Pod Insights Fin vs History Every Mushroom Cloud… | Chernobyl (Part 1/3) About this episode Lads, just boil a kettle!
Chernobyl (Part 1/3)
The show for people who like history but don't care what actually happened.
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Chapters:
00:00 - Happy Birthday Chernobbers!
08:52 - The Blair Years
13:21 - Boil The Kettle Lads
18:02 - Half Life!
22:13 - RWMK
25:52 - Fuck It!
31:20 - BORON!
34:51 - Margin for Error
37:35 - Just The Tip
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Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPact.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
0:29 Speaker 01 Hey, comrade Fred again. Yes, mate. I know it is your first night on shift. We are doing standard nuclear reactor tests. It's gonna be sick, mate. We're going to shut down reactor four. Okay, yeah, cool. You will control the test with your remote control. Mate, don't you love it how like anything can be music? Do you know what I mean? It's not relevant. If you could start the test by pressing V1. Mate, that sounds good. Just one... Mate, that's like the backing track. That's the fucking rhythm. Temperature rise. Release water pumps, V3. V3, mate!
1:04 Speaker 01 Mate, low state. V9, brother, let's go! Comrade, please, none of the core will collapse. The temperature is striking to put in the boom. Oh my god. Evacuate the... It's good. Evacuate the reactor for the engine. Isn't it, brother? I think we got it. I feel quite sick. I feel like bombing the room, brother. I'm gonna be sick. It is sick, brother. It is sick! My eyes are melted, mate. You made it! I'm on it, appreciate it! Mine too, brother, mine too!
1:50 Speaker 02 Welcome back to Fin vs. History. I'm with Horatio Gores.
1:53 Speaker 01 N'est, n'est, n'est!
1:54 Speaker 02 And this is one of our most requested topics. It's a banger. We are getting, finally, to Chernobyl. It's time to cheer on our nobles. It is time to cheer on our nobles, listeners. It's the Communist Titanic. It's the world's worst nuclear disaster. And for the first time.
2:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
2:12 Speaker 02 We are somewhat relevant.
2:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, you're very excited about this.
2:14 Speaker 02 This week is the 40th anniversary of Chernobyl.
2:18 Speaker 03 Well, it says 40th birthday. I'm glad you said anniversary because I think the birthday is weird because you start imbuing. I start thinking of him as a man.
2:25 Speaker 02 Happy birthday to you.
2:28 Speaker 03 But it's also like Chernobyl being like, I'm 40.
2:31 Speaker 02 Fuck.
2:31 Speaker 03 What have I done with my life?
2:33 Speaker 02 I'm so lonely.
2:36 Speaker 02 I've not had any mates. For 40 years.
2:40 Speaker 03 I'm the world's worst nuclear disaster.
2:42 Speaker 02 Yeah. No, you're not. No, you're not. You're not.
2:45 Speaker 03 Statistically.
2:46 Speaker 02 No.
2:46 Speaker 03 Oh yeah, forget about the statistics.
2:47 Speaker 02 Yeah.
2:48 Speaker 03 You're a good guy.
2:49 Speaker 02 Well, so is this a guy who was born as, as the fire starts?
2:52 Speaker 03 No, this is, it's just, it anthropomorphizes the disaster. Makes it a man who's, who's kind of scared about aging on his 40th.
3:01 Speaker 02 Yes, I see. Right.
3:02 Speaker 03 The 40th is not a happy birthday, I don't think. The 50th, I think, is a nice celebration.
3:06 Speaker 02 Well, as someone who's closer to it than anyone in this room, I'd say it's.
3:09 Speaker 03 You're basically dead.
3:10 Speaker 02 No. If I'm basically dead, it's because of other reasons, such as a fatal digestive collapse. I'm not dying because of pure age.
3:18 Speaker 03 Right. But.
3:20 Speaker 02 You have to separate age from my digestive system.
3:22 Speaker 03 You're pretty close to the world's worst nuclear disaster. You're the second world's worst nuclear disaster.
3:27 Speaker 02 Some of my, some of my farts are in the top 10.
3:31 Speaker 03 Finland has to kill a lot of sheep when you fart.
3:34 Speaker 02 All dogs must be put down immediately. No, they must be destroyed when I fart. No, I mean, in the way that Brian Johnson's erections are an 18 year old's erections. In his own words.
3:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:48 Speaker 02 He, he, don't make, don't, don't wince if I said something weird. He says that.
3:52 Speaker 03 Right. It's not over 18 years.
3:54 Speaker 02 He's like, I've got an 18 year old erection.
3:56 Speaker 03 I mean, I only get an erection over 18 years old.
3:58 Speaker 02 No, he's saying my erections are the same strength as an 18 year old. And then he uses an excuse to fuck 18 year olds. Maybe.
4:05 Speaker 03 Maybe.
4:06 Speaker 02 I mean, if, I mean, you should.
4:07 Speaker 03 You should.
4:08 Speaker 02 Yeah. Why else are you doing it?
4:09 Speaker 03 You're wasting.
4:10 Speaker 02 Yeah. Anyway, in the same way that he has, he's a 50 year old man with an 18 year old's boner. I'm a 35 year old man with a 90 year old man's stomach.
4:19 Speaker 02 In that I'm nearing, I'm circling.
4:21 Speaker 03 Well, it's a Sovietly designed reactor core.
4:23 Speaker 02 There's no accountability.
4:25 Speaker 03 It's that the, it's built to, failure is inevitable.
4:28 Speaker 02 It is, and there's no, you know, there's a meddling bureaucracy above it.
4:33 Speaker 03 No one wants to take, you're never taking responsibility.
4:36 Speaker 02 No, everyone's passing the buck. It's always someone else's fault. Well, it's biscuit day. There's biscuits in the house. I can't have biscuits in the house.
4:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, this is not my, I'm not the head of biscuits. You know, you have to go to that department.
4:46 Speaker 02 Comrade wife, why are these biscuits in the house?
4:48 Speaker 03 Or, but also deny the fart, say there is no fart.
4:51 Speaker 02 No, don't evacuate. It's fine. Carry on as normal. It's the 40th birthday of Chernobyl.
4:57 Speaker 03 Happy birthday.
4:57 Speaker 02 Happy birthday to Chernobyl. And, um, uh, we're to celebrate.
5:02 Speaker 03 To celebrate.
5:03 Speaker 02 We'll get a cake in episode three. Part three, we'll get the cake out and the, uh, the very, very sad stripper.
5:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:08 Speaker 02 Who's really ill, bless her. Um, it is.
5:11 Speaker 03 Don't let it cough on you.
5:12 Speaker 02 Imagine, imagine there's a stripper still there waiting in a cake at Chernobyl. Like it was someone's birthday in Pripyat.
5:20 Speaker 03 Right.
5:20 Speaker 02 In April 86 and they're wheeling in a stripper and a cake. And then they were, oh, fuck, we gotta leave. And she's still there being like, uh.
5:27 Speaker 03 All right. Yeah. She's very committed to the job.
5:29 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah. But she must look absolutely clapped now.
5:32 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:32 Speaker 02 This is the worst nuclear disaster, the worst manmade disaster in history. Uh, it's also the most expensive disaster in history, estimated to have cost 700 billion US dollars.
5:45 Speaker 03 I think this is one of the most interesting things ever personally.
5:47 Speaker 02 I agree.
5:48 Speaker 03 I think it's, it's, it's so weird and strange, but also like one of the few examples where the world is potentially at risk. Well, Avengers films is always like, and I will destroy the world. And then, you know, a hero stops it. But this is like a real life, nearly fucked it for everyone. The stakes are so high in this. It's kind of insane.
6:09 Speaker 02 Oh, it's funny how it's framed as a disaster when you could frame it as like, well, they fucking saved the world.
6:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
6:15 Speaker 02 In a way. I mean, they nearly ruined it, but they saved it.
6:18 Speaker 03 But that's, that's why Russian history is so like, it's the sort of, they build such amazing narratives by nearly always fucking it somehow.
6:25 Speaker 02 Yes. But also, I mean.
6:27 Speaker 03 But their commitment to sacrifice to.
6:28 Speaker 02 So it should be said, this is in the Soviet Union, which, and we're in Ukraine.
6:32 Speaker 03 You know, I've been to Chernobyl.
6:33 Speaker 02 Hey, you've been to Chernobyl?
6:34 Speaker 03 I went to Chernobyl. I went in 2017.
6:35 Speaker 02 Is that why your eyes are so far apart?
6:40 Speaker 03 No. It's genetics.
6:42 Speaker 02 Did your mother go there? When you were in the womb, is that why?
6:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, I was a Chernobyl baby.
6:46 Speaker 02 Oh, that makes sense, right.
6:47 Speaker 03 I went to Pripyat in the snow.
6:50 Speaker 02 Oh, you've got to see it in the snow. It's lovely in the snow.
6:52 Speaker 03 Pripyat in the snow.
6:53 Speaker 02 Don't eat green snow.
6:55 Speaker 03 And we got taken around by, there's this guide, and you have a Geiger counter that starts like building up as you go. And it's like, you go into some of the classrooms and it's, the date's been half written on the board because they've had to evacuate.
7:07 Speaker 02 As they're writing the.
7:08 Speaker 03 Mid-class. And the town was only built in 1970. So it's weird, it's a new, for the Soviets, most modern town.
7:15 Speaker 02 It's Milton Keynes.
7:16 Speaker 03 It's Milton Keynes. There was an evacuation in 1986, so it's such a weird life of a town being new and completely ruined.
7:24 Speaker 02 And abandoned.
7:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's really strange, but it was amazing.
7:27 Speaker 02 This is the most expensive disaster in history, as I said. Now, this is the start of a three-part series, and there's going to be a lot of science in this episode, which I will apologize in advance for. Before we get into what happened at Chernobyl, let's take a look at the fittest Soviet woman in the 1980s.
7:47 Speaker 03 Soviets up there with the fittest country? Russians?
7:51 Speaker 02 Well.
7:51 Speaker 03 At the top end.
7:52 Speaker 02 Well, I'm saying, but obviously, we're not in Russia, we're in Ukraine. And at time of record, Chernobyl is the worst thing that's happened in Ukraine.
7:59 Speaker 03 Right.
8:00 Speaker 02 That's, that's an open-ended, I mean, who knows what's going to happen? I'd say the Soviets, until the age of sort of late 20s, possibly the fittest, I'd say they, when they become, when they become mothers, they go off a cliff.
8:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
8:14 Speaker 02 They, you know, you could.
8:15 Speaker 03 It's milk.
8:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, milk does something, breast milk does something to Russian women and they become fucking bricks that you could build houses with.
8:23 Speaker 03 I mean, yeah, it's about when do you get the babushka thing? It's almost like immediately cover up.
8:28 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:28 Speaker 03 But they have respect that as soon as they're no longer like a 10 out of 10 fittest woman ever, they get a scarf and wrap it around their head out of respect. They put a burka on.
8:37 Speaker 02 And they go 90 degrees. I mean, certainly.
8:41 Speaker 02 It is, yeah, inside every gorgeous 25-year-old Russian is a absolute shit brick house of a 40-year-old Russian woman.
8:50 Speaker 02 Is this your dad's tipple, Soviet women?
8:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, he's getting married to a Russian woman in June.
8:55 Speaker 02 Oh, congrats.
8:55 Speaker 03 And the best man.
8:56 Speaker 02 You're the best man?
8:57 Speaker 03 I'm the best man, yeah.
8:58 Speaker 02 Really?
8:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
8:59 Speaker 02 Are you? You're doing a best man's speech for your dad?
9:01 Speaker 03 I'll do a best man, yeah.
9:02 Speaker 02 Wow, that's great.
9:03 Speaker 03 Really fun.
9:03 Speaker 02 When's he getting married?
9:04 Speaker 03 I think it's only gonna be like a legal wedding. So they're not gonna do the whole bells and whistles.
9:09 Speaker 02 Okay, so you're not doing a speech?
9:10 Speaker 03 I'll do a speech, but it will be like pretty low key. There's only like 40 people going.
9:14 Speaker 02 Best man for your dad, that's pretty cool.
9:16 Speaker 03 I guess I'm a nepo baby for getting the job.
9:18 Speaker 02 Yes. I guess my, yeah, if my dad had a, his next wedding was gay or something, I guess I'd be his.
9:23 Speaker 03 But you've got to think, you know, if you're getting married in your late 60s, men after 50, we were talking about this last week, you don't have friends really, it's harder to keep friends.
9:34 Speaker 02 It's very suspicious for a man to have friends, I think.
9:36 Speaker 03 I mean, Charlie, your dad has no friends, right? He's got no mates, no. Does he? He just likes hanging out with my mum. Yeah, but he's fine with it. My dad has a couple of people who are mates for a bit, but then they start, they nearly always join Reform or start selling crypto scams.
9:48 Speaker 02 Yes.
9:49 Speaker 03 And then he backs away. And he's like, I thought this guy was the best guy ever. So I give, oh no, what a shock. Listing his net worth in his bio. There's one of his mates lists his net worth in his bio. 23 million Dubai.
10:02 Speaker 02 Yep.
10:04 Speaker 03 Beast, kind of beast.
10:06 Speaker 00 Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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11:08 Speaker 03 Your dad, does he have any mates?
11:09 Speaker 02 He's got far too many mates.
11:11 Speaker 03 That's suspicious.
11:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, it is suspicious.
11:13 Speaker 03 He's a gay man.
11:13 Speaker 02 He's a gay man. Yes, mates, yeah. No, he's always, he goes to the theatre, he sees his friends.
11:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:20 Speaker 02 He listens to women.
11:22 Speaker 03 No.
11:22 Speaker 02 There's something deeply wrong with this man. No, in another age, my father would be chemically castrated. And I would not exist.
11:32 Speaker 03 Stop him making friends.
11:32 Speaker 02 To stop him making friends. To stop him talking.
11:35 Speaker 03 And you're shedding friends now as you hurl towards 40?
11:38 Speaker 02 Yes, I am shedding friends. I am. I've deliberately tried not to go out and stuff, which is why I'm not in the Epstein files. I don't go to parties.
11:46 Speaker 03 But if you did, you would be.
11:47 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, I'm a man. I'm like, well, all right, what are we drinking? Okay, 14-year-olds, fine.
11:52 Speaker 03 I'll wear the shirt.
11:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, I'll wear the shirt.
11:54 Speaker 03 Go on, Bill. Yeah, this is quite fun.
11:55 Speaker 02 Well, this is what we're doing. You know, I'm easily led. I'm a sheep. I need a woman to tell me what to do.
12:01 Speaker 02 Speaking of women, have you got Tatiana Sorocco?
12:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:05 Speaker 02 She is the daughter of nuclear physicists and she grew up in a secret nuclear research community.
12:10 Speaker 03 Did they make her in a lab?
12:12 Speaker 02 Wow. Yes, she looks very nice. Lovely. Is that her there with getting her whips out?
12:19 Speaker 02 Yeah, lovely stuff. Well, Chernobyl was not all bad.
12:22 Speaker 03 Hmm.
12:23 Speaker 02 Now, we're in Ukraine and the disaster is in April 1986. Maybe we should place this.
12:29 Speaker 03 So what's this? Is this?
12:31 Speaker 02 Just before the Hand of God.
12:33 Speaker 03 I was about to say.
12:34 Speaker 02 Just before the Hand of God.
12:35 Speaker 03 Is it? Wait, so when was that?
12:37 Speaker 02 That was in the summer 86.
12:39 Speaker 03 Right.
12:39 Speaker 02 World Cup. And it was after the Nietzsche killed God on my cross-eyed.
12:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:48 Speaker 02 Or were you going to think of one of them?
12:49 Speaker 05 Yeah, after the invention of a PC plod, the term PC plod. Before Hand of God, after PC plod.
12:56 Speaker 02 No, I'd check that because PC plod is in noddy, is he not? Which I'm not.
13:01 Speaker 03 Is it after George Michael's first sex scandal?
13:04 Speaker 02 There you go. There you go. He's rhymed it.
13:06 Speaker 03 Okay, that's pretty good.
13:06 Speaker 02 What were you gonna say?
13:07 Speaker 03 It was after George Michael's first sex scandal.
13:09 Speaker 02 What, toilets, cottaging?
13:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think so.
13:13 Speaker 02 Don't know if he'd come out in the eighties, in the eighties.
13:15 Speaker 03 No, no, right, far off.
13:17 Speaker 02 Blair's in power when he's cottaging.
13:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, fine, the Blair years.
13:20 Speaker 02 The Blair years, that's when it just goes down the toilet. Yeah, well, more than the country goes down the toilet. Michael goes in there and starts nosing people off. We are in Pripyat, which is, Pripyat, which is, that's a new city which you've been to.
13:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:34 Speaker 02 And Chernobyl is the name of the plant, or is it, that's the area? I can't remember.
13:38 Speaker 03 I think it's the name of the plant.
13:39 Speaker 02 That's the name of the plant. But the city is called Pripyat and it's Milton Keynes but for people who work in nuclear science.
13:45 Speaker 03 Or is the power plant the Vladimir Illich Lenin nuclear power plant?
13:48 Speaker 02 It is that called that.
13:49 Speaker 03 Chernobyl's probably the area then.
13:51 Speaker 02 Chernobyl's the nearby town, maybe?
13:52 Speaker 03 Pripyat's the nearby town.
13:53 Speaker 02 No, I know, Pripyat's built for the town, but why is it called Chernobyl?
13:56 Speaker 03 That's probably handy.
13:58 Speaker 02 Charlie, just.
13:58 Speaker 03 We're out here, just throw a life raft.
14:00 Speaker 02 It is the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat.
14:04 Speaker 03 Anyway.
14:05 Speaker 02 Anyway, who cares?
14:06 Speaker 03 But what is interesting is that Pripyat, because this is like the pride and joy of the Soviet Union, they put a lot of money into nuclear because that's their space age, that was like their whole branding and they wanted to show off to the world that they could lead in nuclear engineering, which is quite funny. They built Pripyat as like a luxury town in many ways because there's a lot of money going into it. And it's funny that you don't really get that. I only recently found that out with this research. I always just thought it was a shit Soviet town.
14:34 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:34 Speaker 03 It's interesting with Soviet towns, you cannot tell what's luxury or not. And I think it's luxury because it has like flowers line the streets.
14:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:42 Speaker 03 But it's still just a fucking.
14:44 Speaker 02 It's blocks.
14:45 Speaker 03 It's still just daggone them, right?
14:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, the Soviet Union is just daggone them.
14:48 Speaker 03 Do you know what I mean? Like type in Pripyat, like this is meant to be like, oh, la di da.
14:54 Speaker 02 Diktop Power Station, I grew up near it. Shout out Diktop, you grew up there as well. I did, yeah, they recently destroyed it. Yeah, they did. Yeah, they collapsed from the tur- one of the turbines. I love watching them do that. Hey?
15:03 Speaker 03 Did you see them do it?
15:04 Speaker 02 I just watched it on telly. Yeah, I watched it. I watched a clip of it, yeah. Let's get some background on nuclear energy. Now, I must, I must say that I got many messages in previous episodes about how triggering this podcast is to fucking wetbags who like science.
15:20 Speaker 03 Yes.
15:20 Speaker 02 Uh, they're fine with accents.
15:22 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:22 Speaker 02 They're fine with all sorts of other things getting wrong, but they cannot handle us talking about science.
15:27 Speaker 03 But also-
15:28 Speaker 02 Now, we've been very clear-
15:29 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
15:29 Speaker 02 That we don't know or care about a lot of gay stuff like science.
15:33 Speaker 03 None of us. We don't have any shit. This, this podcast doesn't, we, we can cover quite a few interests.
15:38 Speaker 02 Yes.
15:38 Speaker 03 Science, we, no, no one's picking it up.
15:40 Speaker 02 What's coal? What is coal? Now, in our, in our Thatcher series, we dealt with coal mining, and none of us know what coal is, it turns out.
15:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:48 Speaker 02 And so what we, what we think it is, and I still don't really know any better than this, is that it is burnt toast that people black up to go underground to get out, right?
15:57 Speaker 03 It's an excuse to black up in the north.
15:59 Speaker 02 Now, nuclear energy is a green energy source, which is better because people don't have to black up to get it out.
16:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, and it tastes like an apple sweet.
16:07 Speaker 02 It's like, it's sweet, yeah, and it's glowing. It's like sherbet, I think. So, the process of obtaining nuclear energy does not emit CO2 or smoke, and it comes from a process called nuclear fission.
16:19 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
16:20 Speaker 02 So, oh my god, there's a graph. Right. So, you get atoms like uranium, or unstable atoms like plutonium, U235, or whatever.
16:29 Speaker 03 Obviously.
16:30 Speaker 02 Right, one of them.
16:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:31 Speaker 02 Uh, this is an unstable atom, which I think means it's just sort of wobbly.
16:35 Speaker 03 It's not balanced with the neutron, the proton, and the fucking other one. The unstable is going like-
16:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's wobbly.
16:41 Speaker 03 I think it needs to have like all three of the ones, and then it's like, stops wobbling as much.
16:46 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:46 Speaker 03 So that's why it's going like, fa-ding, fa-ding, fa-ding.
16:48 Speaker 02 Basically, these atoms, they fire out neutrons.
16:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:52 Speaker 02 And then they bounce off walls, right, and they split.
16:55 Speaker 03 So they're parkouring?
16:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, they're, yeah, these atoms are parkouring round.
16:59 Speaker 03 Backflip off walls, fucking jumping.
17:01 Speaker 02 Whoa, like just running across buildings. Very unstable. And that process emits, uh, energy. And then that heats up water.
17:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's what was interesting.
17:14 Speaker 02 Which then creates steam and the steam powers, uh, stuff.
17:18 Speaker 03 Cause I guess, did you think that nuclear power plants worked? Where it was like, you put the green thing in and it went like.
17:25 Speaker 02 Yeah. And that was just. The Simpsons. It's all my, my.
17:28 Speaker 03 And that was the energy.
17:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:30 Speaker 03 And you just took some of that like.
17:32 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:33 Speaker 03 And that went in. I didn't realise it still just steamed out.
17:35 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah.
17:36 Speaker 03 It's just a.
17:37 Speaker 02 It's just a really dangerous way of making steam.
17:39 Speaker 03 Yeah.
17:39 Speaker 02 Just boil a kettle.
17:40 Speaker 03 Boil a kettle, mate.
17:41 Speaker 02 Yeah. Could you make nuclear fish and tea?
17:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, probably.
17:45 Speaker 02 Probably some of these nonsense listening do.
17:48 Speaker 03 No, trust me, it's way bad.
17:49 Speaker 02 It's way bad for the environment. In my command center, I've got this fish and, fish and tea. What?
17:56 Speaker 05 But apparently we're, um, we're, you know, we're like made of atoms.
17:59 Speaker 02 Well, supposedly, but I don't believe that.
18:02 Speaker 03 You don't buy it?
18:03 Speaker 02 No, I don't buy it.
18:03 Speaker 05 What are you made of?
18:05 Speaker 02 Hey?
18:05 Speaker 05 What do you think you're made of?
18:06 Speaker 02 I'm flesh and blood.
18:07 Speaker 03 Yeah. Or you think the atoms is bollocks?
18:09 Speaker 02 I'm a poo hole, I'm a poo hole and a boner and a brain. That's basically me. I'm not atoms.
18:13 Speaker 03 Wait, do you think atoms, cause to be honest, they could lie to us about atoms.
18:16 Speaker 02 I don't fucking know.
18:18 Speaker 03 We could not see atoms.
18:19 Speaker 05 I don't know.
18:19 Speaker 03 They could have fucking lied to us. You know what I mean?
18:21 Speaker 02 But they're different things. There's not a bit, there's not like a fingernail in a box and, and it's creating steam. Cause they're firing it around. So it's not.
18:30 Speaker 03 What are you talking about?
18:31 Speaker 02 Talking about, if I'm an, if I'm made of atoms.
18:34 Speaker 03 Right.
18:35 Speaker 02 Right. And you've got atoms in a, in a, in a box in a reactor. It's not like a fingernail, is it? It's not part of me.
18:41 Speaker 03 I think it's the uranium atoms.
18:43 Speaker 02 Yes.
18:43 Speaker 03 It's the specific structure of the atoms of these things.
18:47 Speaker 02 Yes.
18:47 Speaker 03 I think your fingernail atoms may be not the right structure.
18:50 Speaker 02 Exactly.
18:50 Speaker 05 But apparently.
18:51 Speaker 03 Don't say exactly as if, as if we've.
18:53 Speaker 02 We're saying the same thing.
18:55 Speaker 03 Exactly.
18:55 Speaker 02 We're saying the same thing.
18:56 Speaker 03 Thank you.
18:56 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:00 Speaker 02 What?
19:00 Speaker 05 Probably there's space between all of the atoms, so actually you're kind of made of air. Like, there's actually, you're kind of spongy.
19:07 Speaker 02 Well, we're meant to be 70% water, but again, I don't buy that.
19:10 Speaker 05 Do you not?
19:10 Speaker 02 No.
19:11 Speaker 03 Bollocks.
19:12 Speaker 02 Bollocks.
19:12 Speaker 03 I do doubt it.
19:14 Speaker 02 I'm 70% bovril most of the time. So, in a nuclear power station, this reaction, which we've explained perfectly, must be carefully regulated because you're basically creating chain reactions.
19:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, but I think regulations is what's destroying the economy.
19:28 Speaker 02 Red tape, yes, I agree. In many ways, this is a victory for freedom from red tape, Chernobyl.
19:35 Speaker 02 Nuclear fission creates a chain reaction, right? And an uncontrolled chain reaction is an atomic bomb.
19:41 Speaker 03 Right.
19:41 Speaker 02 Right, which seems like a lot of risk for the reward of getting a cup of tea. Right? Why don't we drop a bomb in order to make a fucking cup of Tetleys? Yeah, or just boil a kettle out.
19:53 Speaker 03 Split the atom to fucking heat off.
19:55 Speaker 02 Guys, kettles exist. Anyway, why don't you just have 100 kettles in a box?
20:00 Speaker 03 Right, but how do you power the kettle?
20:02 Speaker 02 What?
20:02 Speaker 03 How do you power the kettle?
20:04 Speaker 02 Electricity.
20:05 Speaker 03 Where do you get that from?
20:07 Speaker 02 Well, wherever it comes from now.
20:08 Speaker 03 Oh, that's a good point. Lightning?
20:10 Speaker 02 There you go.
20:13 Speaker 02 Okay, so you need a leg up, but then, once you're up and running, the kettles will, it'll be self-regulating. You use the steam from some kettles.
20:21 Speaker 03 So you need to jump-start the one kettle.
20:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, and then the steam from that powers the other one, and it's like, and that's a chain reaction.
20:27 Speaker 03 So we only need nuclear energy for one kettle, and then the rest should...
20:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, you get the green glowing thing, and you put that in a box. That powers one kettle, then you turn the green thing off, and then you just raise kettles.
20:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
20:38 Speaker 02 Anyway, the heat produced by the fission boils water, which creates steam that spins turbines, which creates electricity.
20:45 Speaker 03 Right.
20:45 Speaker 02 These plants are very expensive to build, and also, any radioactive waste must be managed safely because it has a half-life.
20:54 Speaker 03 Did you learn about half-life at school?
20:55 Speaker 02 Well, I played the computer game Half-Life.
20:57 Speaker 03 It's an amazing game.
20:58 Speaker 02 Amazing game.
20:58 Speaker 05 Half-Life.
21:00 Speaker 03 Half-Life!
21:04 Speaker 02 Yeah. No, not so much.
21:05 Speaker 03 Well, is that Chernobyl blur?
21:06 Speaker 02 Yeah, Chernobyl blur. Half-life.
21:08 Speaker 03 It's like.
21:09 Speaker 02 Half-life. The bin men don't come anymore and I don't go to school on Wednesdays. Half-life. My skin's falling off and my arse has fallen out.
21:17 Speaker 03 The bin man's nose is where his eyes are.
21:19 Speaker 02 Half-life. My baby's got seven fingers. Half-life. All the people.
21:25 Speaker 03 So many people.
21:27 Speaker 02 They all got cancer now. All because of this. Half-life.
21:37 Speaker 02 I feed the pigeons, I sometimes feed the sparrows too, but now they're all fucking dead. Half-life. Brilliant. Anyway.
21:45 Speaker 03 That's good fun.
21:46 Speaker 02 So, the consequences of failure are severe, as may have just been indicated by our.
21:51 Speaker 03 But the half-life, that is where it gets, what's interesting about nuclear, because obviously the fact that it's just steam is a little disappointing because of how dramatic nuclear stuff is. But half-life is kind of terrifying, right?
22:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:02 Speaker 03 It's like energy forever. So, do you understand half-life at all? I don't really understand it.
22:09 Speaker 02 Have I got a life?
22:10 Speaker 03 Shut up. Shut up now.
22:13 Speaker 02 There's gonna be a lot of that this series.
22:15 Speaker 03 I'm too stupid to talk about this. I can't have you being even more stupid than me, because I'm already stupid. So, you just shut up.
22:22 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
22:23 Speaker 03 Half-life, I believe it's like radioactive waves go out of a radioactively unstable thing, right?
22:32 Speaker 02 I believe half-life.
22:34 Speaker 03 Right.
22:34 Speaker 02 Is when, it's how long it takes something to decompose, right?
22:39 Speaker 03 But the half-life could be thousands of years.
22:41 Speaker 02 That's what I mean, which means that it takes thousands of years to only go halfway and then it goes thousands of years again to go half of that. And so it's very, very, very slow. It's exponential but in the opposite direction.
22:52 Speaker 03 What's giving everyone cancer is radiation and how that works is it's waves like this, right, going like that? And then it goes into your skin and it disrupts the skin because it's going like.
23:02 Speaker 02 It fucks your DNA.
23:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, it goes right under, so it fucking works in those pockets.
23:07 Speaker 02 Mm-mm, but Thomas Muller. Right.
23:11 Speaker 03 So it's in between the lines.
23:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:12 Speaker 03 And it disrupts.
23:13 Speaker 02 Pep Guardiola is half-life. Yeah, Sam Allardyce has got no answer.
23:18 Speaker 03 But that stuff does kind of just really give me the boogles.
23:21 Speaker 02 This whole, the whole.
23:22 Speaker 03 Truly terrifying, and that's why this is a issue to solve for humanity is so terrifying. Cause it's, it's like, there's something like a Greek tragedy about like, not even a Greek tragedy, Greek myth about flying too close to the sun, basically unlocking something that you shouldn't have.
23:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, it's Pandora's box, isn't it?
23:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, completely.
23:40 Speaker 02 So let's, so during the Cold War, the Soviet Union has invested in nuclear technology. And it's, as you said, it's tied to prestige and it's the space age. And the USSR rapidly expands its nuclear power programme from the 50s onwards. And the expansion happens within this very centralised and crucially secretive political culture where there's no accountability and no one wants to take the blame for anything.
24:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, they're all middle managers.
24:07 Speaker 02 Yes, exactly.
24:07 Speaker 03 The Soviet Union, as we discussed in our Lenin Russian Revolution series, does mean the union of meetings.
24:13 Speaker 02 Yes, that is what it means.
24:14 Speaker 03 A Soviet is a meeting.
24:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. So it's the country of the union of council meetings. It's a nightmare. And part of the problem with the Russian Revolution is something that should be very excited is handicapped by the amount of meetings they have before anything happens.
24:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, about Jackie Weavers.
24:32 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's genuinely like if you're watching Too Fast Too Furious and then before every car chase, Jackie Weaver comes on and there's like a meeting about where they're going to do the car chase. Anyway, so the nuclear sector is governed by these strict hierarchies. And as ever, there are these intense production targets that people are being judged on. And so this discourages open criticism or any problems being reported because everyone's just looking after their own back. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is constructed in the late 70s and it is part of the Soviet Union's expanding nuclear energy programme. And as you said, it's officially named the Vladimir Ilyich Lenin Nuclear Power Station.
25:05 Speaker 03 Surprise, surprise.
25:05 Speaker 02 Chernobyl refers to a nearby town, which is not Pripyat.
25:08 Speaker 03 Okay, fine.
25:09 Speaker 02 Anyway. So it's about 100 kilometres from Kiev, it's near Belarus and its site is chosen because it has access to water from the Pripyat River.
25:17 Speaker 03 Which you don't need.
25:18 Speaker 02 And obviously you need because you need to heat something up to create steam. It's relatively distant from major urban centres, although that, who cares when you're going to blow this thing to shit. And it's designed to be a major electricity supplier for Ukraine and beyond. So Pripyat was built to plant the workers and their families and yeah, it's like Milton Keynes, but it's Soviet.
25:40 Speaker 03 Yep.
25:41 Speaker 02 If you think Milton Keynes is depressing, check out Pripyat. By the mid 80s, it had about 50,000 people living there, young families.
25:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:49 Speaker 02 And I suppose they were skilled employees.
25:50 Speaker 03 Yep.
25:51 Speaker 02 It was considered one of the nicest places to live in the USSR.
25:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
25:55 Speaker 02 And there you go.
25:56 Speaker 03 So what does that even mean? That's the most tallest dwarf thing ever.
25:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, it is, yeah. It's Dagenham.
26:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:02 Speaker 02 Dagenham with flowers, but the flowers are there not because a kid's been killed by a car on a roundabout. So the reactor of Bolshoi Monjosty Kalonny, the RBMK reactor.
26:13 Speaker 03 This is not the same technology that the West uses, right?
26:16 Speaker 02 No, we use a green thing that Homer Simpson drops.
26:19 Speaker 03 Exactly. That makes a lot more sense.
26:21 Speaker 02 Yeah.
26:22 Speaker 03 But these are Soviet designs because a part of Soviet prestige is being able to come up with your own technology.
26:25 Speaker 02 As critics later joked, and bear in mind, these are science people who don't know what funny is, they said, RBMK, more like ridiculously badly made kettle.
26:33 Speaker 03 I mean, you say that, that's just what we said. That's exactly what we said.
26:36 Speaker 02 No, I said we could be using thousands of kettles to achieve the same effect.
26:40 Speaker 03 Right, okay.
26:41 Speaker 02 Well-made kettles.
26:43 Speaker 03 Right.
26:44 Speaker 02 Anyway.
26:45 Speaker 03 RWMKs.
26:46 Speaker 02 Yes.
26:47 Speaker 03 Ridiculously well-made kettles.
26:49 Speaker 02 Yes. They should have used an RWMK reactor. Many nuclear reactors now, the RBMK uses graphite as a moderator.
26:59 Speaker 03 You've got to have, it's like in the OJ trial, getting an Asian to do it.
27:02 Speaker 02 Yes, you're right. Yeah.
27:04 Speaker 03 What was his name?
27:05 Speaker 02 Lance Eto.
27:06 Speaker 03 Eto, yeah. Graphite is the Lance Eto of this. It's like, let's moderate this.
27:10 Speaker 02 Whites versus blacks, hang on, there's an Asian ref, so this will be fair. Who's the fourth official? I knew it.
27:18 Speaker 03 Yeah.
27:19 Speaker 02 Right, anyway. So the moderator is something that is there to slow down the neutrons. So the neutrons of this unstable atom are firing around.
27:29 Speaker 03 Fizzing about.
27:29 Speaker 02 They're fizzing about. They've got ADHD on a MATHS scale.
27:33 Speaker 03 They're stimming.
27:34 Speaker 02 They're stimming. And then graphite is there.
27:37 Speaker 03 Gives them a fidget spinner.
27:38 Speaker 02 It's a fidget spinner. Exactly. In simple terms, the more effective the moderation, the more energy gets released.
27:45 Speaker 03 You stick one thing in and it goes up. You stick another thing in, it goes down and it's just moving up, down, up, down at the right times. Right?
27:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, when you say it like that, I guess. Guess they must have been fucking idiots to get this wrong. So you have a thing called a control rod.
28:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:01 Speaker 02 And control rods are inserted into the reactor core to absorb the neutrons and to dampen the reaction. The control rods are pushed down into the core, they reduce power. But when they're pulled out, power gets increased.
28:12 Speaker 03 What is it, Charlie?
28:13 Speaker 05 Well, I was just, I was wondering if you thought, you know, like the theory about how monkeys will write Shakespeare if you just leave them to it forever?
28:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
28:20 Speaker 05 Do you think you'd ever come up with this?
28:22 Speaker 03 Does that still work when it's coming up with a nuclear reactor?
28:25 Speaker 02 If you give a million monkeys, a million typewriters.
28:28 Speaker 03 Well, infinite, has to be infinite.
28:29 Speaker 02 Infinite, will they, will they come up with a nuclear reactor?
28:32 Speaker 05 Will they?
28:33 Speaker 03 They probably would.
28:34 Speaker 02 Well, not with a typewriter, that's got nothing to do with it.
28:36 Speaker 05 But the theory.
28:36 Speaker 03 They'll be able to write the rulebooks of the nuclear reactor.
28:40 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, because it's infinite, then, yeah.
28:41 Speaker 05 I think I'd still be in the hills.
28:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, but you're, you're, you're just one bloke.
28:45 Speaker 03 This is literally Karl Billington.
28:46 Speaker 02 If you gave infinite Charlies infinite typewriters, I mean, at least 10,000 of you would shove it up your arse.
28:52 Speaker 05 Yeah, but there's loads of us.
28:53 Speaker 02 Yes, exactly.
28:54 Speaker 03 There is loads, to be fair.
28:55 Speaker 02 Yeah. But I still don't think one of you would, would make nuclear efficient.
28:58 Speaker 05 But how am I seeing a neutron?
29:01 Speaker 02 Well, yeah, I don't know.
29:02 Speaker 05 Because I have to come up with a microscope before I even do that and a pen.
29:06 Speaker 03 It's come with a pen.
29:07 Speaker 02 You've got to be able to make a pen. Back yourself.
29:09 Speaker 05 I don't know if I would immediately.
29:11 Speaker 03 But you're just thinking about you on your own.
29:13 Speaker 05 I'd stand on the shoulders of my giants.
29:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
29:16 Speaker 05 Till eventually.
29:18 Speaker 03 Luckily, you've got infinite amount of time.
29:19 Speaker 05 Yeah.
29:20 Speaker 02 Yeah.
29:20 Speaker 03 So you will eventually crack it.
29:22 Speaker 02 So, right, so there are these big control rods and they get pushed down into the core and they reduce the power. And stability of the reactor depends on maintaining the balance between the fuel, which is the uranium or whatever. The graphite moderator, the coolant flow and the control rod position.
29:41 Speaker 03 Come to me now.
29:41 Speaker 02 Ladies, calm down. No, I'm, that's not me asking for sex.
29:45 Speaker 03 You're hysterical.
29:46 Speaker 02 Please, calm yourself.
29:49 Speaker 02 Go to the toilet, take some deep breaths and change your pants. I can smell them from here.
29:55 Speaker 02 We're talking about the science of Chernobyl. Now is not the time, okay? For Christ's sake, pull yourself together. I don't, I don't think you should be listening to this, frankly.
30:03 Speaker 03 You shouldn't be in here.
30:04 Speaker 02 You shouldn't be in here. This is not for you, all right? This is for men who don't see women because they live underground. Now, now we've dealt with the science comprehensively.
30:13 Speaker 03 Done.
30:13 Speaker 02 Everyone knows how a nuclear reactor works.
30:15 Speaker 03 Dip in, it goes up, take out, goes down.
30:17 Speaker 02 And there's a big button that says blow it all to shit. And I think they, maybe they pressed that, but we'll get to that.
30:21 Speaker 03 Which in the review, they said, take that button out because it serves no purpose.
30:25 Speaker 02 Yes.
30:25 Speaker 03 Having to blow up the whole.
30:26 Speaker 02 Why have you got the blow up the whole thing button?
30:28 Speaker 03 I don't know, I just thought.
30:30 Speaker 02 Let's get into some of the characters that are a part of this story. The man who is the senior figure on the night shift, on the event, on the night this happened, was a guy called Anatoly Dyatlov.
30:42 Speaker 03 Who in the Chernobyl miniseries.
30:44 Speaker 02 Yes.
30:45 Speaker 03 Is arguably besmirched.
30:47 Speaker 02 Yes, he gets a pretty rough ride, yeah.
30:50 Speaker 03 And seemingly, obviously, they blame the systemic issues of the Soviet Union for Chernobyl. But he seems to be one of the nastiest, naughtiest men ever.
30:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
30:58 Speaker 03 He's just the worst boss of all time. Like, insecure, lazy, rude and causes Chernobyl. And that, so they put it kind of all on him.
31:07 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's amazing.
31:08 Speaker 03 All of these like well behaved nukemakers who are just trying to do their job. And he's like, yeah, do it. It's fine.
31:13 Speaker 02 Which is amazing to be someone in charge of a nuclear power plant, to be that reckless and ignorant. Oh, fuck it. No, just do it. Do it. Fuck it.
31:21 Speaker 03 I wanna go home.
31:22 Speaker 02 Boring, tired now.
31:24 Speaker 03 Sir, it says it's about to blow. I don't care.
31:26 Speaker 02 Fuck off, do it.
31:29 Speaker 03 This is something we found out. Dyatlov. So died December 1995. Now Charlie, when is your birthday? February 96.
31:39 Speaker 02 Are you saying he's a spirit? Are you going to Spirit of Woden, Dyatlov?
31:43 Speaker 03 When Dyatlov died, Charlie was in the womb.
31:46 Speaker 02 Right.
31:47 Speaker 03 So I believe that in the way that the Spirit of Woden went from Nietzsche to Hitler to you.
31:53 Speaker 02 Yes, yeah.
31:55 Speaker 03 I believe the Spirit of Dyatlov, at the time when he died, it came into you and you were Dyatlov reborn. But instead of mismanaging a nuclear power plant, you're mismanaging this podcast. You're the Dyatlov of this podcast.
32:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, you are. And actually, do you know what? Every time we press record, there is a meltdown back there. I don't know what are going on.
32:18 Speaker 03 It's the Spirit of Dyatlov.
32:19 Speaker 02 You're always having to go and call Pete and be like, Pete, I don't know what you've done. I don't know what's happened here. Just get on with it. Get on with it. And you look like a dinner lady.
32:29 Speaker 03 Do I?
32:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
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33:32 Speaker 02 Dyatlov was born in 1931 and he is Ukrainian, he's born in, I think he already dies in Kiev anyway. He grows up in Siberia.
33:45 Speaker 03 Ran away home from home when he was 14.
33:46 Speaker 02 He studied engineering, graduates in 59 and he's worked in nuclear reactors for Soviet submarines. But he'd already had prior radiation exposure from an accident in that job.
33:59 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, I mean, this is Charlie's CV.
34:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, it is actually. So by the 1970s, he's considered very experienced with reactor systems. So he is the senior supervisor on the night of the Chernobyl disaster. And he's overseeing a safety test, which is what's going on. So the other characters in this story, before we get to the safety test, you've got Viktor Brukharnov, who's the plant director, and he is very much a guy who is all politics. Like he is entirely obsessed, he's not really obsessed with safety, he's obsessed with his position.
34:36 Speaker 03 It's all civil service, right?
34:38 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:38 Speaker 03 It's all about a ladder that you need to just slowly work your way up.
34:41 Speaker 02 Brukharnov is under pressure from higher ups to keep the plant meeting these targets and to avoid disruptions to the grid. I think maybe in the years reading up to 86, Chernobyl had hit like exceeded its production targets by 100% or something and they wanted to keep it up.
34:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
35:00 Speaker 02 Now, I think there are the four reactors at Chernobyl, I think there are four RBMK reactors. And what they are doing in April 26, on April 26th, is they are running a safety test. And what they want to work out is if you cut external power for like a second or two seconds before the backup diesel generators kick in. There's like a little lag of two seconds and what they want to know is if the steam that is already being produced can fill that two second gap and power the reactor so that there's no drop in
35:34 Speaker 03 No lag.
35:35 Speaker 02 Electricity.
35:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
35:37 Speaker 02 So that's what they're doing on the night. Now, around Dyatlov and these other people, you've got Alexander Akimov, who's the shift supervisor, Leonid Toptenov, who's a 25 year old engineer and he's responsible for managing the actual reactor. That's not Leonel Lewis, Charlie, although these people do keep bleeding and that's part of the problem with radiation sickness. Is that what that song's about?
36:03 Speaker 03 I think so, yeah.
36:04 Speaker 02 Wow. And now the RBMK has several weaknesses. One of the most significant is what is known as a positive void coefficient.
36:14 Speaker 03 Yes, please.
36:14 Speaker 02 I said, stop listening ladies. Positive void coefficients, which is when, huh, in a low power condition, if water in the reactor turns to steam, the reaction can accelerate rather than slow down.
36:27 Speaker 03 Which is the, this is exactly what he didn't want to happen. Sort of situation.
36:30 Speaker 02 It's a button that says press this for the opposite to happen.
36:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, okay.
36:34 Speaker 02 Why have we got an opposite button?
36:35 Speaker 03 Right.
36:35 Speaker 02 And the graphite is the issue because the reactor is using graphite and water cooling. A loss of water does not necessarily mean a reduction in reactivity. I don't understand why. I don't understand this.
36:49 Speaker 03 No, he's getting a bit too much now.
36:50 Speaker 02 I don't understand this. But also what I do understand.
36:53 Speaker 03 It's like they went in at the wrong time. They're meant to go into the water and that's what makes the steam. But maybe the water wasn't in, so it just went straight into the reactor and then that caused it to go the other way around.
37:05 Speaker 02 You also have bor, is it boron or xenon?
37:08 Speaker 03 It's the opposite of graphite.
37:09 Speaker 02 Boron.
37:10 Speaker 03 Boron.
37:12 Speaker 02 Boron. I think that's what they would, yeah. Maybe they misheard him going boring and put boron in. Anyway, the tips of the control rods that are meant to shut down the reactor, they've got graphite on them.
37:24 Speaker 03 Hmm.
37:25 Speaker 02 On the tips. So when the rods that are meant to shut down the reactor go in, the graphite displaces water before the neutron absorbing section of the rods take effect. I mean.
37:40 Speaker 03 So the water's gone, so the graphite goes directly into the core.
37:43 Speaker 02 Ah, I guess so.
37:45 Speaker 03 And that's really bad, I believe.
37:47 Speaker 02 Yeah, but in the wrong conditions, this can cause a short spike in reactivity at precisely the moment the operators are trying to reduce power. So basically, the really bad kettle, the reactor, it can be operated safely, but there are very strict parameters of how you.
38:09 Speaker 03 The margin for error is far too big.
38:11 Speaker 02 Very, very, well, it's very small, margin for error.
38:14 Speaker 03 Small margin for error, that's it, yeah.
38:16 Speaker 02 Charlie, why are you Googling GoldenEye weaponry? Because I can't concentrate.
38:21 Speaker 05 Because that's to do with nuclear bombs, isn't it?
38:23 Speaker 02 No.
38:24 Speaker 05 I think it is.
38:24 Speaker 02 No, it's a satellite with a laser, I think.
38:27 Speaker 05 Which is nuclear.
38:29 Speaker 02 I don't think it is.
38:30 Speaker 05 Similar. Big hardware.
38:32 Speaker 02 It's hard, yeah, no, you're not wrong, it's hard.
38:34 Speaker 05 There's a lot of gear involved with them.
38:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's gear involved.
38:36 Speaker 05 You can't have a nuclear reactor in your toilet or in your bedroom.
38:40 Speaker 02 Well, I sometimes do have a nuclear reactor in my toilet.
38:44 Speaker 02 But I'd prefer it if you called her Amanda.
38:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, and she is unstable, okay? And she has a very, very large margin for error. Very small margin for error, I mean, it's a very small margin for error, some of the stuff she fits.
38:57 Speaker 03 But you're misreporting statistics to try and get ahead in the world.
39:00 Speaker 02 I'm cooking the books, yeah. I'm not passing the buck, you know?
39:07 Speaker 02 But there's an accident's inevitable.
39:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, it is.
39:09 Speaker 02 It's inevitable.
39:13 Speaker 02 So.
39:16 Speaker 02 I mean, basically, your holiday, it sounds like you were.
39:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, he was up there.
39:19 Speaker 02 You were up there in your ski lodge.
39:20 Speaker 03 You were doing some safety tests.
39:23 Speaker 02 Constantly flushing the toilet. It sounds like you were.
39:26 Speaker 03 He's a nat lob in the toilet.
39:27 Speaker 02 You were basically as stressed as the men in reactor four control room.
39:32 Speaker 03 Oh, fuck.
39:32 Speaker 02 Oh, no, just flushing the toilet. Oh, fuck, no, no, no. So, the test aims to see whether the turbine, which is still spinning after a shutdown, could generate enough residual power to bridge the gap in the seconds between the loss of electricity and the generator starting up. It had been tried before, but earlier tests had produced disappointing results.
39:51 Speaker 03 Suspicious.
39:52 Speaker 02 So, management want success, partly for paperwork, partly for credibility, and partly because they face distinct pressure to deliver successful tests, right? Originally, they were meant to do it in the day.
40:04 Speaker 03 Yep.
40:05 Speaker 02 But it got delayed because the reactor was playing up.
40:09 Speaker 03 Right.
40:09 Speaker 02 But anyway, they knock it into the night shift, which is perhaps why the Outlaw's so cranky.
40:14 Speaker 03 He's like, "Oh."
40:15 Speaker 02 Bore on.
40:16 Speaker 03 Bore on.
40:18 Speaker 02 So, the early hours of 26th of April, Unit 4 is being pushed into a low-power regime, where the RBMK was least forgiving. And they're about to start the test, right? So, let's get to the night everything goes wrong. Because the reactor had spent longer than intended at reduced power, the reactor was becoming unstable.
40:39 Speaker 03 Right.
40:40 Speaker 02 The control rods are partially inserted.
40:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, it is a little bit like teasing.
40:47 Speaker 02 There are people listening who will use this analogy when they're having sex.
40:51 Speaker 03 You ready for my control rod to be partially inserted? Into the reactor core I go!
40:55 Speaker 02 Oh, shutdown! That's been a catastrophic accident.
41:02 Speaker 02 That's what they say when they cover their pants.
41:03 Speaker 03 But that sort of implies that everyone in the control room is a
41:06 Speaker 02 Evacuate.
41:07 Speaker 03 Is a nuclear cuck, almost, watching it happen. Just sitting in the chair, loving it.
41:12 Speaker 02 Watching rods insert. I mean, it is a bit
41:14 Speaker 05 I'm reaching critical mass.
41:15 Speaker 02 It is a bit sexual, watching rods go into a core.
41:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
41:19 Speaker 02 So, the rods are partially inserted, just the tip.
41:22 Speaker 03 Just the fucking tip.
41:23 Speaker 02 Water has circulated at high levels. To begin the safety test, power has to be lowered to around 30%. Operators insert the control rods further, increasing their depth in the core.
41:34 Speaker 03 Fuck. This also increases water flow.
41:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, it's very, very
41:38 Speaker 03 It's getting very horny.
41:39 Speaker 02 I mean, people listening, I pray for them.
41:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
41:41 Speaker 02 The operators insert the control rods further. The water flow has increased. The combination cools the reactor more than expected.
41:49 Speaker 03 Oh.
41:50 Speaker 02 And suppresses reactivity. This doesn't normally happen. At the same time, xenon gasp begins to accumulate.
41:56 Speaker 03 Fuck.
41:56 Speaker 02 Now, xen- Now, as the power drops, xenon levels rise. Okay, so effectively, the reactor is being smothered by its own exhaust.
42:06 Speaker 03 Bet it is.
42:07 Speaker 02 So, instead of stabilizing at thirty-
42:10 Speaker 03 Or is it sitting on its face? Is that what you're implying, Charlie?
42:13 Speaker 02 Instead of stabilizing at thirty percent, okay, power collapses to around one percent. The react- now, the reactor had entered a xenon pit, ladies, I'm sorry.
42:24 Speaker 03 I'm sorry.
42:25 Speaker 02 I realize there will be-
42:25 Speaker 03 I'm so sorry to say, but the reactor has entered a xenon pit. I'm sorry, I wish it wasn't the case, but it happened.
42:30 Speaker 02 It doesn't happen, this doesn't normally happen, but my reactor has entered a xenon pit, I'm sorry. I'm very, very sorry. It's an absolute xenon- It's a xenon pit down there, I'm very, very sorry. Um, I have reached a stalled state in which sustaining a chain reaction has become difficult.
42:48 Speaker 03 Well, these are all great lines for erectile dysfunction, aren't they?
42:51 Speaker 02 This is brilliant.
42:52 Speaker 03 Sorry, I've entered a stalled state in which sustaining a chain reaction has become incredibly difficult.
42:57 Speaker 02 Yep. You must remember that an unregulated chain reaction is essentially an atom bomb. And that's what's happened down there, okay? I've been trying to power you safely, but I've ended up absolutely-
43:09 Speaker 03 If I keep pushing, it's gonna be in danger of the surrounding area and potentially the whole of Europe.
43:14 Speaker 02 If I keep having sex with you, then twice the energy that was emitted at Hiroshima will be emitted every hour for the next 20,000 years. It's a great, it's a great way of a nerdy guy who can't keep it up somehow getting power of the situation. Do you know that if I come in my pants now?
43:37 Speaker 02 Before you touch me again.
43:41 Speaker 03 I'm incredibly reactive to your touch.
43:45 Speaker 03 I will explode if you touch me.
43:48 Speaker 02 My reactor core has entered a xenon pit.
43:50 Speaker 03 Steam will come out my ears.
43:51 Speaker 02 If you enter, if you put a control rod in me now. Water levels are remaining high, xenon concentration has increased, the reactor is becoming hard to control. So, Toputnov and Akimov have been faced with a stalled reactor. It's about 1:30 in the morning, right? So they're tired.
44:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:10 Speaker 02 Dyatlov's going, "Go, just fucking, come on, fuck off, get on with it, fucking do it, do it."
44:15 Speaker 03 He's got an eye mask on and said, "Don't wake me up."
44:17 Speaker 02 Yeah. Got cucumbers in his eyes. Right. So they're faced with a stalled reactor and it's no longer sitting in a stable range. So they have a choice. Do they abandon the test and sta- do we abandon the test and stabilise the unit? Or should we try to recover power and carry on?
44:37 Speaker 03 Please don't say the second one.
44:38 Speaker 02 Please don't. Please pick option one.
44:39 Speaker 03 I need to stabilise my unit.
44:42 Speaker 02 I need to abandon the test. The test failed. So but under pressure from the bureaucrats, they continue. And so they raise power again and they begin withdrawing control rods, which keeps the test running, which then narrows the margin for for safety. So there are protections that could have been interrupted, that had run to the procedure, they've been disabled or bypassed. Automatic systems that would normally limit rod withdrawal have been overridden. Eventually, most of the control rods are removed. Now, the the power they think is going to ri- it meant to rise quickly, but it rises very slowly. So it only reaches about 7% of power, which means the reactor is now in unstable configuration. It's only
45:25 Speaker 02 being controlled by the high water levels and the neutron absorbing effects of xenon.
45:30 Speaker 03 Right.
45:31 Speaker 02 It is operating outside safe parameters, but technically still running.
45:35 Speaker 03 Right. So is the is it the system still saying it's running?
45:38 Speaker 02 Charlie, why, what's, Charlie, what have you Googled?
45:41 Speaker 03 Has Chernobyl led to Paralympians?
45:43 Speaker 02 Here we go. Team USA's highly decorated champion, Oksana Masters. She was born in 89.
45:51 Speaker 03 Not three years.
45:52 Speaker 02 With several physical disabilities believed to be caused by radiation exposure, including missing weight bearing bones in her legs, non-functional knees. I have non-functional knees. I genuinely, it clicks every time, this one clicks every time I I squat. And the weekend, I came up from a deep squat and I had a really big pop and it's been killing me ever since.
46:12 Speaker 03 Mine click as well. I'm like Alan Partridge standing up.
46:15 Speaker 02 Yeah. Ah, yeah, it's awful.
46:17 Speaker 03 Let the let the dog see the.
46:19 Speaker 02 Mangled rabbit. Oh, she's gorgeous. So this is, wow. So what's she got?
46:26 Speaker 03 Fucking radiation, Badi.
46:27 Speaker 02 When did Badi become a slur for, um, slur? Is it slur for a fit woman? She's got no, she's got web fingers, no thumbs and six toes in each foot.
46:40 Speaker 03 Fucking hell, I could do a lot with that.
46:45 Speaker 02 Christ.
46:47 Speaker 03 You're getting a wristie from the thing from a shape of water.
46:51 Speaker 02 Yes, I suppose it is. Is that what that film was about?
46:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:54 Speaker 02 So let's have a look. So she moves to the US, has both legs amputated above the knee. And she, so what's her sport though? She's a multi-sport superstar, numerous medals, summer and winter. Fuck.
47:08 Speaker 03 So every cloud.
47:08 Speaker 02 One of the most successful Paralympians in history.
47:11 Speaker 03 Yeah. Every poisonous acid cloud.
47:13 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:15 Speaker 02 Every radiation cloud, every mushroom cloud. Every mushroom cloud has a fucking glowing lining. Paracross-country skiing, parabiathlon, paracycling. She's won 24 medals total.
47:31 Speaker 03 Fuck me. Cheating.
47:34 Speaker 02 Almost. Well, there's a point where Paralympians are cheating.
47:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:37 Speaker 02 And I suppose the committee has to find that line.
47:39 Speaker 03 But this could have been the whole idea behind Chernobyl.
47:42 Speaker 02 To stimulate a loss of power, Akimov and the other cunt, reduce water flow to the reactor. The pump's slow, water begins to boil away, the cooling decreases, xenon levels also begin to fall. And the very factors that have been suppressing the reaction start to disappear. With no water and no xenon, reactivity surges. Akimov presses the emergency shutdown button, the AZ5, the fuck it button.
48:07 Speaker 03 The fuck it.
48:08 Speaker 02 Right. This is that meme of the superhero with the two buttons, right? This is designed to insert all the control rods and halt the reaction.
48:16 Speaker 03 Because the graphite stabilizes the reaction. The graphite tip control rod stabilized the reaction. That's what the theory is.
48:22 Speaker 02 Yes, but the flaw is that the graphite tips mean that that displaces the water and increases the reactivity before the rods can actually have the effect. So it's the tips that's the problem.
48:34 Speaker 03 Is that two second lag between?
48:35 Speaker 02 It's less than that, less than a millisecond lag. But in a stable reactor, this spike would be minor, but in the unstable conditions inside reactor four, it proves catastrophic. Power surges.
48:47 Speaker 03 Oh, the erection comes back.
48:49 Speaker 02 Oh, it's back! My reactor's stable. Shit!
48:51 Speaker 03 Quick, quick.
48:54 Speaker 02 Fuel channels are, my fuel channels are ruptured!
48:58 Speaker 02 Water flashes instantly into steam, generating it.
49:02 Speaker 03 This is a guy desperately trying not to come in the condom. He's just trying to desperately get it in before, so please, I need to lose my virginity.
49:08 Speaker 02 Enormous pressure is generating. The control rods are jammed.
49:13 Speaker 02 With cooling gone and no effective graphite moderation, the chain reaction runs out of control. At 1:23 a.m., the reactor's power rises sharply. In our next episode, we will deal with what happened that night.
49:30 Speaker 03 The biggest bust in history.
49:31 Speaker 02 The biggest bust in history that causes an entire city to be evacuated. A Ukrainian virgin has splurged all over Pripyat.
49:40 Speaker 03 The whole of Europe, the whole of the world is at risk.
49:42 Speaker 02 The next two parts in our epic three-parter on Chernobyl are already on the Patreon, where for £3 a month, you can join a community of people who understand the science that we're talking about and make cups of tea with nuclear fission, probably. On the Patreon for our bonus episode this week, we'll be talking about Fukushima, Japanese Chernobyl.
50:02 Speaker 01 Couldn't give a Fukushima.
50:04 Speaker 02 That's on the Patreon, but if not, we'll see you on Thursday for the next part in this howering tale. Goodbye.
50:12 Speaker 03 Goodbye.
Previous Going Back In Time To Smush Hitler’s Cheeks | The Battle of Little Big Horn (Part 4/4 Next A Greek Building Site | Chernobyl (Part 2/3) Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated