The optimism in this movie is so beautiful. Makes me really sad for what actually came to pass. We could be living in a world of energy abundance right now if things had gone differently than they did.
We have not displaced any alternatives. Solar and wind have been developed and that are the two main forms of free flowing energy we can harvest. It's not easy to transfer electricity over large distances without using immense amounts of material OR accepting a high loss and with wind we need to interconnect places with totally different weather systems: Long distances AND larger amounts has to be transferred than we currently do. Nuclear power can be done very well and the spent fuel reprocessed so everything with long half life is recycled as fuel.
@@whatisnuclear Oh, I wholeheartedly concur. This is one of my favourites. The innocence and vision for the future that speaks from this, is endearing.
I love these old films. It's so sad that even back then they realized that nuclear was the only way to ever become free of fossil fuels as our primary power source and that because of fear-mongering and bureaucracy it has made the nuclear industry stagnate for so long.
Until you figure out where to put waste that humans can't go near for 10,000 years and a way to guarantee that YET ANOTHER MELTDOWN doesn't occur, it's a f******g poison.The goal isn't just 'carbon free.' There's residual waste as well. Nuclear is NOT the way. We're not where we can completely quit oil....it's literally in everything you touch or see, I assure you, and I work on an oil rig...I know it's not great for the environment. Renewable energy technology and mostly EFFICIENCY has to improve a good bit. But it's not so far off we need mounds of radioactive waste for millenia to hold us over until green tech becomes more efficient.
This argument doesn't stand. Nuclear as is with spent fuel managed in dry casks is safer than pretty much everything (ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy). Additionally, we have fine solutions for the spent fuel. See: whataboutthewaste.com/
@@whatisnuclear My 'conspiracy theory' says, they don't want common folk to have electricity, or, they want us to stay broke paying for it, regardless of what fuels it.
@@JoeBlow-jj9uu That's why the current regime keeps sheeple dumbed - down, using their propaganda ministry of Mainstream Media..."When the sheep grow blind, it is the wolves who rejoice".
It's interesting they didn't mention the fatal SL-1 excursion of 1961, five years prior to the release of this film, even though they mentioned several site reactors that preceded and succeeded it.
Yes, well Uncle Sam wouldn't want to cast any doubts on it's FLAWLESS reactor testing or designs now, ... would we ? They also didn't make any mention of the designed, tested and FAILED aircraft nuclear reactor engines, another boondoggle wasting hundreds of millions of dollar, ... though they did show the 1 engine and of course the 3 phase , Low, Medium, Hot work building used in the recovery of the 3 men KILLED at SL-1 for the autopsies and burial procedure !
That was a different type of failure... It wasn't caused by an unforseen event inside the reactor. It was caused by a sudden manual withdrawal of the central control rod, and the rod pulled way too far out of the core by a human being trying to connect the rod back up to it's electronic drive unit. That was an early reactor of a bad design. It wad later realized that there were far to few control rods present in the design if the reactor and that a single rod should NEVER be that "powerful", and be able to cause such a catastrophic, super-critical event in the core cause by the removal of just a single rod. It was basically instanly learned that such huge control of the core SHOULD be spread amongst numerous rods, and to NOT have a single rod have so much control. That way, such a violent criticallty accident could never be experienced again by 1 control rod being accidently (or purposely) pulled out of the core.
@@AppliedCryogenicsI'm sure they didn't want to "spread the word" about how easy it can be to purposely/intentionally blow up a reactor if one was destined to do so... 🤷🏻
@@AppliedCryogenicsI kinda got the idea that this video was more of a "Pro nuclear propaganda tool", and they didn't want to mention the errors and mistakes of the past that could send the message that nuclear reactors can very easily kill human beings if they aren't maintained and ran to perfection. One simple slip can cause a HUGE deadly public disaster, and I'm thinking that they wanted to keep that part of it quiet.
The fact that Homer is the Safety Technician at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant always made me laugh. He must have done a good job because it only went into meltdown a few times, that's a pretty good record! 😂
35:36 Love the self-mockery. In many ways they respected the audience, without dumbing things down. They wouldn't dare show footage of such destructive tests nowadays 😆
Love this film. Thanks for posting it. I'd like to re-watch it and count how many acronyms were used. They must have set some kind of cinematic record! 🤣
Yes, many of the recognizable voices are used time and again due to the soothing, hypnotic tone that every sales pitch desires . LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN Photographic Division was one such outfit ! Positioned in a former Radar Station based high in the Hollywood Hills accessed many famous actors and stars to promote Military and Govt programs via these propaganda films . To paint an," All Is Well " with this operation theme on every single activity ! Even the deadly SL-1 Reactor Incident was done up with a " All Is Well " in the end of the movie !
@@SteveWright-oy8kyReed Hadley was one such actor who was in a LOT of those "Lookout Mountain" studio produced videos. He did MUCH tv and movie work besides just the nuclear documentary videos. That guy got to witness MANY nuclear detonations. What a COOL job THAT would have been!
Wow I've never seen those criticality oscillations on startup in the spert reactor before. I can't imagine control rods would ever be removed that rapidly on a real working reactor but still interesting to observe behavior in edge scenarios.
It happened in the SL-1 reactor..... There were 3 men performing service on top of the reactor that ended up having ONE central control rod disconnected from it's electronic drive mechanism. Upon trying to manually lift the rod back up to connect it back to it's drive, one of the guys accidently pulled the rod several inches TOO far out of the core, and the entire thing went super-critical, blew up, and killed all 3 men in the reactor hall. Most of the water inside of the reactor vessel, near the center, instantly turned to steam. The HUGE pressure spike of the steam shot the head of water that was still remaining above the steam pocket upward SO violently that it hit the reactor top with SUCH force that it made the 26,000lb vessel jump 9' into the air. Also, the 10,000psi pressure build up inside of the vessel due to the intense heat and steam production ended up shooting shield plugs out of the top of the vessel cap, and one of the ejected plugs actually impaled one of the guy's body, got stuck, then carried him up to the ceiling, and impaled the roof, pinning the man up there. The other 2 guys were hit by the high pressure steam, knocking them off the top of the reactor vessel. One immediately died of head trauma, and the other one lived for a short time until the intense radiation killed him shortly after the rescuers got there. The SL-1 reactor had very few control rods in it per the design. It was instantly learned right after the accident to NOT have any one rod in the core that had THAT much influence on the reactivity of the entire core as the SL-1 design had. It was learned to spread out the control over more rods, and prevent such a super-critical even from ever happening again from a single rod withdrawal such as happened on SL-1.
I've never seen videos of the destructive testing. They blew up a few tiny reactors there, one instantly flashing the core into an explosion of superheated steam and burning uranium dust 😅 It was called BORAX-1
True - SL-1. Also the first significant reactor to undergo an in-core very low-yield nuclear detonation. Arguably some of the other small reactors SPERT and SNAP may have as well, though they didn’t cause meaningful damage or releases.
@@tunneloflight Sl1 did not detonate so to say but rather burst , the idiot lifted the rods out so fast a k effective power excursion of high yield took place and boiled like 50 gallons of water in .5 seconds . an older video shows them blowing up a reactor by pulling the rods out realy fast
@@NOBOX7 SL-1 underwent a rapid prompt critical excursion that generated an enormous amount of power almost instantaneously. That vaporized the water in the central region of the core area and some fuel and cladding. The pressure rise from that prompt criticality and resulting extremely rapid pressurization splatted the core outward, ejected the control blades driving the prompt criticality even further and drove the water above the reactor upward through the air space above the water over the core and into the reactor head. The downward force was dissipated into the substructure leaving the upward 10,000 psi water hammer imbalanced and generating sufficient unopposed upward force to launch the reactor vessel upward nine feet into the air and to shear all of the reactor piping. That didn't happen because of over pressurization. It happened because of the prompt criticality and the immense energy release from it. The over pressure was a consequence not a cause. By definition, when criticality exceeds the prompt threshold, the reaction proceeds faster than any control can oppose it. That is a nuclear detonation. This is precisely parallel to the equally arbitrary definitional boundary between deflagration and detonation with the difference being that the later is supersonic in the medium involved. In reactor, a prompt critical detonation can be short lived with doppler resonance or other factors bringing it back under control. Arguably these are either not detonations, or are extremely low yield non-destructive detonations. SL-1 is not one of those either. Clearly the prompt criticality led to such a massive energy release that it destroyed the reactor and killed its three operators. That is a low yield nuclear detonation. And just as there is an arbitrary definitional boundary between a criticality accident and a prompt critical detonation event, there are other boundaries definable about the magnitude of the energy and radiation release. Though I have never seen such definitions written or put in place. The only definition that its in place is that a prompt criticality is a detonation. Mind you there have been many extremely low energy detonations. In liquid systems these are shut down by the expansion of the volume of the solution and geometry changes. The solution then typically 'rings' for about 20 hours until sufficient water or moderator is driven out of the system for the shutdown to become permanent as the k-effective finally drops below unity for good. And there have been many prompt detonations in small reactors (SPERT and SNAP series for example), KIWI-TNT for another. These ranged in energy release with some destroying the reactors, and some not. KIWI-TNT was perhaps the largest energy release and utterly destroyed the reactor in an intentional prompt critical excursion to see what would happen in the most severe accident conceived. That was a really stupid thing to do. Chernobyl also suffered a low yield nuclear detonation. It clearly went prompt critical. And it too destroyed itself in a similar way to SL-1. That is a nuclear detonation, albeit low yield. I have heard it argued that in the case of Chernobyl that was a 20-30 ton TNT equivalent yield. i.e.about one to two one-thousandths the explosive yield of Hiroshima or Nagasaki style bombs. Still 20-30 tons of TNT equivalent prompt energy release in the heart of an operating reactor at reactor operating conditions is a devastatingly large energy release. This is one more criterion for any new reactors to withstand before being authorized. That along with being able to withstand direct strikes from several one thousand pound bombs in hostile acts, missile strikes aimed at the most critical parts of the facility, and having sufficient natural cooling that any spent fuel on site is safe for well over a month without human intervention of any kind. Currently the spent fuel is safe for maybe two days in a station blackout. There after the pools are boiling and human response rapidly becomes impossible.
I can't believe we just thrown all of this incredible knowledge into the trashcan. We saw a carbon-free world back in the fifties and sixties. My God, what have we done?
Carbon free huh ? You obviously haven't followed the course of how Uranium and Plutonium are mined, sorted, milled, processed, machined. irradiated, chemically separated and fabricated. Oh by the way, the Govt is looking for a few dumb ,... I mean,.... good men to CLEAN UP all the pollution left behind from this so-called Carbon Free mess ! Years behind and billions of dollars over budget, your Carbon Free DREAM will break the bank soon enough !
29:49.... Jeez!!.... Neutron bombardment of a fissile material, ( IE: Fission) can be SUCH a violent process, and happen SO fast, (this was a high-speed event of less than a second, captured by fast cameras that slowed the event down considerably) when seemingly that nothing physical even touched the object. (Except the strikingly tiny neutrons) It is SO amazing to me that such TINY objects can wreak such havoc, and release such IMMENSE amounts of power/energy. The energy storage devices that us humans have invented up to current day, (2025) are SUCH low power/density when compared to the power of mother nature and the atom. A Lipo battery explosion is NOTHING compared to if that was a same sized rectangle of atoms all releasing their energy in a chain reaction. A single brick of atoms the size of a typical R/C plane lipo battery would destroy an entire large city if all the atoms inside it were split. Simply awe inspiring!! 😳
Interesting they realized liquid wastes were a large problem even in the mid 60s. Hanford has spent some ungodly amount of money on vitrification to clean up their mess of leaking tanks.
Lol - he also talked about fusion at the end of the movie. Every "expert" in the world say that in 30 years it will work. This means: There is a working fusion reactor since the 90s?
Oh we can do fusion in a tocamak, we'll a tiny amount. But you try extract useful energy from a system working at 100 million degrees c', now there's your problem.
Back when we had a vision for the future now it feels like all we want to do is go back in time vs move forward. Back in the day these folks pushed for a future better for all of us not just a few as it is today. We need to get back to being pioneers not cave dwellers.
Wrong: "The Biden administration has pledged another $1.2 billion to help extend the operating life of older or distressed nuclear power plants, with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm saying nuclear power is needed to support the nation’s clean energy goals. The funding, announced by the Dept. of Energy (DOE) on March 2, is the second tranche of financial aid included in the $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit Program that was created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by Congress in 2021. “President Biden’s $6 billion investment in the Civil Nuclear Credit Program made it abundantly clear that preserving the domestic nuclear fleet is critical to reaching America’s clean energy future,” said Granholm. “Expanding the scope of this Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding will allow even more nuclear facilities the opportunity to continue operating as economic drivers in local communities that benefit from cheap, clean, and reliable power.” The president’s climate team has said nuclear power, as a source of carbon-free electricity, should be preserved and expanded to reach the administration’s goal of 100% clean electricity production by 2035. The administration also wants to keep reactors online while the country continues to build more power generation from renewable energy resources. 92 Operating Reactors in U.S. There are currently 92 operating nuclear reactors across the U.S., according to the DOE, after the closure of 13 units in the past decade. The money in this second round of funding is available to plants at risk of closure within a few years. It also is available to nuclear power plants that have stopped operating after Nov. 15, 2021. The money could support reopening the 800-MW Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan that was closed in May 2022. The plant, which was operated by Entergry and is now owned by Holtec International, had its application for funding rejected during the first round of financial aid from the credit program. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been a proponent of bringing Palisades back online. The Palisades nuclear power plant was a single-unit pressurized water reactor nuclear station with a capacity of about 800 MW. It was closed in May 2022, then purchased by Holtec International for decommissioning. Holtec is now seeking to restart the plant. Holtec officials in February said it would take more than $1 billion to reopen Palisades, which had operated for more than 50 years. The group has applied for a different source of funding, from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office, to reopen the plant located in Covert Township. Holtec bought the plant in June of last year for decommissioning, before making its first application to restart the facility the following month. Patrick O’Brien, director of government affairs for Holtec, in an emailed statement after Thursday’s announcement wrote, “This is great news for the industry, and our country, to consider nuclear so vital for our energy future that the idea of what we are trying to accomplish with Palisades, returning a shutdown nuclear plant back to operation, is something that should happen.” Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), operator of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California, was awarded $1.1 billion in conditional funding during the first award cycle. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved PG&E’s request for an exemption that could allow the 2,300-MW plant to continue operating past its scheduled 2025 closure date." www.powermag.com/biden-administration-pledges-1-2-billion-to-keep-u-s-nuclear-reactors-online/ BTW, you do know fuel loading has just started at Georgia's Plant Vogtle n.4, and n.3 is fully online, don't you?
The shame is that the old clunker reactors that need to be shut down (there's this thing called neutron embrittlement, it makes the pressure vessel brittle) but aren't replaced with new reactors. The second shame is that any replacements is going to be a huge reactor, which is bad for safety. If you keep the reactor under 400 megawatt thermal output then it cannot meltdown, there just isn't enough decay heat to melt the fuel.
Not sure where this exactly is but we can reduce waste by a large amount and in the near term find ways to use the waste for benefit rather than casking it away
We have Biotic Oil and Mineral Oil (Non-Biotic Oil) on Earth .. Mineral Oils and molecular methane and ethane & many benzene type chains can be found on Titan and other Solar System objects
When they extract the uranium from all the other crap that you get in uranium ore (1/2% uranium is regarded as very good ore) it comes out yellow, hence "yellow cake".
Funny how he predicts the future. "This sort of breeder reactor is essential, or we will end up with heaps of inert Uranium 238, useless for anything"... And what did we end up... Heaps of useless waste.
"A precise rectangular grid, or some other machinists nightmare" okay that was good lol
Great effort digitizing these points in history. Thanks for sharing.
I had no idea how extensive the facility was. What an amazing time and place to have worked.
I would have loved to be there... 😍
The optimism in this movie is so beautiful. Makes me really sad for what actually came to pass. We could be living in a world of energy abundance right now if things had gone differently than they did.
We have not displaced any alternatives. Solar and wind have been developed and that are the two main forms of free flowing energy we can harvest.
It's not easy to transfer electricity over large distances without using immense amounts of material OR accepting a high loss and with wind we need to interconnect places with totally different weather systems: Long distances AND larger amounts has to be transferred than we currently do.
Nuclear power can be done very well and the spent fuel reprocessed so everything with long half life is recycled as fuel.
Awesome! Thank you for posting. love these old films about nuclear industry.
You're welcome. I agree that these are a lot of fun to see. Thanks for saying so.
@@whatisnuclear
Oh, I wholeheartedly concur. This is one of my favourites. The innocence and vision for the future that speaks from this, is endearing.
I love these old films. It's so sad that even back then they realized that nuclear was the only way to ever become free of fossil fuels as our primary power source and that because of fear-mongering and bureaucracy it has made the nuclear industry stagnate for so long.
Until you figure out where to put waste that humans can't go near for 10,000 years and a way to guarantee that YET ANOTHER MELTDOWN doesn't occur, it's a f******g poison.The goal isn't just 'carbon free.' There's residual waste as well. Nuclear is NOT the way. We're not where we can completely quit oil....it's literally in everything you touch or see, I assure you, and I work on an oil rig...I know it's not great for the environment. Renewable energy technology and mostly EFFICIENCY has to improve a good bit. But it's not so far off we need mounds of radioactive waste for millenia to hold us over until green tech becomes more efficient.
This argument doesn't stand. Nuclear as is with spent fuel managed in dry casks is safer than pretty much everything (ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy). Additionally, we have fine solutions for the spent fuel. See: whataboutthewaste.com/
@@whatisnuclear My 'conspiracy theory' says, they don't want common folk to have electricity, or, they want us to stay broke paying for it, regardless of what fuels it.
People fear what they don't understand
@@JoeBlow-jj9uu That's why the current regime keeps sheeple dumbed - down, using their propaganda ministry of Mainstream Media..."When the sheep grow blind, it is the wolves who rejoice".
It's interesting they didn't mention the fatal SL-1 excursion of 1961, five years prior to the release of this film, even though they mentioned several site reactors that preceded and succeeded it.
Yes, well Uncle Sam wouldn't want to cast any doubts on it's FLAWLESS reactor testing or designs now, ... would we ? They also didn't make any mention of the designed, tested and FAILED aircraft nuclear reactor engines, another boondoggle wasting hundreds of millions of dollar, ... though they did show the 1 engine and of course the 3 phase , Low, Medium, Hot work building used in the recovery of the 3 men KILLED at SL-1 for the autopsies and burial procedure !
That was a different type of failure...
It wasn't caused by an unforseen event inside the reactor. It was caused by a sudden manual withdrawal of the central control rod, and the rod pulled way too far out of the core by a human being trying to connect the rod back up to it's electronic drive unit.
That was an early reactor of a bad design. It wad later realized that there were far to few control rods present in the design if the reactor and that a single rod should NEVER be that "powerful", and be able to cause such a catastrophic, super-critical event in the core cause by the removal of just a single rod.
It was basically instanly learned that such huge control of the core SHOULD be spread amongst numerous rods, and to NOT have a single rod have so much control.
That way, such a violent criticallty accident could never be experienced again by 1 control rod being accidently (or purposely) pulled out of the core.
@@davelowets When it is caused by human error, it's not counted as an excursion? Terminology aside, it was interesting they didn't mention it.
@@AppliedCryogenicsI'm sure they didn't want to "spread the word" about how easy it can be to purposely/intentionally blow up a reactor if one was destined to do so... 🤷🏻
@@AppliedCryogenicsI kinda got the idea that this video was more of a "Pro nuclear propaganda tool", and they didn't want to mention the errors and mistakes of the past that could send the message that nuclear reactors can very easily kill human beings if they aren't maintained and ran to perfection.
One simple slip can cause a HUGE deadly public disaster, and I'm thinking that they wanted to keep that part of it quiet.
При съемках этого фильма ни одного Гомера Симпсона не пострадало!
The fact that Homer is the Safety Technician at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant always made me laugh. He must have done a good job because it only went into meltdown a few times, that's a pretty good record! 😂
35:36 Love the self-mockery. In many ways they respected the audience, without dumbing things down. They wouldn't dare show footage of such destructive tests nowadays 😆
Why wouldn't they?? 🤷🏻
There's LOTS of destructive testing videos out there to be found. (NOT just nuclear reactors)
Love this film. Thanks for posting it. I'd like to re-watch it and count how many acronyms were used. They must have set some kind of cinematic record! 🤣
My pleasure! Glad you liked it. And if you do count please let me know.
How is it that every single old documentary like this has the same voice 😂 did this guy spend his entire life recording voiceovers?
Yes, many of the recognizable voices are used time and again due to the soothing, hypnotic tone that every sales pitch desires . LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN Photographic Division was one such outfit ! Positioned in a former Radar Station based high in the Hollywood Hills accessed many famous actors and stars to promote Military and Govt programs via these propaganda films . To paint an," All Is Well " with this operation theme on every single activity ! Even the deadly SL-1 Reactor Incident was done up with a " All Is Well " in the end of the movie !
@@SteveWright-oy8kyReed Hadley was one such actor who was in a LOT of those "Lookout Mountain" studio produced videos. He did MUCH tv and movie work besides just the nuclear documentary videos.
That guy got to witness MANY nuclear detonations. What a COOL job THAT would have been!
i just got to see a reactor have a partial meltdown POG
Wow I've never seen those criticality oscillations on startup in the spert reactor before. I can't imagine control rods would ever be removed that rapidly on a real working reactor but still interesting to observe behavior in edge scenarios.
It happened in the SL-1 reactor.....
There were 3 men performing service on top of the reactor that ended up having ONE central control rod disconnected from it's electronic drive mechanism. Upon trying to manually lift the rod back up to connect it back to it's drive, one of the guys accidently pulled the rod several inches TOO far out of the core, and the entire thing went super-critical, blew up, and killed all 3 men in the reactor hall.
Most of the water inside of the reactor vessel, near the center, instantly turned to steam. The HUGE pressure spike of the steam shot the head of water that was still remaining above the steam pocket upward SO violently that it hit the reactor top with SUCH force that it made the 26,000lb vessel jump 9' into the air.
Also, the 10,000psi pressure build up inside of the vessel due to the intense heat and steam production ended up shooting shield plugs out of the top of the vessel cap, and one of the ejected plugs actually impaled one of the guy's body, got stuck, then carried him up to the ceiling, and impaled the roof, pinning the man up there. The other 2 guys were hit by the high pressure steam, knocking them off the top of the reactor vessel. One immediately died of head trauma, and the other one lived for a short time until the intense radiation killed him shortly after the rescuers got there.
The SL-1 reactor had very few control rods in it per the design.
It was instantly learned right after the accident to NOT have any one rod in the core that had THAT much influence on the reactivity of the entire core as the SL-1 design had.
It was learned to spread out the control over more rods, and prevent such a super-critical even from ever happening again from a single rod withdrawal such as happened on SL-1.
That destruction footage is crazy.
Agreed. Those were interesting early days.
almost unbeliveable that back in the day they worked on this in wooden sheds and under free air
Why?
I love the cherenkov radiation. I can't help but be intrigued by it.
Yep, anything that intensely glows without any apparent power source is very intriguing to many people.
Wow, it must've been super exciting to have work in the nuclear field back then.
I was thinking that. When they said they pushed the reactor to the point where it failed. And you see it explode
What a great video
I've never seen videos of the destructive testing. They blew up a few tiny reactors there, one instantly flashing the core into an explosion of superheated steam and burning uranium dust 😅 It was called BORAX-1
Try searching for the KIWI transient nuclear test or Kiwi-TNT.
Now that IS destructive. 🤣
Home of the only American reactor to cause immediate fatalities.
Yup. Compared to all the boiler fatalities of the early steam age we did relatively well with nuclear. But not perfect.
So... accident or murder-suicide?
True - SL-1. Also the first significant reactor to undergo an in-core very low-yield nuclear detonation. Arguably some of the other small reactors SPERT and SNAP may have as well, though they didn’t cause meaningful damage or releases.
@@tunneloflight Sl1 did not detonate so to say but rather burst , the idiot lifted the rods out so fast a k effective power excursion of high yield took place and boiled like 50 gallons of water in .5 seconds . an older video shows them blowing up a reactor by pulling the rods out realy fast
@@NOBOX7 SL-1 underwent a rapid prompt critical excursion that generated an enormous amount of power almost instantaneously.
That vaporized the water in the central region of the core area and some fuel and cladding.
The pressure rise from that prompt criticality and resulting extremely rapid pressurization splatted the core outward, ejected the control blades driving the prompt criticality even further and drove the water above the reactor upward through the air space above the water over the core and into the reactor head.
The downward force was dissipated into the substructure leaving the upward 10,000 psi water hammer imbalanced and generating sufficient unopposed upward force to launch the reactor vessel upward nine feet into the air and to shear all of the reactor piping.
That didn't happen because of over pressurization. It happened because of the prompt criticality and the immense energy release from it. The over pressure was a consequence not a cause.
By definition, when criticality exceeds the prompt threshold, the reaction proceeds faster than any control can oppose it. That is a nuclear detonation.
This is precisely parallel to the equally arbitrary definitional boundary between deflagration and detonation with the difference being that the later is supersonic in the medium involved.
In reactor, a prompt critical detonation can be short lived with doppler resonance or other factors bringing it back under control. Arguably these are either not detonations, or are extremely low yield non-destructive detonations.
SL-1 is not one of those either. Clearly the prompt criticality led to such a massive energy release that it destroyed the reactor and killed its three operators.
That is a low yield nuclear detonation.
And just as there is an arbitrary definitional boundary between a criticality accident and a prompt critical detonation event, there are other boundaries definable about the magnitude of the energy and radiation release. Though I have never seen such definitions written or put in place.
The only definition that its in place is that a prompt criticality is a detonation.
Mind you there have been many extremely low energy detonations. In liquid systems these are shut down by the expansion of the volume of the solution and geometry changes. The solution then typically 'rings' for about 20 hours until sufficient water or moderator is driven out of the system for the shutdown to become permanent as the k-effective finally drops below unity for good.
And there have been many prompt detonations in small reactors (SPERT and SNAP series for example), KIWI-TNT for another. These ranged in energy release with some destroying the reactors, and some not. KIWI-TNT was perhaps the largest energy release and utterly destroyed the reactor in an intentional prompt critical excursion to see what would happen in the most severe accident conceived. That was a really stupid thing to do.
Chernobyl also suffered a low yield nuclear detonation. It clearly went prompt critical. And it too destroyed itself in a similar way to SL-1. That is a nuclear detonation, albeit low yield. I have heard it argued that in the case of Chernobyl that was a 20-30 ton TNT equivalent yield. i.e.about one to two one-thousandths the explosive yield of Hiroshima or Nagasaki style bombs.
Still 20-30 tons of TNT equivalent prompt energy release in the heart of an operating reactor at reactor operating conditions is a devastatingly large energy release.
This is one more criterion for any new reactors to withstand before being authorized. That along with being able to withstand direct strikes from several one thousand pound bombs in hostile acts, missile strikes aimed at the most critical parts of the facility, and having sufficient natural cooling that any spent fuel on site is safe for well over a month without human intervention of any kind. Currently the spent fuel is safe for maybe two days in a station blackout. There after the pools are boiling and human response rapidly becomes impossible.
My father traveled west when he was younger, hunting beaver.
Well, it was a short time post WW2. It was a time of rebuilding and looking to the future after such a devastatingly dark period.
This is an awesome old video thanks voor poster
My pleasure!
I can't believe we just thrown all of this incredible knowledge into the trashcan. We saw a carbon-free world back in the fifties and sixties. My God, what have we done?
Carbon free huh ? You obviously haven't followed the course of how Uranium and Plutonium are mined, sorted, milled, processed, machined. irradiated, chemically separated and fabricated. Oh by the way, the Govt is looking for a few dumb ,... I mean,.... good men to CLEAN UP all the pollution left behind from this so-called Carbon Free mess ! Years behind and billions of dollars over budget, your Carbon Free DREAM will break the bank soon enough !
Oil lobbying won :(
Environmentalists in the late 60s and 70s poisoned the well.
Judges helped.
Now it's so expensive to build a reactor none are being built.
29:49.... Jeez!!....
Neutron bombardment of a fissile material, ( IE: Fission) can be SUCH a violent process, and happen SO fast, (this was a high-speed event of less than a second, captured by fast cameras that slowed the event down considerably) when seemingly that nothing physical even touched the object. (Except the strikingly tiny neutrons)
It is SO amazing to me that such TINY objects can wreak such havoc, and release such IMMENSE amounts of power/energy.
The energy storage devices that us humans have invented up to current day, (2025) are SUCH low power/density when compared to the power of mother nature and the atom. A Lipo battery explosion is NOTHING compared to if that was a same sized rectangle of atoms all releasing their energy in a chain reaction. A single brick of atoms the size of a typical R/C plane lipo battery would destroy an entire large city if all the atoms inside it were split.
Simply awe inspiring!! 😳
And after living most of my life in Idaho it's nothing but a waste dump
Interesting they realized liquid wastes were a large problem even in the mid 60s. Hanford has spent some ungodly amount of money on vitrification to clean up their mess of leaking tanks.
U238 not used to punch holes in tanks thses days ?
Sure is.
Tungsten will work also,but it is more expensive than depleted uranium 😊
@@nilo70 no wonder they invented LED bulbs, they are saving the expensive stuff for breaking Russian tanks
I am a little envious of a country that can assign 500k acres to a project at the stroke of a pen. 😮
Lol - he also talked about fusion at the end of the movie. Every "expert" in the world say that in 30 years it will work. This means: There is a working fusion reactor since the 90s?
Fusion, ... the Govt's latest wet dream ! And it will only cost you TRILLIONS ! Such a Deal !
Tocamak reactors.
Oh we can do fusion in a tocamak, we'll a tiny amount. But you try extract useful energy from a system working at 100 million degrees c', now there's your problem.
The narrator sounds really familiar.
I'm trying to sleep not gonna lie 💀
Same
its less than an hour drive from me. there is a mesuim there now
20:48 SMRs of the 1950s
'...or some other machinist's nightmare." Oof. Fact.
Yeah I snickered at that. What a crazy shape.
I want one
33:52
Iran needs some
i fuckin love borax
Back when we had a vision for the future now it feels like all we want to do is go back in time vs move forward. Back in the day these folks pushed for a future better for all of us not just a few as it is today. We need to get back to being pioneers not cave dwellers.
It's a shame that our current government is trying to shut down every nuclear power station we have.
Wrong:
"The Biden administration has pledged another $1.2 billion to help extend the operating life of older or distressed nuclear power plants, with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm saying nuclear power is needed to support the nation’s clean energy goals.
The funding, announced by the Dept. of Energy (DOE) on March 2, is the second tranche of financial aid included in the $6 billion Civil Nuclear Credit Program that was created by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed by Congress in 2021.
“President Biden’s $6 billion investment in the Civil Nuclear Credit Program made it abundantly clear that preserving the domestic nuclear fleet is critical to reaching America’s clean energy future,” said Granholm. “Expanding the scope of this Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding will allow even more nuclear facilities the opportunity to continue operating as economic drivers in local communities that benefit from cheap, clean, and reliable power.”
The president’s climate team has said nuclear power, as a source of carbon-free electricity, should be preserved and expanded to reach the administration’s goal of 100% clean electricity production by 2035. The administration also wants to keep reactors online while the country continues to build more power generation from renewable energy resources.
92 Operating Reactors in U.S.
There are currently 92 operating nuclear reactors across the U.S., according to the DOE, after the closure of 13 units in the past decade. The money in this second round of funding is available to plants at risk of closure within a few years. It also is available to nuclear power plants that have stopped operating after Nov. 15, 2021.
The money could support reopening the 800-MW Palisades Nuclear Generating Station in Michigan that was closed in May 2022. The plant, which was operated by Entergry and is now owned by Holtec International, had its application for funding rejected during the first round of financial aid from the credit program. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been a proponent of bringing Palisades back online. The Palisades nuclear power plant was a single-unit pressurized water reactor nuclear station with a capacity of about 800 MW. It was closed in May 2022, then purchased by Holtec International for decommissioning. Holtec is now seeking to restart the plant.
Holtec officials in February said it would take more than $1 billion to reopen Palisades, which had operated for more than 50 years. The group has applied for a different source of funding, from the DOE’s Loan Programs Office, to reopen the plant located in Covert Township. Holtec bought the plant in June of last year for decommissioning, before making its first application to restart the facility the following month.
Patrick O’Brien, director of government affairs for Holtec, in an emailed statement after Thursday’s announcement wrote, “This is great news for the industry, and our country, to consider nuclear so vital for our energy future that the idea of what we are trying to accomplish with Palisades, returning a shutdown nuclear plant back to operation, is something that should happen.”
Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), operator of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant in California, was awarded $1.1 billion in conditional funding during the first award cycle. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved PG&E’s request for an exemption that could allow the 2,300-MW plant to continue operating past its scheduled 2025 closure date."
www.powermag.com/biden-administration-pledges-1-2-billion-to-keep-u-s-nuclear-reactors-online/
BTW, you do know fuel loading has just started at Georgia's Plant Vogtle n.4, and n.3 is fully online, don't you?
The shame is that the old clunker reactors that need to be shut down (there's this thing called neutron embrittlement, it makes the pressure vessel brittle) but aren't replaced with new reactors.
The second shame is that any replacements is going to be a huge reactor, which is bad for safety. If you keep the reactor under 400 megawatt thermal output then it cannot meltdown, there just isn't enough decay heat to melt the fuel.
Not anymore !!! 😊
what a happy story! sept4 wheres that 100000 y/o wastes. Hmmmmmm
Not sure where this exactly is but we can reduce waste by a large amount and in the near term find ways to use the waste for benefit rather than casking it away
We have Biotic Oil and Mineral Oil (Non-Biotic Oil) on Earth .. Mineral Oils and molecular methane and ethane & many benzene type chains can be found on Titan and other Solar System objects
No gloves f it, just grab that rod and put it on the control rod control arm.
AoL
Peak oil theory... WRONG
Yellow cake ?
When they extract the uranium from all the other crap that you get in uranium ore (1/2% uranium is regarded as very good ore) it comes out yellow, hence "yellow cake".
@HE-pu3nt Thank you, Brother.
Primitive tech.
Funny how he predicts the future. "This sort of breeder reactor is essential, or we will end up with heaps of inert Uranium 238, useless for anything"...
And what did we end up... Heaps of useless waste.