting clock dials and faces with undark. The facility at Orange also processed half a ton of ore per day. The job of a dial painter was well paid for the time and was considered a top-end job working with a glamorous and exciting substance known for its health benefits. To achieve a precision paint brush end and not waste the expensive undark the workers were instructed to point the camel hair brush by placing it in their mouth. Each time this was done a small amount of carcinogenic radium was ingested and management said it was perfectly safe to put radium in your mouth because of the perceived high status of the job from the title being called an artist and again working with an exciting wonder substance many of the workers encouraged their sisters and other family members to join up. What the workers didn't know was that the scientists and management working on the ore wore protective clothing and stood behind protective screens. However this was not all happening within just one company around 4,000 workers in total over the US were employed in various businesses involved with radium but the other big player in our story was the radium dial company based out of Ottawa Illinois. The company was set up in 1922 to supply painting services for the West Clocks Corp and also employed the lip dip paint method. Management paid workers a few cents for each item they completed giving an incentive to complete on average 250 dollars per day ingesting 4,000 micrograms of radium in just six months. So at more exposure some of the workers painted their nails, lips and even teeth with the radium paint. Even those who hadn't painted themselves came out of the factories at the end of each shift with a glowing hue from the radium dust that had settled on their clothing. This led some workers to not wash their clothes in order to keep the glow as some even came to work in their best outfits in order to get the radium glow. However despite promises from management and the perceived health benefits around 50 young otherwise healthy workers died by 1927. But how did radium cause the damage? As you know radium is radioactive and like all radioactive elements it could kill the cells within your body. This lends itself very good for pinpoint cancer treatment. However this is done in a controlled environment with carefully measured doses and exposure time. Radium emits alpha and gamma rays as it decays which kills off healthy cells in your body. Around 80% of the element when ingested is passed through your body and eventually leaves via feces. 80% doesn't sound too bad but it's really not great as the remaining 20% enters your bloodstream finally making its way into your bones where your body mistakes radium for calcium. This essentially radiates you from within leading to cancer as well as numerous skeletal issues including but not limited to teeth falling out, jaws crumbling, spine collapsing and bone fractures and breaks. This leads us back to the radium girls. By the mid-1920s a number of workers had been taken ill and had passed away. Many of these deaths were covered up by putting the cause of death down to syphilis a sexually transmitted disease. In 1924 US radium hired industrial hygiene expert Cecil Drinker along with Catherine Drinker his wife and William Castle to investigate the growing scandal. The team agreed to visit the Orange New Jersey factory to observe the watch dial painters at work and speak with their doctors. The team from Harvard were shocked at the working conditions and a close proximity to the dangerous element. A report was prepared damning the working practices of US radium. One such quote read, dust samples collected in the work room from various locations and from chairs not used by the workers were all luminous in the dark room. Their hair, faces, hands, arms, necks, the dresses, the underclothes, even the corsets of the dial painters were luminous. One of the girls showed luminous spots on their legs and thighs. The back of another was luminous almost to the waist. Drinker set out a list of improvements to help with the safety of the workers. However, US radium in response denied the link between the injuries of the workers and the environment that they worked. And in not a tall scummy and morally wrong move, US radium president Arthur Roder threatened the drinker team with legal action if they were to ever publish the report. Reluctantly, Drinker complied. However, he found out that US radium had submitted a doctored version of their report to the New Jersey Labor Department, basically saying that Drinker thought that the whole operation was a okay. This prompted Drinker to publish his original damning report on US radium's working practices to a scientific journal, leading the New Jersey Labor Department to order US radium to implement all of Drinker's recommendations, essentially shutting down the factory. Whilst this was running, the case of the radium girls came into the public eye in the form of a trial. Grace Friar had worked for US radium between 1917 and 1920, until a change of career to work in a bank. Not long after taking up the new job, she started to feel discomfort in her jaw. After a loss of a number of teeth, she visited a dentist. Radiographs were taken and showed her jaw to have a moth-eaten pattern. She visited a number of doctors to find the cause of the problem. However, unsurprisingly, radiation poisoning was not an ailment that any of them had come across. However, a trend had started to materialise in the New Jersey area, as a number of women reporting similar symptoms began to succumb to the effects of exposure. Everyone had one thing in common, though, that they were or had been employed by US radium. Grace, in 1925, decided to take legal action against her previous employer. However, it would take two years for her to find a lawyer willing to take on the powerful defence contractor. In 1927, Attorney Raymond Berry took the case and, with four other US radium employees, brought a suit against the company. The suit claimed $250,000 per person. With the first hearing in January 1928, by now, two of the claimants were bedridden. US radium filed a motion to delay the proceedings because of some of the members of staff being on holiday, which is a bizarre reason, but odd as still, the judge granted a delay until September. The tactic was used to try and wait until all the claimants were dead. However, this came to the attention of newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann via Harvard professor Alice Hamilton. After public pressure, the date was brought forward to June. However, the case was settled out of court with US district court judge William Clark, who was also a stakeholder in US radium mediating. The five radium girls agreed that each would receive $10,000 and $600 per year while they lived, and that all medical and legal expenses would also be paid by the company. The agreement also stipulated payment for all future medical expenses, which would be determined by an impartial panel. However, US radium wouldn't have to pay out for many years, as the last one of the five litigants died in the 1930s. In an ironic twist, inventor of radium-based paint died in 1928 from a plastic anemia, a side effect of radium exposure. In Illinois, a similar story was unfolding for Radium Dial Corporation from 1927, when employees started demanding for healthcare costs. However, it wasn't until 1937 that a case was brought against Radium Dial from five employees. And it would take eight rulings against the company before they paid any type of compensation. Applied to the radium girls brought the risks of industry to the forefront of many people's minds. Connecting media and claimants would set a precedent for future abuses of workers' rights, though it wouldn't be until the 1960s that radium-based paint would be made illegal. US radium in orange left even more the mark than its directly affected workers, as the factory site in orange became a designated superfund site after 1600 tons of polluted material needed to be disposed of. Thank you very much for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you'd like to have a say on future videos and even get early access to new videos, you can on my Patreon for just $1 per creation. I've also got a PayPal donate link if you'd like to buy me a drink and I've also got a Twitter as well. And all that's left to say is thank you very much for watching. Thank you to my Patreons for voting on this subject. If you'd like to help me choose what you would want me to cover in the next video, but you can from $1 per creation. On the afternoon of Friday the 24th of July 1964, Robert Peabody set out on his five minute commute to work. Listen to the no, this would be for the last time. Wood River Junction is part of Richmond, Rhode Island, which is around here on a map. The area is known for two things in history, a tragic rail crash and a tragic criticality incident. The former killing 11 and the latter killing one. However much I enjoy talking about anything railway based today we are focusing on a 1964 Wood River plant incident. The United Nuclear Corporation plant at Wood River Junction commenced operations in March 1964 and was designed for uranium 235 recovery from spent fuel rods and other waste products. The process is purely chemical as nitric acid is used to dissolve the waste to collect the uranium for reprocessing into new fuel. This is done by several cycles partitioning off various different products. In between processes the solutions were stored in criticality safe vessels. Because uranium in enough quantities in close proximity can cause the critical mass, criticality safe vessels have been adopted across the nuclear industry and Wood River was no different. A criticality safe vessel provides storage for processing facilities. This was achieved by geometry of the container. In the case of Wood River this was achieved with one gallon polyurethane jars and 11 liter polyurethane bottles. The jars were six inches in diameter with a length of 10 inches and the bottles were five inches in diameter and four feet long. The geometry of the storage containers allowed the largest amount of solution to be stored but were long enough to prevent criticality as the U235 was not physically compact. To prevent the uranium becoming a critical mass from multiple containers stored close to one another the bottles and jars were placed in a special rack. The rack was designed that each container was 24 inches center to center and 10 portable safe carts were used for transporting bottles. Controls on the safe handling and storage of uranium was pretty strict even in the 1960s mainly due to the depth link to the demon core. However workers thought or these controls as a hindrance rather than what they really were which was for the safety of everyone but we will come back to the ramifications of this type of thinking later. In July 1964 the plant was just four months old and solid production hadn't been delivered. Instead Wood River was processing liquid uranium waste called pickle liquor. The new plant hadn't got off to a great start as a black goo like substance had started to plague the processing equipment. The plant machinery was shut down and disassembled for repairs and cleaning of the black substance in the week leading up to the 24th of July. Because of this various levels of concentrated uranium was stored in the storage bottles. During normal operation waste with smaller amounts of uranium were recovered from hand agitation with a sodium carbonite solution with trichlorophane. However this proved to be time consuming and inefficient. The method used shaking the bottles for 20 minutes to separate the uranium from the rest of the mixture. The trichlorophane contaminated solution was stored in the same types of vessel as the higher concentrations of uranium taken from the plant machinery and this led to confusion. Labels were made up to show what was in each bottle though some labors had fallen off and had been reattached with elastic bands. An alternative process was devised by the operators washing the trichlorophane and sodium mixture that was less physically taxing. This involved using a mechanical mixing bowl that was intended for sodium carbonite only. It supported the point out that this mixing bowl didn't have any criticality safety geometry with a diameter of 18 inches by a depth of 24 inches. Two of three shift supervisors knew of the method and thought it would be okay as long as it was only used for low concentration uranium TCP wash mixtures. And the process did work however this was running on borrowed time. On the 24th as Peabody clocked in he was briefed on the evening's tasks. This would involve washing the uranium with the trichlorophane. On the evening only five members of staff were working in the building, three technicians, one supervisor and one security guard. Robert Peabody at 6pm picked up a bottle to be washed and took it up to the third floor where the mixing bowl was installed. However little did Robert know that he had picked up a bottle containing the high uranium concentration from the plant cleaning, rather than the trichlorophane mixture. The bottle had an estimated 200 grams of U235 per litre inside. Upon pouring 10 litres of mixture into the mixing tank the mass became prompt critical knocking Peabody to the floor. A blue glow emanated from the tank. He had been exposed to an estimated 46,000 rads to his pelvis and 14,000 rads to his head, a lethal dose. During the excursions some of the solution had left the tank setting off radiation alarms. As the mixer remained on it splashed excess mixture onto the floor around 20% reducing the contents to below criticality. The vortex in the fluid created by the mixer had kept the solution subcritical. Robert left the room to go to the emergency evacuation building 450 feet south-east of the plant. Upon leaving the main building Peabody took off all of his contaminated clothing and ran to the evacuation building naked. An ambulance was called as Robert was starting to show signs of radiation sickness in the form of cramps and nausea. A measurement at 15 feet away from Peabody's clothes showed 100 millirems an hour. He was admitted to Rhode Island Hospital at 7.25pm. Police and company officials were dispatched to the plant. Around two hours after initial criticality shift supervisor Smith and plant superintendent Holthouse re-entered the building. Upon reaching the third floor it was decided that the radiation was safe enough for a brief venture into the mixing room. The amount of uranium inside the mixing bowl with the stirrer still working was staying subcritical however Holthouse switched the machine off. Once the content settled a second less powerful excursion began as the uranium went critical once again. However the radiation alarm didn't react as it hadn't been reset after the first criticality event. Holthouse made it out of the room quickly enough before the second excursion took place. After around a couple of seconds the mass once again became subcritical as the liquid in the mixer boiled. Quickly Smith and Holthouse drained the content into a number of criticality safe jars to prevent another excursion. Examination of Holthouse's film badge received around 60 to 100 rads a high but not immediately life-threatening dose. However Smith was not wearing a film badge because he had handed his regulation badge over to the health physicist and was subsequently wearing a foil only visitor badge. Everyone on site was sent for evaluation and all but one would subsequently be released and monitored by urine and blood samples for an extended period. Smith and Holthouse were considered at a high risk due to exposure to the second excursion and were subjected to extra medical tests consisting of sperm counts, slit lens eye examinations, blood and urine evaluation and hair activation studies. In total seven were exposed including Holthouse Smith, Peabody, the health physicist and the remaining staff on site during the evening. However Peabody wasn't as lucky. At the time there was no treatment for the amount of exposure Peabody had received and doctors could only treat the symptoms to make him as comfortable as possible. He was placed in a makeshift isolation ward. A slight improvement in his condition on Saturday was quickly overwhelmed by signs of his body shutting down at a cellular level. His right arm began to swell up necessitating his wedding ring to be cut off. His family were told was visiting to only stay at the foot of his bed to reduce the risk of their exposure. On Sunday morning Peabody's body had almost completely shut down and by the afternoon had slipped into a coma and passed away in a night, some 49 hours after the criticality incident. Tests on his gold wedding ring and tissue samples led doctors to believe that he had received a dose of 700 rems of radiation. After a lawsuit was settled Peabody's widow and mother of his nine children received $22,000 from United Nuclear Corporation. During a subsequent investigation by the NRC a number of violations were highlighted and in an interview with Holthouse doubts were raised about Peabody's ability as a technician stating he has recently been involved in an accident at the plant and has been previously been involved in two more. Some of these were eye accidents. The NRC charged United Nuclear with 14 violations of nuclear regulations, eight from the pre-bodied criticality incident. However the company didn't receive any fines. The NRC also stated that improper communications were implemented at the site between shift supervisors, meaning incorrect handling procedures were used. The plant was decontaminated and pressed back into service in February 1965, hiring a number of new staff in the process. And because the incident was largely considered an industrial accident local opinion didn't change towards the site. The decontamination efforts involved nitric acid wash, water wash and removal of tiles and paint. The waste from this was taken to a safe storage area before being disposed of. Non-removable assets such as the walls and floors were scrubbed and painted over. No decontamination of the wider area was undertaken, apart from some vehicles present at the time of the incident. As we've seen time and time again criticality and radiological incidents stem from improper understanding of the elements being handled and the use of non-standard procedures. Like many incidents Wood River was completely avoidable and if the set procedures were followed the tragic loss of life wouldn't have taken place. United Nuclear would end up renaming itself to UNC and would gradually split up its different processing plants, shutting down a number in the process. Wood River itself would be shut down in 1980. The site is now part of a nature reserve after purchase from General Electric who had bought UNC by the nature reserve in 2001. Final cleanup efforts of the site were completed in 2014. Thank you for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you'd like to get early access to videos as well as vote on new subjects you can for $1 per creation on Patreon. I have a PayPal donation link if you fancy buying me a drink and I also have Twitter and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. The plainly difficult channel now has YouTube memberships. Much like my Patreon, joining will get you early access to videos from 99 pence per month. At higher tiers you can also gain access to previous video scripts and have your name in the credits at the end of each video. Also whilst we're here this video was voted for by my Patreons. Carelessness in industry usually ends up with suffering in its wake. From the micro level of poor maintenance of equipment causing injuries to workers all the way to the macro level in the form of environmental pollution. The incident at Bucket Mera falls into the latter category and shows how much damage can be caused by outright disregard for local communities. The 1982 Bucket Mera radioactive pollution incident is similar to the Radium Girls in that the companies involved categorically denied any wrongdoing even in the face of evidence stating to the contrary. And again like the Radium Girls it would take a long drawn out court case before any acknowledgement and compensation were offered. Although the Bucket Mera incident happened in the 1980s in Malaysia our story begins in late 1960s Japan. In 1969 the Japanese government changed legislation for the production of rare earth compounds. The process was deemed too environmentally detrimental for the country. The legislation didn't outright ban the process however it raised the cost of waste disposal via new stricter guidelines to the point where it was financially unviable. The change prompted several rare earth production companies to search for other countries with less strict environmental laws and a desire for foreign investment. One of these companies looking to move production away from their native Japan was Mitsubishi Kazai. Mitsubishi decided on Malaysia in 1973. This was due to more lax regulation and also good natural deposits of tin an essential component in the refinement of rare earth metals. This leads us onto one particular rare earth material. Itrium is a rare earth element that during the 20th century gained a rapid growth in demand. It is used in many mass produced items and is a key part in the creation of cathode ray tube TV colour sets as well as LEDs, superconductors and lasers. To get the valuable itrium monazite a phosphate mineral has to be sourced and this was a byproduct of the tin mining process leading Malaysia to become a preferred choice of Mitsubishi's overseas operations. The problem with monazite is that it contains much more than just itrium with around 24-29% phosphate, 50-60% rare earth metal oxides, 5-10% thorium oxide and 0.2-0.4% uranium oxide. This means that once itrium is extracted there is a lot of waste, all of it not good for the environment, especially when mixed with various chemicals used during the refinement process. However the last two byproducts thorium and uranium are radioactive and if incorrectly disposed of can be deadly for anyone living nearby. In 1979 a company called Asian Rare Earth was set up consisting of the following shareholders, Mitsubishi Chemical Industries, Limited, Behr Minerals, the State-Owned Pilgrims Management Fund Board and other Bumiputra businessmen. It was decided that the nuclear waste could be kept for use at a later date for any nuclear aspirations of the Perak state government. A site not far from the new village of Bukit Merah in the state of Perak was selected for the itrium extraction operations. The investment in the area was embraced by the local government as foreign money would bring with it new jobs, opportunities and increased foreign investment. As soon as operations started at the Bukit Merah Refinery on the 12th July 1982, locals started to complain of bad smells and problems with breathing. The waste from the refinery was being stored at the site in open steel barrels with no protection for anyone nearby and open to the elements. As stated in the photo essay on the event by the Consumer's Association of Penang, that the barrels that were used were of the cheapest quality and were second hand. Around six kilometres away from the refinery in a village called Pepan, a site behind the village had been selected for waste storage by the government. Worried about the building of a waste dump nearby and the increase in health issues, 6,700 residents from Pepan and other nearby areas sent a petition letter to Prime Minister Mahafia Mohammed in mid-May 1984. In late May, a protest from locals blocked off the entrance to the dump site stopping construction. Although a statement from the Prime Minister stating that the site was safe, another protest blocked off the dump site entrance in June. The Minister of Science, Technology and Environment backed up the Prime Minister about the Pepan dump. All while the dispute raged on between villagers and the government, ARE barrels of waste continued to mount up at the Bukit Merah site. As the waste piled up, the company began dumping the barrels of thorium-polluted waste into a field to the rear of the refinery and also into a local pond. Throughout July, several more protests took place further stalling the construction efforts and an action committee was set up by the residents. At around the same time, Shahabat Alam Malaysia or Friends of the Earth Malaysia sent a report to the government informing them of the environmental disaster that was unfolding. The SAM had sent their own officials to the ARE site where the barrels had been dumped to take readings of the radioactive pollution. The measurements showed an estimated 43,800 millirems a year, 88 times higher than the maximum level permitted by the International Commission on Radiological Protection. The government's problems mounted further still when three IEA officials invited to inspect the dump site, subsequently declared the place unfit for use. The remainder of 1984 various other experts came to the site, each condemning the area unfit for use, citing cracked or thin retaining walls to the storage trenches and finding that general engineering work was shoddy. With reports from two different regulatory bodies declaring the site unfit for use, a cabinet meeting was called by the government to discuss the issue. In December, the action committee asked Japanese professor Sadio Ichikawa to measure radiation levels at the open field and pond next to the ARE facility. The results again came back as dangerously high, at its worst point almost 800 times the allowed levels. With the interest generated by the residents and numerous reports and measurements of both the ARE site and the proposed dump site, Deputy Prime Minister Datak Musahitam took a personal interest in the situation and visited the dump site. After the visit Datak called a meeting of his own to find an alternative site for the growing uncovered waste in the field and pond next to the ARE refinery. A new site proposed at Mukin Belenja in a Kledang range, about 5km from Papan. However, this would not be the end of the problem. It wouldn't be until October 1985 that an injunction sought out by eight residents would be granted against ARE to cease production until adequate measures were put in place and around 1500 residents turned up to hear the decision at the court. In September 1986, ARE claims spending in excess of 2 million Malaysian Ringgit on repair and upgrade works on the site to bring it up to IEA standards. Throughout 1986, tests were undertaken at a number of illegal waste dumping sites around the Bukit Merah area. This was done with the assistance of a contractor who was told to dump the waste anywhere. Needless to say, ARE denied these claims. Measurements of around 0.05 to 0.10mAh were taken at one site. Nearly a year and a half after the injunction in February 1986, the Malaysian AELB granted a license for ARE to resume operations. This prompted the start of a 32-month court battle to shut down the plant. Whilst the court battle raised on, several clashes between police and residents took place over the next few years. During this time, residents blocked the entrance to the new dump site, much like they had done in Papan. During each hearing day, thousands of residents walked to the court in Ipoh, as a protest was some days resulting in arrests and harassment from the police. Within the first five years of the refinery being opened, the number of babies born with birth defects increased. And eight recorded cases of leukemia were found within the local area population of around 11,000. For many years before the refinery had started operations, no leukemia cases had been reported. In 1990, the court case was finally over and both sides had to wait until July 1992 for an outcome. During this time, the pollution continued to damage the local environment. The Ipoh court found in favour of the residents and ordered ARE to shut down within 14 days. Unsurprisingly, the company filed an appeal and the Supreme Court overturned the ruling allowing ARE to continue operations. One of the reasons was that the court found the partially government-funded ARE's experts were more believable. A number of residents who were plaintiffs in the case travelled to Japan to meet up with Mitsubishi heads to discuss the situation. During the meetings, they were told that ARE appealed without its parent company's consent. The reason this was able to happen was because Mitsubishi didn't have a controlling share of ARE given the company some level of autonomy to operate. However, Mitsubishi in the face of growing public opinion and the risk to its reputation pulled the plug on ARE in January 1994, even though the company had won the legal battle locally. However, it would be almost 10 years before substantial cleanup efforts would be undertaken. As late as 2010, 80,000 barrels of waste sat languishing in the Kili Dang range dump site. The cleanup effort to properly store waste was estimated to cost 300 million Malaysian ringgit. The safe storage of the waste meant that a hilltop had to be removed and hollowed out to safely store the waste inside with a clay and soil cap. Mitsubishi would quietly finance the cleanup efforts due to having a large stake in the Malaysian economy, where it manufactures multiple different types of products. As part of the settlement, the company donated $164,000 to local schools. However, this feels like a drop in the ocean for potential damage that had been caused to the community. Mitsubishi still denies the link between elevated health issues and the local population and the works conducted at the ARE site. However, the Bookit Mera event wouldn't spell the end for rare earth refining in the country, when Australian company Linus set up in Pahang. The opening of the site became a controversial endeavour as old wounds were reopened, worrying a whole new set of local residents. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video. This video was voted for by my patrons. If you'd like to become one, then you can for $1 per video. That gets you access to votes and early access to future videos. I have a Twitter and also if you want to wear my merch, you can purchase it at my Teespring store. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Thank you to my patrons for voting for this subject. If you'd like to vote on future videos and get early access to videos, then you can for $1 per creation. I also have YouTube membership, where you can get early access to videos for 99 pence per month. A community should be a safe and secure place to live and raise a family. At least, that is what most look for when finding a place to live. However, below one particular community, tons of dangerous pollutants sat waiting to be discovered. It's August 1978 and for the first time in US history, emergency funds are to be used for a situation other than a natural disaster. President Jimmy Carter declares a public health emergency in a community near Niagara Falls and would be the first entry in the superfund list. This would affect hundreds of families, meaning all would have to be relocated, essentially dismantling a small community. But the Love Canal disaster story started many decades before. In 1894, William T Love began to dig a canal between Upper and Lower Niagara Falls City in New York, which is around here on the map. The cutting was intended to be used to provide hydroelectric power to his dream of a model town. Love's plans were shattered by economic difficulties and an alternating current, which negated the need for locally sourced electricity. The canal by 1910 was 3000 feet long, around 80 to 100 feet wide and between 7 and 16 feet deep, with one end around 1500 feet from the Niagara River. The ditch went out of use for many years, filling up with water and occasionally being used for swimming by the locals in the summer. However, the municipality decided the big ditch would be perfect for use as a dump. Throughout its use of the dump, little care was taken to the future of the land, with exposed waste laying in the canal without adequate protection to the environment. In the 1940s, the Hooker Chemicals on Plastics Corporation, looking for a new dump site, bought the canal, including the banks, and lined the cutting with thick clay. For 11 years between 1942 and 1953, Hooker Chemical dumped between 21 and 22,000 tons of chemical waste. Around 200 types of known chemicals were disposed of at the site, for example lindane, which in large enough doses can cause damage to your nervous system. Hooker Chemical in 1953 sold off the land to the Niagara School Board for a princely sum of $1, and the dump was covered with soil. The Niagara School Board had been inquiring about the land as early as 1952. Originally, the Chemicals company had sought to deed the land to the board for the sole use of a park. This was refused by the board and instead the land was sold for $1 with an extensive contract limiting any future liability to the company from the waste buried below. As the housing needs in the Niagara Falls area increased in the 1950s, the now covered over Love Canal started to see development, starting off with the construction of the 99th Street School in its originally proposed location. However, after construction works had begun, some exposed waste led to the project being slightly moved, the fears of foundation issues due to the unstable ground. After the 99th Street School was completed and began teaching its some 400 students, another school, the 93rd Street, opened. After completion of the two schools, the committee sold off the remaining land to private and city developers for housing. Due to land being sold on, the dangerous chemicals were unknown by the new property developers. During various works in the area including building of sewers for the new properties, the clay cap and protective walls to the waste dump got damaged. Because of the lack of knowledge by the developers for the dangers below, no contamination monitoring took place. The damage to the clay linings allowed the deadly chemicals to seep into the ground and be washed away by rainwater. During construction work on the Lacell Highway, some of the chemicals managed to find its way into some of the houses, backyards and basements. By 1972, nearly all the houses in the area were built, with many having their backyards adjacent to the old dump site. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, various residents complained of strange odours, minor unexplained fires and odd puddles of chemicals. Between 1976 and 1977, high amounts of precipitation caused the ground water level to rise. In 1976, the Niagara Gazette reported over two months that materials from a chemical landfill between the 97th and 99th streets had been seeping into basements of the homes in the area, as well as seeping into storm drains leading into the Niagara River. Something was not right with the area as trees died in people's gardens and the air became hard to breathe as noxious chemicals seeped out of the canal. The newspaper sent two reporters to a number of pumps around the area to carry out independent testing. The results indicated a presence of 15 organic chemicals, including free toxic chlorinated hydrocarbon. The articles in the Gazette prompted residents to start contacting the local government and throughout the 1970s organised protests. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation visited the Love Canal in late 1976 due to suspicions that Hooker had dumped Myrex during the area's tenure as a dump site. Myrex is a deadly chemical that has been used in pesticides, however it has since been banned. During 1977, a study was undertaken around the homes closest to the canal and detected numerous volatile organic chemicals, suggesting a serious health threat in the air of the property's basements. In early 1978, reporter Michael Brown undertook a door-to-door survey investigating reports of elevated health issues amongst the Love Canal community. During his survey, multiple cases of birth defects were found. Around this time, several residents' protest groups were formed. On the 2nd of August 1978, Lois Gibbs of the Love Canal Homeowners Association began to rally residents. Gibbs had enrolled her son at the local school in 1977 and he had developed a number of conditions including epilepsy, asthma and a low white blood cell count. Lois would become a very well-known face of the whole disaster and the community's uphill struggle to get recognition for the health effects of the wider community. In August 1978, the New York State Department of Health declared the site a health emergency. The health order suggested closing the 99th Street School, evacuating all pregnant women and all children under the age of two. It also suggested limiting any time that residents spent in their basements and to refrain from eating any produce from home gardens. Governor Hugh Carey announced that the houses closest to the canal, known as the Hazard Zone, would be purchased, meaning around 239 families would need to relocate. Not long after the governor's announcement, President Jimmy Carter declared a federal state emergency, allowing federal funds to be used in dealing with the unfolding health disaster. As a side note, Carter had a number of big things to deal with during his time as president. By the end of August, around 98 of the families had been moved on, with another 46 in temporary housing. By the time that the 200 plus families had been rehoused, the cost of purchasing the houses ran to around $7 million. The EPA set out to tackle the contamination in the area. Their plan involved a trench system to drain the chemicals from the canal into the sewers, adding a polyetherine containment around the outside of the canal and a new more resilient clay cap. However, the works were considered controversial as the local activist groups pushed for an evacuation before excavation policy for the wider area outside of the deemed Hazard Zone. Which is understandable worry as various studies and medical surveys estimated that 75% of Love Canal residents would face elevated health risks. Potensions at the work site ran into fever pitch as protesters including Mrs. Gibbs were arrested, although charges would later get quietly dropped. Surveys around a 93rd Street School also showed elevated levels of contamination and more and more families around the area began to try and move away. By 1980 around 710 families were being prepared for temporary evacuation. These families came from an extended 50 square block area around the dump and was funded by a second federal state emergency declaration. Some were to move only temporarily where others moved out for good. Some were offered buyouts where others were offered low interest loans. Also in 1980 the US government passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act, better known as the Superfund Act. One part of the new act was that it could be retroactively applied. This meant that any company responsible for an environmental disaster could be held liable for cleanup of the waste even though it followed US laws when disposing of it. This would bring Hooker Chemical back into the picture, however it had been sold in the late 1960s to Oxidental Petroleum and this would get expensive. For the next few years the bought out houses began to get knocked down as residents tearfully left the neighbourhood. Two rings of houses immediately around the canal were condemned, however it was unknown if any more houses were habitable. In 1982 the EPA confirmed that the properties outside of the initial two rings of houses would be habitable again. Around this time the EPA found that the dioxin levels at the canal were 100,000 times the toxic level for lab animals. In 1984 Oxidental settled with the residents a $20 million lump sum. The lawsuit had some 1328 named residents. This worked out as $14,250 on average per resident. An additional $1 million was set aside for a medical fund. This was following the 1983 suit brought against the company from the government. The company would carry on paying out for years to come in the form of insurance and personal injury claims. For the remainder of the 1980s further cleanup and remedial work would be carried out including cleaning out the sewers and regular testing of air and soil samples. The Love Canal Area Revitalization Agency was set up for redevelopment of the habitable areas north of the Love Canal, resulting in the new Black Creek Village consisting of around 260 renovated homes. About 150 acres east of the canal were sold to commercial developers for light industrial uses. The health effects on the residents were drastic with around 33% of those tested in 1979 had chromosomal damage. Higher than the national average were reported of low birth weight children as well as higher birth defect rates and sadly higher miscarriage rates. Reports of high white cell blood counts, a precursor to leukemia, were also linked to the disaster. After 20 years of cleanup efforts estimated at around $400 million, the EPA delisted the canal in 2004 from the Superfund list, although it was largely symbolic as the area continues to be monitored. After a 16 year court battle, Occidental agreed to pay $129 million to the government for the cleanup, in a total around 950 families were affected at the Love Canal disaster. Thank you for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video. If you'd like to support the channel financially you can from $1 per curation on Patreon or for 99 pence on YouTube. I have merch if you fancy my face on a t-shirt and I also have a Twitter and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Thank you to my Patreon for voting for this video. If you'd like to vote on future videos you can for just $1 per curation. I also have YouTube membership as well which gets you early access to new videos. A nuclear weapons main purpose is to offer a deterrent to any would-be attacking nation. For this to be achieved a constant state of readiness must be maintained. In a strange case of irony to protect a country from nuclear weapons the same deadly devices need to be kept close to hand. In 1980 an incident showed the dangers of the principle of constant readiness. It is 1980 and in rural Arkansas north of Damascus which is around here on the map, a fuel leak would result in an explosion within a nuclear missile silo killing one an injuring 21 service personnel. The accident would be considered a broken arrow incident and would highlight the risks involved with the readiness of nuclear weapons launch platforms. Underground missile silos listed the continental US forming part of the country's nuclear deterrent. These silos were used to house ICBMs in deep underground structures and were intended to be resistant to a first nuclear strike and the ICBM would form a retaliation attack. Now the silos wouldn't be able to survive a direct hit but their spacing from one another allowed some to be able to launch. One such type of ICBM employed in 1980 was the aging Titan II missile. The Titan II missile was in service between 1962 and 1987 and was developed from an earlier Titan I missile. The rocket used two stages to launch its payload and used liquid fuel for its propellant. Originally built for weapons payloads the missile found non-military uses. During the Gemini project as well as a number of satellite launches the Titan II space launch vehicle variants saw use all the way into 2003. The ICBMs formed the backbone of the US strategic deterrents until being superseded by the solid-fueled Minutemen missile system. The Titan II's warhead was the 9 megaton yield W-53 and was the highest yield weapon deployed on a US missile. The warhead weighed 2800 kilograms and was pretty much the same as the airdrop B-34 nuclear bomb albeit without the parachute and a few other extra things. The weapon was considered a bunker buster using a large shockwave to destroy any buried targets and around 65 W-53 warheads were constructed between 1962 and 1963. In an ideal detonation height the resulting fireball from the warhead could be up to 3.4 miles in diameter. The blast would be powerful enough to level most buildings within a 9 mile radius. If you're lucky enough to survive the blast which was very unlikely you'll get a dose of 500 rem of ionizing radiation. The missile had a total length of 103 feet. This included the stage 1 at 67 feet, stage 2 at 29 feet and the reentry vehicle at 14 feet which is where the warhead was placed. The Titan II had a mass of 154,000 kilograms. The first stage used a liquid-fueled LR-87 rocket engine and the second stage used a LR-91 engine. The system had a maximum range of 16,000 kilometers. The Titan II missiles were originally intended to be retired in the early 1970s due to aging seals in the missiles and the volatile nature of the liquid propellant. They were only intended to have around a 10-year service life, however, they were kept in use mainly due to their ability to deliver the W5-3 warhead. As the years went on spare parts became less and less available and the last test flight of the Titan II took place in 1976. The silo and launch complex for a Titan II missile consisted of two main sections, the launch control center and the launch facility. The two sections of the bunker were connected via tunnels. The LCC held four crew members, the missile combat crew commander, the deputy missile combat crew commander, the listing missile analyst technician and the missile facilities technician. The LCC was downshaked and had three levels consisting of living quarters, launch level and a communication level. The Titan II was housed inside the facilities a 155 feet long launching tube and had sliding steel doors weighing 740 tons at the top. Launch complex 374-7 was one of nine silos within its 374th strategic missile squadron. In total, 54 Titan IIs were deployed across Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas. Launching of the Titan II could only be ordered by the president, this was done in the form of a 35-letter code. The two operators on duty in the launch control center would note the code and compare. If both matched, then they would go to a red safe. The safe had two code locks and each operator had their own code. Once the safe was open, the operators were confronted with a number of envelopes with two letters on each one. In the 35-letter code, another seven-digit subcode was embedded. The first two letters of this subcode indicated which envelope to open. Inside the envelope was a plastic cookie with five letters written on it. If the letters matched the final five on the subcode, then the launch was authorized and the launch could be initiated. To launch the missile, the two operators would need to operate a key each on the main console. The keyholes were spaced far enough apart that one person couldn't turn both keys. Both operators would need to turn the key within two seconds of each other and have to hold the key on for five seconds. The missile batteries would be charged and the main power would be disconnected. The silo door would slide open. During this time, the main engine would build up thrust and finally the ballistic bolts would blow allowing the rocket to take off. Silo 374-7 had seen issues before, as in 1978 an oxidiser leak sent a cloud of toxic fumes 3,000 feet long, 300 feet wide and 100 feet high, drifting across US Highway 65. Also in 1978 another leak at a different silo had killed two airmen. In the two years between that and the 1980 explosion, multiple leaks were reported. This was in part due to dangers of the leak with propellant and also due to the age of the vital seals within the missile. On the 18th of September 1980 at 6.30pm a two-man team from the PTS or propellant transfer team were conducting some maintenance on the Titan II missile. They were checking the pressure in the oxidiser tank. Before undertaking the maintenance work they had taken a three-foot ratchet instead of the mandated torque wrench. The socket for the ratchet weighed 3.6 kilos and during the work the socket fell 80 feet bouncing off a thrust mount into the first stage rocket skin, puncturing it and the fuel tank underneath. A cloud of aerosine began to emit from the punctured first stage. The aerosine 50 would spontaneously combust if it came into contact with the rocket's oxidiser which was stored inside the second fuel tank inside the first stage. Due to the fuel tank emptying an increasing worry of the rocket collapsing in on itself was thought. If it was to happen the oxidiser tank would also get ruptured causing an explosion. A hazard team was formed, personnel on site evacuated and police were sent out to evacuate the local population. Whilst the evacuation took place efforts were undertaken to find out the status of the potentially deadly rocket and even more the deadly warhead. In the early hours of the morning of the 19th two airmen Rex Huckle and Devlin were the first to enter the complex however they couldn't make their way through the inner blast door. Senior airmen David Livingstone and Sergeant Jeff K. Kennedy were then sent in and entered the launch complex to try and get readings of airborne fuel concentrations. The results scarily came back as dangerously high. The two men were ordered back. Upon reaching the surface the two men got to the concrete edge of the access portal and at 3 a.m disaster struck. The hypergolic fuel exploded and the spark was thought to have been from some faulty extraction fans arcing and fusing. The 740 tons silo lid blew 200 feet into the air and landed around 600 feet to the northeast. The second stage and the warhead were launched into the sky shortly after. Upon clearing the silo the second stage's fuel also exploded. When it finally landed the warhead settled 100 feet outside the complex entrance gate. Luckily the safety devices aboard the warhead worked as they should and no nuclear explosion happened or any radioactive material was lost. The explosion had pretty much destroyed the missile silo's tube and other debris spread throughout the area. Sergeant Kennedy was flung 150 feet from the silo receiving a broken leg. Livingstone was buried under the rubble from the silo tube. He was eventually discovered and evacuated to hospital where he would die of his wounds later that day. Around 21 people would be injured from the explosion and the resulting debris. The clean-up works began in October to recover and dispose of the 400 acre area of debris. Many towns were gathered as well as around 100,000 gallons of wastewater from the wrecked complex site. An estimated figure of 225 million was predicted to completely rebuild the site. To demolish the site and clear up the waste a figure of around 20 million was posed. The government decided to fill in the massive hole with debris, soil and gravel. The land eventually came under private ownership and in 2000 the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The event found its way into newspapers however the Carter vs Reagan election campaigns quickly pushed it out to the public consciousness. And this is another event that happened during the Carter administration. Six Air Force servicemen, Livingstone prosthumously, Kennedy, Huckle, Devlin, Don Green and Jimmy Roberts were awarded airmen's medals for heroism in May 1981 for actions during the event. After investigation it was found that the Titan project was still safe however a number of recommendations were made. The Titan 2 didn't last much longer however as it began to be finally phased out in 1982 with the final system at 373-8 in Arkansas deactivated in May 1987. Thank you very much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video. Would you like me to cover more broken arrow events? Let me know in the comments. If you'd like to vote and get early access to videos you can on my Patreon for $1 per creation. I've got Twitter if you'd like to follow me on there and I always have to say yes thank you for watching. Thank you to my Patreons for voting for this subject. If you'd like to vote on future video subjects as well as get early access to videos you can for $1 per creation. You can also get early access to videos on YouTube membership for 99 pence per month. Soyuz has become almost a household name after the ending of the space shuttle project as both Astro and Cosmonauts have travelled aboard the craft. The Soyuz program and its many variants have seen operational use over 50 years however its first manned flight would end in disaster. Now this is a little different from my usual videos but the subject is interesting nonetheless. The space race and the arms race were intertwined especially in rocket development as if you can get a payload into space and back efficiently then you can also use it for nuclear bomb. Hence why during the 20th century almost endless amounts of money was dumped into the exploration of space. The Soyuz program was the third Soviet manned flight system after the Vostok which took Yuri Gagarin into space in 1961 and the Vosthod program which had the first multiple manned crew and first spacewalk. The Soyuz system used two parts the rocket known as the launch vehicle and the spacecraft which included the re-entry vehicle. The rocket consisted of three stages the first was four identical conical liquid booster rockets attached to the second stage. The first stage provided the main thrust in the first two minutes of flight and was subsequently jettisoned. The second stage consisted of one motor with four combustion chambers and tapered towards the bottom to allow the stage one rockets to attach. The second stage took care of the next 168 seconds. The third and final stage also contained a motor and carried on the rocket's upward trajectory after all the other stages had been jettisoned. The first two stages would burn for around five minutes and would consume 225,000 kilograms of kerosene and liquid oxygen. When the last 22 tons of fuel were burnt off and after 8 minutes and 40 seconds the Soyuz would reach low level orbit around the earth. This leads us to the spacecraft part of the program. The Soyuz spacecraft used for the International Space Station today is an evolution. Its beginnings went back to the early 1960s with the first generation Soyuz 7KOK. It was intended to form the backbone of the Soviet lunar exploration mission. The first test flight took place on the 28th November 1966 during the Cosmos 133 mission. The mission was intended to test out automated docking of a second Soyuz launched a day later. However, problems with the second vehicle ruined the planned objective. The abandoning of the second launch required the first Soyuz to be manoeuvred for re-entry. However, issues with the onboard systems led to an incorrect burn. This meant landing being predicted in China. Not wanting the craft to land in non-Russian hands, control sent a self-destruct command. The next test flight of the Soyuz didn't go much better either. After technical problems of its first mission a new launch date was set for the 14th December 1966. An ignition failure in one of the Strap on Boosters caused the triggering of a launch abort. After some workers returned to the launch pad to investigate the issue, the launch escape system activated blasting the Soyuz descent module 3. The flames from the descent module ignited the first, second and third stages destroying the entire launch vehicle and severely damaging the launch pad. The unexpected incident killed one worker. Now the third test launch Cosmos 140 did actually take off and enter orbit as intended. The mission started on the 7th February 1967 upon re-entry once again the craft experienced guidance issues. This time however it remained controllable until re-entry when another malfunction caused two steeper descent angle. In doing so burning a 30cm hole in the heat shield. The Soyuz crashed through the ice in the aerial sea short of its intended target and had to be recovered by divers. Even though the hole in the heat shield would have meant death to anyone aboard, the test was considered enough of a success to use a living human being in the next launch. This leads us on to the Soyuz 1 mission. The plan was for the craft to launch and be followed a day later by a free man crewed Soyuz 2. Upon meeting in orbit two of the cosmonauts would spacewalk from Soyuz 2 to Soyuz 1. The launch date was set for the 23rd of April 1967 and would be crewed by 40 year old Vosthod 1 veteran and lunar training group commander Vladimir Mikhailovich Komarov. The mission was set to be launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Komarov knew of the issues of the previous launches and the Soyuz 1 would have its fair share of drama even before liftoff. It was reported at the time that backup pilot Yuri Gagarin was seen arguing to take Komarov's place. This has been interpreted that he wanted to save Komarov by going into Soyuz 1 instead of him in the thought that the Soviet Union wouldn't risk losing a national hero aka the first man in space. However this has never been confirmed and Komarov did continue on his mission. The spacecraft was launched successfully at 3.35am Moscow time and reached the orbit needed for the mission. Almost immediately the Soyuz spacecraft came into trouble when one of its solar panels failed to deploy, cutting the power supply in half. To add some more salt into the wound the failed panel blocked out the sun and some of the sensors used in navigation. The lack of a working second panel also caused altitude problems due to the now asymmetry of the craft. Komarov in a desperate attempt to write the craft kicked on the Soyuz's wall to try and deploy the failed solar panel. The mission of Soyuz 2 was modified to repair the failed solar panel. However this was quickly abandoned when a thunderstorm engulfed the launch pad. Mission control told Komarov to manually stabilize the craft however it was a waste of valuable propellant. With the battery powered dwindling and almost out of control on the 13th orbit officials on the ground decided to abort the mission. Engineers decided that re-entry should be attempted on the 17th orbit with the next two as backup. This window was to allow the best chance of districting craft to attempt re-entry before the vital batteries died. Before this could be attempted the correct orientation of the craft had to be obtained and this would be difficult with the failing navigation system. Too shallow of an angle and the craft would bounce off the atmosphere too steep of an angle would mean burn up. To achieve this the craft had several systems. The first was the Astro inertial system which had been rendered useless by the failed solar panel. The next system was the ionic sensor which had not been the most reliable system with Komarov reporting problems with it on the 13th orbit. The last usable way of orientating the craft was via manual control however Komarov struggled to keep craft in the correct orientation due to the asymmetry caused by the solar panel issues. Eventually the craft managed to be manhandled to attempt to re-entry burn. During the burn the faulty altitude control system allowed the vehicle to drift too far off the allowed path in turn causing the automatic system to halt retro fire. In order to try and initiate another re-entry was given and this time the engines fired for long enough to begin to enter the atmosphere. However the craft drifted enough of course due to the asymmetric shape of the undeployed solar panel to activate the automatic shut-off once again. Although retro fire had shut off it was enough for the desired effect. Soyuz 1 was beginning its descent. The shielded descent module which housed Komarov successfully detached from the orbital and instrument modules. For a safe landing Soyuz needed to deploy a drogue parachute and a main parachute. The first successfully deployed however due to a failed pressure sensor and a mainshoot did not. Komarov then manually deployed the reserve chute however in a cruel continuation of the mission's bad luck the reserve chute got tangled with the drogue chute. The speed of the descent module was not slowed enough and it slammed into the ground in Orenburg a blast. The speed was predicted to be around 89 miles per hour. A rescue helicopter spotted the descent module on its side with the failed parachutes spread across the ground and landed to try and mount a rescue effort. The solid fuel rockets at the bottom of the module had become crushed in the impact and fired engulfing the craft in flames leaving a gruesome scene of mangled metal. More rescuers arrived at the crash scene and attempted to fight the fire with extinguishers. Tragically Komarov didn't survive the impact and resulting flames. After extinguishing the fire the rescuers were able to dig through the crumpled wreck of the reentry vehicle to find Komarov's remains strapped to his seat. Komarov's body was reduced to a pile of char clothing and flesh as seen in this picture. It was a pretty grim outcome for a brave man indeed. The only recognisable part of his body was of a heel bone. Field doctors declared the cause of the death as multiple blunt force injuries. Findings of the cause of death were confirmed in the Moscow official autopsy. The route to disaster could be placed squarely at the political ambitions of beating the USA to the moon. However in a turn of irony the failed mission would in part scupper the USSR's lunar project. The launch of Soyuz 2 and Soyuz 3 was delayed until October 1968. The mission didn't end in tragedy and the two Soyuz craft made the plan rendezvous, but the plan docking didn't take place. Docking in space which was the original goal of Soyuz 1 wouldn't be completed until Soyuz 4 and 5. Improvements however were made in the 18 month hiatus of the Soyuz project for a while. That was until Soyuz 11 when a malfunction on a Soyuz 7K-OKS caused death by asphyxiation of the three cosmonauts aboard in 1971. Soyuz was the USSR's first public disaster in its space program and it made its mark on the whole Russian space industry. Soyuz would improve to become the world's longest running space program successfully becoming one of the most reliable and safest human transport spacecraft. Comorov was a named hero of the Soviet Union for a second time. He was given a state funeral and his remains were buried in the Kremlin-worn Necropolis at Red Square Moscow. Comorov's name did make its way to the moon with the fallen astronaut aluminium sculpture and plaque. It was commissioned by the crew of Apollo 15 and placed on the moon on August 1st 1971. Did you know you can get early access to my videos for $1 per creation on Patreon and for 99 pence on YouTube membership. The Cold War saw ever more crazy nuclear weapons tests. One such of these tests was known as the Starfish Prime and would create a scary but beautiful light display over the Pacific Ocean. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, knowledge of radiation in space was relatively incomplete with a Van Allen Belt discovery in 1958. The discovery was that bands of high energy particles were held in place by strong magnetic fields. In 1958 the US exploded six weapons in high altitude tests but the results raised more questions than it answered. These tests were stopped when the USA, USSR and Great Britain agreed to a three-year memorandum on nuclear weapons tests. Internal political pressures within the USSR led to an announcement in August 1961 that they would be lifting the memorandum on their testing. In response US conducted Operation Dominic, a series of 31 weapons tests during this period a much more ambitious series of tests were conducted in order to try and answer some of the high altitude questions from 1958. The series of tests were called Operation Fishbowl and the objectives were to investigate three main phenomena, the electromagnetic pulses and its effects of all those associated with high altitude nuclear explosions and blackouts of radio communication. The Fishbowl launches would be from Johnston Atoll. The test required a launch vehicle to place the warheads at the correct altitude. For this the PGM-17A4 rocket was selected. The warhead that was selected for the top of the missile was the W49. It was 20 inches in diameter and 54 to 58 inches long depending on the model weighing between 1640 and 1680 pounds and had a design yield of around 1.44 megatons. The warhead was introduced in 1958 and saw service on the four Atlas, Jupiter and Titan 1 ballistic missile system. The first two launches during Operation Fishbowl didn't go to plan. Launch number one was called Blue Gill and took place on the 2nd of June 1962. During the launch the missile lost radar contact with the ground, fearing the missile being off trajectory and on the collision course for any shipping or local air traffic. The mission was aborted and the rocket was destroyed. The next launch, named Starfish on the 20th of June, went to plan for around 59 seconds after liftoff. Only for the engine to cut out and the rocket then started to break apart. Again the order to abort and destroy the rocket was issued. The rocket was at an altitude between 30 and 35,000 feet. The destruction of the rocket spread radioactive material over Johnston Island and a large amount of debris made it into the ocean just off the coast. This leads us onto what you have come here for, Starfish Prime. Now if the mission failed and was reattempted then the name would be followed by Prime, hence Starfish Prime being a re-go of the previous launch. The rerun was set for the night for July 1962, the missile successfully launched and the warhead re-entry vehicle successfully reached the altitude of 250 miles. The warhead exploded at 0900 hours UTC, 13 minutes and 41 seconds after liftoff, achieving a yield close to the warhead's design spec at 1.4 megatons. The explosion was the largest the US had ever conducted at high altitude. The base particles produced lit up the sky while energetic electrons created artificial radiation belts around the earth. The blast sent an electromagnetic pulse far larger than anticipated, sending recording operators off the scale. Because of this the operation found it difficult to find an accurate reading. 898 miles away in Honolulu, Hawaii over 300 streetlights went out and various other electrical items received interference from the pulse. The EMP and resultant radiation belt damaged on knocked out several satellites in Earth's orbit. These included Transit 4, Telstar 1 and the British Aerial 1. The satellite, although receiving damage affecting its operation, resulted in an odd change of events. The damage to its internal clock inadvertently extended its mission from one year to the mid 1970s. Many of the damaged satellites provided valuable data on the effect of nuclear weapons at high orbit. The explosion was 10 degrees above the horizon viewed from Hawaii at 11pm local time, creating a sunset effect. The fireball burned a bright orangey red. For a few minutes following the detonation auroras could be viewed around the site of the explosion. Several smaller rockets were launched to take measurements of the explosion and its after effects. Academy and Tracer was included in the launch to allow scientists to understand the rate at which polar and tropical air masses mixed during different seasons. As much as five years later electrons from the explosion could still be measured. The fishbowl test concluded with tightrope launch on the 2nd of November 1962. The information gathered from the test showed that a high-altitude explosion could knock out many sensitive electronics, essentially paralyzing a country. In the 1960s the devastation reaped would have been bad enough. In the 60s since, electrolyte devices have become far more sensitive and are relied upon for many more essential services. This means that if a nation was to set off a nuclear explosion of a certain yield over a country, it could literally send it back to the Dark Ages. Thank you very much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video. This one has been a bit shorter than the normal type of video I've been doing, but I thought it was well worth covering. Thank you so much to my Patreons and YouTube members for your financial support. If you'd like to vote and get early access to videos, you can on my Patreon for $1 per creation. I've got a Twitter and if you'd like to follow me there, that would be great. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Thank you to my Patreons for voting on this subject. If you'd like to vote on future videos and get early access to videos, then you can for $1 per creation. I also have YouTube membership where you can get early access to videos for 99 pence per month. A long-standing family-run fertilizer company around 80 miles south of Dallas would be the epicentre of an incident that would leave its facility flattened and cause severe damage to homes, a school and an apartment building, as well as 260 people injured and 15 fatalities. Large explosions injuring hundreds are usually linked to deliberate acts such as terrorism or warfare. However, a small city in Texas would experience one of the worst industrial explosions that the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board would ever investigate. In my quest to expand the channel to ever more industrial and nuclear disasters, today we're looking at the West Fertiliser Explosion. And although not my usual nuclear screw-up, the incident shows the dangers linked to even industries that we take for granted. West Texas is a city 20 miles north of the infamous Waco, and depending on which route Google Maps takes you, around 80 miles south of Dallas, which is about here on the map. First settled in the 1840s and named after its first postmaster, TM West, the city, by the 2010 census, had a modest population of just over 2,800 people. The city of West Texas has actually been in one of my videos before, as just three miles south of the site of Crush, Texas, where two trains were deliberately crashed head-on to one another for the entertainment of a large paying crowd in 1896, with very few safety precautions. This ended unsurprisingly in tragedy with a death toll of two and injuring many others. The West Fertiliser company started operating in 1962, and its core business was fertilizers, chemicals, grains, and various other farming supplies. The facility that stored chemicals was based in the northern end of the city. The company was owned by the same family as a daregrain ink, hiring nine workers on the site. As the years went on, the growth of the city meant that properties were built closer to the fence line of the site. A park less than 150 feet, an apartment complex about 370 feet, West Intermediate School just over 200 feet, and West High School about 500 feet, gradually built up around the area. The site housed two retail companies both owned by the Adair family, the first being the fertilizer business, which sold fertilizer, farming chemicals and other farming equipment, whereas the daregrain bought, sold, and stored grain for the local farming communities. The fertilizer part of the company also rented fertilizer spreading equipment and spread fertilizer on the farmland when needed. This would mean that large quantities of chemicals were stored on site. The amount stored would vary depending on the season. The fertilizer company operated two buildings and multiple tanks on site. One building served as the chemical warehouse, shop area, and offices. Most chemicals purchased by farmers were stored in that building, and one such product sold was 7, which was another subject of a video on this channel. 7 and other commercial chemicals were stored on site in varying containers. The other building, built in the 1960s, was the fertilizer building. It stored a number of fertilizers such as di ammonium phosphate, ammonium sulfate, potassium chloride, potassium magnesium sulfate, and fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate, also known as FGAN. The building was a wood frame structure with a concrete base. The facility did not manufacture any fertilizers on site and was instead more of a distributor, mixing and selling bulk fertilizer components or unaltered products such as pure fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate and ammonium sulfate. The FGAN was stored in plywood bins along the west wall building and in one main bin and the north end of the building. The main bin was not normally more than half full, however the ones on the west wall had varying levels of different fertilizers in them. The west wall bins were freestanding 10 feet high and were made of plywood with one wall open. The main bin was constructed differently as it was attached to the structure of the building but also had plywood walls. It was 8 feet wide, 20 feet long, and 30 feet high. The binhead hull was cut into it to allow adequate airflow and to act as an overflow to another bin. This brings us around to 2013 and disaster. On the 17th of April, a fire had broken out at the west fertilizer site. At 7.29pm local residents contacted 911. One of the first responders was a policeman on his usual patrol. The west volunteer fire department arrived on the scene and began to douse the flames. As emergency responders worked on the fire, the flames reached 40 to 50 feet out at the top of the fertilizer building. Members of the public had stopped to watch and film the fire on their mobile phones. Between 7.50pm and 7.51pm, just 20 minutes after the first report of fire, the fertilizer building exploded with the force of an estimated equivalent power of between 7 and 10 tonnes of TNT. According to the Chicago Tribune, a measured magnitude of a 2.1 earthquake was seen. The explosion created a 93 foot crater where the wooden building once stood. It was estimated that around 30 to 40 tonnes of fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate was present inside the building. The chemical storage and office building east of the fertilizer storage building was completely flattened and a grain silo was also destroyed. A railway carriage containing even more fertilizer was turned on its side. The nearby railway track was shifted around two feet from its original position and in the nearby play park the equipment got completely flattened as well. The nearby school took considerable damage all over. The west raven nursing home was severely damaged with its street entrance completely battered. Many of the bed ridden residents had to be evacuated via the windows for fear of building collapse. The nearby two-story apartment blocks facade was completely gutted leading to the walls and roof to fail virtually destroying the building. Various other private residences were damaged with 142 homes damaged beyond repair, 50 experiencing major damage, 27 receiving minor damage and 130 more homes affected. Around half the houses in west received some kind of damage from the explosion. Houses as far away as 7 miles had window panes cracked. The damage did not end with just property as local infrastructure was also affected with water pipes getting ruptured. Parts of the city had issues obtaining water until completion of remedial works. The fire and resulting explosion killed 15 people, 10 of whom were first responders, two members of the public who assisted and three other members of the public, two of whom were residents in the west terrace departments. Around 260 people were injured with many being sent to medical centres in Dallas, Waco and Fort Worth. A makeshift triage was set up in a local community hall and the injuries varied from serious to minor. All of the local schools were closed in fears of the fire having released toxic fumes into the air and on April 18th the Texas National Guards sent a team to the area to test the air quality and assess chemical and biological hazards. The damage to property other buildings including multiple cars, farm vehicles and first responder vehicles. The total damage cost was estimated to be in excess of $100 million dollars however West Fertiliser only had insurance up to a $1 million dollar liability. The company would receive and settle a number of lawsuits from residents and the city for the best part of the remaining decade. The event made it to national news and President Obama attended the memorial service for the fallen first responders and said in his speech to the families in audience, to the families, the neighbours grappling with unbearable loss, we are here to say you're not alone, you are not forgotten. We may not all live here in Texas but we're neighbours too. We're Americans too and we stand with you. An investigation by the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board found that the company had made some serious issues with the way West Fertiliser had operated. Most notably was the way the chemicals were stored with flammable materials next to the FGAM bins as well as the materials used in the construction of the building. No fire alarm or suppression system was installed on site, meaning that even the smallest of flames could get out of hand very quickly. Such a system would have stopped the whole incident in its tracks. Even the ventilation in the bins contributed to the fire by allowing more air to be sucked into the combustion, creating a hotter flame. The findings found that the operational safety and health administration lacking in its responsibilities to oversee such a facility. Another point was shown that the city had allowed construction so close to such a facility, increasing the risk to the local population. But even though the company was at fault for the ease the fire had in progressing to an explosion, the question still remains how did the fire start? As soon as the flames were put out an investigation was conducted by the fire marshal. This then initiated Texas Department of Public Safety to instruct Texas Rangers and the McLennan County Sheriff's Department to launch a criminal probe. The ATF also started an investigation into the explosion. The agency spent three years and more than $2 million interviewing over 400 people and building life-sized replicas of parts of the plant. Eventually the agency came to the conclusion that the fire had been intentionally started. This was because they acclaimed to have eliminated all other possibilities. The ATF put up a $50,000 reward for any information leading to a conviction. However, their conclusion has been disputed. In 2015 Texas legislature passed House Bill 942. This improved regulations of the storage and inspection of facilities using ammonium nitrate. The bill also granted the authority to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and local fire marshals to inspect and enforce regulations. Many of the damaged buildings had to be torn down and after receiving government funding many structures were rebuilt. Six years after the fertiliser plant explosion a memorial was erected. The memorial is around 100 yards away from the site of the plant and has a reflecting pool surrounded by 15 plaques, one for each of the victims. Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video. This video was voted for by my Patreons. If you'd like to become one you can for $1 per creation that gets you access to votes and early access to future videos. Either Twitter and also if you want to wear my merch you can purchase it at the Teespring store. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Thank you to my Patreons for voting on this subject. If you'd like to get on a vote on future videos as well as get early access to videos then you can for $1 per creation. You can also get early access to videos on YouTube membership from 99 pence per month. Your financial support really helps the channel out. Experimental reactors are a common backdrop to a scene of nuclear power disaster. This could be due to technical or operator issues but nonetheless the outcome can be equally detrimental to both the environment and workers nearby. Fuel sale meltdowns have happened on almost every type of reactor. From sodium cooled to graphite moderated all the way to pressurized water reactors. Today's video is about an incident in such a PWR setup. After an interesting detour of industrial disasters, space disasters and a couple of atomic weapons videos we are back to covering a bread and butter plainly difficult subject. A good old fashioned nuclear reactor screw up. A privately operated nuclear test reactor would become the centre of a little known fuel meltdown. The accident's legacy would be little more than a footnote on scientific journals, NRC and IAEA reports. However a partial fuel sale meltdown is truly a worrying incident. In a 1958 congressional record, Westinghouse was mentioned to be building a new test reactor. In the record it stated that due to the built in safety features of the reactor it offered no danger to the area whatsoever. However this would be proven wrong. The Waltz Mill facility was home to the Westinghouse testing reactor, also known as WTR or TR2. The site was located on an 830 acre tract of land, approximately 20 miles south east of Greater Pittsburgh PA, which is around here on a map. The facility was purchased by Westinghouse in 1955. With the announcement in 1958 the plans for a $7 million test reactor began to take shape. Westinghouse received its licence to operate a reactor in June 1959 from the Atomic Agency Committee. The licence was the second test reactor issued by the AEC but was the first issued to a private entity. The licence limited the reactor to operating at maximum power of 20 megawatts. The primary use of the WTR was to test different materials and fuels. The reactor went online in July 1959 to little fanfare. The WTR was a pressurized water reactor that was light water cooled and moderated. A PWR reactor keeps its coolant water under pressure to prevent it from boiling. The water has two functions. The first is to cool down the reactor core and the second is to be in a moderator, slowing down the fast neutrons increasing the effectiveness of a chain reaction. The reactor was housed inside a containment building and the core was inside a 33 foot tool vessel surrounded by concrete. The vessel was made of 1 inch thick stainless steel. Inside the vessel there were 3 steel shields with different thicknesses of 2, 3 and 5 inches. The bottom had 5 steel shields of 4 inch thickness and at the top had a covering of 215 inches of water with a 10.5 inch vessel head above. The coolant system was a recirculating loop in which the water flowed from the reactor vessel to a 30,000 US gallon surge tank from which it was pumped through heat exchangers to an elevated 60,000 US gallon head tank 250 feet above the ground. The height of the tank meant that the coolant could flow back into the reactor via gravity. The heat exchanger had its own loop separate from the primary coolant. This was to prevent contamination and is common in many PWR reactors. The secondary loop used a cooling tower to reduce the temperature before being pumped back into the heat exchangers. The control reactors power level 9 control rods were employed and ran through 9 channels in the core. The control rods had a length of 118 inches. The 6 outer rods could be used for regulation and the reactor had a scram facility to shut down the reactor in an emergency situation. There were other sections around the outside of the reactor core that were used for various experiments. The fuel used in the reactor was Uranium-235 at 93% enrichment. The fuel was inserted into the reactor through the 77 fuel channels. Each fuel assembly had 200 grams of highly enriched uranium as an aluminium-uranium alloy in the walls of 3 44-inch long cylinders of different diameters around the central aluminium tube in which small specimens could be irradiated. The total diameter of the fuel assemblies was 2.5 inches. Each fuel assembly had coolant flowing through channels within it at a pressure to reduce the risk of boiling at hot spots within the assembly. In January 1960 the AEC issued an amendment to the WTR's licence allowing it to operate up to its designed spec of 60 megawatts. To achieve this final power output Westinghouse wanted to gradually build up to it. This leads us on to disaster at the WTR. By the 3rd of April 1960 the reactor had been successfully tested up to 45 megawatts. Before the fateful experiment helium bubbling tests had been conducted in the coolant and the reactor core. This was to see how bubbles would move through the core in a situation of coolant boiling off. The next step was to conduct a low coolant experiment. The same monitors used in the helium test would be able to detect the presence of steam. You see if the coolant flow is reduced the pressure of the coolant is also reduced lowering the boiling point which usually is something you don't want to happen in the PWR as you could face a meltdown. For the test the reactor was running smoothly at 40 megawatts with around 15,000 US gallons of coolant flow per minute. In order to allow the lower coolant flow the power was reduced to 30 megawatts. Once at the lower power output the relevant safety circuits were reset. The flow was gradually reduced to 5,250 US gallons per minute. The test was to find out how the coolant would react at lower levels. The attention was to see if the reactor could reach 45 megawatts at the lower coolant flow before it would boil. During the test the bubble monitors would be observed to see the state of the coolant. At 8 20 pm the power was gradually raised to 37 megawatts. At 8 33 the power was adjusted to 40 megawatts. Just two minutes later the reactor power unexpectedly failed to 17 megawatts. To counter this the automatic control system withdrew the control rod from the reactor core. At the same time the manual rods were also withdrawn. The power level started to rise back to 38 megawatts. Three minutes after the initial power drop at 8 35 pm radiation monitors started to alert to contamination in a demineralised water supply. As more alarms began to sound the power was dropped down to 15 megawatts. Radiation levels continued to rise and the reactor was manually scrammed. Personnel were evacuated to the control room as radiation was recorded in the containment building. A general evacuation was undertaken to a building a third of a mile from the reactor as radiation levels continued to rise. The reactor primary coolant was left pumping through the core. The surge tank vent blower which takes air from the surge tank to the top of the head tank where its discharge to atmosphere was left in operation. This was to prevent possibility of fish and products being discharged into the process area. However staff later returned to the control room to switch this off to prevent further release of material. Initial surveys showed that the primary coolant had been contaminated. The highest level reading at 40 rpm an hour was taken at the head downpipe at ground level. Monitors showed a maximum of 800 curries of radioactive gases consisting mainly of xenon and krypton were released. On the 4th Westinghouse officials decided it was safe to re-enter the reactor building. Over the next few days the reactor building was decontaminated enough to allow on the 9th the vessel head to be raised one foot to allow examination for damage. Levels were recorded at the head at 1 rpm per hour. During the raising the head was scrubbed with brushes. On the 11th the head was removed and no damage was visible at this point. The next step was to remove the fuel elements from the core. The team worked from the outside working to the centre. Some fuel elements proved a little difficult to remove. To ease their journey out of the core a hoist with a 350 pound force limit was employed. All of the fuel elements were removed but one which could not be lifted by the force limited hoist. It was then that the control rods were removed. The stuck fuel element was finally freed with a 500 pound force hoist. However only half was able to be recovered with the other half remaining inside the core. The recovered fuel elements only showed discolouration and no physical damage. Eventually using a specially fabricated core drill the final part of the damaged element was removed. Once this was completed the coolant was pumped through the core to try and remove as much of the damaged fuel element fragments as possible. Eventually the coolant was removed and stored on siting containers. With all the fuel elements and control was finally removed a proper investigation into the cause of the fuel damage could be undertaken. The power reduction was found to be a symptom and not the cause of the fuel element damage. This was confirmed by the data provided by the bubble sensors. Examination of the fuel element showed signs of fabrication defects this prompted inspection of unused elements using ultrasonic testing. The results on a number of the elements showed multiple imperfections leading investigators to believe that this was the cause of the failed element. The element caused blockages as it partially melted causing voids and boiling off the coolant within thus creating a dramatic power drop during the test. The accident could have been much more dangerous as due to the fuel element being new it had only been irradiated for a few days thus when failed not releasing as much contamination into the coolant. The problem was further exasperated by the operators not recognising the issue and raising the control rods to try and counteract the power drop rather than shutting down a reactor with the scram straight away but instead after four minutes. The license to operate from AEC was suspended until a modified head tank was employed in June 1960. An AEC initial report into the event found that the reactor supervisor on duty during the incident had only three months experience. He was interviewed finding out that his understanding of reactor operations was severely limited. He was the same supervisor who had given the instruction to compensate the power by raising the control rods. The cleanup would take four months and cost around one million dollars. Many of the people that were recruited to work in the cleanup crew were unemployed coal miners and other Westing House employees drafted in. Strangely the crews used women's sanitary towels to mop up the cleaning products. The cleanup crews were limited to the amount of time that they could work on site and were issued with some protective clothing whilst hand scrubbing the reactor building. The reactor was repaired and pressed back into service eight months after the accident until 1962 when it was shut down for the last time. At the time of the incident little was reported to the public and the event went relatively forgotten apart from being referred to in scientific journals. No illnesses were linked to the radiation exposure however radiation contaminated buildings, soil and groundwater have become the legacy of the accident. A thorn in Westing House's side for the best part of 40 years. That was until 50 million dollars was allocated for remediation works at the site in 1997 with the buildings being gradually dismantled and disposed of including the contaminated header tank which was removed in 2000. 6,000 cubic yards of soil was removed from the site and disposed of. The main parts of the reactor site have been decommissioned in 2001 however patches of contaminated soil remained at Waltz Mill for many years until gradually being cleaned up during the following decade. Waltz Mill is still used as a site for Westing House operations today. Thank you for watching I'd like to say a special thanks to Peter Roach for providing a lot of research information on this subject as well as providing some photos of the incident that his father took. I hope you enjoyed the video do you have any suggestions for any reactor based screw ups let me know if you'd like to support the channel financially you can on patreon for one dollar per creation that gets you access to votes and early access for videos. I have a youtube membership as well from 99 pence per month and that also gets you early access to videos. Check me out on twitter and also if you want to wear any of my merch you can purchase it at my teespring store and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Thank you to my patrons for voting on this subject. Liquid sodium reactors have assorted history as many have experienced some kind of incident. A partial meltdown in Michigan would fuel the fire for the anti-nuclear movement however unlike many nuclear events the dangers to the public were negligible. This is the second video in a row that involves a partial fuel meltdown and has a fascinating footnote for a reactor design that never really took off in mainstream commercial power generation. Today we are looking at the 1966 Fermi-1 fast breeder reactor meltdown. This isn't the first time I've covered an incident involving a sodium cooled fast reactor but it probably won't be the last. I'm looking at UEBR1. The Enrico Fermi nuclear power plant is a generating station in Newport Berlin charter township Monroe County Michigan which is about here on the map. The site is named after noble laureate Enrico Fermi and began construction on an experimental reactor in 1956. The site would get a second reactor with construction beginning in 1972 and being commissioned in 1988. Fermi-2 was a boiling water type reactor and a third identical reactor was planned but cancelled in 1974. Interest into the commercial use of a fast breeder reactor has led many organizations down the path of building an experimental unit and Fermi-1 was no different. The allure of a fast breeder reactor is that the use of liquid metal such as sodium does not act as a moderator like water does. The reactor type uses highly enriched fuel and can sustain a chain reaction with fast neutrons. This type of reactor can create more fuel when it consumes meaning it could in theory solve fuel shortage issues. This is done by using a fertile blanket of non-fissile material such as depleted uranium which then can absorb the extra neutrons creating fissile U-235 which then can be used as new fuel. However these types of reactors have two main disadvantages. Firstly is cost rendering the type not ideal for commercial applications and the second is the type of coolant liquid metal which can become volatile when exposed to the moisture in air meaning the event of a coolant leak could be deadly. Now that is a really really rough and brief overview of fast breeder reactors. Let's look at the Fermi-1 in particular. The reactor received its sodium coolant in 1960 and achieved criticality in 1963. The reactor was tested at low power in its first couple of years of operation. Power testing above 1 megawatt commenced in December 1965 immediately after the receipt of its high power operating license. The reactor had two cooling loops both using liquid sodium. The first loop passed through the reactor core and went through a heat exchanger with the secondary loop flowing through it. The heat transferred into the secondary loop and then went through a steam generator for use with a turbine for electrical power generation. The coolant flowed upward from a high pressure plenum connected to the discharge lines of three primary sodium pumps. The sodium flows upwards through the individual core and blanket sub-assemblies into the large upper plenum then flows by gravity to the intermediate heat exchangers and then to the suction side of the primary pumps. The plant was designed with a 430 megawatt capacity however the maximum reactor power with its first core loading core A was 200 megawatts. The reactor was capable of creating 69 megawatts of electrical power. The reactor was contained in a stainless steel vessel sealed at the top by a rotating shield plug. The core was surrounded by a blanket of depleted uranium. The total diameter of both core and blanket was 80 inches and had a height of 70 inches. The core of the reactor consisted of a cylinder of 31 inches across with a depth of 31 inches. This was made up of the control rods, neutron source and multiple fuel sub-assemblies of which were 2.6 inches square by 8 feet tall. Each sub-assembly had 140 pins of 25.6 enriched U-235 resulting in a total mass of 4.75 kilograms of uranium-235 per sub-assembly. The blanket used slugs of depleted uranium bonded in stainless steel tubes. The reactor was designed to be controlled by only two control rods held provisions for eight others as safety rods were built into the design of the unit. At the time of the meltdown only seven had been installed how the reactor had been successfully operated with as few as six safety rods. During normal operations the safety rods were held out of the reactor core ready to be used in the event of a scram. Out of the two main control rods only one was used for major regulating of the reactor's power, the other being used for shimming, i.e. fine tuning. All the rods were of a poison type design employing enriched boron 10. This leaves us up to October 1966. In the nine months prior a total of approximately 770 megawatts of reactor operation was logged. These operations included a 60 hour test at 100 megawatts. During this extended test some temperature abnormalities were recorded how these were within design spec. A test was planned for the 4th and 5th of October. It was intended to measure temperatures at the reactor vessel transfer rotor in the number one steam generator and the sub assembly sodium outlets, check new pressure control adjustment on the main steam bypass line and adjust the automatic feed water flow control system. On the 4th October the reactor was gradually started up to one megawatts to heat up the coolant to just under 518 degrees A fault in one the steam generation valves delayed the upping of the reactor output to 145 pm on the 5th. At 2 pm the reactor was operating at 5 megawatts. An issue with a boiler feed water pump meant that the reactor power was reduced to 2 megawatts for 20 minutes. Once the issue was sorted the power rose to 8 megawatts. The reactor was then put on automatic control until about 3 pm reaching a power of 20 megawatts. The reactor operators observed variations in the automatic control system. This problem had been experienced in the past at about the same power level and was thought to be interference picked up by the control system. The operators placed the reactor under manual control as had happened before the interference ceased and the reactor was put back on to automatic control for the power rise to continue. Just after 3 pm a staff member in charge of the operation saw that the control rods appeared to be withdrawn further than normal for this power level. Both the shim and regulating rods were approximately 9 inches withdrawn. Usually at this time the rods would be at around 6 inches. Abnormally high sodium outlet temperatures were being indicated over two sub assemblies. At this time the power output was at 31 megawatts. At 309 pm radiation alarms in the upper reactor building ventilation system duct alerted the operators. Elevated radiation was recorded in the following areas. The 6 inch exhaust line from the upper reactor building, the 3 inch exhaust line from the machinery dome, upper reactor building and machinery dome exhaust, the waste gas building valve room and the fission product detector building. The power of the reactor was quickly reduced to 3.3 megawatts as operators scrammed the unit. The containment building was automatically isolated although there was no one inside at the time. A class 1 radiation emergency was announced. This is the lowest in severity and management took the decision but no additional measures were required. The AEC was notified immediately. The reactivity levels and the detection of fission product contamination in the cover gas indicated that fuel melting had occurred. Since a significant amount of fuel melting could change the pressure characteristics of the core, flow tests were conducted to determine whether several sub assemblies were substantially blocked or damaged. For the next year the reactor was inspected and many fuel elements were removed for analysis. Investigations showed that two fuel elements had melted together and a third had bent but had little internal damage. In total 3% of the reactor's fuel had melted. The 3 damaged assemblies needed a lot of force to be removed from the core. Necessitating parts of the reactor to be dismantled. On top of that the two bonded elements had to be cut apart for removal. During the inspection of the reactor a foreign object was found blocking parts of the lower plenum starving coolant to some of the fuel elements. This was discovered by draining considerable amount of coolant and the insertion of a boroscope. The obstruction was part of six zirconium alloy panels used to direct coolant upwards to the reactor. It was suspected that dynamic flow forces caused sufficient flutter in two of the zirconium segments to break loose from their zirconium machine screws. However this did not occur until a relatively long period of operation of the system. The objects were recovered in March 1968. The repair works to the core used a specially designed remote control tool capable of withstanding the radiation within the reactor. The safety confinement of the primary coolant loop contained an estimated 10,000 curries of radiation. However this presented a problem in repairing the reactor. Although three elements were damaged the remainder of the assemblies were still salvageable. The reactor was pressed back into service in 1970 after the repair works. However by this time funds had been depleted for the project and the aging equipment meant that Fermi-1 was shut down for good in 1972. The accident of Fermi-1 was used as an example of the dangers of nuclear reactors with publications like We Almost Lost Detroit and 1975 Readers Digest Book by John G Fuller. A song with the same name was released by Jill Scott Herron and Brian Jackson in 1977. However compared to many other atomic incidents the meltdown at Fermi-1 seems pretty tame as the confinement structure worked as it should and no official reports of radiation release were reported. In comparison to the Waltz Mill accident in the last video it seemed that the operators reacted quickly enough to prevent a more serious accident. In 1975 it was officially classed as decommissioned by the AEC however after the formation of the NRC the definition of the unit was reclassified to a safe store necessitating more decommissioning works. In 1996 the works for decommissioning continued however the work again stored in 2011 would aside keeping the safe store classification. The site currently has a possession only licence due to expire in 2025. It is planned that decommissioning will be continued for the purpose of removing the remaining residual radioactive material and terminating the Fermi-1 licence. Fermi-2 is still an operation to this day providing electricity to the local area. The Fermi-2 operating licence expires in 2045. I hope you enjoyed the video. Do you have any suggestions for any reactor based screw ups? Let me know. If you'd like to support the channel financially you can on Patreon from $1 per creation that gets you access to votes and early access to future videos. I have YouTube membership as well from 99 pence per month and that gets you early access to videos. Check me out on Twitter and also if you want to wear my merch you can purchase it at my Teespring store and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. The storage of by-products in the atomic industry has always been a headache for its operators. As potentially deadly materials need constant supervision and attention. Unlike the storing of non-dangerous materials if any is released into the environment the effects can be felt for decades. United Nuclear is not a new protagonist on the plainly difficult channel as it was the operator of the Wood River junction facility when one of its employees created a critical mass in 1964 exposing himself to a deadly dose of radiation. Today we're looking at the Church Rock Uranium mill spill of 1979. The event became the largest release of radioactive material in US history. On a new patented plainly difficult disaster scale I'm placing it here. The Church Rock facility was a 125 acre United Corp operated site located on land about 17 miles north of Gallup, New Mexico and bordered to the north and southwest by another home nation tribal trust lands which is about here on the map. The areas around the facility were used for grazing of livestock and was sparsely populated. Locals used the nearby Puerto Rico riverbanks for recreation, collecting water, herbs and for children to play in. During the explosion of the nuclear industry in the 20th century the need for Uranium led to multiple mines in the continental US. The Church Rock site had two Uranium mines nearby one operated by United Nuclear Corp and another by a company called Quavera. A large number of the workers at the mines in the facility were from the nearby Navajo Nation. These mines produced ore that needed to be extracted and this brings in the need for a mill. The site operated between 1977 and 1982 and was designed to process 4,000 tons of ore daily. The site used conventional crushing, grinding and acid leach solvent extraction methods. This was enough to supply the annual reload fuel requirements of approximately five nuclear power plants. After the Uranium is successfully separated from the ore a byproduct called tailings is left behind. This sandy sludge can still keep up to 85% of the original radioactivity of the Uranium ore. Another byproduct mixed in with the tailings is the acid milling liquids called liquor. These dissolve dangerous traces of thorium 230, radium 222, lead 210 and other isotopes. This byproduct becomes a bit of a problem as large quantities need to be stored safely. Tailings and liquor are usually stored in large ponds where they sit waiting for the liquid to evaporate leaving behind the tailings. The solid tailings remnants are then buried. The process although simple is dangerous as large quantities of contaminated materials are stored in one place and like all large bodies of water need to be contained effectively to reduce the risk of unintentional flooding. The waste materials at the church rock facility were kept in ponds by an earthen dam. The dam was built on geographically unstable land. The dam was 35 feet high and stood on a deposit of collapsible clay and silt 100 feet deep. The design for the dam which was approved by NIC was new for United Nuclear using earth instead of the industry standard method of using tailings themselves for the construction of the dam. On top of this new design the ponds were not lined as required by law. This had an unfortunate side effect. The acidic solution could seep into the earth weakening the foundations and allowing the contaminated material to seep into the groundwater. Between December 1977 and July 1978 several ports were made on cracks forming on the dam wall. The cracks were formed by variations in the settlement of the foundation beneath the dam. During the discovery of the cracks United Nuclear pretty much just painted over them with a benignite and kerosene slurry. Which unsurprisingly didn't actually address the cause but instead made the symptom invisible. Later in 1978 more cracks appeared on the dam. This meant that failure was pretty much inevitable. At 5.30 am on the 6th of July 1979 one of the previously highlighted cracks gave way leading to a 20 foot hole in the south sail pond. As the dam failed approximately 94 million gallons of waste fluid containing 1100 tons of tailings escaped the pond. Many of the solids were caught by an emergency dam however the fluid continued into the pipeline oreo, a tributary of the puerco river. Eventually the contaminated fluid made its way into the river travelling downstream. The effluent flow down the puerco river channel through the city of Gallup. Downstream travel of the waste was made worse by the flow of 5000 gallons per minute of water continuously pumped into the pipeline by routine dewatering upstream in the uranium mines. Gradual losses to evaporation and infiltration caused the flow to cease near Chambers Arizona, about 60 miles away as the bird flies which is around 100 miles on the flow of the river downstream from the UNC mill. The contaminated fluids found its way into drains and collected puddles along the river banks. The liquid contained many radioactive and chemical contaminants consisting of radionuclei uranium-238, thorium-230, radium-226, lead-210, polonium-210, toxic metals including elemental lead, arsenic and selenium and high levels of dissolved salts particularly sulfate. By 6 am the breach had been reported by UNC staff and discharging into the pool was stopped. By 8 am a makeshift dike helped ease the flow of the deadly chemicals. Within hours the Environmental Improvement Division initiated stream monitoring and ordered UNC to cease any discharge of tailings into the breach pond. The mill was shut down and would be for the following three months. The EID also ordered that UNC act to contain the waste spill and collected contaminated materials. The cleanup standards and procedures were provided by the EID. The Indian Health Service and Environmental Improvement Division of New Mexico warned residents via commercial radio. Several days after the dam failure, written flyers were distributed to local residents, farmers and ranchers. Many locals did not hear the first reports as they did not own a radio, meaning many were not aware of the dangers and as usual on the day of the incident many people went into the water with many complaining of unexplained foot blisters and irritation of the skin. Signs were erected near the river written in English not to drink from or let cattle drink from the contaminated water. However many of the locals spoke Dine, a language spoken by around 150,000 people living within the Navajo Nation. The lack of immediately available information exposed many to contamination. The United Nuclear Corporation dispatched Navajo employees to personally notify Navajo speaking residents downstream. However this does not seem like the most efficient way of letting the wider public know of the incident. Several agencies were used to monitor the effects on the local environment, including the New Mexico Environment Improvement Division, New Mexico Scientific Laboratory Division, US Centers for Disease Control, the US NRC, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the US Public Health Service, Navajo Area Indian Health Service, the EPA, the US Department of Energy, Idaho Radiological and Environmental Sciences Laboratory and the Arizona Department of Health Services. The radioactivity levels in the water nearest the breach dam were 7,000 times that of the allowable level in drinking water. Over 250 acres of land and up to 50 miles of the Puerco Riverbanks was contaminated. UNC claimed that only one curie of radioactivity had been released in the spill, however that would be a gross underestimate. The clean-up efforts started shortly after the dam breach, however the work was slow going. By the end of August UNC had cleaned up 50 of the 1,100 tons of spilled waste. The workers used pails and shovels to dispose of the contaminated sediment into oil drums. Because of the steep angle the banks heavy machinery proved too unwieldy, thus slowing down the cleanup. The cleanup crews were extended after local and governmental pressure. Water, soil and air samples were taken and showed a spike in radioactivity immediately after the spill. This was followed by a decline because of evaporation of spill liquids and heavy precipitation in August and October of 1979. United Nuclear supplied bottled water for locals and livestock after several wells were condemned by the EID. New wells were dug but veterinarians reported that livestock in the region had heightened levels of radiation within their tissues. United Nuclear was feeling the financial pressure of the suspending of operations at the mill as they were losing more than $200,000 per day in yellow cake production. In October 1979 Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the United Nuclear Corporation, called and you're not going to believe this David Hahn, begged Congress to allow the restarting of the mill. Surprisingly on the 2nd of November the NRC granted permission to United Nuclear to restart operations, allowing the discharge to be placed into the central tailing cell and burrow pits, both of which were unlined ponds similar to the failed south cell. The decision to restart production directly linked to the site contributing more contamination to groundwater over the subsequent years. However operations would only continue to 1982 when United Nuclear announced a temporary stopping of work but the site was never to reopen. Not only did the closure cause financial issues to the local community as a large employer had gone but the health effects left behind would be a bitter slap in the face. No proper epidemiological studies have been undertaken apart from a few locals sent to Los Anamos for monitoring. Because of this the effects on the local population is relatively unknown. However none other hope people will have elevated cases of certain cancers in comparison to the national average. It was deemed that the local produced meat was safe to eat and less large quantities are consumed. However this doesn't sound very encouraging especially if you are someone who lives off your own produce. The United Nuclear was taken to court by another home nation but a $525,000 out-of-court settlement was reached a year after the spill. The original prediction of one curie or radiation release actually turned out to be 46 curies, making it far worse than the Fremont Island or any other US incident. In 1983 the site was placed on the superfund list with remediation works taking place. In 1988 Namil became a site of dual regulatory oversight from the NRC and the EPA. Even today the site is still under supervision. Between 1988 and 1995 the free tailing sales have been reclaimed. Groundwater remediation is still currently underway and includes a pump and treat groundwater extraction system. The incident didn't receive the same amount of coverage as the Fremont Island meltdown, meaning the accident although far worse than Fremont Island has largely been forgotten. I suppose nothing captures the interest of the public more than a good old fashioned meltdown. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you'd like to support the channel financially you can on Patreon from $1 per creation. That gets you early access to videos and votes on future video subjects. I have YouTube membership as well from 99 pence per month and that also gets you early access to videos. Check me out on Twitter and also if you want to wear my merch you can purchase it at my Teespring store and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Nuclear reactors have found many different applications. From experimental breeder reactors to compact reactors inside submarines all the way to reactors capable of powering cities. As reactor designs developed uses outside of stationary applications were considered. One such was empowering of a vehicle which could be feasible in an environment where weight isn't a priority that can be overcome with power for example in a railway locomotive setting. However a number of experiments involving lightweight units in aircraft design were undertaken in the US during the 1950s. Power excursions in a nuclear setting is not a good thing and as such they have been an often covered subject on this channel and again incidents with experimental reactors are not a rare subject for me either. However the HTRE number 3 is something new to me and that is the use of atomic reactor design to be used on board an aircraft. On the plainly difficult screw-up scale I'm going to place it here. I thought gee the dream of nuclear powered air travel didn't come to fruition. However the program was a vital part of nuclear history. In late 1946 the US Army Air Force looked into the feasibility of building a reactor small and powerful enough to be used in an aircraft. The Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft or NEPA project was started to look into this. NEPA was replaced by the aircraft nuclear propulsion project in 1951. A nuclear powered jet engine in principle replaces the heat generated from burning fuel with heat generated from a nuclear reactor. This system had a major advantage over a conventionally powered aircraft and that was the range between refuelling. The concept of atomic power in an aircraft made most sense in the application of a strategic bomber. Much like a submarine the use of nuclear power vastly improves the operational endurance. Operational time of such a bomber between refuelling was thought to be able to be counted in number of days rather than hours. Meaning that an aircraft could circle the earth ready to strike without the dangerous in-flight refuelling process. Although the advantage could potentially revolutionise a country's ability to strike during a nuclear war the concept had one glaring disadvantage. That was the weight associated with the operation of a nuclear reactor in the form of its shielding. In aircraft design weight is a number one concern as if your plane is too heavy it will be limited on its available payload or worse still not even be able to take off. This completely conflicts with the need for a reactor to be safe and not irradiate everything around it. Traditionally thick shielding of lead or concrete has been used which is surprisingly not very light. Without adequate shielding you would irradiate your way through pilots very quickly and in the event of a meltdown rain molten nuclear waste onto any unsuspecting person on the ground. Designers thought that the weight sacrifice of traditional aircraft fuel might counteract the weight of a reactor's shielding. The amp program set out to design construct and test such a reactor light enough for an aircraft aiming to reduce the weight from tens of thousands of tons to just over 100 tons. The program pursued two different types of propulsion system by two different companies General Electric's direct air cycle and Pratt & Whitney's indirect air cycle respectively. We won't be looking at the latter today but we may do in the future. The former by General Electric began development starting with its first test reactor system in 1956 but first let's look at how the direct air cycle system worked. The GE design used an off the shelf J47 jet engine and modified it for nuclear power. The engine had a long life with the US Air Force with over 30,000 units being constructed. Air is sucked into the engine by the front turbine and is passed through the reactor with some taken to call the components. The majority of the air is heated by the chain reaction on its journey through the reactor and then travels into a lower plenum. It is then passed back through the jet engine in turn powering the turbine connected via a shaft to the inlet turbine. The air is then exhausted to atmosphere. To start up the power plant conventional jet fuel was used to spin the turbines up to the required RPM. Once this was achieved the reactor was slowly powered up by withdrawing the control rods. Once the reactor was up to temperature conventional fuel was shut off. That is the basic overview of the concept however its implementation varied over the project lifespan. This leads us on to the heat transfer reactor experiment. The program took place at the Idaho National Laboratories North Test Area which is around here on the map. The first setup was the HTRE-1. This was a direct air cycle reactor that used nickel chromium and uranium oxide dispersion fuel elements. Water served the combined function of moderator and structural coolant. The HTRE-1 successfully operated the jet engine on nuclear power in January 1956 and throughout the year racked up over 150 hours of operation. However HTRE-1 was more of a proof of concept and wouldn't be considered usable in an aircraft. This leads us on to the next step of the project HTRE-2. The HTRE-2 reactor was a modified version of the HTRE-1 allowing removal of the centre fuel assembly. The removal module allowed experimentation with different core materials and configurations which was essential in paving away for a unit capable flight. Finally the HTRE-3 was a culmination of the advancements of the previous experiments and hoped to be the basis of a production unit. It was built in a configuration ideal for incorporation into an aircraft by having the fuel and control elements mounted horizontally reducing the overall height of the power plant. The 175 megawatt capable unit was delivered to the initial engine test facility on the 20th October 1958. HTRE-3 was mounted to a D102A assembly and consisted of a reactor, primary shield, external auxiliary shielding, engine reactor ducting, a single chemical combustor with surrounding auxiliary shield, accessories and two modified J47 turbojet engines. The unit took the same fuel as the HTRE-1, nickel chromium and uranium oxide but with a hydrided zirconium moderator. The moderator was a hexagonal array of 150 moderator cells surrounded by a beryllium reflector. The reactor core had a total diameter of 51 inches and the active core length was 30.7 inches with an overall length of 43.5 inches. Each of the moderator cells had a circular inner tube cut into it for its full length. This was used to house a fuel cartridge in each cell. The reactor had 48 poison type control rods made out of europium oxide consisting of three automatically controlled dynamic, 30 shim for fine tuning and 15 safety rods arranged throughout the core in both the centre and the outer regions of the reactor. The reactor had an independent scram facility from the control system in the case of an emergency. The whole reactor was air-cooled provided by the air induction from the jet engines. The shielding of the unit consisted of water, lead and steel and had an expected life of a thousand hours of operation. The reactor also had a plug placed at the front and rear. This leads us on to November the 18th 1958 at 8pm. As the reactor was new, operators wanted to conduct multiple low-power test runs building up to a full-power test. Early on in that day a test run had achieved 0.06 megawatts but the evening's test was scheduled to follow a similar run but increased the power to 0.12 megawatts. Pre-test, all equipment and instruments checked out to be okay by the operators. Just after 8pm the test had begun and all seemed to be working well. Two external blowers were used to provide enough airflow passing through the reactor and out to the number two jet engine turbine. The jet engine motored at approximately 600 rpm. To raise the power to the expected level the servo controlled control rods were withdrawn in a set sequence. All of the shim and dynamic rods needed to be withdrawn equally. At around 8.22pm the power of the reactor increased as expected. Shortly before the power reached the demanded level the indicated flux level fell on the linear flux instrumentation. Quickly the indicated power level rapidly rose. The control system scrammed the reactor automatically. The fuel temperature went off the maximum scale and monitors at 3000 Fahrenheit. Around 25 minutes after the dramatic power increase operators decided to use a diesel powered air compressor to blast air through the reactor to cool it down more than the electric blowers could. Radioactivity had been released and a narrow band of fallout occurred contained within the research laboratory site limits. Around 0.04 milli rondogens per hour was recorded 3000 feet away from the test site. Five miles away the measured fallout was 1.25 micro curies per square meter for iodine 135. At around one mile from the test site four hours post event two milli rondogens per hour were recorded. The reactor had experienced an unexplained power excursion and a potential meltdown. It was estimated at the time of the event that 770 megawatt seconds was experienced. A power level like that would be more than enough to cause serious damage to the fuel elements and it did. The power plant was moved to the site hot shop for dismantling and inspection. To reach the core the rear plug was removed revealing fuel damage. The core was removed and it was found that some fuel assemblies were stuck inside their moderator tube necessitating them to be cut free. Many were able to be removed freely however every fuel assembly had received some level of melting towards the centre of the core. Some of the moderator cells and control rods had experienced damage however many were in a reusable condition. After removal and inspection of the fuel elements it was found that although the reactor scram was triggered by excessive fuel heat some parts of the fuel had already melted excessively. This was in part due to the low power electric blowers not providing enough cooling air through the core for the power level being put out. Luckily due to the modular design of the power plant the damaged fuel control and moderator components were relatively easy to replace. With the reactor stripped no cause for failure was found with the control rods fuel elements or moderator. This prompted further investigation into the electrical control and instrumentation of the reactor and it was discovered that the information the operators were receiving from the reactor was lying to them. It was found that the primary cause of the incident was that the linear flux circuitry was unable to indicate true reactor power because of the presence of electrical noise filters in the circuitry. The incorrect information caused a false demand to the control system with drawing dynamic and shin rods when they did not need to causing excessive fission. These filters had been in both the HTRE1 and 2 but on 3 the wiring diagrams did not show their use. The problem was further exasperated by incorrect use of 800 volts instead of 1500 volts meaning the high resistance noise filters affected the signal. The reactor was repaired and set up again for testing reaching its full power in 1959 and things went well logging 87 hours over its intended 100 hours of full power testing. The reactor was used all the way up until the A&P project was cancelled in 1961 in total costing around $1 billion. Even though nuclear power flight didn't happen the lessons learned from compact reactors have been far reaching. The program was considered so influential that the assemblies of HTRE2 and number 3 were preserved and put on display outside the EBR1 building for the public to see. I hope you enjoyed the video, if you'd like to support the channel financially you can on Patreon from $1 per creation that gets you access to votes and early access for future videos. I have YouTube membership as well from 99 pence per month and that gets you early access to videos as well. Check me out on Twitter and also if you want to wear my merch you can purchase it at my Teespring store and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Criticality accidents are wholly avoidable in theory and this relies on strict operator training and supervision as well as the use of correct criticality controls. But as we've seen time and time again these are not taken as seriously as they should have been leading to exposure and contamination of personnel and the environment. If you like what we do here at Plainly Difficult consider helping the channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. Let's get started. A small mistake in product handling can have long reaching ramifications and in 1958 one such mistake led to a 15 to 20 minute criticality excursion and 8 people being exposed to radiation with 5 being hospitalised for over 40 days. In this video we are looking at the Y12 criticality accident. Today's incident I'm going to rate it here on my disaster scale. The Y12 is a United States Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration facility located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Oak Ridge National Laboratory which is around here on the map. The complex was built in 1943 for the use of enriching uranium for the Manhattan Project. Union Carbide took over operation in 1947 from Tennessee Eastman. This plant was federally owned and operated by Union Carbide Corporation under contract by the government. One of the buildings at the site was 9212 which was used as a processing area for the salvage of enriched uranium and was a backdrop to the 1958 criticality accident. Building 9212 was constructed in 1945. It was designed as a bigger version of the same uranium processing facility already installed in building 9206. In the 1950s the complex used two different types of criticality control. The first and original operation relied on administrative controls to prevent nuclear criticality accidents by not allowing enough of a critical capable mass to be stored together. Rigid batching procedures were employed because criticality safe geometry containers were not used regularly. In theory this works how this relies heavily on the operators and supervisors to not cut corners and make errors. The second operation which the complex was moving towards was the use of criticality safe containers reducing the risk of human error in the processing and storage of potential critical masses. A criticality safe geometry stops a fissile material from settling together in enough of a quantity to go prompt critical. In 1958 Y12 was changing from a policy of administrative control practices to the use of criticality safe geometric control practices in uranium recovery operations. During the changeover a redesign of several areas was needed leading to C1 wing employing the old method of working with geometry safe storage tanks and B1 using the new working practices. C1 worked mainly with diluted solutions and B1 worked with higher enrichments. This was why the two different areas used different practices as the solutions in C1 were less likely to cause a criticality incident. Part of B1's refurbishment was to allow the whole reclamation process to take place within the wing however this was not yet complete and a temporary arrangement of transfer of solutions between C and B wings was done via temporary pipeline to make use of the safe geometry storage containers in C1. B1 produced uranial nitrate and C1 stored the solution meaning the concentration of solutions in C1 wing and B1 wing could be the same but transverts take place three different supervisors would be needed for operation however each supervisor was in separate areas from one another leading to communication issues whilst all this was happening an infantry had taken place with different levels of enrichment of uranium solutions. Because of this several parts of the geometry safe containers and pipeline had to be disassembled and cleaned. A regular occurrence after reassembly was leaks obviously something that is not desirable in a complex use for uranium processing. In order to test the equipment water was filled into the tanks for checking and draining before being brought back into use. On the pipeline a single valve was provided to isolate B1 and C1 and along the pipeline an additional valve was provided for draining fluid out of the system. This brings us onto the 16th of June 1958 during normal operations after an infantry both C1 and B1 would be brought online at the same time however delays with C1 wing meant that B1 was already producing solution. On the midnight shift enriched uranial nitrate solution was produced and the valve isolating B and C wings was closed to hold the solution from flowing towards the shutdown area. However valve number one started leaking flowing solution down the pipeline. Valve two to an adjustment station stand pipe was shut to allow the fluid to go towards the criticality safe tanks in the C wing. No entry about the leak into the operations log was recorded. This meant that information was not clearly communicated between the night and day shift supervisors. The day supervisor assigned two operators the task of continuing to conduct leak tests in the C1 wing storage tanks. Before they could conduct their task an operator checked the status of valve one which was confirmed as closed. This made operators believe that no solution from B1 was flowing and they began to fill the storage tanks with water to conduct a leak test. However this belief was wrong. Part of the process to conduct a leak test involved collecting the water after use inside a 55 us gallon storage drum via valve 11. Because it was not intended for fissile material it did not have a safe geometry. No one checked to ensure that uranial nitrate had not already flowed into any of the geometry tanks in C1 wing. Valves three and four were open to allow water to flow into the drum. One of the operators noticed a yellow liquid flowing into the drum. Although he knew it was uranial nitrate he didn't notify the supervisor. Approximately 15 minutes later at around 2pm the liquid in the 55 gallon drum reached a level to become critical and a blue flash was observed by personnel in the area. The drum was around a third full. Radiation alarms in the building sounded as all staff immediately evacuated to a safe distance. It took an estimated three to five seconds after criticality for the alarm to sound. The solution reached criticality a number of times for the next 15 to 20 minutes however none was splashed out of the drum. Eventually the solution was diluted enough from the water used in the leak test. Radiation measurements observed were 0.2mAh outside the building at 3.30pm. At 5pm a team made a preliminary approach to the building. The radiation dosage rate at the south west door of the salvage area approximately 100 feet from the drum was 16mAh. After 10 minutes in the building the canisters of the gas mask worn by the team read 10 to 15mAh showing significant concentrations of airborne contamination. However subsequent surveys showed a rapid decay of fish and products. At 5.20pm a survey was made of C1 wing. Radiation readings ranged from 60mAh 100 feet away up to 1400mAh about 15 feet from the drum. By early evening most of the building was allowed to be reoccupied obviously though apart from the epicenter of the incident. The solution in the drum was poisoned at around 9.30pm by putting cadmium into the contents. On June 17th a safe tank facility was fabricated and installed in one of building 9212 shielded radiograph cells and the contents of the drum were transferred to this on the 18th. Decontamination of C1 wing started at 9.30pm on the 18th of June and continued intermittently for the next few days. Radiation monitoring and smear surveys were made to help direct and evaluate the decontamination efforts. By June the 23rd all decontamination efforts were complete and the facilities went back to normal operations. Strips of indium foil approximately 1g each were included in the security badges of all employees at Y12. The purpose of these foils was to provide quick means of segregating employees who had received a significant radiation dose in the course of a nuclear incident. Eight employees foils showed activation indicating they had received radiation doses. Three of whom were allowed to return to work shortly after the incident as they had been exposed to between 28 and 29 rem. Five men who had received the highest doses were admitted at 1am to Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies where specialized medical attention was available. The time between the incident and the admission was used for taking blood for sampling and whole body counts. The dosage was predicted to be between 230 and 461 rem. Three of the men showed signs of nausea and vomiting within four hours of the incident with one other feeling nauseous five hours later being sick a day later. The fifth man didn't show any signs of nausea or vomiting although two days post incident all had vomited. Initially plans to use bone marrow were set out however it was abandoned after the patient seemed to be making progress. Two received courses of medication for specific infections whereas the others had nothing more than the occasional dose of aspirin or sedatives. Just over a fortnight after exposure the five men experienced hair loss with excessive loss in two. Eventually the five men were discharged from hospital however they were monitored for years to come as they have received some of the highest doses of exposure up to that date. In June 1960 the eight workers B. Wilburne, O. C. Collins, T. Rogers, R. D. Jones, H. Wagner, T. W. Stinnett, P. McCurry and B. Clark filed a lawsuit against the AEC. The lawsuit was settled out of court with varying amounts awarded to each person. More money was awarded later on on the government's Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program. All of the exposed workers at Y12 experienced elevated health issues throughout their life with most having some kind of cancer. In a report into the incident recommendations were offered to Union Carbide the main of which was limiting the use of unsafe geometry containers in uranium processing facilities. Focus was also put on retraining staff periodically on the risks of criticality incidents. Communication was also slated for improvement as the breakdown between shift supervisors meant that assumptions were made as to what each department was actually working on. The report did say that the emergency procedure of evacuation was satisfactory and the staff leaving the building quickly meant that lives weren't lost due to the incident. The lessons would not be learned unfortunately as many more criticality accidents would follow the 1958 Y12 accident with several fatalities. I hope you enjoyed the video if you'd like to support the channel financially you can on Patreon for $1 per creation and that gets you access to votes and early access to videos. I view your membership as well from 99 pence per month and that also gets you early access to videos. Check me out on Twitter and also if you want to wear my merch you can purchase it at my Teespring store and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Incorrect disposal of machinery used in radiotherapy can have a devastating effect causing serious injury and pollution to the environment and in proper chain of custody of such machinery can lead to an orphaned source where radioactive elements are knowingly or more commonly unknowingly removed from their protective enclosures. An accident in Thailand in 2000 shows the importance of correct handling, sale and disposal of radioactive elements. The event would result in three dead and over 1800 exposed. If you like what we do here at Plain and Difficult consider helping the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing. Let's get started. You're starting to feel a bit like Groundhog Day with these radiological incidents involving scrap dealers and in proper disposal of radiotherapy units. Much like Goyanya before it, some scrap metal merchant recyclers would unknowingly expose themselves to a deadly dose of radiation from an orphaned source. Today we're looking at the Samut Plakan radiation accident. This event I'm going to rate it here on my disaster scale. Radiative materials offer many benefits within medicine, research and industry. To limit the exposure to the public, precautions need to be exercised, especially in the case of a radiotherapy unit where the amount of dangerous material is substantial. In 1969 a Gamatron-free tele-therapy unit manufactured by Siemens was imported to Thailand and licensed by the Thai Atomic Energy Commission for peace for use at Rama Thibode Hospital in Bangkok. The Gamatron free unit used Cobalt-60 for treating cancer patients. It achieves this by using intense beams of penetrating gamma radiation. Cobalt-60 is a synthetic isotope of Cobalt with a half-life of just over five years. The source holder and shield was made out of lead surrounded by stainless steel. It was cylindrical 42cm long with a diameter of 20cm. The lead had a thickness of 5cm and weighed in at 97kg. This was held within a stainless steel casing that weighed in at an additional 30kg. The Gamatron unit was used between 1969 and 1981 with its original Cobalt source. However, the treatment times became in practically long. This was due to Cobalt-60's relatively short half-life. This necessitated the need for a new source. In 1981 Siemens, the manufacturer was contacted and a new Cobalt-60 source was supplied by the local Siemens agent. The new source had an activity of 196TB of Cobalt-60 at the time of its installation. However, the support from Siemens would shortly end after the local agent went out of business, meaning that new sources and manufacturer-approved servicing was no longer available to the hospital. With this in mind, when the new replacement source started to provide in practically long treatment times in the early 90s, the hospital took the decision to replace the unit with a new one from Nordayan, a Canadian company. Nordayan's agent in Thailand, KSC, supplied and fitted the new machine. With the new tele-therapy unit installed and operational, the original Gamatron unit was surplus to requirements. The hospital contacted Siemens, who refused to take back the unit, due to the company no longer working with Cobalt-60. Next, they contacted Nordayan via their Thailand agent, KSC, to see if they would accept the old unit. However, unfortunately, because they were not the original manufacturer, they would not accept the disused source. The hospital was now faced with an awkward situation, and that was to safely store the unit as per their licence from the regulatory body. A problem, especially as there was not enough space to hold such a unit. Running out of options, the hospital sold the unit and its source to the new supply agent, KSC company. However, the transferred unit was not reported to the regulatory body, meaning storage anywhere off the hospital site was unlicensed and therefore illegal. At the time of the purchase of the unit, KSC had possession of another tele-therapy unit, which had been imported from Canada in 1974 for a physician. In 1988, the company had been issued with a licence to store the unit at a warehouse in the Bangkok area, whilst the physician looked for a suitable site to install and operate the machine. In 1996, KSE applied for a licence to export two disused units back to Canada. As part of the application process, the regulatory body, the Office of Atomic Energy for Peace, inspected the site. During the inspection, it was found, in addition to the licence unit, three more unlicensed tele-therapy units, one from Japan, another from Germany, and the final one from Narayamati Bodhi Hospital. In 1999, the lease on the warehouse where the four tele-therapy units were stored came to an end. The licence unit was sent back to its owner and the regulatory body was notified. However, the three remaining units were transferred to KSE's parent company's car parking lot, which was used for storage of newly constructed vehicles. The units were placed under coverings of the car park at the time was empty. The site was only protected from the public by a galvanised steel fence. However, gaps had been made by local children who used the empty car park for games or football. Needless to say, this was not a site secure enough for the storage of radioactive material. It was estimated, at this time, the Cobalt-60 source had a radioactivity of around 15.7 tB. Although it is not known exactly by who, parts of the tera-therapy machine were stolen from the site. Unfortunately, this part of the chain of custody of the source is not known, however, the theft resulted in finding its way onto the scrap metal market. On 24 January 2002, scrap collectors claimed that they had bought some scrap metal, which included parts of the tera-therapy head, and took it home for dismantling for resale. The scrap items were kept around 100 metres from the scrap collectors' homes in an open space of land until the end of January. The two scrap collectors, along with two others, started to dismantle the tera-therapy head in early February. Two of the four worked for about an hour trying to separate the steel and lead using a hammer and chisel. They were only able to crack the weld seam. Soon after, they noticed an oily liquid to seep out. However, effort had revealed part of the lead to the collectors. After finding the unit harder to dismantle than expected, the collectors decided to sell the scrap metal to a merchant in San Root, Parakan. On the 30 minute journey, two of the collectors travelled with the scrap, with one resting his leg over the cylindrical metal piece that housed the source. Upon reaching the scrap yard, the collectors requested one of the yard workers cut open the cylinder with a torch. Another yard employee stood on and watched as they successfully cut through the steel and lead shielding. He saw yellow smoke as two metal pieces from inside the cylinder fell to the ground. The first yard worker picked up these pieces and weighed them in his hands. Later, he reported that his hands fell itchy from handling these pieces. The owner of the yard, a 45 year old female, told the collectors to go home to complete the dismantling of the scrap items. However, the two pieces that had fallen to the ground stayed at the yard. Later that same day, the four people present when the torch cut through the housing, started to feel sick and experienced nausea and vomiting. The next day, back at their home, the collectors managed to successfully separate some of the lead and steel and returned to the Samut Parakan. Over the next few days, one of the collectors started to feel sunburn like symptoms on his hands followed by swelling. On the 15th February, the first of the scrap collectors worried about their worsening condition reported to the outpatient clinic of the Samut Parakan Hospital for examination. A blood sample was taken and the doctor requested him to return the next day for the results. Upon his return, he was admitted to hospital. His symptoms included burns, swollen fingers, loss of hair, nausea and vomiting, classic signs of radiation exposure. One of the yard workers also went to see a doctor after his symptoms of diarrhea, hair loss and nausea continued. He was also admitted to hospital on the 16th. By the 17th, the scrap yard owner and her husband who had been experiencing nosebleeds went to hospital. Blood samples were taken and both showed low white blood cell counts. A bone marrow aspiration was performed on both patients. In total, 10 people were treated in hospital consisting of both groups of collectors and yard workers. On the 18th, one of the doctors attending at Samut Parakan's hospital contacted the OAP expressing concern that there may be some kind of radiation source exposing a number of his patients. OAP officers attended the hospital and began to investigate the doctor's concerns. This led them to undertake a search at the scrap yard. Whilst driving towards the yard, the officers' radiation meters started to indicate readings 20 times above normal. On the approach to the yard, a reading of 1 millisievert an hour was taken at the side entrance. They recognized that this meant that there was a serious radiological incident and called for assistance. Surveys were taken up the site revealing radiation dose rate at 10 severts an hour near the source. This kept officers from getting close enough to determine what type of item the source was. In addition to a radiation survey, contamination surveys were also carried out. No contamination was found leading to the conclusion that it was a sealed source, possibly from either industrial or medical machinery. The OAP took the decision not to evacuate the neighbourhood and instead cordoned off an area around the site at a distance of 50 metres where the readings were at around 300 microceverts an hour. On the evening of the 18th, recovery operations were attempted but abandoned. These operations were videotaped for later examination back at the OAP. On the afternoon of the 19th, scrap metal round source was removed using long grasping tools. This facilitated a mechanical digger to place a lead panel one metre across near the source, which would offer some protection for the recovery team. To remove scrap metal nearest the source, electromagnetics attached to bamboo poles were used. Once scrap was removed, it was screened and disposed of if safe to do so. During the night, a fluorescent screen was used to determine the exact location of the source. Eventually at 12.20 the source was pinpointed and tongs two metre in length were used to pick it up and place it inside a lead shielded container. The source was transported to safe storage at the OAP on the 20th of February 2000. The lead container containing the source was placed under 4.5 metres of water in what was formerly a spent fuel storage pool. After removal surveys were undertaken and readings were shown to be back at background radiation levels. Two of the workers at the junkyard and the owner's husband would succumb to their exposure to the source around two months after the initial experience of radiation exposure symptoms. The two workers were 18 and 20 years old and passed away on the 9th and 18th of March respectively. The husband of the owner who was 44 years old passed away on the 24th of March. Two died from septic shock and the other deaf owing to cardiac arrest all linked directly to their radiation exposure. It was estimated that they in addition to the yard owner who survived have received doses in excess of six grays. The reason the worst affected were the yard workers was because of the extended period of exposure to the source they received as they worked on the site. The initial four scrap collectors experienced severe sickness and exposure of between one and three grays, however most of their injuries were localised to arms, hands and legs. 1872 people lived within 100 metres of the scrapyard and each received varying doses from the orphaned source. The source was traced back to KSE and was fined $15,000 for the improper storage of the illegally owned source which is an unbelievably low amount of money. In the following year a lawsuit was filed against the OAP which was settled in 2003 with restitution from the regulatory body costing $5,222,301. The incident as well as a number of others prompted the IAEA to improve the hazard tree foil which was placed on the tele therapy head because no one working in the scrapyard knew what the symbol meant. Because of this the warning label was improved to this which is a bit more self-explanatory of the dangers of the item but unfortunately this wouldn't be the last instance of an orphaned source and funnily enough I've covered it in another one of my videos. I hope you enjoyed the video, if you'd like to support the channel financially you can on Patreon from $1 per creation and that gets access to votes and early access to future videos. I have YouTube membership as well from $0.99 per month and that gets you early access to videos as well. Check me out on Twitter and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Natural disasters have been a fear of mankind throughout history from a volcano near Pompeii to an earthquake in the Pacific Ocean. A natural disaster can devastate a whole region causing mayhem and destruction in its wake. A deadly earthquake and resulting tsunami off the coast of Japan would result in nearly 20,000 missing and dead, a country economically wounded and a chain of events that would cause a nuclear disaster on a scale which the world had not seen since Chernobyl. If you like what we do here at Plainly Difficult consider helping the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing. Let's get started. We have covered many reactor incidents on this channel however something that makes today's subject unique is that the damage to equipment and the environment is worse than anything else I've covered on this channel. Needless to say today we are going to dive into the Fukushima disaster. I'm going to rate this event here on the Plainly Difficult Disaster scale which is higher than the INES which rated it at a 7, the same level as Chernobyl. So that obviously means that my rating scale is better. The Fukushima Daiya Ichi NPP site lies approximately 220km north of Tokyo at almost the midpoint of the Pacific coast. It straddles Okuma and Futaba townships in Fukushima Prefecture which is around here on the map. The site is approximately 3.5km large. It is operated and managed by Tokyo Electric Power Company or TEPCO. The site houses 6 boiling water reactors, 3 built by General Electric, 2 by Toshiba and 1 by Hitachi although all were designed by GE. Construction on the site began in 1967 on Unit 1 with its commercial operation beginning in 1972. For the next 7 years the remaining 5 units came online with Unit 6 commissioned in October 1979. During the 12 years between 1967 and 1979 BWR design improvements led to variations between the 6 units on the site. After Unit 1 which was an earlier BWR-3 design, Unit 2-5 were BWR-4 designs and Unit 6 was a BWR-5 design. Because of this the power outputs of the 3 designs were different with Unit 1 having 460MW of electricity, Unit 2-5 having 784MW of electricity and Unit 6 having 1100MW of electricity. Fukushima Daiya Ichi plant is connected to the power grid by 4 lines, the 500KV Futaba line, the two 275KV Okuma lines and the 66KV Yonomori line to the Shin Fukushima substation. The site was built on a bluff 25m above sea level. Originally it was intended to be at 35m however the designers lowered the height to reduce the strain on seawater pumps as well as making the foundations closer to the stable bedrock which helped keep the plant more earthquake resistant. This lowered height was thought to be tsunami safe in conjunction with an adequate seawall. The reactors on site were in two groups. The first when looking at the station from the sea contains units 4, 3, 2 and 1 going from left to right. The rightmost group contains units 5 and 6. Like all commercial nuclear reactors the end goal is the generation of heat for the purpose of making steam. This is used to drive a turbine which then generates electricity. Right before we dive into the disaster let's have a look at how a boiling water reactor works. As this type of reactor is not often covered on this channel. For the purpose of simplicity this is a general overview of how the GEBWRs work however there were many variations between the three types used at the site. A BWR design uses demineralised light water for both cooling and moderation much like a pressure water reactor. This type of reactor is the second most common type after the PWR. However unlike a PWR which uses the heat of the coolant to create steam in a secondary coolant loop in a BWR the boiling of the primary coolant is used for the steam. The steam is collected in the top of the reactor before passing towards the turbines. The steam generated from fission passes through the turbine after which it goes to a condenser to be returned back to water. Inside the condenser a secondary loop of water is used and is kept separate from the primary to stop cross contamination. At Fukushima seawater was used for condenser cooling water and auxiliary equipment cooling water. A seawall 10 meters high from the seabed was built in front of the power station with open channels behind it that led from the power plant to the ocean. Water was drawn in through sluice gates and pump rooms installed for each unit. From there it is transferred to the condenser by pumps installed in the pump rooms. The fuel used at Fukushima consisted of fuel pins bundled in square arrays. The fuel pins consist of low enrichment uranium oxide or mixed uranium and plutonium oxide. Fuel pellets enclosed and sealed in zirconium alloy cladding tubes. Each of the reactors had control rods for regulating the power and had 97, 137 and 185 across the three different BWR types. The rods were inserted into the reactor from underneath. The control rods had the ability to scram the reactors shutting down fission in an event of an emergency. In the event of a power cut backup power is generated from diesel power generators. This backup system was important for powering the coolant pumps in the event of an emergency. The reactors have two types of containment. The first being the reactor primary containment vessel, the second being the building in which it is housed. The core is kept within a containment vessel. Around the vessel there is an outer containment which is enclosed by a concrete plug. The plug can be moved by a crane over the spent fuel pool. The spent fuel pools is where used fuel rods can be stored. The PCV has two major compartments. The reactor vessel is located in the dry well. The DW is connected to a second compartment, the suppression chamber, which holds a large amount of water and enough space to suppress pressure increases. The water within the suppression chamber can be used to scrub radioisotopes from any gases released within the containment vessel. The primary containment vessels were filled with nitrogen to provide prompt control of any hydrogen generated during an incident. The secondary confinement is provided by the reactor building itself and is designed to try and hold any contaminant in a last line of defence of environmental protection. The site had three control rooms as each was used to control two reactors. Although each reactor had its own panel, this setup allowed close working between reactor teams. Each reactor's emergency diesel generators and associated equipment were stored underneath the turbine buildings between seven to eight metres below grade. The backup power systems also used DC batteries. These were located in the basements of the control buildings for units one, two and four and in the mezzanine levels of the turbine buildings for units three, five and six. Units one to five had two diesel generators each and unit six had three. The batteries gave the power plant up to eight hours of emergency power in the case of electrical isolation from the grid. Issues were raised by some engineers during construction as placement of safety critical equipment below grade had a higher risk of flooding, especially when combined with the lower bluff of the site. However, these issues were swept away by TEPCO's decision to follow GE's design plans to the letter and oh boy that would come back to bite them. This leaves us to March 2011. Three of the six units were shut down for refuelling, leaving one, two and three in operation. There were some 6,400 workers on site, approximately 2,400 consisting of 750 TEPCO personnel and around 1,650 contractors were working in the controlled area with approximately 2,000 carrying out work in the support of the planned refuelling. Unit four had its fuel rods removed and units five and six still had their fuel elements inside the reactors, however the control rods were inserted into the core to stop fishing. On the 11th of March at 1446 local time, an earthquake of a magnitude of nine lasted for two minutes. It was caused by a sudden release of energy at the interface where the Pacific tectonic plate forces its way under the North American plate. The earthquake was the largest ever recorded in Japan and the world's fourth largest since records began in 1900. At the time of the earthquake, sensors at the plant detected ground movement and initiated a scram in the three operating reactors. This was built in to the design of the plant and the action controlled the reactor's reactivity. The offsite power grid connections were lost during the earthquake. Because of this, the emergency systems needed power to be supplied by the 13 on-site generators. Even after shutdown, the reactors needed power to monitor and pump coolant through the cores, as after fishing, the fuel elements still provide decay heat strong enough to cause fuel element melting. To help with the cooling in normal shutdown, the turbines are bypassed and the coolant in steam form goes straight to the condensers, after which it is pumped back to the core completely in the cycle. However, during this event, the reactor was completely isolated from the turbine building due to the loss of power caused by the earthquake. With the usual way of cooling now isolated, a backup system using the suppression pool was used. Unit 1 used a different system to the remaining reactors. It used two closed cooling loops by sending the primary coolant through a heat exchanger using a secondary tank of cooling water. Once the heat was exchanged from the reactor coolant to the secondary water, the primary coolant then returned to the reactor via gravity. However, this system was cooling down the reactor too efficiently, fearing damage to the reactor vessel from extreme heat changes while the system was turned off. This was set out in the operational procedures. The units 2 and 3 an open system was used which necessitated additional water. This was powered by steam from the primary coolant turning a small turbine which in turn injected water back into the reactor. The steam that ran the turbine went to and accumulated in the suppression pool inside the primary containment vessel, which served as a heat sink for absorbing the waste heat. The water needed to continue cooling the reactor was supplied from a condensate tank. Once the tank was empty or the suppression pool was full, water was then supplied from the pool for cooling. However, not only the operating reactors on the 11th of March had decay heat, during refuelling the spent fuel rods are placed in pools near each reactor. These are also still hot so effective cooling is normally provided by electrical power. If it was just an earthquake, the event would have been effectively managed using the on-site generators and batteries. However, 40 minutes post seismic activity, the first tidal wave just under 5 meters tall crashed up against the seawall, which effectively protected the plant. However, just 10 minutes later, a second 14 meter high tsunami wave was heading for the power station. The wave effortlessly crashed over the seawall, which only provided protection of around 5 meters above the normal sea level. The water flooded the turbine rooms, shorting out their electrical systems. The wave damaged the unhoused seawall pumps. This meant that essential plant systems that use seawater, including the liquid-cooled emergency diesel generators, could not be cooled to ensure their effective operation. The flooding water made its way into all buildings, including the vital basements that housed the generators and their associated electrical equipment. This resulted in the loss of emergency AC power. One air-cooled generator survived and continued to supply emergency power to unit 6. This meant, however, that units 1 to 5 had total power failure. The power station was designed to be able to work off DC batteries for up to 8 hours, in the event of the loss of AC power generation. However, some of these systems were also affected by the flooding inundating the functional DC systems. Power started to dwindle in units 1, 2 and 4, 15 minutes post-flood, due to loss of all AC and DC power. The operators of units 1 and 2 could no longer monitor the reactor pressure and the reactor water levels, or key systems and components used for core cooling. This situation had no procedures set out for the operators. Because of this, the emergency control room supervisors were flying blind and had to find some way of resetting power to the stricken plant. Units 3, 5 and 6 maintained power, allowing the operators to observe the power status, as the main control room indications and controls were still functioning. Units 3 and 5 still had DC battery power, and 6 still had full AC power. To extend the time between full plant blackout on units 3 and 5, all non-essential systems were shut down. In unit 3, the operators manually restarted the reactor core cooling system, controlling and monitoring the reactor water injection with the available DC power. Unit 1's attempt to restart the shutdown cooling system failed due to loss of power, and the reactor vessel created more pressure as the core began to increase in heat. The high pressure disallowed the use of an external cooling source, for example from an external pump. After the approval of the prime minister, a nuclear emergency was declared at 3 minutes past 7 local time. With no indications due to power loss, the operators at unit 1 and 2 assumed a worse case scenario of no way of cooling the reactor cores, which would mean potential core uncovering of unit 1 and unit 2. In other words, no calling to the core, which could lead to a meltdown. This information was passed on to the government bodies at around 1 minute past 9pm. An order at 2123 was given by the government to evacuate an area of around 3km near the plant. High levels of radiation were detected in the unit 1 reactor building, indicating core damage at 2151. At 10-12 at night, the reactor vessel at unit 1 showed signs of being over pressured beyond design spec. The site's superintendent ordered preparations for venting of the unit 1 containment vessel. At 2.10am on the 12th of March, a team was able to enter the room where unit 2's reactor core isolation cooling system equipment was located and read the parameters to determine the system's status. The system was confirmed working in unit 2's core, as the steam being created inside the core was successfully powering the small turbine in the backup cooling system. Upon hearing that unit 2's cooling was still functional, operators focused on dealing with the unfolding drama at unit 1. At 4am, an alternate cooling system was put into operation, using firetrucks pumping seawater into unit 1 as the vessel pressure had produced. Unit 1's containment measurement at 4.19am on the 12th of March showed that pressure had decreased since the last measurement, without any operator action and without an official venting route, indicating that some unintentional containment pressure relief had occurred through an unknown path. This coupled with an increase in radiation levels hinted at reactor vessel damage. Because of this, the government extended the evacuation zone to 10km. Plans for venting of unit 1's containment was set to start at 9am on the 12th of March. As soon as the Fukushima Prefecture authorities confirmed at 9.02am of the completion of the evacuation of Akuma Town, the team started the manipulation of valves in order to arrange the path for the venting of unit 1's containment to atmosphere. At 2pm, the final valve was manipulated. Success of the venting operation was confirmed by a decrease in containment pressure at 2.30pm. Initially, no increase in radioactivity was seen, however this would change one hour post venting and was measured at 1mcv an hour near unit 1. At unit 3, after 20.5 hours of operation, the reactor core isolation cooling system ceased to operate at 11.36am. The system was unsuccessfully restarted, resulting in the heat within the reactor core creating steam lowering the cooling level. An automatic high pressure coolant jet system started after the level dropped past the set level. At half past 3pm, work to connect the mobile voltage power supplies to units 1 and 2 using an undamaged transformer in unit 2 was completed and a low voltage grid for supply of AC power to unit 1 was re-energized. However, before the benefits of the return of power could be reaped, unit 1 exploded. The upper part of the reactor building of unit 1 was severely damaged in the explosion. Although no damage was caused to the primary containment, the secondary in the form of the building was now compromised. Three hours later, the evacuation zone was extended to 20km. The cause of the explosion was thought to be from hydrogen that had escaped from the reactor via an unknown path. Teams returned to the site to repair the damaged electrical and water feedlines. After these were repaired, the reactor had been without calling for around 4 hours. Although things were kind of back under control for unit 1, unit 3 started to become the next drama during the disaster. Fearing that the turbine driven high pressure cooling system would fail with the lowering steam within the reactor, unit 3 was planned to be hooked up to an external water pumping source. To facilitate this, the high pressure system needed to be switched off for valves to be opened to be hooked up to the new cooling system. The valves could not be opened. Whilst the operators struggled for 45 minutes, the pressure within the reactor rose disallowing the external water pumping option. Painting themselves into a corner, the operators attempted and failed to restart the high pressure system, essentially leaving unit 3 with no cooling system at all. An emergency at unit 3 was declared at 5.10am on the 13th of March. At 5.15am, fire engines were called up to pump water into the reactor core like had been done for unit 1. Again, like with unit 1, a venting path was needed to lower pressure. To reduce the reactor pressure below the fire engine pump pressure, required the activation of pressure relief valve. This was achieved by the use of 12v batteries taken from cars at the site, which were collected in the common main control room of units 3 and 4. The reactor pressure vessel failed below what was needed to use the fire engine pumps. An injection of boriated fresh water into the unit 3 reactor started at 9.25am. Unit 3 had also gone for more than 4 hours without cooling. At 2.15pm, high radiation dose rate of around 1mhz was measured near the site boundary. 15 minutes later, the radiation dose rate exceeded 100-300mhz at the entry doors of the unit 3 reactor building. At 6.30am on the 14th, the water level in unit 3 dropped as cooling water supplies that were being pumped began to dwindle. At 11.01am, an explosion occurred in the upper part of the unit 3 reactor building, similar to what happened at unit 1, destroying the structure above the service floor. In addition to the destruction of the alternate water injection arrangement, the capability to vent the containment in unit 2 was lost. At around 1pm on the 14th, unit 2 began to experience cooling issues as well. In what seems to be a repeating theme, reactor pressure increased as the cooling water level decreased. To enable low pressure fire truck water pumping, safety valves were operated to help drop the reactor pressure. The fire trucks began to pump water at 8pm. At around 9.55pm, confinement radiation levels had increased substantially to 5,360mhz in the dry well. And 383mhz in the suppression chamber. At 10.30pm, the unit operators tasked with establishing the venting line to relieve the containment pressure were unable to open the vent valves. Venting from the containment was unsuccessful, meaning that there was little that the operators could do to stop pressure build up within the reactor containment. And in the early hours of the 15th, the inevitable happened. In the early hours of the 15th of March, explosions were heard at units 2 and 4, with the top half of unit 4's building being damaged. A drop in pressure readings on the suppression chamber of unit 2 was seen. This hinted in the containment of the reactor had been compromised, meaning an uncontrolled release of radioactive isotopes. Following the events in unit 2, all personnel except essential workers required for monitoring and emergency response were instructed by the site superintendent to go to a radiologically safe location. 650 people evacuated to Fukushima Dianne nuclear power plant site approximately 12km away. White smoke or steam was seen to be coming from the top of unit 2's reactor building. A radiation measurement was taken of 11.93mhz at the main gate at 9am. An order was issued by the government authorities at 11am, requiring all residents within a 30km radius of the power plant to take shelter indoors. A team needed to enter the reactor building of unit 4 to investigate the status of the spent fuel pool. However, upon entry, they recorded radiation levels of 1000mcph. After an aerial survey on the 16th, water levels were confirmed in unit 4's pool, however it was unknown about the condition of unit 3, making its pool a priority to ensure enough water was in place to stop the spent fuel from becoming uncovered. Spraying started on the 17th with helicopters dropping around 30 tons of seawater. Later, fire hoses and water cannons were used to fill the pool. Additionally, on the 20th, unit 4 received water spray as well. Later on into March, power was gradually restored to units 1-4, with units 5 and 6 receiving power from the only working air-cooled generator. Units 3 and 4 were the last to receive power after being completely cut off for more than two weeks. At this time, seawater was swapped for boreated fresh water in the cooling efforts of the reactors, meaning the situation was gradually coming back under control. Unit 5 was the first to be put into cold shutdown mode at 14.30 on the 20th of March 2011. This was followed by unit 6 at 19.27 on the same day. However, the remaining units had a long journey ahead as a more stable situation was achieved in April 2012. TEPCO published in May 2012 an estimate of the amount of radioactivity released at Fukushima, which was about 1,020 petropecule over the 12th to the 31st of March. 500 petropecule of iodine-131, 10 petropecule of cesium-137 and 10 petropecule of cesium-134. The remaining was noble gases mainly made up of xenon-133. Releases to the ocean over the 26th of March to the 30th of September were thought to be about 11 petropecule of iodine-131, 3.5 petropecule of cesium-134, 3.6 petropecule of cesium-137, a total of 18.1 petropecule. The release into the ocean came from the water pumped into reactors during the forced cooling, which had subsequently been contaminated by the damage reactor cause. However, the publications were only estimates and there is much uncertainty as to how much was released into the sea. This is mainly due to the area being flooded at the time of the contamination of the water. It was estimated that Fukushima released around one-tenth of the contamination of Chernobyl. Tests on caught fish around the area were shown to have the same levels of contamination in 2012 as they had post-accident in 2011. Hinting added a more prolonged release of contaminants into the ocean. Post-accident and exclusion zone of 20km were set up around the plant, meaning residents within the zone had to leave. However, other towns and villages outside the 20km zone were also evacuated for decontamination. In March 2012, three area definitions were set up to describe each evacuation status of the towns and villages around the stricken power plant. Area 1 is known as the evacuation cancellation prepared zone. These are areas where it is confirmed, but the annual dose of radiation will definitely be 20mcv or less and the evacuation order will soon be lifted. Residents are allowed to visit their property but not stay the night and people in the area are not required to take protection from radiation. Area 2 is where residents are not permitted to live, known as the restrictive residence zone. Areas where the annual integral dose of radiation is expected to be 20mcv or more and where residents are ordered to remain evacuated in order to reduce the risk of radiation exposure. Residents can also return to this area but not stay the night as well. Area 3, the difficult to return zone, is where it is expected that residents will not be returning home for a long time. These are the most restrictive areas and entry is prohibited and less specifically allowed to and whilst in protective clothing. The annual dose of radiation in these areas is expected to be 20mcv a year or more within five years and the current integral dose of radiation per year is 15mcv a year or more. Gradually as decontamination efforts were undertaken, many places affected in 2011 became habitable. However, such areas as Futaba and parts of Nemi and Okuma are still inaccessible to residents. The roughly 195,000 residents who lived in the vicinity of the plant were screened by the end of May 2011. No elevated health risks were predicted. All of the 1,080 children tested for thyroid gland exposure showed results within safe limits, according to the June IEA report. In December, around 1,700 residents were checked with the majority showing exposure levels below 1mcv a year, with the remaining all but 10 receiving below 5mcv a year, with the final 10 in excess of 10mcv a year. A 2012 Hirosaki University study reported 46 out of 62 people tested had activated thyroids from iodine 131. The average dose was 4.2mcv and 3.5mcv in adults and children respectively. This was much lower compared to the tests on Chernobyl evacuees, who received an average of around 490mcv. It was estimated that there were around 700 deaths from disaster related incidents, for example people uprooted from homes and hospitals because of the evacuation. Another big contributor to health risk from such an incident is the psychological trauma linked to being near a nuclear disaster. Some of the worst affected people were the key workers at the plant who were faced with the fast-moving ever-increasing disaster. Many who worked on the recovery efforts had to complete tasks in less than favorable conditions, all whilst not knowing the safety of their friends and family due to the tsunami in the region. As of 2018, the Japanese government has acknowledged four workers had radiation-caused illnesses, with one dying of lung cancer at the age of 50. A frozen wall was installed around the site to try and limit the seepage into groundwater. Since the meltdowns, Tepco was fighting a losing battle with water that flowed down hill towards the sea, which made its way via Fukushima's fractured reactor buildings. However, the frozen soil barrier had failed to completely stop water seepage. For the best part of the next decade, works at the site have been painfully slow, with not one but three meltdown reactors to deal with. In April 2011, two robots sent into reactor building 1 recorded radiation levels as high as 1120mh. In May, another robot was sent into Unit 1 and discovered levels in excess of 2,000mh. In 2012, radiation levels were found between 31.1 and 72.9mh inside the containment of Unit 2. The status of the fuel in Units 1-3 was unknown as it had melted out of the reactor's cores for several years post-event. In 2015, another robot was sent inside the reactor confinement for Unit 1, how the intense radioactivity immobilized it. Finally, in 2017, a remote-controlled robot took the first pictures of the melted core of reactor 3. In 2019, a robot with two fingers made first contact with the fuel debris in the primary containment vessel of reactor 2. A roadmap to start removing fuel from the three units was set out with Unit 3's storage pool beginning in 2018. Plans to begin to remove fuel from the reactors is set to begin in 2021. The Japanese government so far has put 27 billion dollars into cleaning up the mess, with around 75,000 workers scrubbing the roads, walls, roofs, gutters and drains. Around 600 million cubic feet of grass, trees and topsoil have been removed and stuffed into millions of black bags. But the road to completion of decommissioning and decontamination left by the 2011 disaster will take many more decades until it's finished. Now the IAEA report, as always, is well worth a read for a full dive into the disaster. If you'd like me to cover the aftermath in better detail, let me know in the comments and I may make it into a future video. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you'd like to support the channel financially, you can on Patreon from $1 per creation. That gets you access to votes and early access to future videos. I have YouTube membership as well from 99 pence per month and that gets you early access to videos too. And all I have to say is thank you for watching. Consider helping the channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. Let's get started. You might think that one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history would have happened during a war. However this was not the case. The disaster that unfolded in Texas in 1947 led to a death toll of at least 581 people and would become the subject of the US's first class action lawsuit against the government. Today's subject lands here on my disaster scale. The city of Texas located 10 miles north of Galveston on the Galveston Bay, which is around here on a map. The city port has a deep water harbour with access to the Gulf of Mexico. The city was incorporated in 1911 and had a population of approximately 20,000. The area was predominantly a manufacturing community with oil refineries, two large chemical plants and a dock area for both cargo and petroleum products. The industrial hub in the city drew in workers from Galveston as well as Texas City itself. The area during the secular war was a centre for rubber production. The Texas City disaster was not one but two explosions. The first involved the SS Grand Camp, a Liberty ship originally named the SS Benjamin Arkurtis was constructed in Los Angeles in 1942. Liberty ships like the ones sunk in the Thames Estuary, a video on the SS Richard Montgomery in the Plain and Difficult Archives, were built as mass-produced, cheap and easy to construct transport ships for the war effort. The SS Benjamin Arkurtis was mothballed after the war where the ship had seen service in the Pacific Theatre. Post-war and part of the Cold War relations with France, the ship was brought back into service to help with the rebuilding of the country. Upon removal from mothballing, she was renamed the Grand Camp. The SS Grand Camp weighed in around 7,000 tonnes, with a length of about 437 feet and was operated by the French government. In April 1947, the ship was on voyage from Houston to Bordeaux, stopping en route to pick up cargo of varying types. This brings us onto the 16th April 1947, and the Grand Camp was birthed at Warehouse O, opposite the Monsanto Chemical Company plant. A few days before, the ship had been loaded with oil field machinery, drill stems and around 200 tonnes of peanuts at Houston. The loading at Texas City consisted principally of ammonium nitrate, which is used as a fertilizer but also has explosive properties. It was manufactured mixed with clay, petroleum, voicing and paraffin wax to keep the moisture out and packaged in paper sacks. At 8 am, loading of ammonium nitrate had resumed at the Grand Camp, and the hatch of hold number 4 was opened by a shore worker. He noticed in the hold that had a 2300 ton cargo of ammonium nitrate previously loaded at the port had an odour of smoke. The worker went inside the hold to further try and identify the source of the smoke. After removing some of the bags to get a better view, he discovered some of the cargo smouldering. Water was thrown on the increasing fire to little effect. The worker then called for a fire extinguisher but again this proved ineffective. In an effort to fight the fire, a water line was called for but it was refused on the grounds that it would damage the cargo. At 8.30 am, workers aboard the ship doing the loading were ordered to evacuate. By this time, the fire was spreading. Around the same time, the local fire department received a phone call about the fire and dispatched four engines. Two of the engines arrived first and began to focus streams of water towards the ship. By 8.45 am, red-orangey flames could be seen from the shore. The vibrant colour of the flames attracted people to come and view the developing inferno. Water around the hold of the ship began to boil and water splashing up against the ship vaporised. The ship's hull started to bulge as the heat from within built up. At 9 am, the ship's hull was getting scalding hot further boiling the water around it. At 9.12 am, the ammonium nitrate was experiencing enough heat and pressure to cause an explosion. An initial explosion followed by another five seconds later produced a 15 foot high tidal wave and caused water to flow over a considerable area in the immediate vicinity. The shockwave leveled nearly 1,000 buildings nearby and the blast was felt 10 miles away shattering windows in Galveston. The explosion destroyed the nearby Monsanto Chemical Company's warehouse, causing more destruction as barrels of chemicals inside ignited. Steel from the vessel's hull and superstructure was hurled into the air at up to supersonic speeds, raining shrapnel down on the docks and city. The two-ton anchor of the Grand Camp was hurled across the city, landing over a mile and a half from the epicentre of the explosion. The explosion and resulted debris caused further fires nearby. All but one of the city's volunteer firefighters were killed in the blast as they tried to fight the blaze at the dockside. This resulted in little first response for further fires, meaning the infernos raged uncontrolled. The explosion ignited more ammonium nitrate aboard another vessel, the SS High Flyer. The vessel was owned and operated by Likes Brothers Steamship Company. It was a modern, for the time, C2 cargo ship. The cargo aboard was 2,000 tons of sulfur from Galveston and 961 tons of ammonium nitrate in paper bags, which had been loaded at Warehouse O in Texas City. As the cargo burned aboard the High Flyer, her crew attempted to cut her free from her mooring to be tugged away from the dock. Five hours after the initial explosion, smoke could be seen pouring out of the ship. Several attempts were made to tug the ship free, but all failed. At 1.12 am on the 18th of April 1947, the High Flyer also exploded, further damaging the docks and sinking another Liberty ship called the SS Wilson B. Keane. It is believed that at least 581 people died in the explosion, resulting fires and building collapses. 405 bodies were identified, with another 63 unidentified. However, this isn't the whole story, as at least another 113 persons were not recovered and were considered missing. Many missing persons were the crew aboard the Grand Camp, dock workers and firefighters at the dock side. This is because the size of the explosion meant that their bodies were completely destroyed by the event. It is not unthinkable that the death toll was most likely even higher, as many people, for example unregistered labourers, travellers and visiting seamen, would have been around the docks at the time of the explosion. Such people wouldn't have had any official record of being on site. Bodies quickly filled the morgue and had to be laid out in school halls for identification. The damage was way beyond belief, with 539 buildings condemned as unsafe for occupancy, displacing over 2,000 people. On top of that, many more houses were damaged with many needing major repair work. Other damage included over 1,000 cars, 362 railway carriages damaged with many written off, and all four of the city's fire trucks also being written off. The city post explosion had no fire crews to mount rescue efforts. Because of this, emergency workers were transported in from Texas and the surrounding states. The first responders would be fighting fires for over a week post explosion, and many bodies took months to be recovered. The city was decimated and the road to remediation would be long and expensive. Many of the dock side industries were destroyed, putting massive financial strain on the city. The damage to the economy was compounded by the reduced worker pool as many skilled and unskilled workers were lost in the explosion. Some businesses used their hourly workers for the rebuilding efforts, meaning many survivors kept their jobs. Insurance estimates put the cost of destruction at just under $33 million in 1947. Many of the businesses were insured, however some were not. Understandably, the explosion garnered nationwide newspaper coverage, and several funds were set up to help rebuild the stricken city, with several celebrities at the time including Frank Sinatra raising awareness. One of the largest fundraisers for the city and the victims of the disaster was organised by Sam Macchio, one of two brothers who ran organised crime in Galveston. However, the story didn't end with just a ridiculously big explosion, as it led to the US's first case of a class action lawsuit against the government. The case of Elizabeth et al vs United States brought against the government under the recently created 1946 Federal Tort Claims Act. Interestingly, as a side note, the act was brought in after the 1945 B-25 crash into the Empire State Building. The court found United States responsible for negligent acts of omission by 168 named agencies and their representatives in the manufacturer packaging and labelling of ammonium nitrate. It was also found that negligence in the legislation in transport handling, storing and fire suppression related to ammonium nitrate. All of these created an environment where massive explosion was inevitable. Obviously, the US government appealed and on the 10th of June, 1952, the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned this decision. On the 15th of June, 1953, in a 4-3 vote, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision. However, Congress stepped in to award some monies to the victims of the disaster. By 1957, when the last claim was processed, 1,394 awards had been made, totaling nearly $17 million. The city did rebuild, reaching a population over 45,000 today and has carried on being a shipping hub. However, it will experience another explosion in 2008. This time, however, it involved a BP oil refinery, killing 15 and injuring over 100. And in 2013, Texas State would experience another fertilizer explosion in the city of West. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you'd like to support the channel financially, you can on Patreon from $1 per creation. I have YouTube membership as well, from 99 pence per month. Check me out on Twitter. And also, if you want to wear my merch, you can purchase it at my Teespring store. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Radiation therapy machines are relied on in the battle against certain cancers. Many place their trust and hopes of survival on the effectiveness of such equipment. However, when harnessing ionizing radiation, extreme caution needs to be exercised. This goes for the safe storage and disposal of units, but also, and more regularly, any actual dose used to treat the patients. If you like what we're doing here at Plain Difficult, consider helping the channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. Let's get started. Today we're looking at the FRAC-25 radiotherapy unit and its victims. However, unlike other radiotherapy units on this channel, the death toll was equated to a fault with the unit's software, giving dangerous doses of radiation. Today I'm going to rate this subject here on the Plain Difficult Disaster Scale. In the 21st century, we rely on computer control systems for almost everything, as the accuracy of the digital realm on the whole outperforms that of a human. However, in the mid to late 1980s, the reliance of a computer system for safety critical operations led to a deadly result. Unlike other radiotherapy units that use an active radioactive source, such as Cobalt, the FRAC-25 was a medical linear accelerator. This type of machine accelerates electrons via a gun to create a high-energy beam. The beam is used for treating a small localised area, usually in the form of a tumour. The advantage is that the surrounding tissue is unaffected. Some cancers can respond well to small doses of radiation, in turn killing off the deadly cells, halting the spread of the disease. With the FRAC machine, shallow treatments are dealt with accelerated electrons, whereas deeper targets are reached by converting the beam to X-ray photo beams. The FRAC-25 was a genesis born from a collaboration with AECL, the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited Company, and a French company called CGR. During the 1970s, several units were deployed and put into production, the first of which was the 6 million electron volt FRAC-6, followed by the 20 MeV dual-mode FRAC-20. Both these units used microcomputers, but were developed versions of CGR designs. The computers used in these units only added the ease of use, and mechanical interlocks were still employed. Essentially, these units were standalone and the machines they were derived from didn't make use of computers. During the 1970s, AECL developed a double-pass system. The innovation of the FRAC-25 was that the designers found a way to fold the beam back and forth, so a very long accelerator could be fit into a smaller space. The 25 MeV FRAC-25 made use of the new system. The unit could deliver 25 MeV of photons or electrons at various levels. It also had a field light mode, which allowed the patient to be correctly positioned by illuminating the treatment area with visible light. The unit made use of the same PDP-11 computer as the 6 and 20. However, the computer was not just an addon, but instead had the whole unit controls designed around the computer system. With the extra reliance on the computer, mechanical interlockings were replaced with software. This meant that the safety was ensured within the computer. The software for the new unit was written using the code from the FRAC-6 as a base and had evolved to the 25 via the FRAC-20. The software was programmed only by one person. In depositions from later lawsuits, the company admitted to conducting small amounts of software testing in a simulator. During development, only around 2700 hours of operation was racked up. The software was responsible for machine status monitoring, inputting desired treatment and setting up the unit for treatment. The software also activated the beam depending on operator input and once treatment was complete, would also switch off the beam. This relied on system checks being carried out by the computer. The computer didn't make use of a standard operating system and instead used a proprietary real-time OS. The software had four major components, stored data, a scheduler, a set of critical and non-critical tasks and interrupt services. The software-controlled interlocks were designed to remove power from the unit in the case of a failure. The system used a fault tree in the event of a hardware failure, however it did not consider computer software errors. The culture of the design of the unit thought that all errors in the system would only be linked to hardware failures. There were two ways that the unit's software could shut down operation, treatment suspend or treatment pause. A treatment suspension hinted at a serious error and required a complete system restart. A treatment pause, which the system deemed as not serious, only required a single key command to restart the machine and all treatment parameters remained intact. The danger of this was that an operator could quickly override the system fault by just using the P key. In total the system would allow five pauses before a total restart was needed. During development AECL didn't have the software code independently reviewed. Issues within the software had not been highlighted on the FRAC 6 and 20 units due to their hardware interlocks thus providing final safety. But the FRAC 25 had got rid of these and this would mean the bugs in the software could ignore key safety critical systems. In 1975 the prototype of the FRAC 25 was constructed and commercial availability began in 1982. In total 11 units were installed with five in the USA and six in Canada. There were six incidents of incorrect high current electron beams generated in X-ray mode being delivered to patients. These happened over a two-year period between 1985 and 1987. The first incident took place in June 1985. A 61 year old female patient was receiving follow-up treatment after removal of a tumour from one of her breasts. She was to receive treatment in the neighbouring lymph nodes. This particular machine had been operating for six months at Kinnastone Regional Oncology Centre in Marietta, Georgia. The machine was set up for what was thought to be a 10 MeV electron dose. Upon commencement of treatment the patient experienced a burning sensation on the treatment area. After treatment the patient reported redness and swelling in the area. Her shoulder froze and began to experience spasms. After being admitted to hospital her doctors continued to send her for FRAC 25 radiation treatments. AECL denied that the machine burned the patient and it was thought that her bodily reaction was normal in connection with a correct dose. Eventually the patient's breast had to be removed and she completely lost the use of her shoulder and arm. In October the patient filed suit against the hospital and the manufacture of the machine. The second incident was in July 1985 at the Ontario Cancer Foundation Clinic in Canada. The 40 year old patient was on her 24th treatment from the FRAC 25. During the session the unit initiated a treatment pause due to the computer indicating that no dose had been administered. The operator pushed the P button to override the error. The machine shut down a few more times each incident being overridden by the operator. However the patient complained of tingling in the treatment area and over exposure was suspected with the patient being hospitalised. They died three months later in relation to their cancer. The third incident happened at Yakima Valley Hospital in 1985. The patient, a woman, had developed red parallel strips on the treatment area on her hip. Her condition was thought to be normal and was sent back for more FRAC 25 sessions. Radiation over exposure was not considered until over a year later. Eventually the patient received surgery and experienced minor disability and scarring. The East Texas Cancer Centre in March 1986 would experience the fourth in this series of incidents. The patient, a male, was to receive therapy on his upper back during his ninth treatment with the machine. The machine had been in operation at the hospital for two years treating around 500 patients during that period. During setting up the session the operator had typed in incorrect treatment information by indicating X-ray instead of electron mode. The operator edited this easy to make mistake by using the cursor up key. She correctly filled in all other parameters so once the X was changed to an E after pressing enter the terminal display indicated all parameters were verified. Next the system prompted the operator to begin beam by pressing the B key. The machine shut down with a treatment pause and a malfunction 54 error was displayed on the screen. This error message indicated that either a dose too high or a dose too low had been delivered. The display terminal was showing a substantial under dose. The operator who was experienced with the machine thought it was just a usual quirk and pressed the P button to proceed. Again a malfunction 54 message was displayed however due to a malfunction in the software two doses of the maximum of 25 MeV was administered. Meanwhile inside the treatment room the patient felt a burning sensation on his back upon the first attempt of delivery of a dose. He had attempted to get up from the treatment table before the second dose which had hit him in his arm. After the second attempt he made his way to the door of the treatment room banging on it to get the attention of the operator. As an unfortunate turn in luck the audio and video link between the two rooms was out of order that day meaning that the operator had no way of seeing or hearing the patient. The patient eventually lost the use of his left arm and both legs was unable to speak and had several other complications. He died five months later linked to his incident in the frack 25. A month later in April at the same centre another incident with the same operator would take place. Much like the previous incident the operator had incorrectly typed X instead of E and had gone to correct her mistake using the cursor up key. What was different this time was that the intercom was working and the operator heard a noise from the machine and had grown from the patient. The intended dose was 10 MeV to the face however like before this was far exceeded. The patient was rushed to hospital where he fell into a coma and passed away three weeks later from severe neurological damage. The final incident occurred at Yakima Valley Hospital in January 1987. An operator placed the patient for small position verification doses. The total dose was to be 86 rads which consisted of two verification doses and then a prescribed dose. After attempting to administer the dose the machine shut down with a malfunction message and a treatment pause. The operator pushed the P button and the machine paused again. Like in every other case the patient had felt a burning sensation in the treatment area which should not have been the case due to the dose being very low. This patient died three months later and it was thought that he had received up to 10,000 rads. After each of the incidents AECL denied that the units could have been the cause of the overexposure as the company had misplaced high levels of confidence in the software and hardware combination. As long as they had blind confidence in the unit thoughts could not be identified and rectified as they presented themselves. It wasn't until the fifth instance of overdose that the company started to look into the system although this might have been because the FDA was also launching a probe into the unit's safety systems. The key issue with the Fract25 was in its software. A strange quirk was once an operator information at the terminal outside the treatment room, the magnets used to filter and control radiation levels were set. Due to a number of magnets this process took about eight seconds. If an edit straight away in say under one second the software would adjust accordingly. Similarly if an edit was made after the magnets had been positioned the edit would be registered. However if an edit was made during the magnet alignment time it would not be registered by the system. Once the magnets are set no test is performed by the software to double check that the treatment information entered matches how the magnets are set. This issue is a direct result of the dual mode element of the machine. Much higher levels of radiation are needed in photon mode to produce the same levels of output in electron mode. Meaning if the beam is set for photon mode but the turntable is set up for electron mode a radiation overdose occurs and the operators were none the wiser. The same software glitch was in the programming of the Fract20 however the hardware interlocks prevented the overdose and as described at the beginning of the video these interlocks were not built into the 25. The other software glitch allowed the electron beam to activate during field light mode during which no beam scanner was active or target was in place. The stringent and extensive testing was not undertaken by AECL as only one programmer was used. Limiting the amount of program testing that could be done during development and also as a result of stretch resources code was copied from previous machines. It was assumed by the company that as previous units had been safe that adding to an already established computer system wouldn't need testing and proving. The poorly engineered software had led the operators and technicians to become complacent with the error messages displayed to them. This was because the units would regularly spew out confusing errors eventually conditioning operators to not investigate superior failures. Arguably the operators should have demanded equipment that could operate fault-free however AECL had sold them the lie that the system would not let an incident of overdose even though this was proven to be false. AECL eventually set out a corrective action plan which included a hardware safety interlock and 20 other hardware and software changes. The Fract 25 after these changes went back into service. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you'd like to support the channel financially you can on Patreon from $1 per creation. That gets you access to votes and early access to future videos. I have YouTube membership as well from 99 pence per month and that gets you early access to videos as well. Check me out on Twitter and also if you'd like to wear my merch you can purchase it at my Teespring store and all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Imagine a church rock uranium mill spill but with coal ash. Before we get started I'd like to say thank you to this video's sponsor. Brilliant. More about that later on. Over $1 billion estimated to clean up millions of dollars worth of damage, many workers dying of long-term illnesses including brain cancer, lung cancer and leukemia were only similar results of a massive spill of toxic fly ash. Today we are looking at the Kingston Fossil Plant Fly Ash Spill. This disaster I'm going to rate here because why not. The Kingston Fossil Plant or better known as the Kingston Steam Plant is a coal fired electric generating station in Kingston Road County Tennessee which is around here on the map. The area is fairly rural with a small population. The plant, a 1398 megawatt coal fired power station was commissioned in 1951 and when completed in 1955 was one of the world's largest of its kind. The plant was originally intended to supply power to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory which has unsurprisingly been on this channel quite a few times. The site is operated by Tennessee Valley Authority. The organisation operates and maintains multiple power stations including coal, hydro and nuclear powered plants. The plant is located on a junction of the Emory and Clinch rivers just over four miles from the clinches mouth to the Tennessee river. Coal is a dirty fuel and as such has some pretty nasty polluting byproducts. Fly Ash is a byproduct from coal burned in power generating plants. To stop this particulate matter getting into the atmosphere a type of storage is needed to reduce the risk of environmental pollution. To achieve this containment ponds are used. A full power operation 1000 tons or 1200 cubic yards of coal fly ash is produced daily by the plant. The fly ash is captured by electrostatic precipitators and mixed with bottom ash which is taken from the boilers. To get the waste product to the storage areas the ash is mixed with water in the plant and pumped to a settling pond. After the ash has settled to the bottom the pond is dredged and the wet ash is pumped into storage cells. The ash then sits in the cells waiting for the water to be evaporated after which a new cell is built on top. Once concentrated together these ponds contain many toxic contaminants including arsenic, barium, beryllium, boron, cadmium, nickel, lead, mercury, selenium and phallium. Such pools can even have high levels of radioactivity. Since commencement of operations in the 1950s the plant had been storing its coal ash in its containment ponds at a site adjacent to the Emory River. Due to high levels of waste the initial ponds were filled by 1965. This necessitated the need to have a more comprehensive storage arrangement. To combat the growing waste problem a new settling pond and ash storage cells were constructed. The storage area was divided into a number of smaller dredged cells. These consisted of a perimeter 60 feet above the winter level and 740 feet above sea level. Dykes were then stacked on top of each other on top of the previously sluiced ash materials. To maintain safety these dykes were visually inspected by workers daily and more in depth surveys were undertaken by engineers yearly. In between the daily and yearly inspections quarterly checks were undertaken by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation. In the early to mid 2000s a number of small dyke failures were investigated and repaired by TVA with the assistance of an engineering firm. After that and leading up to disaster no other issues were reported on the dykes. This leads us to the disaster in December 2008. On the 22nd of December 2008 at 1 a.m eastern standard time the central and north portions of the dyke failed and tons of ash slurry were released over a period of two hours. Initially the first wave lasted around one minute but was followed by several other smaller waves. The spill extended over approximately 300 acres outside of the ash storage area. The effluent flowed through houses disrupting gas water and power services flooding nearby railway line and blocking off roads. 5.4 million cubic yards of waste village was estimated after aerial surveys were undertaken. Once settled the sludge was up to six feet deep. Due to the blocking of the road and rail services coal supplies to the plant were shut off. The toxic contents also made its way into the Emory River poisoning the food chain for the local wildlife. A day after the spillage TVA released a statement acknowledging the event saying we deeply regret that a retention wall for ash containment at our Kingston fossil plant failed resulting in an ash slide and damage to nearby homes. We're taking steps to stabilize runoff from this incident. Tests of nearby water showed elevated levels of lead and fallium however arsenic was not recorded to be too high. Drinking water tested six miles away was shown to still be within legal standards. However later tests by independent laboratories showed elevated levels of arsenic, copper, barium, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and nickel in the nearby river water. Within days of the spill cleanup efforts began under the watchful eye of the EPA. In 2009 TVA hired contractor Jacobs to provide program management services to assist with the cleanup. The first stage of the cleanup was run by TVA and was called the time critical stage. During this 18 month period around 3.5 million cubic yards of waste was collected. Removing around 90% of the ash in the Emory River allowing it to be reopened in 2010. The cleanup involved mechanical excavation, hydraulic dredging and rapid materials handling. The ash was dewatered at Kingston and then transported by rail to Arrowhead landfill in Perry County Alabama which is around here on the map. Phase two was a non-time critical stage and involved mechanical excavation of approximately 2.3 million cubic yards of ash near the Watts Bar Reservoir. The excavated ash was dried on site to a storable moisture level and was placed in a 240 acre cell. This phase of the cleanup ended in December 2014. The third and final phase consisted of a human and ecological health risk assessment for the remaining ash not removed from the Emory River during phase one. During this phase, monitored natural recovery was selected to complete the cleanup. This used natural processes such as mixing, scouring and redepositing and sedimentation of the remaining waste. Now here's some words from today's sponsor Brilliant. If like me you feel that your brain has turned into mush from the inactivity of being cooped up inside during the hellscape that has been 2020, then Brilliant could be what you need to get your brain back into gear. Brilliant helps you build up your problem solving and critical thinking skills running at your pace, your rules. Their puzzles have really helped me get back on track to start training up my fatty brain into a brainy six pack. Not just that, but as a person who enjoys learning about the technicals of how things work some of Brilliant's courses help you learn new subjects. For example, learning about how a search engine works. Or this course about scientific thinking where you explore the laws of physics and principles of engineering, which I really enjoy doing, and all of their courses are made by experts. If this interests you and if you're a regular watcher of Plainly Difficult, might hint that you are, then you can try a free preview of each course and get daily challenges in the Today tab. Even better than that, the first 200 people to subscribe using my URL rail link www.brilliant.org slash Plainly Difficult will get 20% of a yearly subscription. After around 70 years and $1.1 billion, the cleanup efforts were considered complete, taking 6,700,000 worker hours. During the peak remediation works, around 900 people were on site per day. Although no one was killed during the spill, as many as 40 would die during the cleanup, with hundreds more left with illnesses linked to the toxic materials left on site. The contractor Jacobs Engineering was discovered to have mislead many of the cleanup workers of the hazards of coal ash. As such, the company didn't provide correct PPE to workers, meaning many did clean up works without masks or protective clothing. After a number of years seeking compensation, a federal jury in November 2018 ruled in favour of the workers paving the way for a much needed payout. This would be a vital lifeline, as many of the workers did not have health or life insurance. The lawsuit is still ongoing, with a rejected offer of $10 million in April 2020. The legacy for these workers is respiratory difficulties and long-term illnesses such as elevated chances of cancer. Although the effects were pretty obvious, I mean just look at this aerial photo, the main question remains, how did this happen if it was regularly inspected? LA-based engineering firm ACOM was commissioned by TVA to launch an investigation into the root cause of the dike failure. ACOM at the start of 2009 began to analyse samples collected from the site. The scope of the work was limited to the identification of the likely cause of the disaster. Sampling was used to find out the native and non-native site materials to find out their properties in order to see if there are weaknesses in the ponds. On June 25th 2009, ACOM released a final report on their conclusions on the root cause of the disaster. They set out four likely causes. Field geometry, increased fill rates, soft foundation soils and loose wet ash. It was found that the unstable wet ash had slipped underneath the pond, weakening the dike leading to failure. This failure point was compounded by rainfall leading up to the failure of around 6.48 inches between December 1st and December 22nd. However ACOM's findings were not definitive as unsurprisingly they were unable to get undistributed samples, but that would have really only been possible pre-disaster. In a court case in 2012 to see if TVA was liable for the spill, found that the organisation did not build the holding pools according to plans and failed to train its employees on how to properly inspect the dikes surrounding the ash ponds. This led to a failure to maintain the facility to prevent rupture of the dikes, essentially guaranteeing the disaster. The site still operates today and many workers paid the price for the remediation with their health and in far higher number than necessary with their lives. I hope you enjoyed the video. I'd like to thank Brilliant for sponsoring this video. Sponsors like this really help keep the lights on here at Plain and Difficult HQ. So don't forget if you'd like to check out Brilliant use this link www.brilliant.org slash plain and difficult for the first 200 people to get 20% off an annual subscription. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Before we start, I've got to let you all know that this is the 100th episode of Plain and Difficult. To mark this event, I've got a new t-shirt out on my teespring store. When you think of nuclear accidents in the former Soviet Union, Kushtym or Chernobyl come to mind. However, there was a lesser known incident in the newly formed Russian Federation which involved an explosion and a release of radiation. If you like what we do here at Plain and Difficult, consider helping the channel grow by liking, commenting and subscribing. Let's get started. It has been a while since we've covered an incident in Russia and this subject has been on my list for quite a long time. It is a very interesting event to look at as it happened fairly recently, well in comparison to some of the other things I've covered on this channel. Of course, today we are looking at the explosion at Tomsk 7 reprocessing facility. Today I'm rating this subject here my disaster scale, not too bad, not too good. Nuclear fuel reprocessing is a vital link in the fuel supply chain for both nuclear reactors and atomic weapons. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, many facilities were employed in the recycling of spent fuel for reuse. One such facility in the former Soviet Union, based in Tomsk 7, was a complex used in a nuclear technological cycle for the creation of nuclear weapons components based on fissile materials. Tomsk 7 was the name given to current day Svesk, a secret city in Tomsk Oblast Siberia. The city was founded in 1949 and quickly became a main hub for the Soviet atomic industry. The city was home to Siberian chemical enterprises, a complex involved in a large-scale production and reprocessing of uranium and plutonium fuels. Construction at the complex started in 1949 and began highly enriched uranium and plutonium production between 1952 and 1955. The plutonium at the site was originally used for commercial uses until two reprocessing lines in the radiochemical works came online in 1961. The site had a varying number of uses, including experimental reactors, an isotope separation plant, a plant for producing uranium oxide, protoxide and hexafluoride, a uranium and plutonium production plant and storage facilities for radioactive wastes. With such a strategically important site, the USSR kept the plant and the city under tight controls, with the city not appearing on public maps and the movement of residents severely restricted. However, today's incident actually happened after the fall of the USSR in the new Russian Federation in April 1993. The city had been able to use its real name after President Boris Yeltsin decreed in 1992 that such cities could use their historic names. Although no longer a state secret, the facility in the newly named Svesk was still vital to the country's nuclear industry and as such was still heavily guarded. After the end of the Cold War, the Tomsk 7 complex had moved away from weapons materials production to more civilian applications. Due to the activities on the 192km square site, an area surrounding it of 1560km2 was designated as a supervision zone, where routine measurements are taken to monitor the environmental impact of nuclear operations. Located around 16km from the regional capital of Tomsk, in 1993 the city which houses personnel working at SCE and their families had a population of over 100,000 people. The countryside around the SCE was sparsely populated apart from Tomsk and the former secret city, Svesk. The regional capital had a population of around 500,000 people. There were several smaller villages in the region, mainly agricultural communities with only a few hundred inhabitants. Reprocessing of uranium and plutonium was carried out in Building 201 of the Radiochemical Works at the SCE. Let's have a look at the process employed at Tomsk 7. Reprocessing started with loading of the radiated standard uranium blocks into the plant where they were dissolved in concentrated nitric acid. The solution was then transferred to another vessel and was prepared for extraction by adjusting acidity and the temperature. Sometimes additional solution was added which had already gone part the way through the process before. To avoid a chemical reaction in the solution compressed air was used to stop it from separating out. After this point the solution passed along the reprocessing line for solvent extraction using tributyl phosphate in a light hydrocarbon dissolver. A series of mixed settlers were used for selective transfer of uranium and plutonium to the TBP leaving behind unwanted products such as cesium and strontium in the aqueous solution. The two liquids then separate with the TBP sent on for further processing to separate the uranium and plutonium from one another. Isolation AD6102-2 was used as part of the reprocessing process. It was a vessel used to prepare the solution prior to reprocessing. The vessel was made out of stainless steel with a volume of 34 meters cubed enclosing a steam heating and cooling sleeve. It was also fitted with a number of sensors to help with process control. These sensors included two level indicators, a thermometer, a pressure transducer, a pit open warning device, a flow rate transducer and some radiometric control sensors. It was placed underground with two meter thick concrete walls and a concrete lid below the ground in building 201 in one of its two reprocessing lines. This leads us on to the disaster on the 6th of April 1993. In the preceding days, installation AD6102-2 was completely emptied. The facility was then recharged in preparation for new solution. Before the 6th, one batch had been extracted. After extraction, around 4 meters cubed of residual solution was left behind. In the morning of the 6th of April, two batches of product 166 with a volume of around 19.5 meters cubed were added to AD6102-2. At 10.30 am, 1.5 meters cube of nitric acid was also added in preparation for extraction. At 12pm sensors within the vessel started to show a pressure rise. 40 minutes later, a new shift arriving at the building noticed red smoke coming out of the vent tube, something that was not a usual sight during this type of extraction. 10 minutes later, the engineer in charge was notified of the pressure increase, which was at 2.80 am and still rising. The order to reduce pressure in the vessel was issued however no discernible effect was seen as the pressure raised to 5.80 am. At 12.58 pm, the pressure exceeded that of the vessel's design specifications and ruptured. Within seconds, an explosion engulfed building 201 knocking down walls on two floors of the complex. Start within the building donned breathing apparatus which was located near their workstations and mustered in a safe area where they were informed of the incident. The radiation monitoring system was activated and within a few minutes of the explosion, the on-site fire department arrived. Within 10 minutes, the fire on the roof and equipment room was extinguished by the swift response on site. Dose rates at the site of the explosion meant that first responders couldn't get direct access, however significant damage was clearly visible. The slabs covering the cell had been displaced and the ceiling of the equipment room had been partially destroyed. The surviving walls showed signs of blackening from the intense fire. Due to the damage, no immediate assessment of the vessel could be undertaken and the compromised building meant that no passive containment of radiation was available. This meant the deadly radioisotopes were escaping into the atmosphere. Around 250 meters cubed of radioactive gases, 8.7 kilograms of uranium and 500 grams of plutonium were released into the environment. This amounted to around 30 terabectals of beta and gamma emitters. At the time of the explosion, there was a light wind and snow limiting the spread of the release, however contamination did make its way into the environment. Almost straight away, aeroplanes were sent out to get a scope of the radio activity and an aerial survey was undertaken. The accident released a plume of fallout into the surrounding countryside. This was both from the damaged building and from the 150 meter high stack on site. The main area affected by fallout from the accident was the village of Gorgievka with a population of about 200. Doses up to as high as 30 microceverts an hour were recorded. The weeks after the accident, the snow contained radioactive elements such as cesium 137 and strontium 90, both known carcinogens. For the cleanup efforts, lead shielding was erected to protect workers. To decontaminate the area, snow and soil was removed, roads around the SCE site were washed down and any solid wastes, for example debris from the buildings, were disposed of on site. The damaged building was rebuilt by mid 1994. In the village of Gorgievka, 380 tons of soil and snow were removed for burial. Contaminated planks of wood, firewood and garbage were also removed from the village. The final stages of decontamination consisted of deep ploughing of vegetable gardens and the use of mineral fertilizers and asphalting the main street. For the remainder of 1993, residents were encouraged not to eat any local produce. The government provided free fruit and vegetables, bought any livestock to be slaughtered and mixed feed was imported to enable food for farm animals to not be contaminated. The children of the village were voluntarily relocated in total 18 children were kept away from the village for around 2 and a half months. The doses estimated between 0.15 to 0.37 millisieverts for villagers during the event and were estimated to be between 0.016 and 0.049 millisieverts one year post event. At the SCE around 1900 personnel were exposed to varying levels of radiation during the event and subsequent cleanup, with the highest being received at 7 millisieverts. Amongst the firefighters, the dose was thought to be around 2 millisieverts, mainly from exposure during the 10 minutes that they quelled the blaze. But how did this disaster happen, you might ask? Well, let's look at this next. In a 1998 IAEA report, it was thought that the cause of the incident was poor flow of the compressed air. This meant that the solution was not properly mixed, causing separation. This was thought to have been caused by one of two reasons, operator error or mechanical fault. The disaster started when nitric acid was being introduced to adjust the acidity. Because of the poor air flow, this was not properly mixed into the solution. The chemicals within the vessel settled into different layers in which the nitric acid settled at the top of the vessel, oxidizing with organic materials inside, releasing gases from the reaction. Eventually, the pressure ruptured the vessel. The gases released were inflammable and ignited on either a spark caused by the rupture or on a 450 degree centigrade hot vessel. After the vessel was ruptured, disaster was inevitable. The site continued to see use, however some of the reactors on site were shut down in 2008 as part of a Russian US agreement in winding down of weapons grade plutonium production. Today the facility produces fuel for foreign customers and stores low and intermediate level nuclear wastes from reprocessing. For the video, if you'd like to support the channel financially, you can on Patreon from $1 per creation. That gets you access to votes and early access for future videos. I have YouTube membership as well from 99 pence per month, and that gets you early access to videos as well. Check me out on Twitter and also if you want to wear my merch, including my new 100th episode special t-shirt, you can purchase it at my Teespring store. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. Thank you so much for making it this far, and here's to another four years.