Something Happened at Chernobyl...

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:08]Hello, welcome to my YouTube channel. My name  is Barry and today we are going to be watching something is happening at Chernobyl. I'm not  sure what it is, but I think the demon might have awoken. Let's check it out. 35 years ago, the  world experienced what was and still is the worst nuclear disaster in history. Oh, reactor number  four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had melted. Remember we watched that video. Is that  the one with the elephant's foot where the guy went to go take the picture and then after he  took the picture he thought it was going to be like Pokémon snap but then like his life snapped  in half and he died. Yeah, I remember that it down spewing radiation across Europe and creating  hundreds of tons of radioactive lava. 95% of which remain semi- crystallized in dark basement to this  day. It's still there. Oh my god, there's finally a room that's more toxic than mine. And that's  where most people's knowledge of the catastrophe ends. Yeah, that's all I know. Well, almost four  decades after most of the world has forgotten it, something is happening a few meters below Pripat  once again. Oh, I like the accent. What is it? And just how concerned should we be that Chernobyl's  irdiated heart is still beating? That's scary.

[00:01:22]This is the seventh video in the series Half-Life  Histories. Wait, there's like a whole Avengers buildup and I just kind of skipped it and went  right to this. I am so sorry. I should have done my homework. I'm sorry. The scope and scale of  the disaster that was Chernobyl was something the world had never seen. As was the cleanup.  Me and my friends in Lethal Company be like, "Over 206 days, 90,000 people flooded the  dangerous site to clean, catalog, and construct.

[00:01:51]The first responders were the first victims of  fatal radiation doses. After those first bodies failed and robots malfunctioned, Soviet soldiers  known as liquidators were brought in. Holy aura though. Like this picture is crazy. Like they look  like little SCP guys. This is nuts. These young men actually considered braving the invisible  dangers because the Soviet Union had told them they could either serve 2 years in the concurrent  Afghan war or 2 minutes shoveling debris off of the reactor roof. Oh my god. I would be scared.  I would probably pick the left because if they're only telling me 2 minutes, there's a reason. Most  of these liquidators are now either sick or dead.

[00:02:39]The initial cleanup, a war never changes. Yeah,  I I would pick war. At Chernobyl was a monumental and costly effort that ended with the sarcophagus,  a hastily made coffin of concrete and steel meant to keep radiation in and everything else out.  It wasn't perfect, but it was never meant to be a lasting solution. Yeah. Because just being in  the vicinity of the failed reactor was dangerous in and of itself. That's kind of scary. Like they  have to find a solution, but then you just have to find people to go in. And then like you don't even  know if the band-aid's going to stop the bleeding.

[00:03:11]So then you just have to keep finding more people  to do more band-aids. Nothing was constructed optimally. There were more than 1,000 square m of  cracks in the shelter, and no engineer would ever consider it stable. Oh no. This was when something  much more impressive was designed and eventually implemented. The new safe confinement. One  day, Barry Crepe will also be a failed reactor.

[00:03:35]That was so wrong. That was the most wrong thing I  have ever read in the chat. That was rude. Started in October 2007, the new safe confinement  or NSC would be a modern tomb to rival the ancient pyramids. It was to be built taller than  the Statue of Liberty and wider than the Roman coliseum. You know what? We could make the Statue  of Liberty a little wider. Who's with me? If I'm president, I'm making the Statue of Liberty have a  little bit bigger of a butt. And everybody gets a statemandated cat, girlfriend. I got you. And I'm  gonna limit people to only have three max amount of people you're allowed to bring with you into  Costco or Target because I am tired of grandpa, grandma, mom, dad, puppy dogs, all of them just  walking around doing nothing. This would require more bolts than most US cities had people  and about half the Titanic's weight in steel.

[00:04:30]Wow. It was slid over the sarcophagus in late  November 2017 with the promise of containing the ruins underneath for at least the next 100 years.  I know a hundred years sounds like a long time, but that's like kind of not that much.  It's like if I gave you $100 right now, you could spend that pretty quick. The NSC would  allow scientists inside to study the failure, keep radiation and radioactive dust from escaping  into the environment any further and jumpst start the cleanup process with cranes installed on the  interior. The space between the ruin reactor and the outside world was even pressurized. In the  event of an excursion from the sarcophagus below, a pressure gradient would keep the nuclear  material inside, at least for a little while.

[00:05:14]Uh-oh. Of course, there were 30 years between when  the sarcophagus was constructed and when the NSC intombed it. During that time, nature wasn't  following the suggestions of scientists. No, every time it rained, water would enter the leaky  coffin and soak literally hundreds of thousands of kg of nuclear fuel and fuel containing materials.  Oh my god, I forgot about weather. Oh no.

[00:05:44]and it's like weathering away everything. Nature  is angry and now we got doodoo water. Nasty soup.

[00:05:52]This was a problem because water interacts with  nuclear material in a very specific way. It's going to go into the ground and then if it's  in the ground, what if it starts getting into like the water supply or like messing up with  the soil or like having other issues? Oh no.

[00:06:09]Oh no. Or what if it evaporates into  rain? Everything here is really bad.

[00:06:18]Sorry, I got banned on Reddit one time. This word  scares me. In pretty much every nuclear reactor you've ever heard of, water is critical. Inside of  a nuclear reactor, it serves three functions. The first is to cool down fuel. The second is to get  turned into steam by that fuel to turn turbines and generate electricity. And the third gerine to  this analysis is to act as a moderator of nuclear reactions. This last function is at the heart of  what's happening at Chernobyl right now. Neutrons flying out from radioactive materials don't just  smack into other atoms and instantly cause a chain reaction. It turns out that only certain  kinds of neutrons do that. The slow kind See, you don't always got to be the fastest person  in the room. There's something bad about always talking slow cuz like you know people can like  digest it a little bit better and then it makes you a little bit more better presenting.  Neutrons come screaming out of unstable nuclei at 45 million miles hour way too fast  for other atoms to grab onto them and continue on the chain reaction. Neutrons at 1 10,000th of  that velocity are much better at that. And you can slow neutrons down this much by making them  bump into a bunch of stuff. Oh, science [ __ ] If you've ever played billiards, I have. That's why  I would have hit right here in the pocket. You've seen something pretty close to what's called an  elastic collision, a perfect transfer of momentum.

[00:07:43]You may have even seen one ball slow down almost  completely after a good smack. You can test it right now. Looking at the math makes this easy to  understand. If momentum is always conserved, then if both balls are the same mass, as you see here,  then the only physical option is for one ball to slow down considerably or even completely. Oh,  an effective way to slow down neutrons inside of a nuclear reactor, therefore, would be for those  neutrons to hit as many similar mass particles in elastic collisions as possible and slow way down.  I knew that. This is exactly why you see water in a reactor. The hydrogen in water has mass just  like a neutron. And being a similar mass, hydrogen slows neutrons way down after colliding to the  point of much more likely chain reactions and the successful operation of a nuclear reactor. How  did people figure this out? Like with the really really really really big microscope. This is the  reason why water is a great moderator of nuclear reactions. And all of this brings us back to an  trial and error. You do not want to hear that.

[00:09:00]I hope that I didn't have to be the error. I  hardly know her. An inaccessible basement below Chernobyl reactor number four. That's where I  keep the mods. And that is a cause for alarm.

[00:09:12]They always want to be ordering pizza down there.  Cranes, sprinklers, and entry points. The new safe confinement was outfitted with radiation  detectors, and they've been blinking above the ruins of reactor number four for 35 years.  Damn, some spots are more hot than others, but scientists expected this to be the case.  I have a question. Like, with technology, can this be moderated a little bit more now?  Like, could we have like little robots that go down there and check in on stuff and like look  around like beep beep and then like send stuff back and then we can like see what we got to do.  The rapidly constructed sarcophagus was leaky and most of the uranium fuel at Chernobyl was still  slumbering. This meant that any seasonal or heavy rain let water in. John, sorry, heavy rain like  activates something in my brain. Submerging the fuel in pitch black basement and moderating  emission. This had the effect of reigniting smoldering embers of the worst nuclear disaster  in history. Like lightning, neutron spikes in the radiation detectors would come and go with  the rain. Oh, but this never seemed to worry the scientists of the Institute for Safety Problems  of nuclear power plants. We need ghosts to do it, dude. If I was a ghost and they gave me a job,  hell no. Send me to hell. the only scientific institution that has been studying the state of  the sarcophagus since the accident. And to quote the scientists there, fuel containing materials  were fully wet and dynamics of the neutron flux density was within seasonal trends due to the  regular precipitation and condensate input, i.e. there were no potentially hazardous changes of  the subcriticality of these nuclear hazardous file materials. End quote. And it was this institution,  the ISPNP, that has now pushed back against the flurry of breathless headlines implying some  kind of imminent disaster at Chernobyl. Yes, something is indeed happening. It's just scary  because like you never want it to get worse.

[00:11:24]Like you're already in my giant big tomb basement.  Like why are you getting mad? Like eat the pizza, play your PlayStation, chill out. No need to get  heated cuz now I don't know what to do. This year, neutrons have been spiking detectors in an  inaccessible basement room named 305 over2. Yes, there are nuclear reactions pinging beneath Pryet  again. However, these stories are ex like does everybody in the world help with this? Because  I feel like this is such a crazy disaster that like everybody probably should help or like learn  something. Exactly why understanding the nuclear physics first is important. The nuclear scientists  watching these spikes in the sarcophagus expected this to happen too. Like they expected spikes as  seasonal rains dripped onto slowly deteriorating uranium fuel. You see, the new safe confinement  was watertight, which meant that eventually all that water that had gotten into that cursed place,  it's got to go somewhere. Like it it does it go up would evaporate. Yeah. The best hypothesis  scientists currently have is that as evaporation in Chernobyl occurs without water to get in  the way, neutrons are now moving through the nuclear material differently. Oh, the lavalike  fuel has cracked and cooled over time and has become porous. Forbidden tubby custard machine,  full of holes. This change in structure combined with the receding water and the reflectivity of  the surrounding crumbling concrete is hypothesized to account for the 40% increase in neutron spikes.  Those 45 million mph neutrons are shooting out once again. Quoting the representatives of  the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl itself, this situation had been predicted by the  ISP NPP before the NSC arch was slid over.

[00:13:22]When I start seeing acronyms, I get scared.  And was taking place due to the drying of overmoistened environment of black lavalike FCM.  Currently, the sensors tracking the neutron flux density show constant values in all premises with  no trends to rise and the current levels do not pose threat of self-sustained chain reaction of  fision. End quote. Is this truth or fision? Of course, this will only put your mind at ease if  you believe the predictions of nuclear scientists working at and for the Chernobyl nuclear.  Yeah, like that's what I'm saying. Like, who do we believe? Power plant. Despite the  headlines, what is happening at Chernobyl is currently cause for cautious study, not panic.  These are embers of a 35-year-old catastrophe, not a looming second disaster. In fact, according  to the physics, nothing like what happened in 1986 is ever likely to happen there again, as remaining  water to moderate a meltdown would quickly boil away. And safety protocols like sprinkler systems  that spray neutron absorbing liquids are already in place. Oh, wait. So, they have like the foam  machines or something. But make no mistake here.

[00:14:40]From monitors sealed underneath an artificial  shield taller than the Statue of Liberty, we know that what melted into the earth below the  Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986, what is beneath a sarcophagus 90 km north of Kiev is not  dead and buried. What happens to like the animals in the area? Cuz like they don't know. And like  what if they roam in from other areas and they just are like drinking water somewhere? Like do  they just turn into like little Simpsons guys or something? They die. Wait, they mutate? Yeah. Like  what if they like come in? Could they get like superpowers? Like are they are they like sipping  I don't know V adapt or die? They grow really big and fight each other. Oh, hell no. It's like Spore  Godzilla. They mutate, dude. That's crazy. Wait, there's like I think somebody said dogs. Are there  mutated dogs? Oh, hell no. I had to deal with them enough in Dark Souls 3. They'd be falling from  the sky and biting my [ __ ] Until next time.

[00:15:48]Thank you so much to the very nerdy staff here  at the facility for their direct and substantial support in the creation of this here video.  Today especially, I'd like to recognize research assistant Applejuice and visiting scholar Sarif  the dipping on apple juice the angel. If you'd like to join the facility, no, I don't look like a  cult leader. Every time he comes up on the screen, someone in chat is like, "He is so handsome." Do  you want to drape on a silky white lab coat? Get behind the scenes photos every week. Get members  only live streams with me. Not like that. See videos. He heard you. He knows what you said.  Early. You can go to patreon.com/carlhill and join the facility today. And hey, if you support  us just enough, you get your name on Arya here each and every week. And as you can see, there's  literally hundreds and hundreds of you. So, I have no idea how I'm going to pass the time.  Interesting update. Okay. You may know that my history as a science communicator and someone  who likes to talk about nuclear disasters intertwines with what's called the elephant's  foot. Oh, yeah. Tons of radioactive lava that melted through the basement of Chernobyl and  accumulated in a elephant's foot looking thing, wrinkled and gray. Well, when I Okay, I'm only  28. I wouldn't be saying those words around me, though. They're kind of triggering. I did research  on that initial video and article I wrote many years ago. It was hard enough that they had  to fire an AK-47 at it to get a what? Wait, I forgot about weapons. We just be blowing  this [ __ ] up chunk off for study. But today, apparently in 2021, it has more the composition  of sand. So this uranium fuel and these fuel containing materials in Chernobyl are everchanging  and ever deteriorating as these fuels go through their halflife. Something's always going to be  We should play Halflife. Bye. Is he leaving for good? Where did he go? Um, anybody see him?  Oh, thanks for watching. Oh, no thank you.

[00:17:56]that damn smile. Anyways, thank you so  much for watching. I super appreciate it and you should go by the Twitch stream  or sorry, I'm going to throw up. Save and I hope you use code berry for 10% down  your gamer subs order. It super helps me out. I hope you have a great evening.  Goodbye YouTube. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

[00:18:18]And here lives a truly  extraordinary species, the volcus.