Episode 183: SL-1 Nuclear Reactor Explosion

in which we talk about an extremely gruesome and also extremely looney toons accident check out scooter on bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/angryscooter77.bsky.socialor on the horrible website for bad people: https://x.com/Angryscooter77 LINK TO BUY A VAN FOR LIAM’S COWORKER:https://helphopelive.org/campaign/24216/ Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wtyppod/ some further reading recommended by scooter himself: Tucker, Todd. Atomic America: How A deadly explosion and a feared admiral changed the course of nuclear history. Free Press, 2014. Stacy, Susan M. Proving the principle: A history of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, 1949-1999. ID Falls, ID, Washington, D. C.: Idaho Operations Office of the Dept. of Energy ; For sale by the Supt. of Docs, 2000. McKeown, William. Idaho Falls: The untold story of america’s first nuclear accident. Toronto: ECW Press, 2003. Send us stuff! our address:Well There's Your Podcasting CompanyPO Box 26929 Philadelphia, PA 19134DO NOT SEND US LETTER BOMBS thanks in advance in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Liam McAnderson?

  Here's the fucking thing. Roz, can you tell our beloved hogs why you had to take a minute to start the recording?

• 0:08November Kelly?

  We don't need, we don't need to get into that. We're all people of inconvenient bathroom use time.

• 0:13Liam McAnderson?

  No, it's not the inconvenient bathroom use time. I don't give a shit about that. I lived in the man for years.

• 0:17Justin Roczniak?

  I had to give a shit about that.

• 0:18Liam McAnderson?

  No, no. Tell them what you had to do before we started recording.

• 0:22Justin Roczniak?

  I had to delete an old file, so I had room to put this one in.

• 0:26November Kelly?

  I see.

• 0:29November Kelly?

  I mean.

• 0:30Liam McAnderson?

  It's gonna sound like a scramz album when I'm done here.

• 0:32November Kelly?

  I had the exact same thing where I was, something was filling up my, my boot drive because like all my, all my stuff is on the like SSDs and the hard drives that are like, you know, loose in the, in the computer case. But the like actual like boot drive is just a little like 250 gig SSD, which is now constantly full. I'm like, why is this constantly full? And I finally like free up enough space to install CCleaner and look and see what's, what's filling it. And the answer is using Zencastr requires me to use Satan's Own Microsoft Edge.

• 1:05Liam McAnderson?

  You can use Chrome.

• 1:06November Kelly?

  Uh, yeah, but in any case, like I don't want to.

• 1:10Liam McAnderson?

  No, I understand that. I hate that I have Chrome installed. I am a Firefox boy.

• 1:14November Kelly?

  But so, um, the whole time it's on, Microsoft Edge is just, just, just taking up data, gigabytes of it. Like, why, why does it have 12 gigabytes of, of, of cache data for the thing that I only use on this website? I don't know, but it does. And so I got rid of that. Now happy days, problem solved. But that was a stressful moment.

• 1:33Liam McAnderson?

  You can also use a WinDirstat.

• 1:35November Kelly?

  WinDirstat?

• 1:36Liam McAnderson?

  Win dir, Win Directory Statistics. W I N D I R S T A T, Windows Directory Statistics, which gives you, in my mind, I use that a lot, uh, because you, you may not know this, but Audacity, uh, also hogs a lot of space. Because it doesn't, at least in my experience, doesn't cleanly delete files I'm done with.

• 1:58November Kelly?

  Yeah, no, yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, this has been fascinating.

• 2:02Justin Roczniak?

  I, I, I am confused.

• 2:04November Kelly?

  This is great podcasting.

• 2:06Liam McAnderson?

  Well, I've seen you operate a computer, Roz. It's, uh, I, friend of the show, uh, Andrew Salt, who's a, a teacher in Philly, said that we should do a 24 hour charity livestream where it's just Roz attempting to use Linux.

• 2:20Justin Roczniak?

  But you you can install the thing where the window goes wobbly when you drag it around, you know?

• 2:26Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah, wobbly windows, yeah.

• 2:27November Kelly?

  I I have I have the kind of trans woman's natural affinity for old computers. So I'd like it if we went back to the kind of reel to reel thing. Whereas with Justin, I feel like the kind of time period that you're you're pitching at is

• 2:40Liam McAnderson?

  Free Eniac.

• 2:42November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, like punch cards or something.

• 2:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, sort of, sort of a babbage adding machine.

• 2:47November Kelly?

  The computer is a room that you go into and then some people take care of it for you.

• 2:52Justin Roczniak?

  What, you mean like the guys who wipe down the holodeck?

• 2:55November Kelly?

  Yeah, I guess so, which the worst job in Starfleet, no question.

• 3:02Justin Roczniak?

  I'm the guy who wipes down the loads.

• 3:04November Kelly?

  Yeah, so I'm doing a viscera cleanup detailed DLC where I've got to mop all of Riker's cum out of the holodeck.

• 3:11Liam McAnderson?

  Thank you.

• 3:12November Kelly?

  Just just open with that line, no context. Thanks so much.

• 3:16Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:18Liam McAnderson?

  Stage direction, clean cum, question mark, stage direction, confetti, question mark.

• 3:24Liam McAnderson?

  We were doing the the live show at the film where they were like, all right, we're gonna have a safety brief, which this is the only venue that did a safety brief.

• 3:31November Kelly?

  And because and they were just like. The assignment, yeah.

• 3:33Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, they just they were like, OK, so is it like, are we expecting like stage diving? I was like, I hope, like, can I do it? And they were like, no, you can't. I was like, OK, well, then, no, like.

• 3:43November Kelly?

  Whenever we do, whenever we do the Kill James Bond live shows, there's always a question on the the safety assessment. It's like, are you going to use any replica firearms? And I've always had to tick no, but I've always kind of wanted to tick yes. And I've never had an inkling of what that would look like. I think it's mostly I want to do it just to tick the box on the form, but I want to tick the box on the form so bad.

• 4:04Justin Roczniak?

  This is what you do is that at the beginning of the show, you inform the audience, you know, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to inform you that during the duration of this show, a pistol will be fired and then someone else immediately fires the pistol.

• 4:24Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. That's not my bit. That's from the Maryland Renaissance Fair Act. Hack and slash. It was a really good bit.

• 4:32Liam McAnderson?

  I did like too that they were just like, what do you want us to do? Like, I had to explain like, we will be heckled, but it's fine. It's just the hogs. And they were like, are you sure we can kick people out? But I was just like, I kind of like, kind of wanted to use unnamed person as an example, but only kick them out.

• 4:51November Kelly?

  I feel like getting, getting kicked out of a Well, There's Your Problem live show for heckling us is like a spiritual injustice that can never be righted. Like, you would have to kill one of us with a sword to be, for us to make that up, too. I speak, speaking of being killed with a sword, I always do feel a little bit like, because like, whenever I do live shows in person, I always get to meet the fans. It's always really lovely. A bunch of them are wearing like shirts that we designed or whatever. People come up to me, people say things to me. And it's very nice, but there is a little bit of me, like 1% because I have an anxiety disorder. That's like, you know, any one of these people could Inajiro Asanuma you. The Japanese Communist Party guy who got like, killed with a sword on stage. And it's like, you could, you could, you could get fucking killed with a sword right now. So, you know, please don't kill me with a sword is the main thing.

• 5:37Justin Roczniak?

  The Fillmore had metal detectors. We were good.

• 5:41November Kelly?

  Stabbing the flat screen and I'm just like, completely fine.

• 5:45Justin Roczniak?

  You know, it's funny is they also made us go through the metal detectors.

• 5:48November Kelly?

  Yeah, just in case you were gonna smuggle in something. Yeah.

• 5:50Liam McAnderson?

  You were supposed, you were supposed to.

• 5:52Justin Roczniak?

  They padded me down. I got to get felt up for that show.

• 5:55Liam McAnderson?

  You were, you were supposed to go through the metal. That's fine. Security Theater is how terrorists win. Real quick, before we begin, this is an ad for us. Please buy the shirt that, that is now on the store. That is my dad leading, my dad as Chairman Mao.

• 6:14November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's magnificent.

• 6:15Liam McAnderson?

  With all three of us, yeah.

• 6:17November Kelly?

  If you haven't, if you haven't checked the store in a minute, check the store because there's like two or three new shirts on there.

• 6:23Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 6:23November Kelly?

  I saw someone wearing a Meat Deck shirt at the most recent Trash Future show.

• 6:27Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, someone bought one.

• 6:28November Kelly?

  I was so gratified. So yeah, shout out to my, to my Meat Deck heads out there.

• 6:34Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, June thought that it was bootleg merch and I had to explain that, no, this is our merch.

• 6:39November Kelly?

  We really made kind of faux workwear that just says Meat Deck on the back in big letters.

• 6:45Justin Roczniak?

  My, my, my design concept for that one was to make it intentionally bad.

• 6:52November Kelly?

  I designed it, so I like to think that I succeeded in that.

• 6:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, we've, we collaborated on that one.

• 6:58Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, can I reach my fan? I'm so hot and sweaty. Yes, I reached it.

• 7:04Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. And the other thing is, as, as I've mentioned on previous episodes, I slash my coworkers are raising money for my grandson to get a handicap accessibility van. The glorious Hogs have raised over $9,000.

• 7:20Justin Roczniak?

  She's over $9,000.

• 7:22November Kelly?

  That's so good, though.

• 7:23Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, every time you open the browser window, it does that. Yeah, you will drop the, the, the link in the video description. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Hogs. You will be spared during the upcoming, well, there's your problem podcast purchase.

• 7:38November Kelly?

  Yeah, spared, spared by your dad specifically.

• 7:40Liam McAnderson?

  Oh yeah, it's coming, it's coming.

• 7:43Justin Roczniak?

  So.

• 7:44Liam McAnderson?

  Why are we here?

• 7:45Justin Roczniak?

  That being said.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Can I say one thing real quick?

• 7:48Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 7:48Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yes.

• 7:49Speaker 03

  Shouldn't we do a sync point?

• 7:51Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, that's a good point.

• 7:52Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, thanks, Scooter.

• 7:53November Kelly?

  All right, Dev, what I want you to do is I want you to leave in the Riker come line and the, the links and nothing else. And we'll just do the same point.

• 8:02Justin Roczniak?

  So I'm gonna do three, two, one, mark. Everyone clap. Three, two, one, mark.

• 8:10Justin Roczniak?

  Okay.

• 8:11November Kelly?

  Crisp.

• 8:11Justin Roczniak?

  Okay, we did it.

• 8:12Liam McAnderson?

  Yay.

• 8:13Justin Roczniak?

  And with that in mind, hello and welcome to Well, There's Your Problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides. I'm Justin Roczniak, I'm the person who's talking right now. My pronouns are he and him. Okay, go.

• 8:28November Kelly?

  I am November Kelly, I am the person who is talking right now. My pronouns are she and her. I got hit with a sudden wave of like dissociation beam attack, saying my own name there. Not sure what that's about. Yay, Liam.

• 8:38Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yay, Liam. Hi, I'm Liam McAnderson.

• 8:42Liam McAnderson?

  God damn it.

• 8:43November Kelly?

  My pronouns are he and her. Yeah, yeah.

• 8:45Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I got him. I got him. I got him in states.

• 8:47November Kelly?

  Did they get you with a beam attack as well? Because like, it's going around.

• 8:50Liam McAnderson?

  No, I spared the beam attack, but I probably have some sort of concussion. I don't know. And we have a guest.

• 8:58November Kelly?

  We have guests.

• 8:59Liam McAnderson?

  Well, there's your problems, number one enforcer.

• 9:03November Kelly?

  I didn't know we had a goon, you know?

• 9:05Liam McAnderson?

  We do. We do have a goon.

• 9:07November Kelly?

  Hit somebody.

• 9:11Liam McAnderson?

  You could say that. The live shows were wild, I'll say that.

• 9:16November Kelly?

  Yeah, someone tried to kill me with a sword.

• 9:19Liam McAnderson?

  Like stabbing the flat screen. It was, it was less effective than you would think it was.

• 9:24Speaker 03

  No, hi, my name's Angry Scooter. My pronouns are he, they.

• 9:28November Kelly?

  You want to be careful with those Angry Scooters. That's how Palestine action got prescribed.

• 9:34Justin Roczniak?

  Man of many hats in exactly one outfit.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:38November Kelly?

  Yeah, like.

• 9:40November Kelly?

  I think it's completely valid to go Bart Simpson mode. If you find one thing that like works for you and you just get like six variations of it, then yeah, ideal. Well, not even variation, six identical, like same t-shirt, same pants. Yeah, perfect.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  Well, I have work uniform work and work uniform nice. So, and it all looks like military.

• 10:01November Kelly?

  The work uniform nice is the work uniform, but you've just got a bow tie on.

• 10:05Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah, I, I.

• 10:06Speaker 03

  I mean, close.

• 10:07Liam McAnderson?

  Bow tie should be banned at this point.

• 10:11Liam McAnderson?

  That's when I, when I lead the glorious Vanguard party. The thing I believe in.

• 10:17November Kelly?

  Under, under the guidance of Chairman Bill. Yeah.

• 10:19Liam McAnderson?

  Chairman Bill. Yeah, of course. Uh, I was telling, uh, I was telling my mom that on the LA Transit Bonus episode, there's a story redacted and she was like, oh, you and my dad pipes in from the other room and goes, you can tell that story. It's been long enough. Nope, it's paywall, baby.

• 10:38November Kelly?

  Why are we looking at a big grain silo if someone's built into a Quonset hut? That's not a Quonset hut, but you know what I mean.

• 10:43Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, Ron, do you want to explain this to us or Scooter? Scooter, are you taking this one?

• 10:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think so. Uh, it's built in the middle of the desert to hold stuff we're gonna talk about.

• 10:53November Kelly?

  Oh, spicy rocks. Yeah, it's been too long since we did a spicy rocks episode.

• 10:59Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So, yeah, today we're gonna talk about a particularly gnarly nuclear incident at a reactor known as SL1. But first we have to do the goddamn news.

• 11:18Justin Roczniak?

  Sidak, I actually added a drop for this and then, uh, the strike ended. Um, AFSCME 33, uh, our garbage workers here in Philly.

• 11:30Liam McAnderson?

  Local, yeah.

• 11:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, they, uh, they, uh, what you call it? Um, they, they reached some kind of contract negotiation last night. It was not the pay increase they wanted. These are some of the lowest paid workers in city government. Um,

• 11:46Liam McAnderson?

  The largest, blackest and lowest paid union we have in Philadelphia.

• 11:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. And, you know, they got, I want to say 3% raises per year as opposed to the five they were angling for.

• 11:59November Kelly?

  Don't they make like $40,000 a year or something like that?

• 12:02Liam McAnderson?

  Yes, incredibly difficult, agonizing work, especially garbage collection. Meanwhile, would you like to know what the minimum salary for a Philadelphia police officer is?

• 12:11November Kelly?

  $69,532. Uh, don't ask why I know that.

• 12:18November Kelly?

  I never get back to any of my emails.

• 12:21Justin Roczniak?

  The thing, uh, the thing about these, uh, these wage increases is that given, you know, cost of living and inflation and so forth, this is still in real terms, nothing. I mean, very little.

• 12:33November Kelly?

  Don't parkers scab mess.

• 12:37Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, people are just like, I, other people are like, you're not, the public is obligated to participate in str- yes, you are. You are.

• 12:43November Kelly?

  I saw that one woman, yeah, with the, with the like, back of the car full of garbage being like, for $25, I will take your garbage. By the way, I'm not a scab. And it's like, yes, you are. Like, just because you're like, because you are doing the work, you're taking money for it. You're doing like, the work that the striking workers are doing, uh, and you're not in a union. Like, that's scabbing. It just is.

• 13:05Justin Roczniak?

  Um, I'll tell you one thing. I held the picket line. I did not, I did not go to any of the city designated drop off points. Yeah. And, uh,

• 13:13Liam McAnderson?

  Hooray for us.

• 13:15Justin Roczniak?

  You know, exactly, exactly. We, we were, we were good at solidarity. Problem is, you know, even though the strike ended late last night, I still didn't get my garbage picked up this morning.

• 13:24Liam McAnderson?

  No, it's not happening until the 14th, bud.

• 13:26Justin Roczniak?

  Not happening until Monday. Yeah.

• 13:28Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 13:28Justin Roczniak?

  Um, and the union rank and file still has to vote on this contract. So we don't know if.

• 13:34Liam McAnderson?

  DC 33 members to vote no, get the pay increase you deserve.

• 13:38Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 13:38Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck them. Fuck them all, buddy.

• 13:40November Kelly?

  Just the, the sort of like solidarity forever. We can smell worse.

• 13:43Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 13:47Justin Roczniak?

  I thought,

• 13:50Justin Roczniak?

  I thought, I thought this was gonna go, uh, for longer, so, um.

• 13:54November Kelly?

  Yeah, you were prepared for it. I mean, if anybody.

• 13:56Justin Roczniak?

  Get your way to work tomorrow instead of sitting around with your finger up your ass. Look around. There's a union out there called ASME and they're busting their balls for you doing a lot of shit work you take for granted. For example, we pick up your fucking garbage.

• 14:09November Kelly?

  Fucking garbage.

• 14:11Justin Roczniak?

  We got broads out there. Yeah, I thought this is gonna be a segment for like three weeks.

• 14:18November Kelly?

  Like Philadelphia trash update. I mean, the thing is, right? If anybody had asked, uh, had asked me, um, your fucking union, uh, doing comms wants to take this solidarity forever. We can smell worse and make it into like merch by all means, please do that.

• 14:32Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you can have it.

• 14:34November Kelly?

  Send me one.

• 14:35Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So I, I would rate this as okay. Uh, finally, Mary Sherrell Parker did a thing and that thing was bad.

• 14:42Liam McAnderson?

  Do you remember when she said that Kamala Harris was struggling because there wasn't enough Mary Sherrell Parker in her like campaign material?

• 14:51November Kelly?

  Just really need you to be like tied to my personal reputation and brand.

• 14:55Liam McAnderson?

  We live in the dumbest city in America. Maybe not the dumbest, but we're top five for sure.

• 15:01November Kelly?

  I'm so proud, I'm so proud of it.

• 15:04Liam McAnderson?

  They're, they're trying to give, trying to give us a Waymos and it's just like, maybe they should fucking fund Septa first. I don't know. I'm just an asshole who cheers to the Eagles when I thumb up my ass, but.

• 15:14November Kelly?

  I'm excited to see what the city can do to a Waymo. Cause I know in my heart, there's going to be some shit I've never seen before.

• 15:20Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 15:22Justin Roczniak?

  You gotta mangle a car in ways that haven't been seen since burnout revenge.

• 15:28November Kelly?

  Doing, doing crash mode on the first Waymo that shows up. Yeah.

• 15:33Liam McAnderson?

  I'm gonna slash its tires.

• 15:35November Kelly?

  Gonna make Hitchbot look like Asamo.

• 15:39Justin Roczniak?

  Well, in other, uh, non-news.

• 15:45November Kelly?

  Weirdly for a podcast that keeps getting outpaced by events, we kind of don't have a lot of news on this one. Yeah.

• 15:52Liam McAnderson?

  No, I, I, we could have put, uh, Elon made rocking Nazi, but I was just like, you all said it. I don't want to.

• 15:58November Kelly?

  Yeah, for sure. And, and now it's, it's this thing, which is, uh, Zorin Mamdani, uh, you know, getting subject to some really difficult scrutiny here of like, exactly what race he identified as as like a, a 19 year old. And it's like.

• 16:13Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I was got, was worried they'd get out scooped by, uh, what's that? Uh, fascist. I hate Christopher Russo.

• 16:19November Kelly?

  Chris Ruffo, yeah.

• 16:20Liam McAnderson?

  Ruffo, yeah, thank you.

• 16:21November Kelly?

  Chris Ruffo and this one guy who was going by Cremia Edward Lasker or whatever he looks like. As I saw someone say, it looks like he could eat an apple through like a chain link fence.

• 16:31Liam McAnderson?

  I did see that.

• 16:32November Kelly?

  Real like equine dentition. That that guy was like, I'm gonna break this like devastating story about Zoran. And it was, it's nothing like it's so much a non-story that even talking about it being a non-story is a non-story. This isn't the goddamn news. This is the goddamn lack of news.

• 16:49Justin Roczniak?

  The lack of news. Yeah, I mean, the full context of the story is Zoran Mamdani, who is a man of Indian descent who was born in Uganda and immigrated to the United States. Tick the boxes for his Columbia application for both Indian and African American.

• 17:09November Kelly?

  Yeah, which is like, doesn't Elon Musk call himself African American all the time as a joke?

• 17:13Justin Roczniak?

  Like. I mean, you know, this gets into like complicated questions of race like, okay, what's an African American versus what is black? You know?

• 17:24November Kelly?

  This is not something that the like Columbia admissions department has a kind of

• 17:30November Kelly?

  real sort of like status to interrogate, you know? It's kind of like an awkward bureaucratic thing that doesn't also matter that much necessarily.

• 17:40Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly. And then then people went out and started trying to find his SAT scores. I this this is something.

• 17:47Liam McAnderson?

  A truly bizarre thing to do.

• 17:48Justin Roczniak?

  Generally found over the past, you know,

• 17:53Justin Roczniak?

  eight or 10 months with regard to like Palestine protests and all this stuff is like, why do people talk about college so much?

• 18:00November Kelly?

  Cause like it's weirdly all Republicans are college Republicans. Because all the ones who aren't college Republicans don't know how to read. So the ones who are like, the ones who are typing. They're the ones who like were Republicans in college out of contrarianism and racism and never got over it and are still kind of mentally stuck there. It's it's different in the UK where the Labour Party is the still is the like real like never got over university party but like, yeah, that's my diagnosis is that it's all college Republicans, you know, that that's why when they were pushing the whole like, oh, there's too much woke on campus thing.

• 18:39November Kelly?

  Like, or going to college campuses and trying to like debate and trigger SJWs back in the day. Like, that's why it's always been about that. It has always been about like, I wasn't popular enough in college and therefore, you know, the West is falling. Yeah, you weren't popular because you were a fucking creep who wouldn't stop hitting on girl underage girls at parties. Exactly. And like, it's the same reason they try and start their own like anti-woke universities, like the University of Austin at Texas or whatever the fuck it's called. Like, it's it's just that it's an extended kind of wish fulfillment of like, well, I wish I had been to college in a way that I think was cool, you know? And it's like, you know, most people still don't love their college experience, right? Like, most people feel kind

• 19:23November Kelly?

  of isolated. It's just, you don't have to turn into the fucking sixth Reich about it.

• 19:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 19:29November Kelly?

  I sure did not love mine.

• 19:32Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, yeah, I definitely definitely had some pretty bad experiences in college. Yeah.

• 19:36November Kelly?

  Yeah. Yeah, but instead of letting that lead you to like incel shit, you became a successful podcaster instead, you know?

• 19:43Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 19:44November Kelly?

  That's the trick.

• 19:45Speaker 03

  My college experience was great. I barely was there.

• 19:50November Kelly?

  I mean, I I just finished my my like open university degree and that was that was the ideal college experience in that I regularly forgot I was doing it. I never had any communication with them outside of like the bare essentials. Every email they sent me went directly to spam and stayed there. And yeah, I I paid the tuition, I submitted the assignments, I'm I'm hopefully going to get a degree out of it and I had absolutely no involvement with anything beyond that. Totally atomized the dream.

• 20:21Justin Roczniak?

  You had the you had the good version of the nightmare where you signed up for a course and forgot to go to all the classes.

• 20:28November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I don't I barely opened the course materials. Like, I'm sorry to say, but just, yeah.

• 20:38November Kelly?

  So I'm just gonna read about this on my own. I'm just gonna do the essays and that seems to have worked out. So you know, maybe after the the right completely like defunds college education, that'll be the only thing that's left, you know?

• 20:48Justin Roczniak?

  Well, probably. Uh, well, on that piece of non news, that was the goddamn news.

• 20:55November Kelly?

  No, it wasn't.

• 20:59Justin Roczniak?

  All right. We got to talk about our favorite thing.

• 21:01Liam McAnderson?

  Piece of news was that the Phillies won 13 to nothing. We're back, baby.

• 21:04Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 21:05Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah. All right. That's it. Let's talk about spicy rocks.

• 21:07November Kelly?

  Spicy rocks. We I feel like I've seen this diagram or some variation of it about six different times on this show. The explain how a nuclear reactor works one.

• 21:17Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 21:18November Kelly?

  It's all turbines.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  It's the Drake's well of spicy rocks.

• 21:23November Kelly?

  Drake's reactor.

• 21:24Speaker 03

  Drake's reactor. Yeah.

• 21:25November Kelly?

  One guy dug up a bunch of weird rocks, got cancer from them and was like, what if I?

• 21:31Liam McAnderson?

  I can use this to power Philadelphia.

• 21:35Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. And I every everyone knows that, okay, nuclear reactor, spicy rocks, boil water, turn a turbine, make electricity. But Scooter here knows more about them than we do.

• 21:47November Kelly?

  Okay, let's go.

• 21:49Speaker 03

  I mean, I'm going to try not to explain on a college level because that's boring.

• 21:54November Kelly?

  That's fine. I won't listen to it anyway.

• 21:56Speaker 03

  Perfect.

• 21:58Speaker 03

  So it's it's technically Drake's well and Rickover's reactor. We'll get there. But on the right, you have your pressurized water reactor, which is what like your everybody knows has a nuclear reactor, pretty much. This is Three Mile Island. And if you want to get into it, go to the Three Mile Island episode. But simply a pressurized wire reactor is full of water, bottom to top, has the spicy rocks in the center, some control rods that keep spicy rocks from playing too much with each other. And then a water loop that goes out to a heat exchange. That then takes the hot water, puts it in other hot water in two separate vessels, which then the second loop of hot water spins a turbine,

• 22:40Speaker 03

  gets condensed with the big cooling tower, goes back inside the heat exchange. Fair enough.

• 22:45Justin Roczniak?

  Right, that way, so the wat- the water's under pressure, there's two separate loops of water, the very hot water from the reactor heats up the less hot water from outside the reactor, so the turbine doesn't get covered in radioactive water.

• 22:59Speaker 03

  Exactly. The important thing to note about a PWR reactor is that it doesn't boil. It's kept under pressure, so no steam gets generated in the reactor.

• 23:09Liam McAnderson?

  Is it, is it done, sorry if I'm, I'm asking the obvious, is it done in these, oh, I see the steam generator, I just didn't say that at first. Yes, alright, continue.

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Okay, so on the left, you have the boiling water reactor, which this one, the opposite. It's in the name.

• 23:26Liam McAnderson?

  Much steam.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, you want steam, you want a lot of steam. It's not full, it's depending on the reactor, like, one quarter full to three quarter full. And it's one loop, it goes out to the turbine, down to a condenser, and back into the reactor.

• 23:42Justin Roczniak?

  Real simple. Now your turbine is all nice and radioactive when you gotta work on it.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Exactly. And that's the reason why these didn't catch on as much. But they're still used commercially, there's, they're, they're, they have their purpose, especially when you want simple, which is today's subject, is making nuclear power simple. So, next slide, please.

• 24:07Justin Roczniak?

  Right.

• 24:08Speaker 03

  So when you talk about boiling water and making steam, you have to talk about how these things interact with each other when you make, you make your spicy rocks. You're trying to get them more spicy, essentially.

• 24:21Justin Roczniak?

  Right.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  So, in a reactor, you normally have a coolant, which also acts as a moderator. And the coolant, obviously, is to keep the spicy rocks from getting too hot and becoming a puddle of spicy rocks. That's bad.

• 24:35Justin Roczniak?

  Spicy lava, that's not a good situation.

• 24:37Liam McAnderson?

  I don't like the idea of radioactive lava, I'll tell you that shit right now.

• 24:42Speaker 03

  But so it's a cool one. Number one, important. But two, it's used as a moderator. And what a moderator is, and I get in trouble with this explanation, but I'm going to do my best. When you get this material and it's naturally breaking down, it breaks into fast neutrons and slow neutrons. Slow neutrons have a better chance of impacting the next atom, breaking it and continuing on. Fast neutrons pretty much zoom by. Think about it like bowling, right? You want to hit it, the pins correctly so that the pin hits the next pin and so on. You don't want to divide into a seven, 10 split.

• 25:24Justin Roczniak?

  Uh huh. I'm looking at this and I'm thinking more along the lines of croquet, actually.

• 25:28Liam McAnderson?

  Okay.

• 25:29November Kelly?

  Yeah, this is the funniest possible way to conceive of nuclear fission is a big croquet game on the sort of like lawn of a big, uh, like country house.

• 25:40Speaker 03

  I got into an argument about that it was billiards. Somebody I was working with called it more like billiards or pool. And

• 25:47Justin Roczniak?

  It's like billiards. It's like bocce ball. It's like, I don't know. Name another sport. What are the sports where a ball hits a thing? Squash.

• 25:57November Kelly?

  Yeah, uh, handball, uh, highlight.

• 26:00Liam McAnderson?

  It's like highlight. Yeah.

• 26:04Justin Roczniak?

  It's actually a lot like polo.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  So there's water involved. It's water pool.

• 26:09Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 26:10November Kelly?

  There you go.

• 26:11Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  But so what water does is it slows your fast neutron down by giving it a medium to pass through. It bounces around and becomes a slow neutron, which gives it a better chance to hit and continue the site.

• 26:26November Kelly?

  It gives it riz.

• 26:29November Kelly?

  Okay, sure. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll see myself out. It's fine.

• 26:33Justin Roczniak?

  No, it's fine.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  I laughed.

• 26:35November Kelly?

  Thank you. Thank you.

• 26:36Liam McAnderson?

  I was, I was sort of caught off guard. I, I believe.

• 26:39November Kelly?

  So Chance to hit like idiomatically like

• 26:43Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, of course. I am, I am of pure mind and body and I don't stoop to your pure I ways, Nova.

• 26:55November Kelly?

  Actually, they're actually like Puelal now. Is that how you would switch the gender of Pural? Because, hmm, whatever, come back to me and I'm gonna get my Latin dictionary.

• 27:06Liam McAnderson?

  All right, you do that. All right, let me, let me hear about spicy croquet.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  So, so the moderator is important so you get more chain reactions control.

• 27:15November Kelly?

  Pueline from, from Puela, meaning girl. Okay.

• 27:20Liam McAnderson?

  I like this. I like that this is just copyright 2012 Encyclopedia Britannica ache and we're just like, yep.

• 27:27November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 03

  It works.

• 27:28November Kelly?

  Someone, someone commented like, hey, could you include like a bibliography of your sources? And I was like, well, there's a couple of reasons why we might not want to do that.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  This is the best thing I could find that wasn't like somebody personals own diagram that would come back and be like, that's mine.

• 27:45November Kelly?

  If, if, if, you know, if you saw us stealing the Encyclopedia Britannica's content, no, you didn't.

• 27:50Liam McAnderson?

  No, you didn't.

• 27:51November Kelly?

  It's fine. If, if they, if they sue us, we just take it down and we do like a hand drawn crayon version. It's fine.

• 27:57Justin Roczniak?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 27:58Liam McAnderson?

  Roz, Roz, it is MS Paint genius delirium. Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  It was hard not to include.

• 28:04November Kelly?

  Diagrams.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  It was hard not to include Roz's nuclear reactor diagram in this.

• 28:09November Kelly?

  The sun, yeah, with the sunglasses on.

• 28:12Justin Roczniak?

  I was considering going back and grabbing that and putting it in. I just couldn't remember which episode it was on, or I couldn't find the slides.

• 28:20Liam McAnderson?

  We lost those tapes in the great Roz's hard drive disaster of every year he's ever been alive.

• 28:26November Kelly?

  It's, it's fine. I keep the backups in one of these.

• 28:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 03

  All right, so.

• 28:34November Kelly?

  Did you like the sound of me kicking it for real?

• 28:36Liam McAnderson?

  No, I didn't.

• 28:39Speaker 03

  My sweet baby, Sudi will be liberated from the shackles of terror of November.

• 28:43November Kelly?

  Listen, this, this, this, this computer case has an expired Windows 10 license key stuck to it. A logo for something called Crap Co. stuck to it and then two big googly eyes, one of which has fallen off.

• 29:01Liam McAnderson?

  It's just Cyclops, which is Cyclops is some sort of massive CTE diagnosis.

• 29:07November Kelly?

  Yeah. And, and this is the, the keys to my livelihood somehow.

• 29:11Liam McAnderson?

  I have a nice, it, my PC has a place of honor.

• 29:16November Kelly?

  Uh huh.

• 29:16Liam McAnderson?

  Uh huh. Oh, don't look at my stuff.

• 29:19Justin Roczniak?

  None of the viewers can see this.

• 29:21Liam McAnderson?

  I don't care. I have a cab.

• 29:23Justin Roczniak?

  All right. All right. Let's go.

• 29:24Liam McAnderson?

  All right.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Anyway, so moderator, that's why you have it. Control rods stop reactions entirely between fuel assemblies, moderator helps them hit each other better.

• 29:37Liam McAnderson?

  That's so like a forum. Yeah.

• 29:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Moderator is, is, is, is ensuring that there is some level of disorder and violence.

• 29:48Speaker 03

  But a controlled disorder.

• 29:50Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 29:50Speaker 03

  It's peaceful protest, not a violent protest.

• 29:53Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, we're not allowed to call for organizer on this podcast. YouTube will get mad at us.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  So also on this slide, I want to talk real quick about steam fact because you're using water as a coolant, right? Steam is a horrible moderator. It does not allow the reaction to continue because it's, it's more spaced apart. It's less dense. Makes sense?

• 30:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yep. Yes.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  That easy. Boiling water reactors, you have to use a pump to push water through so you don't get voids. You get steam voids as it's boiling because that'll cause your, your fuel assemblies and everything around them to start vibrating and all kinds of other bad stuff that you don't want. So you just keep it full. You don't get steam except where you want it. Problem solved.

• 30:39November Kelly?

  Hmm. It's just all of this, all this radioactive steam, you just keep it over there and then nice and contained.

• 30:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 30:45November Kelly?

  Not your problem unless anybody has to work on it, which you just hope they don't. It's fine.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  That's their problem, not yours.

• 30:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Not yours. Yeah.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  So there's, there's the science of it. So now we get into the history. Uh, next slide, please.

• 30:58November Kelly?

  Oh, fine.

• 30:59Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 30:59November Kelly?

  Uh, pile one, baby.

• 31:00Speaker 03

  Yep. So you have Chicago pile one on the left. And this is our first real nuclear reactor used to test the theory of fission, essentially. It's made out of graphite. It's built in Chicago under Stag Field.

• 31:15November Kelly?

  It's a squash court, right?

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Under a squash court.

• 31:18November Kelly?

  They are play, they are playing atom squash. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  My favorite note about this is not that any of the, the real history about it, but the workforce was thirty high school dropouts that they built.

• 31:32November Kelly?

  They didn't care. They didn't value human life in that way. I, my, my question is, you say it's under Stag Field. What is Stag Field? Is that a sports field? Yeah, it's the football field at Chicago. Oh, hell, yeah. Chicago used to be a legitimate football program. Just wondering why every, every football player of that generation has like mega like foot cancer. Oh, no, these are my mutant atomic supermen.

• 31:58November Kelly?

  Getting, getting the okay on this by telling the football program that it might give them powers. Yeah, exactly.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  But yeah, there were these like thirty guys. I'm sorry, I just got to finish this. These thirty guys are getting ready to ship out for World War Two. So it's like getting your friends together to move and giving them the case of Addy Light.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  To stack some blocks.

• 32:21November Kelly?

  Calling your one friend who has a pickup truck to get you to move the nuclear reactor.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  This, this is kind of a trend with Argon National Laboratory reactors. We'll get into later, but that's what the University of Chicago's nuclear laboratory becomes. And there's just this different vibe of their reactors that comes from the thirty guys stacking the blocks. Uh, on the right is EBR one, which is the Experimental Breeder Reactor. This was built in nineteen fifty-one at the National Reactor Testing Station. So out in the middle of Idaho. There in a little bit, uh, built as a breeder reactor. So they were testing.

• 33:03November Kelly?

  That's one of my kinks.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  If you're into it, uh, they built it to just take uranium two thirty eight and turn into plutonium. It's breeding this material. It used a liquid sodium potassium coolant instead of water. Why? They were test. It was early nuclear reactors. So they were testing what coolants were going to be best for heat transfer. I say. Best for all, all different types of reactor usage. And this is really good at being a coolant and moderator. But it's really bad for life, for corrosion, pretty much everything. So it's not really used commercially.

• 33:56Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's been like the problem with all like the, uh, the molten salt reactors. It's like, uh, molten salt's not very good for metal, you know?

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Correct. So interesting thing about this is on December 20th, 1951, it was one of the, or it was the first reactor to produce in-house electricity. Being generated and they powered for 200 watt light bulbs. Hell, yeah. Incredible. Later on, they hooked it up to the city of Arco, Idaho and powered it for a while. And Arco's like 12,000.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  This is also notable because in 1955, it suffered, suffered a partial meltdown during a coolant flow test. My light bulbs. Oh, no, they're melted. They, uh, they fucked up. They didn't plan for the thermal expansion of, of the reactor and the fuel. And it jammed up the control rods and, you know, just melted a little.

• 34:55Speaker 03

  You can still go see this. It's out in Idaho. It's a museum now. Cool. All fact about it. It'll be fun.

• 35:01Justin Roczniak?

  And go see the partially melted down reactor.

• 35:06Speaker 03

  Kids, get in the car. We're going on a road trip.

• 35:08Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. You're gonna get superpowers.

• 35:12Speaker 03

  Gonna get so good at football.

• 35:16November Kelly?

  So that's early. Dimly remembering the history of American atomic exploitation and being like, yeah, Americans invented nuclear power in order to get good at football.

• 35:26Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 35:28November Kelly?

  Would track though. I mean, have you seen the CFL? Yeah.

• 35:32Justin Roczniak?

  Good point. Yeah, actually I have seen a CFL game, but I wasn't in the stadium. I was on an overlook on, what you would call it, Mount Royal.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  So, next slide please. So that's, that, what we just talked about is just the general beginning of reactor history, but this is the 50s. Everybody wants in on the nuclear craze, right?

• 35:56Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  Commercial, military, and every branch of the military wants to do their own thing.

• 36:02November Kelly?

  What if we put them in planes? We'll do a thing about nuclear aircraft sooner or later, I'm sure.

• 36:07Speaker 03

  I've done it once, but.

• 36:08Justin Roczniak?

  We did it once, but.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  Crazy.

• 36:10November Kelly?

  What if we just do it all over again? Like, at a certain point, I, I forget enough that it becomes like funny for me to do different jokes. I love this for you.

• 36:20Speaker 03

  There will be a slight refresher further on, but long story short, everybody wants to get in on it. So the armed forces splits it up to where the Navy is going for nuclear power in submarines. The Air Force is trying to do it in planes and the Army.

• 36:37Justin Roczniak?

  Makes sense.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Gets stationary reactors for just general generation.

• 36:42Justin Roczniak?

  They didn't, they didn't want to put it in a tank or something.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  They did, but that was down the line.

• 36:49November Kelly?

  Yeah, what, once things elaborate to the point of like, what if we dug one of these into sort of like pack ice? Or like, what if we put one in a tank? But right now, it's like, what, what does the army have? Building?

• 37:00Speaker 03

  Pretty much. So, the Army starts a test program and they decide to build a, a prototype reactor, but also one that they can train people on. And in 1957, they build the SM-1 in Fort Belvoir.

• 37:17Justin Roczniak?

  Fort Belvoir, yeah. This is where I had my first Boy Scout camp out. What? Not near the reactor, but it was on base. It was across from the commissary.

• 37:27November Kelly?

  I want some Belvoir, because the NSA isn't me. Don't they do some intelligence stuff about?

• 37:31Liam McAnderson?

  The Army Intelligence, the Army of Northern Virginia, whatever they call it.

• 37:36November Kelly?

  It's, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  I was gonna say it at the end of the slide, but Fort Belvoir is headquarters to Defense Logistics Agency, the Defense Acquisition Agency, or Defense Acquisition University, Defense Contract Audit Agency, Defense Technical Information Center, the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command, United States Military Intelligence Rightness Command, the Missile Defense Agency, the Defense Reduction, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, and the National Geospace Intelligence Agency.

• 38:07November Kelly?

  Now, DTRA is cool. I mean, I hope they haven't all gotten dogged yet. Um, a shout out if we have listeners out there. Thank you for, uh, making sure the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons didn't get loose in the 90s.

• 38:19Justin Roczniak?

  Also, I think, uh, Geospatial is actually just off base now. They got that nice new building on a Fairfax County Parkway.

• 38:25November Kelly?

  We're not, we're not beating the Fed allegations if we're talking about all of these agencies like coworkers.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  I do have to say, the guy that was at the live show in DC that was really mad you didn't bring up the DOE as one of the three-letter agencies.

• 38:41November Kelly?

  I'm sorry.

• 38:44November Kelly?

  I know you guys are special. I know you have like special clearances that you don't even get to talk about that'll like fucking just letters and numbers and sigils that make you go mad. He's got Q clearance! I, I, I know that for a while Rick Perry was one of the most powerful human beings to have ever existed. Uh, I know that Ernest Menez and his hair was also one of those. I, I'm aware of the Department of Energy.

• 39:07Justin Roczniak?

  I, I have a special clearance that means it's safe for me to hold the Cobalt 60 rod.

• 39:12November Kelly?

  Drop and run, don't apply to me, baby. Let's do this.

• 39:18November Kelly?

  I don't think it's problematic to be interested in the Fed shit and to say that sometimes the Fed shit is aesthetically cool and interesting. That's just, that just means you've played control once in a while. Like, of course, yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  I just want to say, he wouldn't say what part of the DOE he was in, so I fully believe he was one of the crazy cops that chased nuclear weapons.

• 39:39November Kelly?

  I, those guys were all, yeah. No, I, huge, huge fan.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  Okay, well, back on subject.

• 39:49November Kelly?

  Yeah. No, no, no, I got like an hour more of this. I, um, on, on Trash Future, because we have a similar relationship with the sort of like Organs of the British State. We had a running gag about doing a shirt that's like the GCHQ logo, but it says Gender Confirmation Headquarters, and it's in the, the trans flag colors. And, because, because we haven't gotten the, like, those people haven't gotten dogged yet, yet, here. And so, I was like, oh, it's a funny joke. Well, we never got around to making it. And then at some point, I heard from somebody being like, it's a shame you never got around to those, because I know like, two dozen people who would have kept

• 40:30November Kelly?

  those in their locker to change into. So, I, I don't know where that leaves me in terms of my relationship with the likes, the security state, other than that, I could have been purveyor of t-shirts to it, you know?

• 40:44Speaker 03

  Hey, just FYI, my audacity crashed.

• 40:46November Kelly?

  That's, that's them now, I guess. Hey, guys.

• 40:51November Kelly?

  Sorry, I never like using guys for a group that includes trans women, so, um, hi, seasoned professionals of the, of the government communications headquarters.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  What do I, what do I do with audacity crashed?

• 41:10Justin Roczniak?

  They also, they only take, I think they do tours of the Pentagon.

• 41:13November Kelly?

  That's true. Probably not anymore.

• 41:15Justin Roczniak?

  I actually, maybe not anymore. Well.

• 41:18November Kelly?

  Yeah, they don't let us do tours of the Pentagon.

• 41:21Justin Roczniak?

  They're hardly gonna, you're hardly gonna be able to fly a plane into the Pentagon from inside it.

• 41:27November Kelly?

  Bringing, sneaking a plane in through the metal detector. Yeah.

• 41:31Liam McAnderson?

  This is, hey, hey, this is, this is allowed.

• 41:36Liam McAnderson?

  I do not wish to create disorder with you, sir, trying to hustle my science at the Pentagon.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  So.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  The reason the reactor was constructed 18 miles away from Washington DC at this fort was because it's the headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers. So they wanted their nice fancy toy right next to their headquarters.

• 41:56November Kelly?

  In their backyard, sure. Those guys are so good at putting one brick on top of another brick.

• 42:00Speaker 03

  They did quite, quite a bit, uh, because they had to build a pressure or a containment dome here on this one too. So they not only did the internal bricks, they did the out, external bricks and then on a leg too.

• 42:12November Kelly?

  I, I, I don't have anything for containment dome and I'm disappointed in myself.

• 42:17November Kelly?

  She gave that containment dome until the Cobalt. The shit I was doing in lockdown was getting containment done. Very good. There we go. We got there in the end.

• 42:26Speaker 03

  The, this was the prototype for a reactor that was going to go to Fort Greeley, Alaska, up where it's cold as hell and they're just using coal power.

• 42:36November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 42:37Speaker 03

  And it stands, the SM1 stands for stationary medium sized reactor prototype one.

• 42:43November Kelly?

  What was missing, missing the R and the P there?

• 42:47Speaker 03

  It's the army they forget.

• 42:50Justin Roczniak?

  They're not, they're, they're not so good at letters.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  They're not chewing crayons, but they're close.

• 42:57Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 03

  The cool thing about this one and quite a few of the army reactors that was built by ALCO.

• 43:05Justin Roczniak?

  It's the American locomotive company.

• 43:07November Kelly?

  Of ALCO smoke fame. Yes. The, the, the, the train people, like.

• 43:11Speaker 03

  Drain people because they're good at building boilers and that's all nuclear reactor is.

• 43:16Justin Roczniak?

  It's yeah, I mean, you know, by this time they're winding down steam locomotive production. So, you know, you got all the equipment for it. I mean,

• 43:24November Kelly?

  A little bit of retrofuturism where you're like, well, I've had a, a long career building steam engines, but now I can, I can finally do the work of the future. I can build the like pressure vessels for the reactors. Everything's going to run off, I assume.

• 43:36Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 43:37November Kelly?

  You know, surely after this, we won't go back to like building, uh, you know, coal power plants or whatever.

• 43:42Justin Roczniak?

  No, no, they'll be in everything. They'll be in your, in your car. They'll be in airplanes. Too cheap to me. Yeah. They'll be in your toaster.

• 43:50Speaker 03

  It'll be in your tank.

• 43:51Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, your tank. So be a home, home hot water heating by nuclear reactor. Oh, boy.

• 43:59Speaker 03

  This was a pressurized water reactor, so more akin to what commercial use and so on. Cause they had space to build it. You didn't have to worry about, you know, logistics of moving this thing or saying it up. Uh, everybody was trained on this. So army, air force and navy reactor operators that are going to work on stationary reactors would go here first and then go to whatever project they were working on next.

• 44:23November Kelly?

  I mean, that's, that's not a bad system. You know, this is the, the, the training wheels, you know?

• 44:27Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 44:28Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  And if they fucked up, they're only 18 miles away from Washington DC.

• 44:34November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Justin Roczniak?

  This is your, uh, you know, Fisher Price baby's first reactor. Either I do my job, right? Or it's not my fucking problem anymore.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  So moving on, next slide, please.

• 44:45Justin Roczniak?

  Camp sanctuary.

• 44:47November Kelly?

  Let's fucking go.

• 44:49Speaker 03

  We'll start with the dew line on the left. So it's the 50s, the cold war's raging and the Russians are coming to our doorstep. Maybe, probably. And they would likely come over.

• 45:02Justin Roczniak?

  You see all those bombers, right?

• 45:04November Kelly?

  Yeah, coming, coming in, in the form of like TU 95s and shit. Yeah. Like again, retrofuturism, Soviet bomber engineer being like, I've, you know, I've designed the last, uh, sort of like four engines, like a propeller bomber of the Soviet Union. After this, all jets, we're not going to still be using it in like, you know, fucking 2025.

• 45:24Justin Roczniak?

  Uh huh. Stupid. You've got me. I will make bomber fly over parade seven times. So we do not have to build seven bomber.

• 45:35Justin Roczniak?

  Oh shit, we need 500 bombers.

• 45:41Speaker 03

  So as you're getting comes over the North Pole. We wanted to make sure we could spot them and we had lines of radar stations close to the United States, but they wanted to build one as close as you could get to Russia. So they came up with the distant early warning line. It was built along the 55th parallel, the Arctic, and it had like multiple stations. So you'd have big air or big air bases with multiple radars. You'd all the way down to like a station that was self-contained and no one was at called a gap filler. So the problem with the dew line is it's in the Arctic. So you're having generators run all this nonstop. Did we lose Liam?

• 46:21Justin Roczniak?

  Right. Did we lose Liam?

• 46:23November Kelly?

  Liam.

• 46:23Justin Roczniak?

  Liam.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  Liam. Fuck.

• 46:25Justin Roczniak?

  Shit.

• 46:26Speaker 03

  Fuck.

• 46:26Justin Roczniak?

  God damn it.

• 46:27November Kelly?

  It's fine. We'll, we'll claw our way through this one.

• 46:31Speaker 03

  So keep going.

• 46:32November Kelly?

  Yeah. Going. Yeah.

• 46:33Speaker 03

  Okay. So the, you're using diesel generators. You're in the Arctic. It's unforgivable.

• 46:38November Kelly?

  So I'm gonna have to like fly a C 130 for the barrel sort of diesel out here every like month.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  That's.

• 46:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, it's finally, yeah, it's finally like, you know, transport fever where you put the, fill the airplane with diesel. Yeah.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  But, uh, so the thought is put a small nuclear reactor there. Problem solved. You got heat, you got energy, runs itself.

• 47:01November Kelly?

  The, the bit in Kerbal Space Program where you unlock RTGs and you're like, this will solve all my problems. This game doesn't model radiation. I can stick 50 of these fucking things in like a radial formation around whatever it is I'm doing. It's gonna run forever.

• 47:16Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  It'll be fine. Don't worry about the launch pad.

• 47:22Speaker 03

  So about the dew line is it came online in 1957. What else happened in 1957? Sputnik. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. Rods of the gods. Let's do this. The second it came online, it was outdated.

• 47:40November Kelly?

  I love the Cold War so much. I, I will play all comers at Twilight Struggle and I will win. It's my favorite period of history largely because of how simultaneously dumb and terrifying it is.

• 47:53Speaker 03

  Hell, yeah.

• 47:54November Kelly?

  I'll buy that. Just any moment, any single moment, the whole world could have ended, like, human civilizations, we know it could have ended, and it kept not happening for, for, for like 50 years? Can you imagine?

• 48:08Speaker 03

  Duck and cover, baby.

• 48:10Justin Roczniak?

  Well, yeah, we, we would have a very different podcast if it did happen.

• 48:14Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah. Welcome to nuclear fallout. Well, there's your problem podcast.

• 48:19November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, there's your mutants.

• 48:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 48:22Liam McAnderson?

  But they're good at football.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  So the, the dew line stayed intact to an extent all the way up to 1990 in certain forms. So even though it was outdated, it stayed operational.

• 48:39November Kelly?

  Existed primarily as a kind of internal management tool, as somewhere they could send you if nobody likes you.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  Bingo. So there's still a point to build something to put up there in 1957. That's the thought.

• 48:51November Kelly?

  Shoveling snow in Siberia, except it's in Greenland.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  The, well, speaking of Greenland, the other place that makes sense to put a nuclear reactor for the army is Camp Sentry.

• 49:03Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  Camp Sentry was built on the public idea of having a research station under the ice up in Greenland. Have a place to learn about the polar ice caps and.

• 49:16Liam McAnderson?

  Melt them more officially.

• 49:19Justin Roczniak?

  Stuff, yeah.

• 49:20Liam McAnderson?

  And Roz's priest is up there too.

• 49:23November Kelly?

  Literally, yeah.

• 49:24Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know if I've told the story on the main feed. I think I told it in the Catholicism episode.

• 49:29Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah, go for it.

• 49:30Justin Roczniak?

  Our, um, so at Nativity Catholic Church back where that was my parish growing up, there was, uh, Deacon Corpy, Deacon Bill Corpy, uh, I think his father Corpy now, I'm not sure if he's still alive. Anyway, he, uh, you know, but he was, um, I went to the Catholic school. Um, Deacon Corpy was known, you know, he was a big hit with the kids, known to be a big bullshitter though. You know, uh, but one of the stories he would tell was, um, about, oh yeah, I was, uh, chaplain at, um, a secret army base under the ice in Greenland. We're like, oh yeah, sure. Yeah, then I saw a documentary about Camp Century on YouTube. It was an old one from the 50s.

• 50:15Justin Roczniak?

  You know, they've gone through the various base facilities and, you know, like we even have a chapel when the camera swings over and there he was.

• 50:27Justin Roczniak?

  It's Deacon Corby. Holy shit, it was real. Everything was real.

• 50:33Liam McAnderson?

  Ross's eyes just melting out of his skull.

• 50:38Liam McAnderson?

  Calling up Father Gordon to be like, I'm sorry, brother. Like my, my, I wasn't familiar with your game.

• 50:43Justin Roczniak?

  It's not brother, father.

• 50:44Liam McAnderson?

  Fuck you, man.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  So the real point of Camp Century was to test whether or not you could make a missile base underneath the ice. It was part of Project Ice Worm. And the thought was.

• 50:59Justin Roczniak?

  What a day.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  He would tunnel miles and miles of tunnels underneath the ice, build a rail line between all these tunnels. And then put nuclear missiles, medium range nuclear missiles on rail cars and move them between the different tunnels. So the Soviets could not track and target them.

• 51:21Justin Roczniak?

  My understanding was this, this is also like proper trains, like not like, you know, some kind of, uh.

• 51:27Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, man.

• 51:30Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, no, we're gonna, yeah, we're gonna dump a diesel locomotive in there and some flat cars, you know.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:38Liam McAnderson?

  Imagine being the poor son of a bitch that has to collect railroad retirement for these jack offs.

• 51:43November Kelly?

  It's literally like we'll build our own Siberia home, right? Like we, we, we will have our kind of like, instead of just driving around in like TELs. We're just gonna like do it on trains. I also note that this is between, this runs between Thule Air Force Base, Camp Century and Camp Fist Clench. So where did, where did you serve? I was at Camp Fist Clench. I was in the gay army, actually.

• 52:10Liam McAnderson?

  So you've been in the Navy.

• 52:15November Kelly?

  New tunnels were to be dug every year so that after every, so that after five years there will be thousands of firing positions, among which several hundred missiles can be rotated. That fucks.

• 52:25Speaker 03

  About that. So they build Camp Sentry to test trying to do that. And they decide Camp Sentry is like the place you need a nuclear reactor because it's cold, it's under the ice, makes sense. So they build the PM2A reactor, which is a smaller version of what was a port belvoir, but it's closer to what we will be talking about later in its design.

• 52:50Justin Roczniak?

  You're here in this box from the American Locomotive Company with a cute dog on top.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  I love that picture.

• 52:56Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 52:56Speaker 03

  I also love the portable reactor plant on the box.

• 53:02Justin Roczniak?

  It's like a Acme box, you know?

• 53:07Justin Roczniak?

  Disorder the portable nuclear reactor.

• 53:11Justin Roczniak?

  All these straps it off on your head.

• 53:13November Kelly?

  I like that it's addressed, you know, just in case it got to someone who wasn't the core of engineers and they were like, no, no, sorry, this isn't for me.

• 53:20Justin Roczniak?

  Nah.

• 53:21Speaker 03

  It had to be small enough to fit in a plane to transit in like 1950s planes, so pretty small. I just like the idea of them just dropping this out the back and leaving like, fuck Greenland, we're like, here you go, here's your reactor.

• 53:36November Kelly?

  And it's liquefied, alright. Dropping a sorry we missed you card onto Camp Sentry. You were out and it's like, motherfucker, you didn't even knock on the ice door.

• 53:48Speaker 03

  I mean, we've spread nuclear material all over Greenland before, so like it wouldn't put it past doing it again.

• 53:54November Kelly?

  One more, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm looking at the map of Camp Sentry here and the chapel had to share a space with the theater, which must have been fun. I'm also noticing that the officers had a separate latrine, privileges of rank, I guess.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  Hell, yeah. So just while we're on the subject of Sentry, the reason why we never got completed Project Iceworm is because ice melts, ice shifts and Camp Sentry over the decade or so it was around would have situations where a whole tunnel would just kind of fall in and go sideways.

• 54:29November Kelly?

  Chapel's gone, so it's just gone.

• 54:31Speaker 03

  There's a, there's a famous picture of one of the barracks where like the beds are sideways and the roofs right on top of the, one of the beds. And I just thought like, what if you were sleeping there when that happened?

• 54:42November Kelly?

  Fuck that.

• 54:43Justin Roczniak?

  That would not be ideal.

• 54:45November Kelly?

  Of all the, um, things that you want to happen to your little containerized nuclear reactor crushed in ice flow is not like. No, I feel like that's down on the list. Yeah.

• 54:56Justin Roczniak?

  Probably gonna be hard to use at that point.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  So.

• 55:00November Kelly?

  We're getting the reactor room and it's like on the side of the wall instead of on the floor and you're like, oh, okay. Deal with this later.

• 55:07Speaker 03

  Yes. Greenland's problem.

• 55:09November Kelly?

  I'm, I'm, I'm going to the chapel slash theater. I'm going to the, going to the, does this like glycol trench? I don't want to go to the glycol trench.

• 55:19Speaker 03

  Got to bury it somewhere.

• 55:20November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  So let's take a step away from Greenland and let's go to another wonderful place that's cold, frigid and barren. We're gonna go to Idaho.

• 55:30November Kelly?

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  Oh, you're on.

• 55:32November Kelly?

  America's Siberia part two.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  So we're in the deserts of Idaho, near Idaho Falls at the National Reactor Testing Station. It's 1949 when it opens and everybody runs to it to put their new nuclear project on site. The EBR one was there that we talked about. It also became the target for Admiral Hyman Rickover to place his test bed reactor for the Nautilus, the first nuclear submarine.

• 56:01November Kelly?

  Man, unfortunate name. We've talked about Hyman Rickover.

• 56:05Justin Roczniak?

  Have we?

• 56:06November Kelly?

  Yeah, I'm sure we've talked about Hyman Rickover because I, I, if nothing else, I've laughed at the name Hyman privately.

• 56:12Justin Roczniak?

  Ah, I see, I see.

• 56:14November Kelly?

  The father of the nuclear navy.

• 56:16Justin Roczniak?

  Famous for stealing salt shakers.

• 56:18Speaker 03

  You motherfucker.

• 56:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, he would, and when he went over to other people's houses for like dinner parties and stuff, he'd leave and their salt shakers were gone. Apparently this happened every single time.

• 56:33November Kelly?

  If he was, he was an admiral, what do you?

• 56:35Justin Roczniak?

  What is he doing with the salt shakers?

• 56:38November Kelly?

  Fuck it up.

• 56:39Speaker 03

  No one knows.

• 56:41November Kelly?

  Did he have like a little serial killer like, like Kilrum? Full of other people's salt shakers?

• 56:49Speaker 03

  Well, if you read anything about Rickover, like, he would be the type to do something serial killer-y, but not actual commit. He was a hard ass. Uh, his like, claim to fame that I find the most interesting is everyone that joined the nuclear navy to, to be a reactor operator, had to interview with him, every single person. And he, he would come in and fry you, no matter who you were, he'd sit there and berate and rip your resume apart. There's multiple parts to this, I won't spoil all of them for somebody that would want to research him further. But my favorite thing he did other than the salt shakers was he would get, he'd light you up and then he'd go,

• 57:34Speaker 03

  "Give me your tie."

• 57:35November Kelly?

  What?

• 57:37Speaker 03

  "Give me your tie." And if you gave him your tie, he would open up a drawer, throw it in with all the rest and throw you out of his office. You just lost the job.

• 57:47November Kelly?

  Jesus.

• 57:48Speaker 03

  If you stuck to your guns, you would get the job.

• 57:52November Kelly?

  Just one of, one drawer ties, one drawer salt shakers. Yeah. Somehow, somehow this man nuclearized the entire United States Navy submarine fleet with a drawer, with a desk that like was one half neckties, one half salt shakers.

• 58:12November Kelly?

  This is, this is why, this is why I kind of get the like Atomcraft nine Danker stuff, the like anti-nuclear stuff is that like, atomic power, it works, it's safe, it's like an incredible civilizational advancement. Everyone who likes it, dangerously insane. Yes.

• 58:29Speaker 03

  Well, and that's what's crazy about Rickover.

• 58:32November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 03

  At the end of his life, he admitted that he did not agree with nuclear power. It was a necessary evil to win the Cold War.

• 58:41November Kelly?

  Okay, dude.

• 58:43November Kelly?

  It's just like, why'd you do so much of it, man?

• 58:47Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 58:47Speaker 03

  It is a necessary evil. He was committed to the military.

• 58:50November Kelly?

  He was, he was doing his, his, his, like, the thing he was really fond of, which was stealing people's cutlery.

• 58:55Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly. I, I, I mean, the, the advanced coal turbine plane, or, you know, aircraft coal propulsion just doesn't have the same ring to it.

• 59:07November Kelly?

  Yeah. What do you do on the bomber, Dimitri? I'm a stoker.

• 59:10Justin Roczniak?

  I'm a stoker, yeah.

• 59:11Speaker 03

  Well, when it comes to the nuclear navy, they build a nuclear submarine in the desert of Idaho in a pool, so the reactor can actually interact with the outside water.

• 59:23November Kelly?

  It's instead of a stone frigate, it's an adobe submarine.

• 59:26Speaker 03

  But they, they build this thing and all Navy nukes are sent out here to check, train on this and then go out to their subsequent submarines. When something went wrong, because Rick Over believed that it's not the engineering that, that was going to keep reactors safe, it was the people. So if there was anything up with these reactors, especially this one, when they're designing it, say a, a steam pipe would break. Well, they would pull the steam pipe out, investigate it. If it wasn't what they wanted, what it was supposed to be, they'd tear everything out of the reactor that had anything to do with that and put it back. Put the right thing in. There was no excuse in the nuclear navy for any failure.

• 1:00:10Speaker 03

  And to this day, we've never had a reactor issue in the nuclear navy that caused the fatality.

• 1:00:16November Kelly?

  And, and the price of it was letting one deeply, deeply unwell man run it as his own kind of personal fiefdom.

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:00:25November Kelly?

  Sometimes dictatorship works, like.

• 1:00:29November Kelly?

  Yeah. Not even a benevolent dictator, just a dictator, but he just like, just knew what he was about, I guess.

• 1:00:35Speaker 03

  So also at the test site, they have, if I say so one more time, beat me.

• 1:00:40November Kelly?

  It's fine. I say like an earth so many times. Whenever I listen back, I want to hit myself with a hammer.

• 1:00:46Justin Roczniak?

  I hear that.

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

  Also on the site, there's Test Area North, which is relegated to the Air Force, which goes, well, the Navy, the Navy gets propulsion. I want propulsion. I want a nuclear bomber.

• 1:00:59November Kelly?

  This is the problem.

• 1:01:00Speaker 03

  Nuclear powered.

• 1:01:01November Kelly?

  This is insane, but it's a different kind of insane, right? Because the real, the real weirdos, your hymen rick over or whatever, any uniform service, any bureaucracy, right? You get a limited supply of those and it just so shook out that the particular kind of nuclear inflected weirdo that the Air Force got was your Strategic Air Command kind of guy. The, I'm not saying we won't get a hair must, but like 100 to 200 million tops kind of guy. Rather than, rather than like, it's the like, I just want to see Moscow get vaporized once in my lifetime. Please God, let me not die without seeing Moscow get vaporized guy. Yeah. Rather than the, I want to put the nuclear reactor in the back of the plane.

• 1:01:43November Kelly?

  And I want all of the guys who work on the nuclear reactors to be like personally traumatized by me in an interpersonal setting.

• 1:01:51Justin Roczniak?

  And I want their tie.

• 1:01:56Liam McAnderson?

  The tie is a metaphor for blood.

• 1:01:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:01:58November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  The, the thing about the test area north is they, it's away from everything because they're testing nuclear powered jet engines that is open air. So you're just tacking a reactor onto the back of two J 47. J 47. Yeah.

• 1:02:15November Kelly?

  Bumper sticker on the, on the exhaust nozzle that just says fuck the environment.

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  Yes. They, they build a smoke stack for it to just get it up high enough to not contaminate the area around where they were testing.

• 1:02:33November Kelly?

  This is like, that's fine. There's no, there's no environment in Idaho.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  This is the same program that in Georgia as for testing materials, they had an open air reactor that when, when they were testing, like what does aluminum do when it's under intense radiation? They would fire it off and it taxidermied everything around it. Everything would drop dead and then stay there because there's no bacteria left.

• 1:03:00November Kelly?

  Jesus.

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  All from the air, all from the aircraft nuclear propulsion. It's, it's an episode in itself. It's out there. It can come back, but there's so much to this that's just wild and we did it for a billion dollars. 1960 money.

• 1:03:17November Kelly?

  I'm, I'm so sad that, um, because you know that like, uh, as much as the Soviet Union should have won the Cold War, they were also allotted their number of weirdos, right? And despite it all, despite a lot of historical investigation, we don't know half as much of what, of what their weirdos were up to. And I wish, I wish deeply that like, someone could go into the archives and find out the type of shit they were doing to like, you know, wild deer in Kazakhstan or whatever, that we still don't know about, you know?

• 1:03:48Speaker 03

  Right. So the important thing about this relating to our story is they built a hangar for what was going to be this nuclear plane at Testaryan North.

• 1:04:00November Kelly?

  I love the trifile on the, the rudder there.

• 1:04:03Speaker 03

  Oh, hell, yeah. The NB-36 was like the coolest plane ever built and it is a shame it was scrapped. But, uh, so they built a giant hangar for this giant plane that was going to haul a reactor and then they canceled the program. So there was no reason to have it.

• 1:04:18Liam McAnderson?

  It was the Cold War. What do you care?

• 1:04:20November Kelly?

  And it's a turbo, it's, it's, it's a turboprop. It's all turbines. Radiation gets sad when you don't use it to turn a turbine.

• 1:04:29Justin Roczniak?

  All right. It's, uh, it's, it's a Convair six turning, four burning.

• 1:04:33November Kelly?

  Hell, yeah.

• 1:04:34Justin Roczniak?

  One, one spicy.

• 1:04:43Justin Roczniak?

  I guess one boiling. I don't know.

• 1:04:47Speaker 03

  So that's kind of what's going on around the rest of the, the rest of the Nevada, or sorry, Idaho testing site.

• 1:04:54November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:54Speaker 03

  Nevada is where they are doing the other crazy shit with nuclear propulsion.

• 1:04:58November Kelly?

  You had a lot of states and they used like five or six of them just to be like, we can just light shit up.

• 1:05:03Speaker 03

  Just to radiate.

• 1:05:04Liam McAnderson?

  It's a testing range, the whole state is testing range. Fuck y'all.

• 1:05:09Speaker 03

  So another thing they were doing at the testing site was the borax experiments. And this one's the boiling reactor experiments.

• 1:05:18November Kelly?

  Oh, it looks like it's boiling all right.

• 1:05:19Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I feel like this image on the right, things have gone well slash poorly.

• 1:05:25Speaker 03

  Well, what they would do with borax is it was testing to see if a boiling water reactor would shut itself down if it's got too out of control. And so they would run excursions, run the, run the reactor up too hot, blow it up in, in small geysers. It wasn't like blowing the reactor apart. They would just melt some, melt some fuel, melt some rods, um, make everything around it nice and spicy. And they did this 70 times.

• 1:05:53November Kelly?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:05:54Speaker 03

  Same reactor.

• 1:05:55Liam McAnderson?

  That feels unfair.

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  But they discovered that a boiling water reactor tends to inherently be safe because once you produce steam, the reaction shuts down. The reactor goes back. Normally you might get a small geyser, but you won't get a meltdown per se. But they had fucked it up enough to where they decided that, well, let's just see what happens when we blow one up. So the last test they do with it is they stick a spring underneath the main control rod.

• 1:06:24November Kelly?

  The last one being like, let's do a silly one.

• 1:06:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is literally. They get in a lot of trouble for doing this. They shoot the control rod out in like two milliseconds and the whole reactor just heats up and detonates and blows the mound that's around it apart and shoots the, uh, shoots the control rod drive mechanism, that top part on the top of the mound, 10 meters into the air.

• 1:06:49November Kelly?

  Jeez.

• 1:06:50Speaker 03

  And then everybody at the testing site gets real mad at these guys for just contaminating everything around their site, but their experiments prove that boiling water should be safe. And is simple to operate. This creates a false sense of security.

• 1:07:09November Kelly?

  No, no, trust me. I just blew up one of these things. I tortured it for like 12 months and now I blew it up to put it out of its misery. I'm pretty sure it's safe.

• 1:07:19Liam McAnderson?

  It's good, bro. Trust me. Yeah.

• 1:07:21Speaker 03

  Well, the, the, the real thought was like, look what it took to blow it up. Like you can't, you can't fuck this up by doing anything normal. So that's, that creates this false sense of security. Like you cannot, if you design this right, you can't do anything wrong. And that percolates throughout everybody in the reactor community when it comes to boiling water reactors. Next slide, please.

• 1:07:46November Kelly?

  Yes. We made this one idiot proof and also I'm kind of distracted because Hyman Recover, I think is breaking into people's shit and like stealing their neckties and salt shakers.

• 1:07:55Justin Roczniak?

  That's why they could, that's why he couldn't, they couldn't build a mold and salt reactor around them. He'd steal it.

• 1:08:00November Kelly?

  He had an incredible gift for stuff.

• 1:08:05November Kelly?

  You'd be working on this and you'd be like, I swear I was wearing shoes.

• 1:08:09Liam McAnderson?

  Ah, all Rickover strikes again.

• 1:08:14Speaker 03

  Oh God, I love that, man.

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  So we're back to the army. We're back to the army programs and they decide to build a prototype of what they want to put out on the dew line. And what is being built for Camp Century. And they, they want to make this a simple, incredibly simple, incredibly easy to operate, incredibly portable, small reactor. So they design, they have Argon National Laboratories design the SL1, the stationary low power reactor prototype. Notice that it was not built by Alco or anybody else that's been doing reactors so far. It's built by a laboratory.

• 1:08:58November Kelly?

  They built it in 19. I mean, you start, you start under a squash court. It's like, it's all good.

• 1:09:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  They built it in 1957. It goes first time critical in 1958.

• 1:09:09Speaker 03

  So since it was built by a laboratory and it's for the army, they still need somebody to maintain it.

• 1:09:16November Kelly?

  So they still got those like thirty dropouts?

• 1:09:20Liam McAnderson?

  No, they got turned into mulch.

• 1:09:21Speaker 03

  Well, it's even better. They hire combustion engineering, which is famous for locomotive super heaters. So it's a

• 1:09:30November Kelly?

  Okay.

• 1:09:30Speaker 03

  Another group of people that are familiar with steam, but not particularly familiar with the army or reactors.

• 1:09:39Justin Roczniak?

  Nah, nah, it's all steam locomotive guys all the way down.

• 1:09:43Speaker 03

  So this reactor, just for some statistics, is a three megawatt boiling water reactor. That's designed to generate 200 kilowatts at the generator. So it's for like small applications, small bases.

• 1:09:57November Kelly?

  You run the lights and you're kind of like horrible ice hole.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 1:10:02Justin Roczniak?

  Is that a usual amount of efficiency there? I'm just thinking three megawatts to 200 kilowatts seems like kind of, there's a lot of wastage here.

• 1:10:12Speaker 03

  There is, but you're, you're, the wastage is fine because you're only trying to hit a certain target. You're not trying to, you can only get so big of a generator in a plane, for instance.

• 1:10:23Justin Roczniak?

  Right. Okay. That makes sense.

• 1:10:25Speaker 03

  This thing's supposed to be portable. You'll see in two slides that this thing's only like 20 feet tall total. So it's a little guy. We'll get to another little guy here in a bit too.

• 1:10:35November Kelly?

  It looks like a fucking grain silo like.

• 1:10:38Liam McAnderson?

  That's what I was thinking. Yeah.

• 1:10:39Speaker 03

  That's, they designed it. It's a big metal building, round building because again, you're putting this out in the middle of the Arctic. You don't need anything but protection from the elements. So it didn't have like a containment dome because it's why you're making it simple. It's, and it's inherently safe. Boiling water reactors can't explode, right?

• 1:10:58Justin Roczniak?

  Right. Yeah.

• 1:10:59Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:00Speaker 03

  So you don't need to have.

• 1:11:01Liam McAnderson?

  It's dogwood now, baby. Let's do this.

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, and it runs it, it just to put a number in your head, it runs at 300 pounds per square inch of pressure when it's operating and generating electricity.

• 1:11:12November Kelly?

  Are we sure that it didn't have a containment dome and then Hyman Rick over visited?

• 1:11:20November Kelly?

  Opening a desk drawer full of domes?

• 1:11:23Justin Roczniak?

  Well, it's portable, so he would have stolen the reactor too.

• 1:11:27Speaker 03

  Well, I was gonna get to this layer, but I will say, Rickover has nothing to do with this. And he's pissed about it.

• 1:11:34November Kelly?

  He's a really fun guy. Okay, sure, sure, sure.

• 1:11:36Speaker 03

  He is mad as fuck that the army's doing this without his oversight, or at least input.

• 1:11:42November Kelly?

  Yeah, you dare create fissile reactions without my input?

• 1:11:46Speaker 03

  So. Give me your tie.

• 1:11:50November Kelly?

  Just escalating, be like, you know what, give me your pants too. Right now, let's go.

• 1:11:54Speaker 03

  Right now. Well.

• 1:11:56November Kelly?

  Walking out of his office pantsless and being like, having to call my wife and be like, no, no, honey, I didn't get the job. Sorry.

• 1:12:04November Kelly?

  Also, also, we need to get new pants.

• 1:12:09Speaker 03

  What the army does to keep him out of it is, the Navy has an agreement to train people on it, but the army demands that only the Navy CBs, the engineering, this leg of the Navy, can be on it, keeping all of Rickover's men away from it. This becomes important later. So, next slide. So, we're looking at. This looks gloomy. And what it is, is it's mostly aluminum. The fuel assemblies, the boxes that hold the uranium are in aluminum alloy. Big waffle iron. Big waffle iron.

• 1:12:44Liam McAnderson?

  Big waffle iron.

• 1:12:45Speaker 03

  The.

• 1:12:46Liam McAnderson?

  I could go for some waffles.

• 1:12:47Speaker 03

  The plus signs that you see are where the control rods go. And what the control rods are, is they're actually like paddles. Instead of a round rod, they're four square. They're like paddles. So you get four paddles to eat rod that gets pulled up and out of the reactor. The idea is to keep it small, so you have more reactivity per control rod. Makes sense? Uh huh. Right, yes. Enough. It's built to take 59 fuel assemblies and nine control rods, but they decide to make it only 40 fuel assemblies and five control rods to, again, help minimize this design and the react and, and the comp complexity.

• 1:13:29Speaker 03

  But what it does is it increases the reactivity in this, in the core. So, that center rod becomes the, if you pull it out, can start up the reactor by itself.

• 1:13:42November Kelly?

  That's good, right?

• 1:13:44Speaker 03

  I mean, it's good if you're trying to start the reactor quickly.

• 1:13:47Liam McAnderson?

  I sure am.

• 1:13:48November Kelly?

  What if I'm trying to start the reactor really quickly?

• 1:13:51Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51November Kelly?

  What if I'm trying to start the reactor really, really, really, really quickly, like microseconds quickly?

• 1:13:56Speaker 03

  We'll get there.

• 1:13:57Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, no.

• 1:14:00Speaker 03

  So it turns the the outside rods into like trim rods. So like it helps adjust, but you don't particularly need them. There were also tacked on to the fuel assemblies boron boron poison strips. And when I say tacked on, I literally mean somebody went in and tack welded these to the side of the fuel assemblies.

• 1:14:21Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, hell, yeah.

• 1:14:22Justin Roczniak?

  Nice.

• 1:14:23Speaker 03

  It's not engineered in. It's it's just some some dude at Argon, just like works.

• 1:14:30Justin Roczniak?

  Looks good. Pretty sheer welding uranium.

• 1:14:32Liam McAnderson?

  Slap it. It's just like slap it. This bad boy can fit so much energy inside of it. So.

• 1:14:37November Kelly?

  Yeah. So like, what kind of your, what kind of welding do you do? Like, like TIG or like no uranium?

• 1:14:42Liam McAnderson?

  Uranium.

• 1:14:43Speaker 03

  Are you okay, dude? No.

• 1:14:47November Kelly?

  Wanting the hands.

• 1:14:47Justin Roczniak?

  But I'm really good at football now.

• 1:14:53Speaker 03

  It's like, it's like the guys that were hired at the Bud Plant, you know? You want, you want to do some shot welding? You want to live for 10 years? You're hired.

• 1:15:04November Kelly?

  People don't know this, but like the guy who in Chernobyl, who gets like super irradiated and he's looks like, you know, like crispy bacon. That guy could have kicked a field goal from any distance.

• 1:15:14Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:15:16November Kelly?

  Getting him off the bed, that's an issue, sure, but like incredible legs on that guy.

• 1:15:21Speaker 03

  His foot might go with the ball, but.

• 1:15:25Liam McAnderson?

  That's not a paddle. They shut up.

• 1:15:29Justin Roczniak?

  I think that's three more points. I think that's equivalent of a touchdown.

• 1:15:32Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, I think you're right.

• 1:15:34November Kelly?

  So part of part of him touched the end zone with the ball.

• 1:15:38Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:15:39Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, yeah. All you gotta do is break the plane, baby.

• 1:15:43Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, well, as long as as long as the foot hit the, is it in the rules? The foot has to be attached to the player?

• 1:15:52Liam McAnderson?

  I don't have a thought of that one. So we're gonna find out, buddy.

• 1:15:57Speaker 03

  So.

• 1:15:58Liam McAnderson?

  You show me. You show me where it says.

• 1:16:04Speaker 03

  There's a percentage of the body that has to be in the end zone and it's 2%.

• 1:16:11Speaker 03

  So these boron poison strips are to help trim reactor startup, the reactivity. So essentially it keeps the center from burning up faster than the outside. That makes sense?

• 1:16:23November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 1:16:24Speaker 03

  Without getting way into it. That's, that's the gist of it. Uh, the problem with these is that they started rotting fairly quickly and they would rush jack against the control rod channels.

• 1:16:39Liam McAnderson?

  Another one of my kinks. Sorry.

• 1:16:43November Kelly?

  I like, I like to just leave them like to die in silence just to make you feel bad and give you a complex.

• 1:16:49Liam McAnderson?

  Ah, I, listen, I, I crave attention like a monkey at a circus. Some of this bothers me. Can you tell I was an only child?

• 1:16:57November Kelly?

  Hi, mom. I, I was also an only child. I don't, maybe it just makes you like this. I don't know.

• 1:17:02Liam McAnderson?

  Who's to say?

• 1:17:03Speaker 03

  So the, there's this rush jacking happening and there's also flakes of boron falling off into the reactor and getting swished up into the control rod channels. So these channels are getting really sticky, like really sticky. Meanwhile, next slide please. The reactor was, was built to be incredibly simple to operate. Because it's going to be operated by like three guys in the Arctic. You want to be able to maintain it easily with like pipe wrenches in a small crane.

• 1:17:33Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Keep in mind those three guys, you know, only like half of them know how to read. Half of one of them knows how to read.

• 1:17:43Speaker 03

  So the, the thing about how this was designed, which we'll get there, but everything can be taken apart with like a dude in a crane. But all of the drive mechanisms for the control, although like motor control is like liftable by a man. You don't need a crane. You don't need anything to make it easy to assemble and disassemble. Because the reactor is only 20 feet tall, like end to end. That means every single part is, is maintenanceable. But also means everything's fairly easy to move and deal with.

• 1:18:15November Kelly?

  Just pick up the reactor, throw it over your shoulder, walk to the next base.

• 1:18:19Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:18:19Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you and Rick over can do that together.

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  But the army sees this as like-

• 1:18:23November Kelly?

  Wearing a parka?

• 1:18:26Speaker 03

  The army sees this as like, oh, they can just do the work. It's their problem now. So they minimize the amount of staff that would work on these. But also they minimize the amount of combustion engineering's oversight. So this reactor is built new in 58 and as people are trained on the maintenance of it and the general operation of this thing, it starts to wear down really quickly. So one, control rods are getting stuck when you, when you would use the motor to drive them in and out. If you scram the reactor, which shuts, supposed to shut it down instantly, drop the control rod, shut it down instantly.

• 1:19:09Speaker 03

  There were times where it would drop the rods and they would have to manually crank them down through the channel.

• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  There were also circumstances where when they were doing maintenance, they would find like all the, all the mechanisms that move stuff were wearing out. Seals were wearing out, uh, bearings were starting to fail and wear out. My favorite story about this is right before January 1961, they're doing the procedure where you put the reactor back together after like changing fuel out or doing general maintenance. And one of the control rods gets stuck and they have to take a pipe wrench and beat it down into the reactor.

• 1:19:52Liam McAnderson?

  Not all I know, but fuck now.

• 1:19:54Speaker 03

  Now, if you look at the diagram and look to the right in the

• 1:19:58November Kelly?

  This is spiritually so Soviet, I have to say.

• 1:20:02Speaker 03

  Uh, it's, we're in competition with the Soviet army. We're gonna act like them, right?

• 1:20:06November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:08Speaker 03

  We, they build a Davy Crockett, we build a Davy Crockett. They build a Shea reactor, we build a Shea reactor.

• 1:20:14November Kelly?

  Yeah, the Soviets, in order to melt down a reactor, the Soviets spent millions of rubles developing the AZ5 switch. Uh, and the Americans used a wrench.

• 1:20:27Speaker 03

  So just to point out on the right hand side, if you look low in like the last quarter, the core of this reactor is only, fuck, I can't see it on the, I can't see it on my own presentation.

• 1:20:39Justin Roczniak?

  Fifty inches tall.

• 1:20:41Speaker 03

  Uh, two feet, two inches tall.

• 1:20:44November Kelly?

  Three apples high.

• 1:20:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, two feet, two inches tall. So it's like half the height of my legs, honestly. Um, it's not very big, but that means, that means, uh, fifty inches. Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. I thought you, I thought you said fifty feet.

• 1:21:01Justin Roczniak?

  Fifty feet tall. No, that's too many. That's too big.

• 1:21:05November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:05Speaker 03

  But it's, it's fifty inches tall, so it's not very big. That means that the control rod, that's the long pieces in the center that go up to those that drive, those are shield plugs. And above that's the rod that you can manually operate to do work is only eighty-four pounds. So again, this is really easy until things start failing to, uh, sorry, I lost my place here.

• 1:21:32November Kelly?

  Nuclear chain of thought.

• 1:21:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:21:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:35Speaker 03

  The control rod fell in, it just shut everything down. So long story short about why I'm trying to get to is, this thing is incredibly easy to work on, but also incredibly, the margins of error are also really small. We're talking in two feet. You have your whole core. So you figure half of that, half of that core is like operating, is like you're operating depth of the control rods. I think it shows on that diagram as well, how high the water is, which is like two thirds of the way up the vessel.

• 1:22:05Justin Roczniak?

  Right, yeah.

• 1:22:06November Kelly?

  Doing, doing like miniaturized nuclear reactor operation, but also I have to use, I have to do it with like a wrench.

• 1:22:13Speaker 03

  Yes. So the water only being like two thirds of the way up is important and a little bit. So keep that in mind. So next slide, please.

• 1:22:26Justin Roczniak?

  Hi, it's Justin. So this is a commercial for the podcast that you're already listening to. People are annoyed by these, so let me get to the point. We have this thing called Patreon, right? The deal is you give us two bucks a month and we give you an extra episode once a month. Sometimes it's a little inconsistent, but you know, it's two bucks. You get what you pay for. It also gets you our full back catalog of bonus episodes so you can learn about exciting topics like guns, pickup trucks, or pickup trucks with guns on them. The money we raise through Patreon goes to making sure that the only ad you hear on this podcast is this one.

• 1:23:09Justin Roczniak?

  Anyway, that's something to consider if you have two bucks to spare each month. Join at patreon.com/typpod. Do it if you want, or don't. It's your decision and we respect that. Back to the show.

• 1:23:29Speaker 03

  So they would call the groups of people doing the operations a cadre. And the cadre working in January 1961 were the three guys in front of us.

• 1:23:43November Kelly?

  Oh, boy. I feel similarly to when you give me like name and photos when I hear a date at this point.

• 1:23:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. I also love this photo because it's like, this is the photo of these guys. There's no others that are used and is the worst photo I've ever seen.

• 1:23:59Justin Roczniak?

  About to say, you know, it's official document if it's got that much photocopy.

• 1:24:02Speaker 03

  There's a lot of photocopy burn on this. So this cadre is they'd operate in three man teams and they're sending these guys out from Fort Belvoir.

• 1:24:14November Kelly?

  The war.

• 1:24:18November Kelly?

  Named, I imagine, after a Confederate because that's some shit I can hear Shelby Foote saying, you know?

• 1:24:23Speaker 03

  Well, the Midwest in maize like Fort Belvoir.

• 1:24:26November Kelly?

  Fort Belvoir.

• 1:24:29Speaker 03

  No, it's Fort Belvoir. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:33November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:34Speaker 03

  So these guys.

• 1:24:35November Kelly?

  It's named a Virginia moment. It's named after the plantation it was built on top of. Yeah, that that sounds about right.

• 1:24:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. So these guys get trained for a year at in Virginia and then get sent out to SL1 to learn how to operate this reactor and so on. The goal of almost everyone, the reactor program, is to spend their year like their their initial sign on with the army, learn how to run a reactor and get the fuck out of the army and go work in commercial nuclear power.

• 1:25:04November Kelly?

  Right.

• 1:25:04Speaker 03

  Because that's where the big bucks are. So nobody in this program actually gives a flying fuck about going to Greenland or the Arctic Circle. They just want to do their time and get the hell out. So, starting with the youngest, we have Jack Burns, who's 22 years old, a father of one. He's an avid skier and his life is falling the fuck apart.

• 1:25:30November Kelly?

  Incredible. I mean, not a lot of skiing in Greenland. Yeah.

• 1:25:34Speaker 03

  Idaho's a little better, but.

• 1:25:37November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:39November Kelly?

  Losing the thread a bit, like this still has to do with the ice, the ice worms, right?

• 1:25:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:46Speaker 03

  His life is falling apart because him and his wife do not mix. They fucking hate each other.

• 1:25:53November Kelly?

  She's like, I'm I'm sick of your skiing shit.

• 1:25:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:25:58November Kelly?

  I'm sick of you skiing. You always talk about the pest. You always talk about the the fucking, what's what's the thing skiers do after they ski, they get drunk in the chalet, the that. He's always talking about the après ski. He's always talking about like fucking what dickhead snowboarders are. It's like, we live in Idaho, you work on a nuclear reactor, Hyman Rickover keeps stealing shit out of our house. Yeah.

• 1:26:23Speaker 03

  Well, he's, he hates her so much. He takes a job at a Texaco station just to stay out of the house.

• 1:26:29November Kelly?

  Jesus. Back before no fault divorce was instituted and the like mysterious death rate among men dropped by like a third. And this was one of the other options besides getting murdered was just get a second job, stay out of the house all the time. Both of them independently pay a living wage. You own six houses that no one now will be able to afford even in Idaho.

• 1:26:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:26:53Speaker 03

  The big, the big thing with him is other than his marriage, just being a wreck. He is a moody asshole at work.

• 1:27:01November Kelly?

  Probably, probably mad because he's not skiing.

• 1:27:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  And he's judged unfit for promotion. So he gets to stay as a base level reactor operator for the rest of his fucking career. Which means when he goes out of the army, the best chance he has is gain a low level position. No big bucks for him.

• 1:27:23November Kelly?

  I mean, here's the thing. That is, that is Homer Simpson as a career trajectory. And he seemed happy.

• 1:27:30Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. That's because Homer Simpson had a union.

• 1:27:34November Kelly?

  That's true. That is true. He had a union and he loved his wife. These are the two pillars of happiness.

• 1:27:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yes. And he got to strangle his kid all the time.

• 1:27:42November Kelly?

  We're not adding that as a third pillar of happiness.

• 1:27:47Speaker 03

  I mean, it's the 50s. It's possible here, too.

• 1:27:51November Kelly?

  Getting strangled by your ski obsessed dad and all of a sudden you're just this like poor boomer who has a bunch of inexplicable alpine trauma.

• 1:27:59Justin Roczniak?

  Well, yeah, he went up the mountain and he was, I saw Flanders, stupid sexy Flanders.

• 1:28:07November Kelly?

  Years later, as Hyman Rickover is finally forced to retire at the age of 90 or whatever, they're clearing out his offices. Then I'm like, what is he going to have skis?

• 1:28:18Speaker 03

  So, god damn it.

• 1:28:22November Kelly?

  It's like the last bit of Citizen Kane. They've got the they've got the sled with rosebud on it, but it's not his sled.

• 1:28:32Justin Roczniak?

  I would like to think that that that it was like a green golf ball situation, you know, no one knows what happened to the salt shakers or the ties. They all disappeared.

• 1:28:42Speaker 03

  When he died in 89, I wonder if he was buried with them.

• 1:28:46November Kelly?

  Why does this cough and rattle so much? Maybe he maybe he kind of like, maybe nuclear power is kind of eldritch and unholy after all, and he was feeding a kind of like malevolent presence in his desk drawer. It's just like, in order to, you know, the devil's bargain there is, we'll give you the nuclear navy, but you have to keep feeding us salt shakers, which for some reason we like. He didn't even want to do it. He was horrified. He was so embarrassed by it, but he had to do it. And people don't even know the kind of the sacrifices that he went through.

• 1:29:16Justin Roczniak?

  Well, you know, it's kept the nuclear navy safe ever since then. So I don't even know if it was a malevolent presence. You know, you know, there's something.

• 1:29:23November Kelly?

  Ambivalent devil. Yeah. You know how there's something like inherently so like evil and traumatic about being, for instance, president that everybody ages like 20 years for every year in the job? Part of the reason why is because as soon as you get like briefed, as soon as you get like read in on a bunch of classified stuff, like you find out who really killed Kennedy, you find out about like, you know, the Epstein files and all this shit. But they also find out that, by the way, the US Navy needs like 60 salt shakers a year. Otherwise, the entire planet's going to implode. Yeah. And the salt shakers, you can't you can't buy them. They have to be like stolen.

• 1:29:58Justin Roczniak?

  They have to be stolen.

• 1:30:01Speaker 03

  All right. Well, since we're on the fun fact of Rickover or of him.

• 1:30:05November Kelly?

  I can't I can't stop being on.

• 1:30:08Speaker 03

  I gotta tell another story about him because you can't do, well, there isn't your problem with Hyman Rickover.

• 1:30:16Speaker 03

  He wouldn't wear his Navy uniform ever and it pissed off everyone because

• 1:30:23November Kelly?

  I don't wanna, I don't wanna.

• 1:30:24Speaker 03

  He didn't want.

• 1:30:26Liam McAnderson?

  This whole drawer full of ties. I gotta, I gotta feed this possibly malevolent nuclear devil.

• 1:30:32Speaker 03

  It is, it is so prevalent that he didn't, that his statue at the Naval Academy has him in a civilian outfit. Not in a naval.

• 1:30:43November Kelly?

  Incredible.

• 1:30:44Speaker 03

  It's because he liked blending in with the contractors so he could just fuck around more.

• 1:30:53Speaker 03

  So he could just be the angry, shows up a general dynamics and is like, hey fuckers, fix my boat. And they're like, who's that angry motherfucker that just came in here? That's the enemy running the program, guys.

• 1:31:06November Kelly?

  I, I, I do also know that he's, because he's an engineer, like, and he's not like deploying or whatever. He's got like nine metal revens as, as like a, like a three star, like flag officer. So maybe that's why as well as being like, I am self, I got like ribbon insecurity, you know?

• 1:31:24Speaker 03

  Short King syndrome.

• 1:31:25November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. Speaking, speaking of short kings.

• 1:31:28November Kelly?

  Oh, you know what it is? Navy uniform doesn't have the pocket space for salt shakers.

• 1:31:32Liam McAnderson?

  No, you got, you're carrying 50 of those out a week.

• 1:31:35November Kelly?

  Double breasted jacket, you're not going into that with a salt shaker and not getting caught like.

• 1:31:39Liam McAnderson?

  My lights just dim. So if I lose power, simply go on without my.

• 1:31:42November Kelly?

  It's fine. I got like 50 more minutes of salt shaker bits.

• 1:31:48Speaker 03

  Well, let's go back to the short king statement because that's who we're talking about next is, uh, Richard Leg. He's the next operator at SL1. He's a Navy CB. So he's the, the, the exchange student of the group. Here at SL1, he's a chief operator, just, just promoted to chief operator, shift supervisor. He's 26 years old. He's also tiny. He's like five four, maybe shorter. Of course, that number's obscured in everything you read about this, just like this whole fucking thing.

• 1:32:21November Kelly?

  Short guy. Also, it's the 50s, so they probably called him Dick, so Dick Leg.

• 1:32:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, Dick Leg.

• 1:32:26November Kelly?

  Dick Leg. Yeah.

• 1:32:28Speaker 03

  Poor guy. He is also hot headed.

• 1:32:30November Kelly?

  Made you a five foot four angry short guy named Dick Leg. On the other hand, he has seen fit to get you promoted, so. Yeah.

• 1:32:38Speaker 03

  Well, he gets promoted only by like force, like force majeure.

• 1:32:44November Kelly?

  Six guys had to come into the office, hold him down and sew the extra stripe on.

• 1:32:50Liam McAnderson?

  The guy who, uh, was it, I forget, six this? No, the guy who didn't want to be pope.

• 1:32:55November Kelly?

  Oh, Celestine the fifth. Yeah, I love to make Celestine the fifth a recurring figure on this podcast.

• 1:33:01Speaker 03

  Well, the problem with Dick Leg is that he's also doesn't give a fuck about his job and he's a jokester.

• 1:33:10November Kelly?

  Just doing the like, yeah, you know, we all know that what we do here isn't that important at a nuclear reactor.

• 1:33:16Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 1:33:16November Kelly?

  Yes. Different facets of Homer Simpson, all of them.

• 1:33:21Speaker 03

  Well, the funny thing about him is he's caught sleeping in his car regularly. During shit.

• 1:33:27November Kelly?

  Did he also hate his wife? Like, is this, is this a fuck wives shift that we're dealing with?

• 1:33:33Speaker 03

  Recently married to a very young Mormon girl.

• 1:33:38November Kelly?

  She's just like, babe, can we do the soaking thing again? I've, I'm, I'm off the 50s Quaaludes. I encased a whole ham in Jell-O. He takes one look at this. He's like, I never want to come home again. I'm gonna, I'm gonna stay at work like overnight. It's fine.

• 1:33:52Speaker 03

  She's eight months pregnant, so yeah, he probably doesn't want to be home at all.

• 1:33:56November Kelly?

  Oh my God, he used to just like patriarchy. Wild, still wild. He used to be wild too. Yes.

• 1:34:03Speaker 03

  The big thing about Leg, the big known thing about Leg that's important is he's a practical jokester. So he would regularly go throughout the reactor building and set off alarms just to fuck with his other crewmates.

• 1:34:16November Kelly?

  Doing practical jokes on my heavily pregnant child bride. Again, everyone born in the 50s has like such a depth of trauma. We, as much as we're down on boomers, we don't really understand some of the shit that they went through, like in the womb, being like, yeah, my, my mom didn't know what like a car was. And then my dad kept like exploding uh, like paper bags directly behind her.

• 1:34:45November Kelly?

  He used to do that and then disappear for like 30 hours at a time. Anyway.

• 1:34:51Justin Roczniak?

  One of my buddies. Cigarettes disappeared for two years, then had the gall to show back up.

• 1:34:59Speaker 03

  One of my buddies said that the, the, a very probably like handed off rumor that I could not find in any writing was Leg would set off an alarm in the reactor and then slam the door on somebody running through the reactor to go, go figure out what's going on.

• 1:35:16November Kelly?

  Fucking hell.

• 1:35:17Speaker 03

  So he's literally two people.

• 1:35:21November Kelly?

  I guess, I guess, I guess our boy Hyman was right, that if you don't exercise like tyrannical rule over your nuclear program, it does become

• 1:35:29Justin Roczniak?

  Doofus city, yeah.

• 1:35:31November Kelly?

  The three dumbest men in your twenties you've ever seen all jerking off at work.

• 1:35:36Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:37Speaker 03

  So what's important between these two men is they hate each other.

• 1:35:44November Kelly?

  Yeah, you don't say.

• 1:35:47November Kelly?

  I, I don't get promoted. The guy who keeps slamming doors in my face gets promoted. This could have been a workplace shooting.

• 1:35:57November Kelly?

  This is a nightmare. This is like page minus three of the stand.

• 1:36:05Speaker 03

  Well, they hate each other. One, because you're right, Leg got promoted, Burns didn't. But even worse, Burns would go to parties and get wasted.

• 1:36:14Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm.

• 1:36:15Speaker 03

  And Leg was like enough of a military man to be like, what the fuck's wrong with you?

• 1:36:20November Kelly?

  Yeah, we all hate our wives, but you don't have to get drunk about it. You you you deal with it like a man by terrorizing them with practical jokes.

• 1:36:27Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:36:29Speaker 03

  Well, there's there's a party sometime in 1960 where they're both at and they go to blows. Like they they get in a fistfight and Leg like throws Burn out of the house. Uh, nobody knows why. Some say it's because Burns was fucking around with a hooker at a military party.

• 1:36:48Justin Roczniak?

  Ugh.

• 1:36:50Speaker 03

  Some say that it was just Leg being like, dude, you're fucking drunk, leave, fuck off. And Burns would take it.

• 1:36:55November Kelly?

  Maybe he was just satisfying his like desperate need to slam doors in people's faces.

• 1:36:59Liam McAnderson?

  Just slamming, opening it, slamming, opening it right into the right into the sex work.

• 1:37:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, Leg has presumably a whole bunch of like various practical jokes. You slam the door in your face, drop a safe on you. Maybe, uh, you know.

• 1:37:14Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, it's a sharp and run, doesn't it?

• 1:37:17Justin Roczniak?

  Large comedy mallet, hitting you over the head with it, you know?

• 1:37:22Speaker 03

  Large comedy pipe wrench from the reactor.

• 1:37:25Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, good point. Good point. Yeah. Spicy.

• 1:37:28Speaker 03

  So those two fucking hate each other. That's important.

• 1:37:31Justin Roczniak?

  Uh huh.

• 1:37:31Speaker 03

  Third at the site is Richard McKinley. He's fresh to the army. He's a nuclear, he's in the nuke program. Because he transferred from the Air Force. He's 27. That's important. He's 27. He was originally in the Air Force. He transferred to be an army nuke for the the idea of the experience and becoming a commercial operator, but just because he's smart.

• 1:37:55November Kelly?

  Totally normal guy, totally normal guy who would have passed the necktie test and they locked him in a reactor room with these two fucking idiots.

• 1:38:04Justin Roczniak?

  Correct. Wise and old man, you know, um, definitely, uh, yeah, he's he is the straight man to the, uh, to the two, uh, you know, uh.

• 1:38:14November Kelly?

  We call this the mature student on a group project experience.

• 1:38:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. So McKinley's like well-liked and everybody loves him and he's only been there for like three weeks. And he gets put on shift with these two fucking idiots.

• 1:38:33Speaker 03

  And their goal, the reactor had been shut down for the holiday. It's been Christmas, we're January 3rd, 1961. So they're

• 1:38:44Justin Roczniak?

  No radiation today. It's Christmas.

• 1:38:48Speaker 03

  Well, why you need the reactor spinning when nobody's there? Uh, the night before they go on shift, Burns goes to a party and just doesn't seem right. It's because his wife has thrown him out of the house and he is sleeping on his buddy's couch for the last two days.

• 1:39:06November Kelly?

  The, the house that he is barely in, by the way.

• 1:39:09Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 1:39:10November Kelly?

  Because he already hates his wife.

• 1:39:12Speaker 03

  But she's also taking most of his paycheck. Which they regularly get in fights about.

• 1:39:18November Kelly?

  This guy seems like a fucking asshole.

• 1:39:20Speaker 03

  Well, he goes on, he's on shift with Leg as his boss for this show.

• 1:39:25November Kelly?

  Okay, I, I, I do see that part, right? Because like, okay, you're an asshole. Fine. Lots of people are assholes. You then go to work and your boss is a bigger in some ways asshole and also different type of asshole in a way that clashes with you being an asshole.

• 1:39:41Speaker 03

  You're generic asshole. He's Looney Tunes asshole.

• 1:39:44November Kelly?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's just like you, you just like regular 50s misogynist, right? First thing through the door, you are catching a pie full of shaving foam in the face.

• 1:39:57Justin Roczniak?

  I'm imagining here like Burns being sort of a John Fetterman type character. With like Leg being shorter.

• 1:40:10Justin Roczniak?

  I don't want to be here.

• 1:40:13November Kelly?

  To be at the beach. Yeah. Do you think, do you think Leg was having a good time doing this? Or do you think it's worse? Do you think he was like doing the pranks while he was actively miserable just to cheer himself up?

• 1:40:23Speaker 03

  I think it was to survive. I really do.

• 1:40:28November Kelly?

  So then, oh, by the way, the completely normal guy is here.

• 1:40:36November Kelly?

  Like door opens, bin that's been placed on top of it falls onto Burns's head and he stumbles around trying to get it off. Totally normal guy also present.

• 1:40:49November Kelly?

  You just hear a guy yelling into the inside of a bucket about how he's gonna come back with a gun and shoot up the place. And you're, and you're just like, I gotta get a fucking transfer off the ship. I missed the fucking air force. It's even funny, it's even funny if you try to envision why he would have left the air force in the 50s. So it's like, as a nuke as well, it's like, I gotta get out from under these general Ripper psychos that are gonna get us all killed. I gotta, I gotta work with some normal people.

• 1:41:20Speaker 03

  I'm just imagining him like Gareth with the newspaper, just face buried in it as these two just go at it.

• 1:41:30Liam McAnderson?

  Settle down, children. It's just like, this is Cobalt just being dropped on you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:35Speaker 03

  And a reminder to everyone listening, these guys are fucking around screaming at each other with a nuclear reactor in the background.

• 1:41:46Liam McAnderson?

  That's how you know it's good.

• 1:41:47Speaker 03

  And their job tonight is not to just flip some switches and watch some gauges and generally operate this thing. Their job tonight is to put it back the fuck together.

• 1:42:00Liam McAnderson?

  That seems like a tall order for our, for our beleaguered hero. It is two dumbass rivals.

• 1:42:06November Kelly?

  Guy who has been sleeping on a 50s couch, one of the most uncomfortable things I can imagine, thinking about nothing but he, how much he hates his bitch wife. Guy versus guy who is escalating to setting up like bear traps on the floor because all he can think about is how much he hates his bitch wife. And then one guy who is desperately hoping for a transfer.

• 1:42:33Speaker 03

  Fuck it, I'll go to Greenland. Just send me.

• 1:42:36November Kelly?

  This is, this, this, this goes out to like every single person in this situation who is like totally normal and all of your coworkers are assholes. Like, please, accept my regards. I hope you don't work in a nuclear reactor.

• 1:42:52Speaker 03

  So what they have to do, what they have to accomplish this night is as follows. Perform a reactor pump down, reassemble the control rods and install plugs and replace the shield blocks. Leave the top shield off. So the big steel block on top, leave it off. Re or connect the control rod drive motors. So we're on step three. Four, electrically and mechanically zero the rods. So up, down, you know, make sure they set where they're supposed to. Accomplish control room and plant startup logs.

• 1:43:22November Kelly?

  It's gotta be hard to do all of this while your boss is hitting you over the back of the head with a frying pan. Giant mouth.

• 1:43:26Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:43:28Speaker 03

  Perform cold rod drops.

• 1:43:30Justin Roczniak?

  A lot of piano is being delivered to this facility for some reason.

• 1:43:36Speaker 03

  Replace the top shield and then accomplish a normal startup, all in one night with these fuckers.

• 1:43:43November Kelly?

  Jesus.

• 1:43:44Speaker 03

  With the guy with, again, Looney Tunes asshole being the guy in Shars.

• 1:43:49November Kelly?

  Don't love that.

• 1:43:55Speaker 03

  To put it on the record, so I don't get yelled at, I know Leg was not that Looney Tunes, but for the love of God, it's funnier if he is.

• 1:44:03November Kelly?

  Comedy podcast, comedy podcast. As far as we know, Hyman Rickover was not feeding a kind of elder demon salt shakers either.

• 1:44:12Speaker 03

  I choose to believe that now.

• 1:44:13November Kelly?

  Disappeared off of having said that. Like, there's, there's like two guys from like the Office of Naval Intelligence at all of our doors first thing.

• 1:44:21Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, you're the Elger Core unit. Yeah, Elger Core unit. You guys gotta start.

• 1:44:26Justin Roczniak?

  They're gonna disappear you into a hole that Leg painted on the floor.

• 1:44:38Speaker 03

  In this list of, I can't.

• 1:44:41November Kelly?

  You're done, okay?

• 1:44:43Speaker 03

  Well, it's the Looney Tune shit that's about to happen is if funnier now and I can't get to.

• 1:44:52Speaker 03

  So they they get through step one and two and they're on step three, which is to connect control rod drive motors, which means you have to pick up the control rods, lift them four inches and then reattach them to that sideways motor drive. And you have to do that with all five.

• 1:45:13November Kelly?

  And they're all kind of sticky and finicky. And the whole time you're thinking, I wish I was at fucking Camp Fist Clench or whatever.

• 1:45:20Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:20November Kelly?

  But by the way, every time I was at Camp Fist Clench, can we throw up the like, hey, Arthur, like Fist Clench meme?

• 1:45:28Speaker 03

  Uh, god damn it.

• 1:45:32Speaker 03

  I'm telling you, it's, it's, it's so much funnier now that this is a Looney Tune situation. I'm not going to be able to make it through this. So what you see on the right is the shield plug. That's the thing that you put the control rod through so that shit doesn't leak by it because the rod goes up and down through that plug. This is important later. You have to take a C clamp off so the rod doesn't fall all the way into the reactor, lift it up four inches, clamp it again, and then connect the drive motor. So it gets put in gear. Then the drive motor holds it. That's what they're supposed to do. And assuming that Legs, the supervisor, is making Burns do this, right?

• 1:46:16Justin Roczniak?

  Right.

• 1:46:17Speaker 03

  Fucking do it, guy newbie. I'm gonna fucking stand here and drink my coffee.

• 1:46:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Yeah. Go lift the 80 pound thing. Just go do it. It's the fifth, it's all the 60s.

• 1:46:27November Kelly?

  He's been like greasing up the soles of his shoes.

• 1:46:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Remember, lift with your back.

• 1:46:36November Kelly?

  New kid, you're gonna want to use like a, yeah, exactly, jerking twisting motion.

• 1:46:43Speaker 03

  So it needs to go four inches. Burns reaches down. We assume Burns reaches down, grabs the rod. It's January 3rd, 1961 at 9:01 PM.

• 1:46:55November Kelly?

  God damn it.

• 1:46:56Speaker 03

  Next slide, please.

• 1:46:58Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, this looks for boating. This looks like the kind of place you'd be taking the hog tide tail.

• 1:47:03November Kelly?

  Wes Anderson shots, you know, it's too, too centered in the frame.

• 1:47:07Speaker 03

  At 9:01, an alarm goes off in the reactor testing station's firehouse. It's the third time this day. The first two times on first shift before these jackasses showed up was a heat sensor that was faulty. So these poor fuck fucker firemen, sorry. These poor firemen have to run out to their truck and go out into six degree weather. Drive 10 minutes. And this is like an old fire truck where like you have two guys hanging on the back, raising their dick off.

• 1:47:40Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:41November Kelly?

  That's six degrees Fahrenheit, I would assume. Pretty, pretty warm in the, in the bunker gear, at least you'd hope.

• 1:47:47Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:47November Kelly?

  What helps?

• 1:47:48Speaker 03

  It's American number. So it's six degrees Fahrenheit. They're freezing their dicks off.

• 1:47:52November Kelly?

  Negative one million Celsius. It's colder than like the surface of Pluto. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:48:00Speaker 03

  So they, they've had this happen twice. It's the third time. They're like, oh God, fucking damn it. It's SL1 again. They drive out there. They arrive at the reactor. There's like a guardhouse in front of it and there's no one to let them in. So they have to get like a security guy to come over and let them in instead of the operator. They pull up to the reactor, get out, grab their gear and they walk into the office, control room, and there's no one there. But they notice everyone's jacket is still there and everyone's car's outside.

• 1:48:33Speaker 03

  Oh boy. The cups of coffee sitting on the control stand are still hot.

• 1:48:37November Kelly?

  Ah.

• 1:48:38Speaker 03

  And the radiation alarm is going off. Unsolved mysteries presented by Well, There's Your Problem.

• 1:48:44Speaker 03

  But the radiation alarm is going off.

• 1:48:46November Kelly?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:48:47Speaker 03

  And they and it's for the whole building. So they assume some might be wrong. So they go back out and get a Geiger counter. Standard, standard tools for the station.

• 1:48:57November Kelly?

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 1:48:58Speaker 03

  They walk back into the building and start walking towards the reactor building, the silo we talked about earlier.

• 1:49:03November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 1:49:04Speaker 03

  Get about halfway there and the Geiger counter pegs at 200 Rankin.

• 1:49:10November Kelly?

  Do that. Oh, not good. Not good.

• 1:49:12Speaker 03

  Straight to it.

• 1:49:13November Kelly?

  It's that's and and you're thinking suddenly about how much time you've just spent in that building.

• 1:49:18Speaker 03

  Correct. Really? But but they think it's a false positive. They think the the meter just went haywire. Lads, please. So they go back out to the fire truck. They come back in again with a new meter. This time they're wearing their Scott air packs so that just in case, right? Right, of course. They get closer to the reactor building. It goes straight to 200 again. They're like, wait a minute. Fuck this.

• 1:49:43November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, not going in there. So they leave.

• 1:49:47November Kelly?

  How to clean own diarrhea out of bunker gear pants?

• 1:49:52Speaker 03

  You just go in the suit. It's fine. They leave and at 917, the health physicist for the site arrives. The health physicist is the more intense knowledge on radiation.

• 1:50:04November Kelly?

  Yeah, he knows, for instance, that you don't need to go and get a second Geiger counter before you start running.

• 1:50:09Speaker 03

  Well, he brings the third one.

• 1:50:13Speaker 03

  It's high level is 500 Rankins and they start walking towards the building, towards the silo. They walk halfway up the stairs and it pegs at 500 Rankin. Nope. Fucking no.

• 1:50:23November Kelly?

  He didn't. He didn't tell me that the 200 Rankin was off scale high. I didn't know that piece of information. That also makes me think differently about the about these firefices. Eh, not great, not terrible.

• 1:50:38Speaker 03

  They still haven't found the operators, so they decide to press on and just try and get in and out as quickly as they can. Hopefully finding these these guys.

• 1:50:47November Kelly?

  I mean, at this point, they're like fucking sizzling for heat. It's like, it's it doesn't matter like. At this point, they'd become Tom fucking Brady.

• 1:51:07Speaker 03

  Next slide, please.

• 1:51:10November Kelly?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:51:12Speaker 03

  They turn the corner at the top of the stairs and look in, and this is what they see. Those big blocks are the concrete blocks they were supposed to put on top of the reactor when they were done. Clearly, that didn't happen.

• 1:51:25November Kelly?

  No.

• 1:51:26Speaker 03

  They immediately duck the fuck out when they see this.

• 1:51:31November Kelly?

  Yep.

• 1:51:32Speaker 03

  That sounds like what I would do. And at 10:30.

• 1:51:35November Kelly?

  Just like get a helicopter to dump 500 tons of gravel on top of it and call it a day. Never go back to Idaho. No one goes back to Idaho. Whole state's over. Just take the star off the flag. Yeah, state's closed.

• 1:51:49Speaker 03

  But there's three military men in there. You have to go get them. We're not the US Marines. We do absolutely 200% leave a man behind.

• 1:51:57November Kelly?

  Two, 500 tons of gravel. Put a flag on top of it. I don't care. Top Gear rules.

• 1:52:05Speaker 03

  It's also the 50s, so yellow, we're gonna go back and get them.

• 1:52:08November Kelly?

  Oh, my god.

• 1:52:09Speaker 03

  At 10:30, the lead health physicist for SO1 shows up. His name's Ed Valerio. Or sorry, he gets in his car, drives out with Paul Duckworth, the operations supervisor from combustion engineering. They dawn air packs with the firefighters and go to inspect the facility again. At this point, everyone, their mother, has no idea what happened, and they don't believe anything nuclear happened. This is just an industrial accident, in theory. So they're, they're assuming they need to find these guys, get them out. They'll probably be fine. Let's go.

• 1:52:42November Kelly?

  I'm, I'm, I don't know how you come to that conclusion at this point, but I'm, I'm glad that their response is, let's stay out of the building.

• 1:52:50Speaker 03

  Reactors are inherently safe. These reactors will not explode. That's the thought process. They get to the top of the stairs. They find McKinley still alive.

• 1:53:02November Kelly?

  Jesus Christ. He's landing field goals, states away.

• 1:53:11Speaker 03

  He has a massive facial injury and his, his left hand is essentially blown clean off. But he's still alive.

• 1:53:19Liam McAnderson?

  You could block with one hand, you could block with one hand.

• 1:53:21November Kelly?

  This is the, this is the like, normal guy as well. This is terrible. This is heartbreaking. This is the guy who just, he just wanted to go to work and, and, and like his two coworkers are fucking around and he gets his fucking hand blown off. He gets his face stove in, he gets massively irradiated. Like, I know that's kind of an average workday for a lot of people in the 50s, but like, Jesus Christ.

• 1:53:44Speaker 03

  Well, he's like moaning and like trying to crawl away towards the, towards the door. They find him, they rush out, go get three other men, rush back with a stretcher and throw them on it. While they're doing this, somebody sees Burns on the other side of the reactor, runs over to him, checks his pulse, dead, runs back.

• 1:54:07November Kelly?

  Determinism, you know?

• 1:54:08Speaker 03

  And helps the guys with the stretcher. When they go to exit, one, their Scott.

• 1:54:14November Kelly?

  Wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on. There's one other guy. Where's, where the fuck is leg? Is he just like the perfect wily coyote silhouette on the wall?

• 1:54:21Speaker 03

  Hold that thought.

• 1:54:21November Kelly?

  Oh, hold that thought, yeah.

• 1:54:27Speaker 03

  Their, their air packs start to fail, so they can't, they start like holding their breaths.

• 1:54:31November Kelly?

  Oh, this is a nightmare. This is a nightmare.

• 1:54:34Speaker 03

  One guy's, uh, because of the air pack, it starts fogging up his glasses.

• 1:54:38November Kelly?

  Oh no.

• 1:54:39Speaker 03

  So on their way out the door, what had been holding the door open.

• 1:54:42Liam McAnderson?

  Girls with big glasses as he's just like gasping for air and dying.

• 1:54:45Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 1:54:47Speaker 03

  There was a coffee can holding the door open.

• 1:54:50November Kelly?

  What?

• 1:54:51Speaker 03

  And they trip over it on their way out the door and fall down the stairs.

• 1:54:56November Kelly?

  Holding the what? And just, you, you have to get out of here in like an emergency situation, but first you must, you must navigate the recently deceased Richard Leggs maze of pranks. Like, this is the most anyone has been like posthumously owned by like a dead prankster since the middle sore movies.

• 1:55:24November Kelly?

  You're trying to rush this like horrifically injured guy out and every single one of you steps on a different rake that he has placed there for this purpose.

• 1:55:36Liam McAnderson?

  Banner's falling for the sillies, just saying, "Got you again." Dead guy is falling like raindrops.

• 1:55:46November Kelly?

  Now for my greatest prank yet, vaporizes himself.

• 1:55:55November Kelly?

  They didn't think you could do that with one of these reactors, but he figured it out.

• 1:56:00Speaker 03

  Oh, that thought. We'll get there.

• 1:56:07November Kelly?

  Just the, the level of complacency. Radiation does not need your fear brackets. Yes, it does, but it does demand your respect. And holding open the door to the fucking reactor room with a cat with like a Kenko coffee cat.

• 1:56:21Justin Roczniak?

  It, it, it demands both your respect and your tie.

• 1:56:26November Kelly?

  Your tie, your salt shaker and a little bit of poop to come out of you.

• 1:56:32Liam McAnderson?

  Also your soul, who's to say?

• 1:56:37Speaker 03

  Alright, so they trip over the coffee can, they fall down the stairs.

• 1:56:42November Kelly?

  Just like, barely conscious, incredibly irradiated, missing a hand, being stretched out. You're like, can this day get any worse? And then you get thrown down the stairs.

• 1:56:53Liam McAnderson?

  Keystone cough, maybe you see a catfish on the way out, who's to say?

• 1:56:58November Kelly?

  And then the bin, like perched on top of the door falls on you.

• 1:57:02Speaker 03

  So, yeah. So, because, because we don't know it's, they don't know it's McKinley yet. They just know it's one of the guys that's still alive.

• 1:57:11November Kelly?

  Massive facial injury, yeah. Oh god, okay.

• 1:57:14Speaker 03

  But they take him down the stair, they fall down the stairs and then they throw him and one of the, one of the many employees are here now. They throw him in the back of his panel van because they need to take him to the hospital because he's fucking dying, right? Nobody is thinking about what this man is about to do.

• 1:57:34Liam McAnderson?

  Don't love that.

• 1:57:36Speaker 03

  So they throw him in the panel van, they start up and the next slide plays.

• 1:57:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 1:57:41Speaker 03

  As soon, as soon as they get the van started, the ambulance shows up. So they take him out of the panel van.

• 1:57:51November Kelly?

  And they just bonk his hand on the door frame a bunch of times like.

• 1:57:56Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:57Speaker 03

  They throw him in the ambulance where a nurse is in the back of the ambulance because it's 50s. They throw him in the back of the ambulance. The nurse checks his vitals and says she hears him like hardly breathing, but he's breathing. Close the ambulance door. Off it goes to go to Idaho Falls Hospital.

• 1:58:17Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, this guy's not making it out, huh?

• 1:58:19Speaker 03

  Director of Safety Wayne Bills.

• 1:58:20November Kelly?

  Barely making it in.

• 1:58:22Speaker 03

  Director of Safety Wayne Bills leaves church choir practice because he's heard about the incident and redlines his student baker to go pick up the AEC doctor, John Spicker.

• 1:58:33November Kelly?

  Ow, fucking yeah. Just kicking the ass of your student baker out on like a dirt, like desert road. Fantastic.

• 1:58:39Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then Bill, of course, redlines it all the way to the SO1. They get to the gate at the edge of the site and they see the ambulance coming and they flag it down. The reason is because Director of Safety Wayne Bills has realized that this man is so radioactive that no hospital should have him in it.

• 1:58:59November Kelly?

  Oh, boy.

• 1:59:00Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, no.

• 1:59:02Speaker 03

  They take her, they pull out their Geiger counter, which they have the high end Geiger counter and it reads 400 Rinkens.

• 1:59:08November Kelly?

  Well, it's gone down a hundred, so.

• 1:59:10Speaker 03

  They then grab the nurse and throw her out of the ambulance.

• 1:59:17Speaker 03

  Jump in, check him for a pulse and hear nothing. So the nurse heard his last breaths.

• 1:59:24November Kelly?

  Which must have been a relief for him at that point because like.

• 1:59:27Speaker 03

  Fucking kidding. They grab the driver then, pull him out of the ambulance and go, this thing is so hot that we cannot take it back to the, back to the hospital. We can't take it back to the garage and we can't take.

• 1:59:43November Kelly?

  We, we gotta dig like a, we gotta make like a new access road and this ambulance stays here forever. Somebody's dumping 500 tons of gravel on it.

• 1:59:51Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:52Speaker 03

  They give the driver a lead blanket. Throw him back in the sea, have him turn right and drive into the desert a half mile.

• 2:00:01November Kelly?

  I served the Soviet Union. Yep. By fanning this ambulance.

• 2:00:05Speaker 03

  They say they see the lights go out and then the man jump out the side and start running.

• 2:00:11November Kelly?

  Uh huh.

• 2:00:13Speaker 03

  And then they leave the ambulance. It is now sitting now in the six degree cold indefinitely.

• 2:00:18November Kelly?

  What's, what's the, what's the half life of the like fuel that they're using in this reactor? Because if you wait like a thousand years or whatever, mint condition ambulance. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You gotta scrape the guy out the back of it, but like otherwise.

• 2:00:30Speaker 03

  Spoiler.

• 2:00:31Liam McAnderson?

  Like a putty knife, yeah.

• 2:00:32Speaker 03

  Spoiler, once all of this is said and done, they actually decontaminate this ambulance and use it for another 12 years.

• 2:00:38Liam McAnderson?

  No, they don't. Jesus Christ, man.

• 2:00:41November Kelly?

  And anything with fleet vehicles, you're like, this thing has seen things I don't even want to know about. Ambulance is the worst, the worst for those.

• 2:00:50Liam McAnderson?

  JK's limo, it'll buff out, it'll buff out.

• 2:00:52November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I, I want to hear some ambulance safety thirds. If you can do that without compromising like patient confidentiality, WTYP.

• 2:00:59Liam McAnderson?

  Or we got that message, crashing your ambulance.

• 2:01:04Speaker 03

  FYI, this whole thing is just a safety third. For anybody, I, I, I come back with a whole episode safety third again, so.

• 2:01:15Speaker 03

  Uh, but yeah, they decontaminate the ambulance as a training to practice doing decontamination and get the skills and procedures on how to do it. So it just runs for another 10 years, but we have to move on.

• 2:01:29November Kelly?

  Yes.

• 2:01:29Speaker 03

  Do not change the slide, do not read ahead.

• 2:01:33November Kelly?

  I, I wouldn't trust that ambulance. I'd be like, you missed one bolt or something that you didn't unscrew. And that's currently giving everyone who rides in this ambulance turbo cancer.

• 2:01:41Speaker 03

  So leg has still not been found yet.

• 2:01:44Liam McAnderson?

  Oh.

• 2:01:46Speaker 03

  At 10:38 PM, four men enter the silo with their only job to find leg.

• 2:01:53November Kelly?

  Don't kick over the coffee can on your way out.

• 2:01:55Speaker 03

  They have 60 seconds to get in and out.

• 2:01:57November Kelly?

  The guy's banging the big pipe like, you know?

• 2:02:01Speaker 03

  They do that later on.

• 2:02:02Liam McAnderson?

  Wake up.

• 2:02:03November Kelly?

  Oh my god.

• 2:02:04Speaker 03

  They're, they are given flashlights and they go into the reactor building and start swarming it. Two minutes after they get in, they come back into the control room, ashen and shaken.

• 2:02:14November Kelly?

  Well, probably because they spent twice as long in there as they should have done.

• 2:02:17Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:17Speaker 03

  Well, that takes a minute to get from the reactor to the control room. They get back to their, their waypoint in this mission. One of their flashlights had grazed the ceiling while they were in, just moving around, trying to find him.

• 2:02:32November Kelly?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02:33Speaker 03

  And they found a bundle of rags stuck to the ceiling by a shield plug and control rod.

• 2:02:39November Kelly?

  Oh.

• 2:02:41Speaker 03

  Once they all focused on it, they realized it was Leg.

• 2:02:45November Kelly?

  Uh-huh.

• 2:02:46Speaker 03

  Next slide, please.

• 2:02:48November Kelly?

  This is a horror film. Jesus Christ!

• 2:02:51Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, don't love that. We're gonna have to slap a graphic content warning on this one.

• 2:02:55November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:55Speaker 03

  Uh-huh. I'm sorry.

• 2:02:57Liam McAnderson?

  The good news is I can't even tell this is a guy, so.

• 2:03:00Speaker 03

  I was trying to cut out-

• 2:03:01November Kelly?

  Really, really good prank.

• 2:03:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, I was about to say, died as he lived.

• 2:03:07November Kelly?

  About to do some shit the likes of which you have never seen before.

• 2:03:11Liam McAnderson?

  For my grand finale!

• 2:03:15November Kelly?

  The prestige, Master One.

• 2:03:17Speaker 03

  I tried to cut most of the graphics out, but you can't miss that for this story.

• 2:03:21November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:03:23Speaker 03

  It, I, it could get a lot worse with the autopsies, but we're gonna skip that, cuz I don't-

• 2:03:27Liam McAnderson?

  Thank you.

• 2:03:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:03:29November Kelly?

  I, I, I'm, I'm morbid enough that I might look those up in my own time, but like-

• 2:03:33Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, do you know?

• 2:03:33Speaker 03

  If you want links after this, I can send them.

• 2:03:36November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, please do. I, I, I love, uh, I love, I love gore, I guess. I'm not sure why, I don't know what's wrong with me.

• 2:03:41Speaker 03

  I'll, I'll also cite my sources at the end, so people can go, "Big."

• 2:03:47November Kelly?

  Yep.

• 2:03:48Speaker 03

  So, they find Leg, and everybody gets the fuck out of the reactor and leaves for the last time. Because now there is no point to risk radiation at all.

• 2:03:57November Kelly?

  500 tons of gravel.

• 2:03:58Speaker 03

  Fucking dead.

• 2:03:59November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:00Speaker 03

  But there's a problem. If you look in the diagram, he is directly above the reactor. There is concern- That if he has enough thistle material stuck in him, or because a person is mostly water, if he falls and moderates the reactor, it will heat up again and go off again.

• 2:04:21November Kelly?

  This guy was so fucking good at pranks.

• 2:04:25November Kelly?

  He almost pulled another one off after he died.

• 2:04:29Speaker 03

  So you can't just fucking leave.

• 2:04:34Speaker 03

  And also it's the 50s, you can't, you can't leave your brethren behind, question mark, question mark.

• 2:04:40November Kelly?

  He was an asshole, but he was our asshole.

• 2:04:43Justin Roczniak?

  Yes.

• 2:04:43Liam McAnderson?

  One of our assholes, other guy's dead, so.

• 2:04:45November Kelly?

  One of our assholes is missing.

• 2:04:49Speaker 03

  So before we.

• 2:04:49Liam McAnderson?

  Me when I eat too much Taco Bell.

• 2:04:55Justin Roczniak?

  That's if someone's missing from the bridge of the spaceship from Spaceballs, right?

• 2:05:04Speaker 03

  So before we talk about getting him out of there, we have to talk about what the fuck happened. And this is where we have to talk about what prompt criticality is versus regular criticality. Criticality. Regular criticality is what we talked about with moderation, where you have general decay going through. You're trying to increase that to a point where you get heat, enough heat to run some. Simple way of explaining it, not going for scientific accuracy here. Prompt criticality is less the slow reaction and more comparable to a nuclear bomb.

• 2:05:39November Kelly?

  Last night, the Vladimir Illich Lenin Nuclear Power Plant achieved its target for the generation of electricity under the five-year plan in .001 microseconds.

• 2:05:50Speaker 03

  Correct. You're shotgunning neutrons out, neutrons out, and it's guaranteed, no matter how fast, how slow, whatever, they are going to hit others, which will then cause the process over and over again in a series, faster than you can blink. The reactor had gone prompt critical in four milliseconds. Water boiled in the bottom, or sorry, the fuel boiled in the bottom.

• 2:06:16Speaker 03

  Which then caused the water above it to boil and then push upwards and water hammer the top of the pressure vessel. Yeah.

• 2:06:24Justin Roczniak?

  In terms of like the fuel, the fuel itself, like the uranium turned into a gas.

• 2:06:31Speaker 03

  Correct. Wow.

• 2:06:32Justin Roczniak?

  Oh.

• 2:06:34Speaker 03

  This, and I just have to read this verbatim. The slug of water was propelled at 150 feet per second, 109 miles per hour about with the average pressure around 500 pounds per square inch. That then hit the top of the vessel and made the entire reactor vessel, the whole tube, jump upwards at 27 feet per second or about 18 miles per hour. But we have the shield plugs in the top, so the control rods can go up and down. They are shot out of the top at 85 feet per second or about 57 miles per hour.

• 2:07:11November Kelly?

  And, and for his finest trick, dick leg is hit by one of these and killed instantly.

• 2:07:17Speaker 03

  Correct. He's standing above it when it happens.

• 2:07:22November Kelly?

  Oh. I mean, at least you probably don't know anything about it. I'll take that over the like agonizing radiation death where they're throwing me in and out of different panels.

• 2:07:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yes, and dropping me down the stairs.

• 2:07:33Speaker 03

  And dropping me down.

• 2:07:34Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:35Speaker 03

  So, so of course, all the shield plugs and control rods just went up until they hit something.

• 2:07:41November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 2:07:41Speaker 03

  The, the whole vessel jumped all the way up nine feet, hit the crane above it and then fell back into the hole. So we know that the reactor went prompt critical because a brass screw on McKinley's lighter and then the watchband on Burns had both turned a radioactive copper 64.

• 2:08:03November Kelly?

  Whoa.

• 2:08:04Speaker 03

  So that means the only way this could have happened is if that reactor went full on and irradiated everything around it.

• 2:08:12Speaker 03

  Before that, though, before they discover that in the investigation, no one believed that this reactor had detonated itself. There, we'll get to it in the next slide, but there's more than one theory about what actually happened. But we know that it went critical and blew itself to pieces.

• 2:08:29November Kelly?

  Hmm, right.

• 2:08:30Speaker 03

  The picture on the left is what's left of the core.

• 2:08:33November Kelly?

  All those like cruciform things with the paddles in which have just been busted wide open.

• 2:08:38Speaker 03

  Correct, and turned to, turned to scrap. That's all aluminum too, so you can imagine all that just like shredded, you know, it's, it's not like it's steel. Just where it just kind of blew apart. The next slide.

• 2:08:51November Kelly?

  A radioactive pipe bomb.

• 2:08:53Speaker 03

  Pretty much.

• 2:08:54November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:56Speaker 03

  So what happened? What caused this to happen? Instead of control rod number nine, the center one being lifted four inches and attached to the drive mechanism. It's calculated that it was lifted 20 inches. You remember the reactor was two feet tall.

• 2:09:13November Kelly?

  Yes. Just grabbing yoink too hard.

• 2:09:17Speaker 03

  Somehow, correct. The theories that start were industrial accident first. Then immediately people thought it was sabotage because Cold War. So during the investigation, they do chemical analysis to find any kind of explosives and can't find it. That rules that out instantly.

• 2:09:36November Kelly?

  I have a theory. I have a theory, which is it, so Burns is pulling out the thing. And Leg is behind him, uh, just blowing out into the paper bag.

• 2:09:49Speaker 03

  Well, about that.

• 2:09:50November Kelly?

  Oh my god.

• 2:09:52Speaker 03

  The, the theory that starts going around in the, in the space is that it's a murder suicide with two explanations. The first, that is the one that's spread the most on like bullshit YouTube videos and even in the reports in the sixties. Was that Leg was cheating on, or cheating with Burns's wife? Or Burns was cheating with Leg's wife, so they.

• 2:10:17November Kelly?

  Being, being.

• 2:10:18Speaker 03

  Prank.

• 2:10:20November Kelly?

  I was gonna say, yeah.

• 2:10:22Speaker 03

  Or the other one is that Burns was fucking hated Leg, fucking hated his wife.

• 2:10:28November Kelly?

  Plausible.

• 2:10:29Speaker 03

  Fucking hated his job.

• 2:10:30November Kelly?

  Plausible.

• 2:10:31Speaker 03

  And decided just to fucking kill himself in the hardest way possible.

• 2:10:34November Kelly?

  But why would you do that with something that you believe to be inherently safe? Right.

• 2:10:40Speaker 03

  So.

• 2:10:40November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:41Speaker 03

  There's an explanation for that. There's a mix in the reports that people either thought that this won't explode, but if you pull the rod out, it will just irradiate the piss out of you.

• 2:10:52November Kelly?

  But that's a horrible way to die. Like generally. Okay, yeah, people, he's just like, I don't know what that does. Sure. Yeah. It's like. It's probably fine. You're in the military in the 50s in Idaho. You have a gun and everyone around you is using theirs to kill themselves with. Like you did like.

• 2:11:12Justin Roczniak?

  It's just like the prestige where the guy thought that drowning was painless.

• 2:11:18November Kelly?

  It's like a nuclear physicist or like health physicist having to be like, no, no, no, no, no. Actually extremely painful to die of radiation sickness. Yeah.

• 2:11:26Speaker 03

  Yeah. So that's like what gets spread around is it's a murder suicide. I forgot to mention up earlier that at seven o'clock the night of the incident, Burns's wife called to ask for a divorce and the last thing they talked about was dividing up his paycheck after the divorce.

• 2:11:43November Kelly?

  Let me, let me, let me just call my famously like buddy rich level fly off the handle husband. Um, at work at the nuclear reactor to tell him that I'm gonna divorce him. And I think he, I think his boss just like shook his hand, but he had one of those electric buzzers.

• 2:12:04November Kelly?

  Just hanging up that vocal like, hmm, that's, um, hmm, hmm. He's got a flower.

• 2:12:16Speaker 03

  So that's the theory that gets spread around, likely bullshit because why, right? Like also Leg's wife is pregnant, so why would Burns? Yeah, it doesn't.

• 2:12:27November Kelly?

  Pregnant and heavily Mormon as well.

• 2:12:29Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 2:12:30November Kelly?

  Yeah. Lightly pregnant, heavily Mormon. Um, yeah, no, I, I, I, I do buy interpersonal beef of just like this guy just tied my shoelaces together or whatever. For the last time. Yeah.

• 2:12:43November Kelly?

  Either as he was doing the thing, or he's like, fuck it, I'll irradiate everybody. I don't give a fuck.

• 2:12:48Speaker 03

  That's, that's what, if you want to believe that Burns did it to try and kill himself, but they all believe these reactors were safe. That's probably what it was, was fuck it, I'm right. I fucking hate legs, so he can die with me. We'll just vaporize each other.

• 2:13:03November Kelly?

  And do, do that to Paul McKinley? I, I never like to like libel, libel the dead necessarily. And I, whenever we do the, um, the USS Iowa turret explosion, we'll talk some more about that. Uh, assuming we haven't done it already and I've forgotten it. So like, uh, yeah, no, I'm, I'm, I'm buying like, practical joke, potentially gone horribly wrong in the funniest way. Yeah.

• 2:13:31Speaker 03

  Well, about that, um, the next theory we need to talk about is oops, which is the rod got stuck and it's 84 pounds. So you're trying to-

• 2:13:42November Kelly?

  Lifted like unhandled 84 pound, like vertical weights, just like manually. I'm doing a kind of jerk off motion here.

• 2:13:50Speaker 03

  Yep. So like he's down-

• 2:13:52Justin Roczniak?

  The radiation leaks out as you lift it, you get stronger.

• 2:13:57Liam McAnderson?

  Eventually, right. Eventually you, you, you do it, Aaron Rodgers.

• 2:14:01November Kelly?

  Weighted squats with the, with the control rods, like.

• 2:14:05Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:06Speaker 03

  So the thought is it got stuck. He yoinked on it too hard, went up to 20 inches. Off it went.

• 2:14:13November Kelly?

  Just like whoop. And the second it does that, you just, it does a comedy sound effect and then blows your boss's head off and throws him into the ceiling.

• 2:14:21Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:23November Kelly?

  And you're like, man, I, I don't even necessarily like that guy that much. And then milliseconds later, you are shredded by aluminium.

• 2:14:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:32Speaker 03

  So we get to the-

• 2:14:36Speaker 03

  I have a personal theory I need to say first. Listening to Todd Tucker talk about this, who wrote, essentially wrote the book on this accident after all the accident reports. He believes Leg was who was on the control rod and because of where his body ends up with control rods or shield plug seven going through him, because he would have had to be standing on top of the reactor, right?

• 2:14:58November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:59Speaker 03

  So he, he has a theory that it was Leg lifting the rod and that it just got stuck because of the poor maintenance on this reactor. That's an easy, that's a simple explanation for this, right?

• 2:15:10November Kelly?

  Hmm.

• 2:15:11Speaker 03

  My belief is if it was Burns, and again, this is after reading all the reports and all the reports argue themselves. So there's not really, the final answer was not really direct.

• 2:15:23November Kelly?

  We don't know. We'll, we'll never know.

• 2:15:24Speaker 03

  We'll never know because the only guys that know got blown to hell.

• 2:15:28November Kelly?

  Right. Should have, should have asked McKinley in the ambulance, be like, what did those two assholes do? And while he's kind of like agonily breathing, he's just like, prank gone wrong.

• 2:15:39Liam McAnderson?

  It's just a prank.

• 2:15:42Justin Roczniak?

  Gone sexual.

• 2:15:46November Kelly?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Leg, Leg just sticks this little tiny iPhone microphone and, uh, in Burns' face. I'm just like, what's your body count? About to be three higher.

• 2:15:59Speaker 03

  So what I believe is Burn, Burns was having like the worst night of his fucking life. He's ordered to do this. It gets stuck and he has like a fit of rage, you know, because who wouldn't at this point? And that's when he jerks it and it comes up and off it goes.

• 2:16:17Liam McAnderson?

  Hey, when I jerk it and I kill.

• 2:16:19November Kelly?

  Yep.

• 2:16:20Speaker 03

  Kill three people and irradiate most of Iowa, Idaho.

• 2:16:24November Kelly?

  Who's that?

• 2:16:25Speaker 03

  If it's Leg, there's one more theory and let me finish saying it before we start.

• 2:16:32November Kelly?

  Jesus, okay.

• 2:16:33Speaker 03

  Leg was a practical jokester.

• 2:16:36November Kelly?

  We know this.

• 2:16:36Speaker 03

  And McKinley is a new trainee on site.

• 2:16:40November Kelly?

  Uh huh.

• 2:16:40Speaker 03

  One thing that has been suggested, other than Leg just pulling it, getting stuck and then pulling harder, is that you could bounce the control rod up and down past the four inches and make the Geiger counter chirp harder every time.

• 2:16:57November Kelly?

  Oh my.

• 2:16:58Speaker 03

  Freaking out your trainee.

• 2:17:03Speaker 03

  So there's a theory that he's bouncing the control rod, making the Geiger counter whir and pissing off McKinley, who's the straight man in our, in our timeline.

• 2:17:17Speaker 03

  Like, oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. It gets stuck and then, gotcha. Explodes.

• 2:17:23Justin Roczniak?

  So his last, last words were whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop.

• 2:17:28November Kelly?

  Even, even more horrible then for that guy to be the longest living witness and to die in like agony to be like, my boss was doing an asshole prank on me and fucked it up so bad that it took me hours to die.

• 2:17:45Liam McAnderson?

  And also we irradiated like half eye now.

• 2:17:48Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. If, if, if life's the joke and death is the punchline, then I don't think this one worked pretty good.

• 2:17:58Speaker 03

  So this is where we get into, there's arguments in all the reports about how it happened because you have, you have combustion engineering in the army not wanting them to take the blame and nuclear power not be dismerched. So that's where you get like theories of like, maybe it was the murder suicide, maybe it was the fucking around with their wives. They investigate all this. You have GE come in as a second investigator or third, sorry. They investigate all this, still have like a lot of reason to not blame nuclear power and blame it on these guys fucking up.

• 2:18:30Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm.

• 2:18:33Speaker 03

  But then Admiral Rickover sends a guy.

• 2:18:39Justin Roczniak?

  And I was never here.

• 2:18:40Speaker 03

  He's not happy with the, the other reports that have gone public. Rickover's guy's report is still classified.

• 2:18:47Justin Roczniak?

  Interesting.

• 2:18:49Speaker 03

  But after interviews, it's surmised that it was the poor reactor condition is why this fucked up.

• 2:18:56Justin Roczniak?

  Uh huh.

• 2:18:57Speaker 03

  Something got stuck.

• 2:18:58Justin Roczniak?

  Bunch of, uh, official looking guys to copy documents and, uh, steal all the salt shakers.

• 2:19:06Liam McAnderson?

  I don't like the sheer amount of photocopy of bird we got going on here.

• 2:19:10Speaker 03

  The lunchroom had a, the lunchroom has a salt shaker up probably. So you had to go get it.

• 2:19:14Liam McAnderson?

  Had.

• 2:19:17Speaker 03

  So the reports argue that the rods never got stucked, the rods always got stucked. In the appendix of one of them, it says the main rod got stuck seven times recently, and then once needed to be moved with a pipe wrench. That's where we get the beating the fucking rod in with the pipe wrench.

• 2:19:33November Kelly?

  Hard to get it out that way as well.

• 2:19:36Speaker 03

  Well, you just pull one of the others out, take the rest with it. So we'll never know. The three guys that know got blown to hell or heaven, clearly not Burns.

• 2:19:46November Kelly?

  Mormon heaven, unclear. I, I, I, I like to believe in universalism, I think. I think Dick Burns or whatever is in heaven. Uh, he's just an asshole there, too.

• 2:19:57Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. Leg is pranking angels in heaven now.

• 2:20:03Liam McAnderson?

  Doing the, doing the paperback thing right behind some cherubim.

• 2:20:08Speaker 03

  So.

• 2:20:08Justin Roczniak?

  You can't, is that the kind that's like a bunch of rings with eyes?

• 2:20:12November Kelly?

  I don't know, man.

• 2:20:14Justin Roczniak?

  Cause that would be difficult on that way. Cause if you get inside the rings, but that seems like a invasion of personal space.

• 2:20:20November Kelly?

  Yeah, it's heaven. What do you care?

• 2:20:23Justin Roczniak?

  It's a good point.

• 2:20:25Speaker 03

  Can we move on to the next slide, please?

• 2:20:26November Kelly?

  Yeah, go for it.

• 2:20:28Speaker 03

  Alright, so we know what happened. We know how it happened to an extent. Now we have to clean this shit up.

• 2:20:34November Kelly?

  Oh, boy. Reactor cleanup detail.

• 2:20:37Speaker 03

  Leg's final practical joke comes up.

• 2:20:41November Kelly?

  Grand finale. Yeah, I'd like to see you retrieve my mangled body.

• 2:20:46Speaker 03

  After four days of planning, Leg's body, which was by far the most contaminated, was retrieved. They would sing guys up for 60 seconds, get pictures or video and come back down to get a general idea of how they're going to do this. They jerry-rigged this stretcher on the right on a crane to slide under him.

• 2:21:06November Kelly?

  How the fuck do you take pictures and video and film? It's gonna get like irradiated to fuck itself.

• 2:21:12Speaker 03

  Well, why you think everything's so grainy?

• 2:21:15November Kelly?

  Yeah, no kidding.

• 2:21:18Speaker 03

  They had to get a welder inside of a lead shielded box attached to a crane to be able to like make this all work.

• 2:21:27November Kelly?

  Of course.

• 2:21:27Speaker 03

  And on January 9th, in relays of two at a time, they put the stretcher in the door underneath leg. And then two men at a time with 65 seconds each poke at him with 10 foot long, sharp hooks. And attempt to pull his body free.

• 2:21:44November Kelly?

  Oh, God.

• 2:21:47Speaker 03

  Without dropping it into the reactor.

• 2:21:49November Kelly?

  Right.

• 2:21:52Speaker 03

  When they get it out and they dump it into a lead cask because it's.

• 2:21:58Liam McAnderson?

  We're also gonna fucking pot it, right?

• 2:21:59November Kelly?

  Slam dunk this guy's body into a sarcophagus.

• 2:22:04Speaker 03

  Did they get him in one piece? As far as everything I've read, they got what was left of him in one piece.

• 2:22:11November Kelly?

  Okay.

• 2:22:12Speaker 03

  That.

• 2:22:12November Kelly?

  This is the worst carnival game ever.

• 2:22:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, it doesn't get into the detail. I don't think the autopsies will ever be classified, but I'm sure he didn't come down cleanly. Probably not. He wasn't rotting, all the bacteria is long dead, but.

• 2:22:27Liam McAnderson?

  There's a reason they call them leg and not legs.

• 2:22:33Speaker 03

  I want to talk about the autopsy, but I can't do it.

• 2:22:36Liam McAnderson?

  No.

• 2:22:36November Kelly?

  Why not? Why not? Talk about the autopsy.

• 2:22:38Liam McAnderson?

  I'm gonna be nauseous.

• 2:22:40Speaker 03

  All right.

• 2:22:40Liam McAnderson?

  You know, knock yourself out. Knock yourself out, Scooter. I got it. I got it.

• 2:22:44November Kelly?

  Just we, we, we support your welfare. Just mute yourself for a bit and go play like Bellatro or something. Cause I want to hear about, I, I have a, I have a medical interest. I want to hear about the, the autopsy.

• 2:22:53Speaker 03

  I'll warn when we get to the part that I'll give you a countdown on, I guess. Uh, so they take them all to the chemical plant at the site and they rig up a, an autopsy room. They had Burns and McKinley, which they still didn't know if McKinley was leg or McKinley yet. They had Burns and McKinley in, on ice in stainless steel tanks. And then they bring Legg in, in the, the leg cask. The autopsies were performed by Clarence Lushbaugh, which is who performed the first autopsy of an irradiated man, which was Cecil Kelly, which happened at Los Alamos, who safety thirded himself by a plutonium purification tank.

• 2:23:37November Kelly?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've read about this. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:23:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:23:39November Kelly?

  You gotta be careful with those barrels.

• 2:23:41Speaker 03

  Turned a switch on, died. But Lushba is famous for being a body snatcher. He would take parts of his autopsies and send them around for other scientists to look at without permission.

• 2:23:54November Kelly?

  How fake pranksters look when a real prankster comes up?

• 2:23:59Speaker 03

  So, we're gonna talk about the autopsies. So, give us like, five minutes.

• 2:24:04Liam McAnderson?

  I'm good. I'm here.

• 2:24:06Speaker 03

  Alright, so, they identify Leg. Once they get him in on a, they had two sawhorses and a stainless steel sheet.

• 2:24:15Liam McAnderson?

  I just want, kinda throw him over like you're like a sack of flour?

• 2:24:18Speaker 03

  You're correct.

• 2:24:19Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah! I can do it, I can do it!

• 2:24:22Speaker 03

  They have medical instruments on ten foot poles that were like, well, tack welded on to the end of these poles. So like a scalpel, some, some, I don't know the terms, but stuff to pull them apart.

• 2:24:33November Kelly?

  You're not gonna be, you're not gonna be precise with that scalpel.

• 2:24:36Speaker 03

  A hacksaw, they have a hacksaw on a pole. And then, the dog catcher wire loop thing, that to grab onto parts and pull them, and pull them out of the way. They identify Leg because he has a Navy Seabees tattoo. So this first time they realize it's Leg, the mass has the Seabee tattoo. So that, then they know that McKinley's the guy that got his face blown off. Burns is discovered to be dead by getting impacted by a flat, something flat. So he got blown away from the reactor, impacted, and a rib broke off and pierced his heart.

• 2:25:14Liam McAnderson?

  Ah, Jesus.

• 2:25:15Speaker 03

  McKinley was, had his face destroyed and his arm blown off because he might have been behind something, and that's why-

• 2:25:23November Kelly?

  So it just catches him in the like, face and hand or whatever, yeah, sure.

• 2:25:28Speaker 03

  And that's why he was likely still alive, but unable to be identified. Leg, obviously was, I'm not saying it the way it is in the autopsy, in what I read. Obviously had pole go through body.

• 2:25:41Liam McAnderson?

  Hmm, sort of a unrecognizable mass of flesh. So just becoming like one of those, like a, like a guy out of like, Cocktail, got one of those Cocktail swords. Yeah. I'm really trying here.

• 2:25:56Speaker 03

  The important thing is they also try and prep the bodies to be less radioactive. But any part that was like McKinley's hand, legs, head, anything that was hyper radioactive, they had to saw off the bodies with the hacks.

• 2:26:13November Kelly?

  Uh huh. Yeah.

• 2:26:15Speaker 03

  They would then take those and put them in a lead line cave at the autopsy site, eventually barreling them up and burying them as radioactive waste with the rest of the reactor.

• 2:26:27November Kelly?

  Incredible.

• 2:26:27Speaker 03

  Most of the, of the command chain in the science side of this wanted the bodies buried offsite with other radioactive waste, never to leave the testing site. But because it's the military and because the families wanted the bodies back, they opted to cut all the most radioactive parts off the bodies, put them in Batesville monoseal caskets.

• 2:26:53November Kelly?

  I really, I, I like the, the, um, the brand name there. Yeah. Batesville monoseal casket.

• 2:26:59Speaker 03

  I gotta shout out my hometown. I have to.

• 2:27:02November Kelly?

  I, I, I Googled Batesville monoseal casket and the first thing is, um, an eBay, uh, listing for the key to one of those. So if anybody wants to do any grave robbing of like extremely radioactive dead bodies, I guess that's easier to find than the casket itself.

• 2:27:22Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I was about to say, what, what, what does an extremely radioactive body, uh, get on the open market these days?

• 2:27:29November Kelly?

  Depends who you sell it to.

• 2:27:30Speaker 03

  I had to shout out my hometown because we're the city of death. They build caskets and the beds that like hospice uses across the street from each other.

• 2:27:40November Kelly?

  Just more, just to get you used to the feeling before you, like, do you use the, the rest of their profit and project line?

• 2:27:47Speaker 03

  You will spend the end of your life in a Batesville product.

• 2:27:52November Kelly?

  I like a shroud burial personally. I don't know that I need to be in a box. I would get claustrophobic.

• 2:27:59Speaker 03

  So, speaking of boxes.

• 2:28:00November Kelly?

  It comes in four different colors. India star Huntington green stark warts and.

• 2:28:04Liam McAnderson?

  Oh, I want Huntington green.

• 2:28:06November Kelly?

  Yeah, me too. It looks really nice.

• 2:28:10Speaker 03

  So, speaking of boxes.

• 2:28:12Justin Roczniak?

  Are we that old? We're looking at caskets.

• 2:28:16November Kelly?

  I'm a trans woman who lives in Britain. I gotta get ahead of this shit while I can.

• 2:28:21Speaker 03

  You got the money, spend it now, right? Only gonna get more expensive.

• 2:28:26November Kelly?

  That's true. Yeah.

• 2:28:31Speaker 03

  Might as well buy the plot wire edit. Just make sure it's got room. So, boxes. They put these guys in the boxes and fly them to their hometowns to be buried. Burns, I don't have the names of the towns handy because I didn't want to talk about it, but oh, well, fuck it. Um, Burns has flown to Michigan and the Atomic Energy Commission goes with each of the caskets to make sure like nobody's getting too close or fucking around with them.

• 2:29:01Justin Roczniak?

  These people are too good at football.

• 2:29:04Justin Roczniak?

  Even from beyond the grave, we gotta have someone with them.

• 2:29:09Speaker 03

  Uh, Burns, Burns's funeral, they want to see the casket. They don't want to just put it in the vault. They want to see it and the Atomic Energy Commission's like, no. They're like for five minutes and they're like, okay. So, for the funeral, they raise the casket out of the concrete vault and the radiation level pegs during his service. So, I can just imagine like two guys in black suits, just like grabbing their collar, starting to sweat as this.

• 2:29:39November Kelly?

  Making the like hurry it up, uh, kind of gesture at the priest like.

• 2:29:44Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, a short, a short version.

• 2:29:48November Kelly?

  Uh, veil of tears, amen.

• 2:29:50Speaker 03

  So, he's buried, uh, Leg is buried in New York, kind of the same situation, nothing of note that I remember. And McKinley is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

• 2:30:04Liam McAnderson?

  It's the least they could fucking do for the guy.

• 2:30:06Justin Roczniak?

  I was about to say, yeah, as the only normal person there.

• 2:30:13Speaker 03

  On January, I'm reading straight from the book here. On January 31st, 1961, this letter was sent to Arlington National Cemetery from the AEC. To Superintendent Arlington National Cemetery. Radioactive remains of SP4 Richard McKinley were interred at Arlington National Cemetery on January 25th, 1961. It is desired that the following remark be placed on the permanent record, Record of Interment. Victim of nuclear accident, body is contaminated with long life radioisotopes. Under no circumstances will the body be moved from this location without prior approval by the Atomic Energy Commission. With consultation from this headquarters.

• 2:30:57November Kelly?

  He's there forever.

• 2:30:58Justin Roczniak?

  There forever at the tomb of the incomplete soldier.

• 2:31:06Justin Roczniak?

  I'm sorry.

• 2:31:11Speaker 03

  So.

• 2:31:12Liam McAnderson?

  We all cope with the bleakness of our own ways here.

• 2:31:14Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, yeah, that's true.

• 2:31:16Speaker 03

  His grave's not like any differently marked than any of the others at Arlington. It's not like they put a trifle oil or anything on it.

• 2:31:23November Kelly?

  This is weirdly warm under your feet, though.

• 2:31:26Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, but what's fascinating.

• 2:31:28November Kelly?

  I've got like underfloor heating here.

• 2:31:30Speaker 03

  And I didn't realize this when I visited Arlington, because I went to see his body, Bur's grave.

• 2:31:36Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:37November Kelly?

  Yeah, a shuffle and some breathing apparatus.

• 2:31:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's my key for sale there. I already used it.

• 2:31:47Speaker 03

  No, I went to see the grave just to see it because I like atomic shit. And what's funny, and it was pointed out inside this book, is you can see from Rickover's grave, McKinley's grave.

• 2:32:02November Kelly?

  Just, yeah, Rickover's epitaph just says, "Should have done it my way."

• 2:32:07Speaker 03

  Well, it's, the book reads, "The irreducible laws of radiation shielding, however, make it necessarily true that some infinitesimal amount of radiation still streams from McKinley's shattered body, crosses Sheridan Drive, and illuminates ever so slightly the grave of Admiral Rickover."

• 2:32:26November Kelly?

  That's incredible.

• 2:32:27Speaker 03

  A fitting end for them both.

• 2:32:29Justin Roczniak?

  You can, you can, you can tell Rickover's grave because there's just a patch of brown there. The earth has been salted.

• 2:32:38November Kelly?

  Nothing will ever go again, of course.

• 2:32:39Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:41Speaker 03

  Alright, next slide, please. I'll make this one short, I'm sorry.

• 2:32:44November Kelly?

  It's fine. It's literally fine. I'm having the time of my life. Yeah, this has been good.

• 2:32:48Speaker 03

  So, General Electric's named the prime contractor for cleanup. It's 1961 and the, or sorry, it's the end of 1961, going into 1962, and President Kennedy has just canceled the aircraft nuclear propulsion project.

• 2:33:04November Kelly?

  Oswald was right.

• 2:33:07November Kelly?

  Now, this is, this is the real truth. There's an Air Force guy gone.

• 2:33:10Speaker 03

  So, so General Electric has like 500 people at the testing site and nothing for them to do. So, it works out because now they can just send them next door.

• 2:33:20November Kelly?

  Oh, being in the military fucking sucks so bad.

• 2:33:23Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. You want to clean up this horrible thing that happened?

• 2:33:27November Kelly?

  Yeah, you all just got volunteered to dismantle the most radioactive grain silo ever made.

• 2:33:32Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:33Speaker 03

  Do you want to keep your fucking job or not?

• 2:33:37Justin Roczniak?

  Listen, there's only a little bit of gore still left in there.

• 2:33:43Speaker 03

  There might be a jolly buzzer or a whoopee cushion too. You gotta watch out for those.

• 2:33:51Speaker 03

  So, GE goes in, starts to, starts the process of cutting into the buildings so they can get the reactor body out. They have the 60-second time limit. You go in, you cut, you get the fuck out, you're done for three months.

• 2:34:08November Kelly?

  I, I gotta be honest, I'm not doing shit in those 60 seconds. I'm gonna pretend to do, I'm gonna pretend to work, and I'm gonna be like, okay, I'm done. Because like, I'm in there for, they're not checking. They're not, what are they gonna do? Send me back in? Be like, oh, it doesn't count. You didn't do it. Like, fuck you, I was in there for 30 seconds.

• 2:34:24Speaker 03

  I didn't hear any grinding, motherfucker. Send me again.

• 2:34:28November Kelly?

  My kid's gonna have horns because of you. Fuck off.

• 2:34:31Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I go in there and I spend the first 30 seconds looking at the gauge on the acetylene torch and trying to remember if this is a setting that's fine or one that causes it to instantly blow up.

• 2:34:42Speaker 03

  Does this? Does this?

• 2:34:44Liam McAnderson?

  Don't worry about that.

• 2:34:44Speaker 03

  Or does this cut the beam?

• 2:34:46Liam McAnderson?

  Yeah, once it says that, you're dead anyway. Don't worry about that.

• 2:34:49November Kelly?

  Yeah, you know what it says, like, measure three or four times, cut, you know, well, maybe cut like once.

• 2:34:56Speaker 03

  So they they have 500 people taking turns to go in and out of the building to get this. They cut away, get into where they can get a crane to lift the vessel and they pull it, they pull it out, but there's a problem. There's nowhere big enough on the test site to take this thing, except for the hangar from the aircraft nuclear program at Test Area North, which is 20 miles, 35 miles away. So they have to put it in this truck with this vessel in the picture, remove 45 power lines and drive the tractor trailer with a convoy of like 50 cars, cops.

• 2:35:34November Kelly?

  The scariest psychos in early 1960s America had ever produced, which is a fucking, that's a, that's stiff competition.

• 2:35:42Speaker 03

  Up a high, yeah, up a highway at 10 miles per hour to take it into the hot shop. Once they get the reactor out of the building, it it's much easier. They can go in, scrub, cut, take stuff down without as much of a time limit. They bury everything from the silo 1600 feet northeast of where it was sitting. But they keep the control building and all the auxiliary buildings until 1993.

• 2:36:09November Kelly?

  Yeah, just in case you need them. Army never throws anything away.

• 2:36:12Speaker 03

  Well, what they did was use as practice for decontamination to learn how to make a site usable again. So they.

• 2:36:21Justin Roczniak?

  All right, kids, let's get into this highly contaminated radioactive site. We're gonna, we're gonna do some decontamination.

• 2:36:29Liam McAnderson?

  Let's spread that with hot water. It's fine. Get that, break out the, break out the purple stuff.

• 2:36:33Speaker 03

  That's what they did. And then they painted over the walls inside the building to just hold the radiation in. I'm not joking. Lead paint's a hell of a thing.

• 2:36:41November Kelly?

  Lead paint, yeah, I was gonna say, yeah.

• 2:36:44Justin Roczniak?

  Landlord special, it works.

• 2:36:45Speaker 03

  Anywhere the soil was too hot, they'd just pave over with asphalt. Uh, and it lasts that way till 1993 where they finally decided to decommission these buildings. North or Lockheed Martin, sorry, gets in to do the decommissioning, gets paid infinitesimal money, buries all this shit with the rest of the shit 1600 feet away. And then sometime in the 2000s, the super fun site that SL1 becomes is not good enough to be just left as a burial ground. So they have to do a cleanup again, move everything out of the burial site and into essentially a radiation landfill further into the Idaho, the Idaho facility. So this was a general contractor's wet fucking dream.

• 2:37:30November Kelly?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:37:31Justin Roczniak?

  What a sentence.

• 2:37:32November Kelly?

  I used to make so much money off of this.

• 2:37:34Speaker 03

  So much goddamn money. So SL1's gone. Has the army learned its lesson?

• 2:37:41November Kelly?

  Probably not.

• 2:37:42Speaker 03

  Next slide, please. Hell, no, they didn't.

• 2:37:49Speaker 03

  So Camp Sentry's reactor is already running and SL1 was where they trained people to send them to Camp Sentry. Because Camp Sentry was relatively the same as SL1, it had the same problem. The central control rod had way more capability of starting the reactor up. So they put an interlock on the central control rod that no one can touch without the base commander there.

• 2:38:18November Kelly?

  Just, just putting a, a big sign on it that says, do not kill everyone.

• 2:38:22Speaker 03

  Yeah. So they run the Camp Sentry reactor till 1963 and then decide, fuck this, it's not worth it and take it out and they take it out back and shoot it essentially.

• 2:38:36Speaker 03

  Ship it back home. I don't know where it's buried, but it it gets disposed of in March 1962. The Fort Greeley, Alaska reactor comes online. It's an Alco reactor, so it's a pressurized water reactor. It's fine. It works for a while. They decide it's not worth it and go back to coal power. Also in 1962, a PM3 reactor sent to Antarctica to McMurdo Station. They used it for heating and operating the the the base down there for the Navy. It lasts a few years, gets decommissioned. And in 1967, the MH1A Sturgis, a converted Liberty ship, had a 10-megawatt reactor installed for the Panama Canal Zone.

• 2:39:19November Kelly?

  Wow. Hey, do you mind if we just run this nuclear reactor inside part of your country?

• 2:39:25Justin Roczniak?

  Well, by the way, it doesn't matter because we own it.

• 2:39:27November Kelly?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:29Speaker 03

  Sucks to suck.

• 2:39:30Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:30Speaker 03

  I I it was it was Jay that pointed out, I think, that they put the reactor on a Liberty ship known for breaking in half.

• 2:39:39November Kelly?

  Oh, we've talked about those ships.

• 2:39:43Justin Roczniak?

  Uh huh.

• 2:39:44Speaker 03

  So it was just moored at a dock, so it should be fine, but it lasted. It lasted. Good. Sorry.

• 2:39:52Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, weld some, you know, you know, weld some beams on the side. It'll be fine.

• 2:39:59Speaker 03

  It lasted a few years, but then they decided it's probably not a good idea to have a nuclear reactor in a contested part of the country. So they pulled it out and then because they didn't have anywhere else to send it, they scrapped it.

• 2:40:10Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:40:11Speaker 03

  And so the Army's nuclear program ended. They never deployed SL1 clones to the Doo Line because the Doo Line was outdated by when it started. They didn't deploy them up north anymore than they needed to. They had one station in Wyoming that I didn't list here.

• 2:40:28November Kelly?

  The whole thing was a waste of time.

• 2:40:30Speaker 03

  Pretty much. It was there for like two years.

• 2:40:33Justin Roczniak?

  The United States Army is still the world's number one consumer of diesel fuel.

• 2:40:38November Kelly?

  Well, I mean, good, good news. The Army Futures Command is mooting. What if we just, what if we, what if we got back into the nuke business? What if we had a very small, very reliable nuclear reactor we could use for remote installations? Wouldn't that be handy? Now, far be it from me to speculate as to what installations they might be talking about, but they are talking about it, so. This can all happen again. And the only thing stopping us from this happening again is woke, right? Because

• 2:41:11November Kelly?

  the current dismantling of woke is going to create another situation where men hate their bitch wives. Because under woke, men, you know, love their wives, whereas this, this is the kind of like, you know, the patriarchal thing where you hate your bitch wife. You don't want her to divorce you. You are sleeping in your car, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And as we increase the divorcedness of America in a kind of malignant, like, a fault required sort of way, this is more likely to happen again.

• 2:41:39Justin Roczniak?

  You two can join the army and become a stupid nuclear science bitch.

• 2:41:48November Kelly?

  The like, the only way to make this safe is to make it so that the relationships are very positive and very chill and everybody takes it seriously and everybody is a scientist. You have to have the cadre of the thing be a polycule. It's the only way, only way it works, mandatory, no exception.

• 2:42:05Justin Roczniak?

  Unfortunately, it's the army, so that absolutely will not happen.

• 2:42:08November Kelly?

  I know. Brutal.

• 2:42:10Justin Roczniak?

  Well, that's why it works on the Navy.

• 2:42:14November Kelly?

  See you all again for the SL12 episode when some like MAGA chud soldier gets like impaled with a reactor core.

• 2:42:25Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I mean, it's the secret of running a good nuclear reactor is some form of sodomy.

• 2:42:33November Kelly?

  Because, because, because doing this honors the god Uranus,

• 2:42:40November Kelly?

  to whom, you know, uranium is named and after whom Uranian, the first term for gay was called. So this is, this is why it's important. You gotta be gay. You gotta, radiation, gay science. You gotta, you gotta be gay.

• 2:42:53Justin Roczniak?

  Yep.

• 2:42:53November Kelly?

  Roz and I have to just burn coal, I guess.

• 2:42:58November Kelly?

  You can use renewables, it's fine.

• 2:42:59Speaker 03

  So, before we move on, there is currently a program where they are planning to put a small modular reactor back in Alaska for the Army.

• 2:43:10November Kelly?

  Let's fucking go.

• 2:43:11Speaker 03

  Hopefully, they learned their lesson.

• 2:43:14November Kelly?

  Is the United States Army a lesson-learning institution? Does it do that?

• 2:43:18Speaker 03

  Ask Pete.

• 2:43:19Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, we got a ninety, we got a ninety-slide PowerPoint presentation about that.

• 2:43:28November Kelly?

  Well, there's your problem, the US Army.

• 2:43:30Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:31Speaker 03

  So, I wanted to end on the note of, at the end of the day, SL1, all the Army reactors were small modular reactors. They're able to be put anywhere, supposed to be transported, built for a specific use. And that's all the rage nowadays, is building a small modular reactor that we can put anywhere, use to power smaller cities. It doesn't cost as much, it's easier to build.

• 2:43:55Justin Roczniak?

  Or you have like a big power plant that has like twenty of them on racks.

• 2:43:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so you can shut one down, the rest run. And while I was doing this, I found this picture, I don't, it was like a general picture, it didn't say which company this was, but it looks familiar, about twenty feet tall, has a big cap on the top, is about the same size as SL1's. And it's just rings back to the poster that was spread around after the accident, lest we forget. Engineers in all fields still refer back to SL1 as you can't make it so simple, one person can fuck it up. No matter what their intentions are, it shouldn't be a situation where one person can blow a reactor up,

• 2:44:43Speaker 03

  or fire the missile, or whatever.

• 2:44:47Justin Roczniak?

  Do a hilarious prank.

• 2:44:49Speaker 03

  It is honor, right?

• 2:44:52November Kelly?

  But time is a flat circle.

• 2:44:54Speaker 03

  This is why like these newer reactors are going to have to be incredibly heavily censored, automated, etc. Because with smaller reactors, there's less in there and do more with it. There's always the chance. Uh, I just wanted to point out as well that in our nuclear fearing world, everybody's starting to catch on to nuclear reactors, but the SMR guys just seem to name their shit in the least confidence building way.

• 2:45:23November Kelly?

  Oh, God.

• 2:45:24Speaker 03

  You have new scale that's like leading the field field in it, but then the Idaho National Laboratory named their SMR, the four S, the super safe, small and simple reactor.

• 2:45:36Justin Roczniak?

  I thought that started with Toshiba or something.

• 2:45:39Speaker 03

  Me too.

• 2:45:40Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:45:41Speaker 03

  It's a whole, there, everybody's getting in on it.

• 2:45:44Justin Roczniak?

  Right.

• 2:45:44Speaker 03

  But then there's also Terra Power, which is Bill Gates company.

• 2:45:48November Kelly?

  Terra Power?

• 2:45:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, Terra Power.

• 2:45:51Justin Roczniak?

  Is that the one that's across the river where New York shipbuilding used to be?

• 2:45:56Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 2:45:56Justin Roczniak?

  I don't know either. I'm pretty sure they build like either components for SMRs or SMRs in there.

• 2:46:03Speaker 03

  Um, that's wild.

• 2:46:04Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:05Speaker 03

  Well, my last, the last one's my favorite. Their website made me laugh. The Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation? Uh huh. With their micro modular reactor?

• 2:46:16Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, oh, MMR. Great radio station.

• 2:46:21November Kelly?

  Ultra safe.

• 2:46:22Speaker 03

  So let's hope they take from what we've learnt today as well.

• 2:46:26Justin Roczniak?

  Hmm. My, uh, my, my nuclear power corporation's name is raising a lot of questions, which are answered by the name of my nuclear power corporation.

• 2:46:37Speaker 03

  So what'd we learn other than don't make it so simple? No, the term is bad.

• 2:46:43November Kelly?

  Pranks at work are always funny and will never backfire.

• 2:46:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, prank, pranks at work, great idea. People will love you for it.

• 2:46:50November Kelly?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:46:50Justin Roczniak?

  Um, you definitely won't piss off other people so much that, um, you cause the stupidest nuclear disaster in history.

• 2:46:59Speaker 03

  Don't let your nuclear reactor get into such a bad shape that shit gets stuck in it. Probably a good idea.

• 2:47:05November Kelly?

  Probably a good one.

• 2:47:07Justin Roczniak?

  Uh, don't put like 20 year olds in charge of a nuclear reactor.

• 2:47:12November Kelly?

  No.

• 2:47:13Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:13November Kelly?

  That was Rick. Seven year olds in charge of it. Right.

• 2:47:16Speaker 03

  That was Rick over his big thing when it came to Three Mile Island, because he was brought in as a consultant for that. Of course, was that in the shipping port reactor, he always had supervision, somebody that knew the reactor back, forward and so on. Where at Three Mile Island, even though they were all Navy nukes, there was no one that was overhead of them. They just kind of flailed. He was then brought back on to be for to say Three Mile Island one was safe. Because they wouldn't start it up without his blessing after they, after he bashed in their heads with his comments.

• 2:47:53Justin Roczniak?

  That he stole.

• 2:47:56November Kelly?

  As, as he was leaving, they're like, didn't we have more cooling towers than that?

• 2:48:00Speaker 03

  Where are my pants?

• 2:48:05Speaker 03

  No one in the control room is wearing a tie. What happened, guys?

• 2:48:11Justin Roczniak?

  Well, we have a segment on this podcast called Safety Third.

• 2:48:19Justin Roczniak?

  Hello, Justin, November, yay, Liam, Devon, et cetera.

• 2:48:24November Kelly?

  You demoted to a Sashros goes from.

• 2:48:26Justin Roczniak?

  Wow. This story comes to you from the exciting world of piano tuning.

• 2:48:33November Kelly?

  Oh, I saw this one.

• 2:48:35Justin Roczniak?

  Warner Brothers has, of course, made us all very aware of the many things that can go horribly wrong around pianos.

• 2:48:41Speaker 03

  That's what we forgot is like, did it drop a piano on first?

• 2:48:46Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, no, no, I did mention a lot of pianos are being delivered.

• 2:48:51November Kelly?

  You know where we covered it?

• 2:48:52Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, these instruments can and do, in fact, fall on people, fire their steel springs into walls and floors and albeit only partially implode.

• 2:49:03November Kelly?

  Oh.

• 2:49:05Justin Roczniak?

  But today's story instead comes from the fact that so many people nowadays forget that we piano technicians still exist. Well, I don't.

• 2:49:15November Kelly?

  And thank you for your service.

• 2:49:16Justin Roczniak?

  Right. On the day in question, one of my tuning appointments was a grand piano in the front stage in a middle school auditorium. So far, nothing out of the ordinary. I signed in, I scanned my ID, the front desk summons the music teacher who leads me to the piano and promptly runs back to her class. I get to work. Some fifteen minutes of tuning pass and the public address system crackles to life. Working in schools means contending with announcements and the occasional fire drill. Shelter in place is the command from a calm and unhurried voice with not much more explanation. This seems to be some kind of lockdown drill, definitely better than

• 2:49:59Justin Roczniak?

  a fire drill, so I get to stay put and keep working. A few more minutes pass and the voice is back on the public address system. All students are being told to go to the neighboring high school's auditorium. On command, the sound of hundreds of feet not so enthusiastically marching down the halls rattle the doors of the middle school auditorium. There's a sort of institutional malaise about the whole thing. This is obviously, yeah, this is obviously some sort of drill they make the kids do. There's no instruction to the staff, teachers or contractors. The main office, where I had signed in maybe twenty five minutes prior, was less than fifty feet from the auditorium, so I figured if there

• 2:50:44Justin Roczniak?

  was some sort of actual emergency, they could easily open the door and shout. So I kept working. The building gradually went quiet again, which is the perfect condition for my work to continue. I've finished up with.

• 2:50:59November Kelly?

  I'm concerned that there's just like a tornado bearing down on the sky like the, I say guy, I assume, just a tornado bearing down on a heroic piano tuner like the end of, um, uh, Serious Man.

• 2:51:11Justin Roczniak?

  I finish up with the tuning and move on to some minor mechanical adjustments. And at this, it is at this point that I realize just how quiet the building has gotten, but my work is nearly done and I still haven't been given any instruction to go anywhere else.

• 2:51:26November Kelly?

  Autism moment. I feel you.

• 2:51:29Justin Roczniak?

  Just as I was finishing up, the side door of the auditorium opened. Through the big double door, walked a local police officer. Our eyes met with similarly shocked expressions on our faces. All I could think to say was, "Oh,

• 2:51:47Justin Roczniak?

  you gotta get out of here, man. You smell gas?"

• 2:51:49November Kelly?

  Oh, thank god, it's just about to explode. At least it's not a mass shooting. Jesus Christ.

• 2:51:55Justin Roczniak?

  Before I could reply, the opposing side door burst open behind me. Two more police officers marched in. "Are you child's name redacted?" one asked.

• 2:52:05November Kelly?

  Weird thing for a cop to say.

• 2:52:08Justin Roczniak?

  "No, I'm the piano tuner," I said, "my hand still inside said instrument."

• 2:52:14November Kelly?

  Visibly tuning piano. "No, I'm the piano tuner. Who are you and how did you get in here? I'm a locksmith and I'm a locksmith."

• 2:52:23Justin Roczniak?

  These three officers were apparently risking their lives to search for a missing child inside a school that was about to explode.

• 2:52:33Justin Roczniak?

  "Can I grab my tools?" I asked for some reason. The policeman said, "Yeah, I guess. Just get out of here."

• 2:52:39Speaker 03

  Picks up his tools, spark happens, everyone dies.

• 2:52:44Justin Roczniak?

  That's, that's why piano tuners' tools are made of beryllium.

• 2:52:50November Kelly?

  Can I just take my control rod with me?

• 2:52:54Justin Roczniak?

  Ah, shit.

• 2:52:57November Kelly?

  It's weird that they had that on stage.

• 2:52:59Speaker 03

  Tuning the piano and one of the keys is the bomb?

• 2:53:03November Kelly?

  Tuning the piano in the experimental nuclear reactor.

• 2:53:07Justin Roczniak?

  Oh, they gotta, they're trying to, they're trying to train the kids early on nuclear reactors so they're better at it when they go into the army.

• 2:53:14November Kelly?

  They do, yeah.

• 2:53:15Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah. So with my toolbag, that's STEM education right there. With my toolbag now on my back, I made my way out of the auditorium and towards the exit. Emerging into the atrium, I was met with a sea of flashing lights. Hmm.

• 2:53:30Liam McAnderson?

  Sleepy baby.

• 2:53:31Justin Roczniak?

  A little bit tired, yeah. Sea of flashing lights shining through the glass of the school's main doors. An armada of police, fire, and EMS vehicles surrounded the school. I held the door open for yet more confused police officers entering the school. As I stepped out and walked back to my car, I smelled it. And from extensive experience blowing stuff up in my backyard as a teen, I recognized it immediately as burning plastic, not gas. I had, in fact, smelled it earlier and figured New Jersey just smelled like that.

• 2:54:05Justin Roczniak?

  Since I hadn't had the time to put the various exterior parts back onto the piano, I had no choice. Yeah, I had no choice but to sit in my car and eat lunch while the situation blew over, rather than have the school staff try and reassemble the piano. Soon enough, the students were marching back to the school, confirming that, yes, indeed, New Jersey just smells like that.

• 2:54:32Justin Roczniak?

  Regards from Luca Sepola.

• 2:54:35Liam McAnderson?

  Chipola?

• 2:54:36Justin Roczniak?

  Chipola?

• 2:54:37Liam McAnderson?

  I don't know.

• 2:54:38Justin Roczniak?

  Chipole?

• 2:54:39Liam McAnderson?

  Chipole?

• 2:54:40November Kelly?

  Thank you for sending in Safety Thirds. Send in more Safety Thirds. W T Y P pod at gmail dot com. Buy the shirts.

• 2:54:49Justin Roczniak?

  Keep the Safety Thirds to about a page in length if you can.

• 2:54:52Liam McAnderson?

  Please.

• 2:54:52Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:53Liam McAnderson?

  By the time we get here, we're all delirious from pranksters and Facebook.

• 2:54:59November Kelly?

  If we get a few good, long ones, we'll just do an all Safety Third episode.

• 2:55:03Speaker 03

  That will be the third one we've done. You're welcome.

• 2:55:06Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.

• 2:55:08Liam McAnderson?

  All right, end this.

• 2:55:10Justin Roczniak?

  All right, that was Safety Third.

• 2:55:16Justin Roczniak?

  Our next episode will be on Chernobyl. Does anyone have any commercials before we go?

• 2:55:21November Kelly?

  I think we covered all of them. Scooter, if the people want more Scooter, where can they find you?

• 2:55:24Speaker 03

  I'm on Blue Sky and Twitter at AngryScooter77. I mostly do train shit. The whole reason we're talking about reactors is I used to be in procedures and quality assurance for company redacted, but I still write papers on this shit. So every once in a while, I'll post nuclear shit, but it's mostly me bitching about my job.

• 2:55:45Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah, nice. You want more scooter, uh, go charter a private railroad car.

• 2:55:49Liam McAnderson?

  Yes.

• 2:55:50Justin Roczniak?

  It's fun and extremely expensive.

• 2:55:55Justin Roczniak?

  All right. I think, I think that's it.

• 2:55:57Liam McAnderson?

  Well, do it.

• 2:55:58Justin Roczniak?

  That's not as running. All right. Good night, everyone.

• 2:56:01Liam McAnderson?

  Night.

• 2:56:02Justin Roczniak?

  Yeah.