Well There's Your Problem | Episode 8: Three Mile Island

Today @donoteat01, @aliceavizandum, and @oldmananders0n are joined by @LindsayPB to head to Central Pennsylvania to talk about the biggest civilian nuclear accident in the United States, which nonetheless didn't do very much
listen to trashfuture: trashfuturepodcast.podbean.com/
Here's the Patreon link so you can watch the Groverhaus episode: / wtyppod

[@cmdr_talikarni]

Over 3000 active nuclear plants across the US and no problems.... Typical of the left to claim this one with the problem applies to all, while ignoring the other thousands/millions that do not have the problem... This applies to power plants, guns, and dozens of others topics. One major problem is they put wind where wind is very sporadic instead of somewhere like the eastern edge of the Rockies where they 340 days of wind per year. Cover the eastern half of Wyoming with wind turbines and the nation would be powered. With solar they use panels that cannot handle the heat in the hottest areas of the southwestern US.

[@Lmndrsn]

The podcast is pro-nuclear. You didn't even listen to it, did you? Dumb as hell.

[@TheMilkManCow]

Try listening to the podcast.

[@welltheresyourproblempodca1465]

typical of the youtube commentor to not watch the vid before asserting that we stated the opposite of what we said in the video

[@theryanbard]

@@welltheresyourproblempodca1465 I appreciate that you always highlight the stupidest comment for easy reference

[@CommieGIR]

Hi, I'm a leftist and attended school for nuclear fuels. They specifically said they are pro-nuclear, but its important to highlight the mistakes made in nuclear accidents precisely to prevent them from happening again. Safe nuclear requires open critique and 20/20 hindsight on accidents and incidents.

[@NafiKhan]

trans rights

[@magnusaugust8489]

Everybody deserves rights!

[@marinary1326]

Transformer rights

[@YoutubeAdministrator]

What rights?

[@Lmndrsn]

Trans rights

[@ivanclark2275]

Nuclear trains rights

[@Anonarchist]

you control how spicy the rocks get by poking them with big pencils.

[@willmiles7978]

"Why did I see graphite on the roof?"

[@debrasue2793]

amazing 10/10

[@Izual001]

@@willmiles7978 You didn't because it's not there!

[@Rosetrainz]

@@willmiles7978this man is delusional get him to the infirmary

[@valentinelewton8189]

Three Mike Island. An island just for Mike, his friend Mike, and Mike's brother Mike.

[@Huntracony]

But what about Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, and Mike? Where do they live?

[@maglorian]

@@Huntracony they live at five Mike Beach.

[@erinb8937]

don’t talk to mike or my mike or my mike’s mike ever again

[@Brooklyn-Manhattan]

@@maglorian Wildwood.

[@cmdr_talikarni]

Yes?

[@pinkosock9728]

eventually the Tacoma Narrows Bridge episode will happen, and the next episode will still be the Tacoma Narrows Bridge

[@MrJohndoakes]

No, then it will be the Philistine temple Samson destroyed.

[@TrashHeapCustodian]

Turns out this was true And then eventually it became the molasses flood

[@DiamondKingStudios]

@@MrJohndoakes "what did we learn from that one?" "Directing strangers to load-bearing structures bad; shaving good"

[@EvergreenTransit]

And after the molasses flood it became the Chernobyl disaster

[@gimpy1091]

I'm a simple man, I hear "car bad, train good" and I like the video.

[@wondermenel2811]

im a simple man, i hear car racism, i dislike the video

[@GaldirEonai]

Gotta love the subtitles. "Give me my pen. [The pen does not appear as he forgets to turn screen recording on]"

[@curiousteddie]

I just realized that, on a long enough timeline, you're gonna have to do an episode on Bhopal someday and it's going to be the most soulcrushingly depressing ep ever created, even if y'all are some of the most charming people ever. Somehow I am looking forward to it

[@collintmay]

Liam replied to a comment I made on the last video, they have a Bhopal ep in the works. It's gonna be a fuckin bummer.

[@thewarzoneformerlyknownass4498]

The more insane part is that there is a very famous Swedish band called "union carbide productions" as a direct result of that and no one ever makes the connection.

[@gfox5237]

Man my mum took me to a play when I was like 7 on that disaster. I completely agree

[@popskism]

yaay

[@jeanlucdiscard]

From the authors of the Sampoong department store podcast, another capitalist nightmare story awaits.... BHOPAL BHOPAL BHOPAL BHOPAL BHOPAL BHOPAL BHOPAL BHOPAL BHOPAL

[@Mr.Sparks.173]

A little added info about TMI: all the major operators/ engineers in charge of the reactor were ex navy nuclear operators in like submarines and aircraft carriers. The reactors in those applications only ran at around 12 MW, TMI ran at 880MW for comparison. So the biggest worry a Navy operator had was making the pressurizer "go solid" or in other words filling it with water causing all the issues discussed in the podcast. This was such an issue that it took priority over making sure the reactor had water. Why? Because decay heat was about 10% of whatever the reactor was running at when SCRAM was initiated, which puts the decay heat of a navy reactor at around 1.2 MW, too cold to cause a meltdown. As long as you got the rods in, you could practically ignore the coolant situation. Which ment the pressurizer was your main and only concern. But TMI didnt run at 12MW, it ran at 880MW, which ment its decay heat was 88MW, which is more than hot enough to cause a meltdown. So priorities needed to shift - making sure the core had water circulation was the absolute most important thing, not making sure the pressurizer didnt go solid. Just too bad no one made sure the ex navy nuclear operators knew and understood that crucial diffrence. In addition, the warning panel that should have told them the sump was full had something like 300 lights on it, around 40 of which were always on during normal operation. Basically no one saw it because unless you're watching the panel like a hawk, you'll never notice a new light kicking on. Add in a nonsensical layout (like the over pressure warning light being right next to "the reactor is on" light) and that warning panel might as well been decoration.

[@nemo5654]

One small correction, the decay heat is about 7% of the core thermal output upon shutdown. Assuming a 33% thermal efficiency (most designs range from 33 to 37), the decay heat upon SCRAM is 184MW.

[@Wileama]

Also, the dot matrix printer that spat out error codes took 8 hours to print out all the errors that were generated in the first few minutes of the accident. I was a little disappointed with this podcast because the poor design of the alarm system feels like one of the root failures that occurred at TMI. The podcasters really disparaged the operators without understanding that the warning system did not provide them the situational awareness they needed. If the system had clearly communicated major events, namely the sump pump coming on, a lot of this disaster could have been prevented. The fact that there was no cohesive thoughtful design to the alarm system made their job of safely controlling the reactor far more difficult then it should have been. Here's another video on TMI which I think provides some really important insights kzbin.info/www/bejne/nn7OZ6V8abmtqck That being said I love the Leftie stuff and really appreciate a consistent social justice perspective on these disasters.

[@nakternal]

Thanks for regurgitating statements from a documentary than can be found here on KZbin

[@grmpEqweer]

...Does that mean that an array of smaller reactors would be safer? ...I'm guessing it would just be prohibitively expensive or otherwise not useful to build a bunch of smaller reactors to get the same power output? I was just wondering if it would be useful to size each reactor core such that it's _just_ small enough that it cannot catastrophically melt down in case of emergency shutdown. Then building enough reactors to fulfil power supply requirements. Sorry if that's a dumb question.

[@Mr.Sparks.173]

@@grmpEqweer safer yes, absurdly expensive also yes. Bigger reactors are also cheaper (in terms of MW / per resources spent, not final price) than smaller reactors. Basically the bigger the reactor the more power you get with less cost per MW, but also the more dangerous it is. So you need to strike a balance between efficiency and safety. And that cost isnt always dollars (though that makes a handy gauge of the costs) - the actual physical components are labour intensive to produce and require some rather fancy engineered materials. Even pulling the problem of capitalism out of the issue would still make that idea difficult, if not impossible. The better plan is to not build uranium light water reactors - as there are safer kinds of reactors to use (like thorium, where the byproducts arnt as hot and cant be used for weapons) but they tend to be either expensive to run (thus no profit, and thus no one wants to pay for it) or can't be used to make weapons (a plus for us, but a big no from our buddies at the Pentagon)

[@MatthewOstergren]

Liam going hard on transphobes always warms my heart.

[@AlanCanon2222]

I count several trans people among both dear friends, and people I admire (Fran Blanche is my current engineering crush, with her amazing and informative "Franlab" series on KZbin). I care deeply for the fairness of trans people's treatment by society, and I agree with you.

[@theryanbard]

Everyone else is waiting for the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse episode, I'm waiting for the Liam's van episode.

[@Lmndrsn]

I'll go rogue and record it

[@CODMarioWarfare]

I'm waiting for the 9/11 episode

[@Lmndrsn]

@@theD0gfish I can do a passable imitation of DNE

[@HugoStiglitz1942]

U are lucky today

[@CommieGIR]

Fukushima - Yeah, the Sea Wall was a big issue, the other one was placing the Cooling Pump generators below the water level, meaning the thing you need the most during a shutdown is the one now filled with water. You cannot now move water, because the thing to move the water is underwater. Irony.

[@sarahwashington7069]

Unbelievable that the free content hour doesn't have perfect visuals. 😂

[@PanAndScanBuddy]

I was worried we wouldn't get any slides either.

[@jeanlucdiscard]

I was expecting 3d animations comrades! I thought you all dabbed in graphic design.....or some shitz?

[@rockets4kids]

Well there's your problem...

[@tangledfish]

So what I'm taking from this series of podcasts is that a nuclear-powered RORO ferry is a fantastic idea.

[@gwynjudd]

Made with high strength steel

[@ussjohnston3334]

Just watch out for Mothman, and remember, P is stored in the nuts.

[@andrewmclaughlin7500]

And it also needs to have a roof made out of air conditioners.

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

Made with engineered lumber

[@weatheranddarkness]

I thought p was processed in the thigh pads?

[@djhsilver]

The cool sun is the best recurring character in the donoteat universe.

[@seanomatopoeia]

The eatcanon

[@djhsilver]

yes

[@8roomsofelixir]

TBH, "Three Mile Island" is actually a pretty cool place name. I can easily imagine this name showing up in a cyberpunk-vibe post-apocalypse novel or movie or game.

[@deeznoots6241]

八斋不死薬 it’s also functional as hell, it’s an island three miles long, three mile island. It’s like having a mountain called 2 kilometre mountain

[@8roomsofelixir]

@@deeznoots6241 As a person currently live near the Mile High City, I think a Two Kilo Mountain is feasible

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

we like on Blue Green Planet

[@IrishMorgenstern]

One of my friends is a "skyclimber" who services the turbines. He said being crushed or stuck is a higher risk than fire. They also dont have standardized equipment even within the same company as many of the employees are contractors, not full time w2 employees. So his harness may not work on a line structure or he maybe too big to fit in an area to fix something with it on. Capitalism will ruin everything it touches, even if it is an inherently good thing.

[@BadWebDiver]

There used to be a video on You Tube from the POV of a maintenance guy who climbed the transmission towers. That video seriously scared the willies out or me, as I'm inherently scared of heights. Was a great guilty pleasure tho...

[@grmpEqweer]

@@BadWebDiver Hmm. The cellular tower near my old house was home to an osprey nest for some years. I think repairing things at the top of the tower during nesting season would have been illegal and unsuccessful if attempted.

[@aprilk141]

@@BadWebDiver Try watching pimple popping videos while eating cream cheese for the sheer challenge of it

[@LunaRose1312]

Capitalism making electric cars for a fortune which eventually harm the environment more, they're playing us

[@jimcrelm9478]

Capitalism will ruin nuclear power. That could be by flouting safety standards for profit, by generating and/or dumping waste irresponsibly (with or without government approval)

[@CommieGIR]

I think the one thing Chernoby did pretty well in the last episode was discuss just how many mistakes/things they had to ignore or bypass to create the incident. As bad as the RBMKs are, it still took a clown show removing nearly every safety feature, ignoring basic reactor physics 101, for the accident to happen. The RBMK flaw just AMPLIFIED the shitty mistakes and ignorance of the crew, even while the Reactor Engineers were going "No, this isn't safe, we shouldn't do this".

[@0Asterite0]

oof, imagine listening to western propaganda.

[@AlanCanon2222]

Yes. The lesson learned shouldn't be "let's not build nuclear reactors," but, "For Enrico Fermi's sake, let's no one ever build a reactor like Chernobyl, those obviously sucked and an idiot shouldn't have to be told."

[@worldwar2freak12]

@@0Asterite0 Oof, imagine listening to the propaganda of a 30 year old dead state.

[@FalconOfStorms]

@@0Asterite0 Imagine listening to Hungry Santa.

[@SgtLion]

The problem is, Chernobyl absolutely was not faithful or historical in any meaningful sense. It genuinely is a piece of modern western propaganda where people now think they're experts on what happened but actually know less than nothing.

[@camelliascholl6564]

a couple years down the line, a Babcock factory was being torn down and I am delighted to inform you in the process there were a lot of photos taken of a partially demolished chimney with the word COCK spelled in differently colored brick

[@Huntracony]

"Transformator" is the word for 'transformer' in quite a few European languages, so it wouldn't surprise me if the diagram creator's native language is one of those.

[@BewegteBilderrahmen]

It's the original latin, iirc. English used it too in some old texts before they used the more familiar one.

[@Dawa1147]

In german its Transformator, so maybe from there?

[@Huntracony]

​@@Dawa1147 I didn't want to start guessing, because a lot of languages use 'transformator.' Here's a list of all the languages supported by Google Translate that use the spelling 'transformator' or, in case of non-latin alphabets, pronounce it as 'transformator': Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Frisian, German, Indonesian, Kazakh, Macedonian, Mongolian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Tajik, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Uzbek.

[@BewegteBilderrahmen]

@@Dawa1147 It's "transformator" or very slight variations in almost all european languages, even in french it's "transformateur"

[@Flying_Basset]

Correct, though we often say 'trafo' for short. Oh, and we use 'transformer' for big robots that turn into cars.

[@adamp3223]

S.C.R.A.M.: "Shoot Carcinogens At Mechanic"

[@Mr.Sparks.173]

Shoot Carcinogens Rapidly At Mechanics. You forgot the R in SCRAM

[@leemullen433]

I was 5 playing in my grandma’s yard 20 miles away in Perry County. I remember hearing the three local towns’ fire sirens go off and grandma came running out and dragged me inside. We watched news all day, but she got bored so we watched Three’s Company.

[@rtc3]

"they bricked the reactor"

[@CommieGIR]

Its worth noting: The Turbine room runs on a seperate cooling loop, so its nowhere near as radioactive as the actual reactor cooling loop. For a couple reasons: One, you don't want to contaminate the turbine steam which is usually sourced and returned to a local body of water, two because the reactor cooling water is usually de-ionized water to help prevent corrosion. The Steam Generator is also a heat exchanger, so the cooling systems never touch other than thermal exchange.

[@BadWebDiver]

Interesting info.

[@drewgehringer7813]

although Boiling Water Reactors, which do have the turbine room on the same loop, don't stay radioactive for long once you cut the steam supply off.

[@ericc9321]

People in the 50s: Someday radioactivity will become so mundane people will describe the taste of food with "radioactive" People on the cusp of 2020: Have you ever considered that radiation is just _SPICY AIR?_

[@matthewpicchu8232]

All we got was that Imagine Dragons song.

[@sammosaurusrex]

2 years later and I’m still disappointed Alice’s “for me all pork is pork that’s gone wrong” didn’t get a bigger laugh, that was a funny joke

[@Nenona1200]

Winning Taglines for this episode: "Spicy Rocks" *suddenly possessed voice* "I HATE TEA"

[@AKKK1182]

8:40 this is blatantly incorrect. The graphite part of the control rods is meant to increase the reaction because it absorbs fewer neutrons than the water. The part of the control rod that actually reduces the reaction in case of Chernobyl was boron carbide.

[@rossmum]

To be fair, the RBMK is so weird and arse-backwards from a western perspective that it's not surprising it trips people up.

[@jonnytightlips513]

It is not so much its absorbtion factor, but its moderation value. The graphite displacers or sliders were of almost equal length of the boron absorbtion rod separated by a chain link. Adding moderation to the void within the pressure tube and displacing water... this as you say prevents the addition of a vurtal water control rod.

[@MinaKittenGaming]

I'm only like 15 minutes in, and I just want to say whomstever did the closed captioning in this episode: Stellar Job. \m/

[@sadr18]

the possibility of a nuclear power plant meltdown is scary until you learn theres been 5 explosions/fires at 5 different petrochemical plants this year alone in southeast texas... the most recent one just a week ago

[@excitableboy7031]

Hate to be that guy but oil fires spew toxic smoke that settles down or disperses within a few days. Nuclear cleanup is a lot more involved.

[@grmpEqweer]

@@excitableboy7031 There's a huge petrochemical industry in the Houston shipchannel area. There's a cancer cluster stretching about 15 miles northward from it. Probably mostly from regular emissions, but the accidents don't help.

[@SgtLion]

The Chernobyl disaster, alone, is still likely responsible for increased cancer rates in the majority of the world population. Nuclear is generally aight, but not great.

[@Huntracony]

That clip of the Cybertruck's window breaking during the demonstration made it all worth it.

[@cantab345]

Well There's Your Pronoun!

[@authoranonymous8892]

48:20 "Disasters don't just happen. They're a chain of critical events." -Seconds From Disaster

[@adrift-at-c]

Damn, Alice is right. I just googled water hammer and all of the diagrams look exactly the same.

[@crismairo]

*guttural vocals* WATER HAMMER!

[@m__y-t-s]

all of the diagrams look extremely good

[@thisislesbomaya]

rip annotations, OK YALL CALLING OUT ME LIKING MILK TEA RUDE

[@jequirity1]

45:36 "Sometimes boring things are good" - me trying to flirt

[@readwrecks]

I swear to gods, I actually thought Liam’s name was “Leaves” for the first 3 episodes. It’s probably because I wasn’t paying attention, but I prefer to blame it on Liam’s microphone.

[@katiepatrick425]

Hey ~ it's me again. The girl with a TBI. I made it all the way through EP 7 Lac-Megantic without falling asleep. I'm going to try this episode. Maybe I'll see you here tomorrow. FML. I can't work, drive or leave my fkn house for the entire Fall and Winter. This better knock me the fuck out. I used to watch lectures about maths. I figured, I used to sleep through this in school so it should be a great sleep aid as an adult. Well, with a concussion I assure you maths hurt. I wasn't getting any sleep. I was getting nauseous. anyway. fk Katie~ she/her

[@tanithrosenbaum]

Actually, you can attach a fan to the sun, and we do. Many, actually. They're called wind turbines. :)

[@kensurrency2564]

remember: efficiency and down time

[@unicorn4031]

Pronouns: she /her. You should do the SL-1 nuclear disaster. US military experimental nuclear reactor that managed to kill three people. Comes complete with water hammer. 🌊 🔨

[@BadWebDiver]

One or the most interesting disasters. A man gets speared through the groin. O_O

[@CommieGIR]

@@BadWebDiver Speared through the groin AND PINNED TO THE REACTOR CEILING. Seriously, they had to construct a special sled to remove him from the reactor due to him being pinned onto the ceiling beam and radioactive as all get out.

[@BadWebDiver]

@@CommieGIR Yeah, I've just reread the details recently. It's an extreme one.

[@unicorn4031]

The part that gets me is that it took an hour or two before anyone looked up and noticed he was up there. 😱🤦🏻

[@TheMrVengeance]

@@BadWebDiver - That's what you get for trying to insert your smooth black rod into the spicy rocks. Tsk tsk. 😔

[@1BlessEdYou]

Next bonus episode is going to explore the series of events leading up to the annotation/screensharing mistake.

[@matthewmelange]

2:07 Alice: [laughs in transgender] If you have the subtitles on

[@alicecaldwell-kelly9530]

yes

[@philiproszak1678]

Yay! Onagawa!! It's true and we can all thank Yanosuke Hirai, a great civil engineer. He's responsible for a number of well built things that survived disasters. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanosuke_Hirai As a nuclear supporter I'd love some content on molten salt reactors. Haven't heard much news in a few years.

[@centurion1945]

Sadly the biggest problem with new nuclear is that nobody, American, European, or Japanese can seem to build a reactor even close to on time or on budget. The French EPR design ran into so many issues that Olkiluoto is literally a decade behind schedule and Westinghouse's AP1000 bankrupted the company, nearly destroyed Toshiba, and V.C. Summer had to be flat out abandoned, and the Vogtle expansion is only limping on thanks to some extremely generous financing arrangements. The only country that seems to be able to successfully produce new nuclear plants is China, and considering that China is using the same designs as the American and European plants, the safe money is that the Chinese plants are fully operational in name only. EDIT: I am also super pro-nuclear, but goddamn nobody can seem to actually build the stupid things.

[@dongiovanni4331]

There's some good news. Kursk 2-1 and 2-2 are on track for a 40 month build time.

[@centurion1945]

@@dongiovanni4331 We'll see as we are still fairly early in the project there. I am a little sceptical as so far all the VVER 1200 reactors that the Kursk units are based on have all taken around a decade to build, and what units have been exported all cost a fair amount more per KW than what the Russians claimed. But that's just the cynic in me talking, hopefully they can pull it off. Honestly, as far as the AP 1000's are concerned, their issues seem to be more a matter of sheer ineptitude and poor management than any technical hurdles. Reading Bechtel's report on V.C. Summer as well as reports about stupid shit happening at the Lake Charles fabrication facility makes you wonder how some of those people tied their own shoes, much less attempt to manage a multibillion dollar first of it's kind nuclear construction project.

[@madelinevoelker8346]

YES please do a mining disaster episode!! There are (unfortunately) so many to choose from. I'd also love to hear y'all talk about the 2007 I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse; it inspired a lifelong fear in my little sister, maybe knowing more about would help her.

[@GraysonZieglerPlusMe]

My great-grandfather worked at Three Mile Island, I'm so glad you guys covered this!!

[@XRXaholic]

Hydro is uh... massively ecologically destructive. Not to the same extent as say oil/coal/LNG, but still pretty devastating to local ecosystems. Use with care. I have no idea where your numbers about solar/wind efficiency are coming from, but they've basically been increasing steadily over the last few decades.

[@generalperiwinkle8868]

Steadily increasing to their current crap efficiency

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

Hydro is massively destructive once, and then you get a lovely lake, though?

[@Improbabilities]

@@RoamingAdhocrat you flood a valley, and every plant and animal who got drowned goes through anaerobic breakdown. You have a lake that spews out methane for years. Existing hydro plants have already done the damage. Any future use of existing hydro is essentially emission free (but still has a huge effect on the local ecosystem). Building new ones causes serious environmental damage, both globally and locally.

[@carl8790]

Solar and Wind can never compete on a large scale with nuclear, even if it was 100% efficient. However, Solar, Wind, Hydro and Nuclear all have there place for the grid, or whatever application it fits.

[@pennyforyourthots]

​@@carl8790 exactly. It should be a nuclear base load, supplemented by whatever suits the local environment the best. I find it weird that everybody acts like you need one solution to the energy crisis.

[@YoungZibzy]

My hopes feel dashed, i was so excited for extensive use of your newfound John Madden powers :(

[@Valkyrien04]

if you guys want a mine disaster, do the one where an oil derrick floating on a lake pierced a salt mine and made a river flow backwards for a week.

[@LaTigerGenesis]

Centralia seems like a natural future ep. This one was great and very gender fluid!

[@River_StGrey]

Dunno how the Tacoma Narrows Bridge joke makes me laugh every time, but it does.

[@Victoria-wl8tv]

PORVs are those weird bird things from star wars

[@Brooklyn-Manhattan]

Porgs*

[@inTIMMYdator44]

Groverhaus yesterday and this today. You're spoiling us!

[@Huntracony]

Spoiling patrons, merely accommodating us plebs. (Not complaining, though.)

[@eagletanker]

Anyone have a link to pirate?

[@Brooklyn-Manhattan]

@@eagletanker kzbin.info/www/bejne/onu4XoRvnNySqck

[@Brooklyn-Manhattan]

@@eagletanker Actually it's kzbin.info/www/bejne/e4e4hYmcfciWbcU

[@Summer-it3wh]

I really appreciate you doing the three video prequel to the tacoma narrows story, I can't wait to find out how the nuclear highway hotel features in it. Most commentaries leave that out.

[@Furore2323]

I can't express how much I love this show and everyone involved with it. Thank you all so much.

[@CommieGIR]

Re: Containment Building: Nobody can go in there during operation, because its sealed and airtight on purpose.

[@cfredrics]

Hoping for at least two pronoun checks. Will report back.

[@Huntracony]

I have lost all hope of you reporting back.

[@RoamingAdhocrat]

@@EmeraldLavigne neopronouns are made up, unlike every other word

[@TrashBinCat]

47:42 We have equipment to rappel down the outside if shit hits the fan

[@simongiavaras7787]

Fellow RAT? what's goooood?

[@BadWebDiver]

Hopefully not literally... :DDDDDDD

[@jgg-ox2uq]

I think Alice just exposed that she’s a gamer. Wonderful!

[@OnboardG1]

You should do the Northeast Blackout. Great example to talk about how stupid having lots of little grids is.

[@ShuRugal]

PORVs are really cool. They can be dual or single acting - dual acting valves close themselves when the pressure drops back below a certain level, and single-acting ones just stay open (single-acting PORVs are also referred to as emergency-relief valves) The biggest difference between a PORV and a regular blow-off valve is that a regular blow-off valve will begin to unseat as pressure passes a certain level, and their flow increases in linear relation to pressure until the valve is fully opened, whereas a PORV will immediately snap to "full open" when the trigger pressure level is exceeded (and, if it is dual acting, will snap back to full close when the pressure falls below the "close" threshold, which is usually set lower than the "open" threshold to prevent the valve cycling rapidly) The PORV at TMI had an electronic control for manually closing it, in the event that it had been triggered incorrectly or some other condition required accepting the higher operating pressure. The problem was that the control panel light for the PORV did not indicate if it was open or closed, it only indicated if the command to close it had been sent.

[@maggiesmith2843]

In the grim future of waterhammer 40k there is only Kevin bacon

[@scorpiosystem8082]

If milk in tea is wrong then I don't want to be right

[@ThePinkus]

2:45 listening to "I get really annoyed with dumb comments on YT section" while watching those evaporation towers made me think of that factory along an Italian highway, which painted a huge sign on their towers which reads "It's water!"... and I think they meant "It's f#*king water!" but either they went cheap on paint or the PR department vetoed it... and I can only imagine that if they listened to this podcast they would be saying at this point "We feel Your pain, dude! Every time the local environment group demonstrate at our gates, every time the news talk about CO2 pollution and shows our towers --- we feel Your pain! It's FH2O! And no, that's not fluorine."

[@snarkknight2092]

Also, might be worth noting that the reason the operators ignored the alarms was because the alarms printed out on this sheet with a several minute delay because so many alarms were going off simultaneously and it was basically impossible to parse while you're doing a whole bunch of other shit trying to figure out what's going wrong.

[@werta5000]

I am glad that I am watching these sequentially. If I didn't non of the references would make sense

[@TrashHeapCustodian]

Woooo can't wait for the bridge! Just like every time! It's right around the corner!

[@BigFatWow]

Dams ok. Creating a dam can destroy the immediate environment around it because you need to make a lake for it to work. People who used to live in the valley be dammed.

[@BadWebDiver]

Plus the problem of porous mountains on the side, like that big disaster in Italy.

[@mbilbo]

I'd suggest adding your podbean link (or a hint about the RSS feed) to the description, so people like me don't type out a rant about the unavailability on podcast apps, and then delete it, when we find out there is a feed hidden on your patreon page, like 1 second later. Anyway, love what y'all are doing. Trashfuture is also very dope.

[@LoneWolf343]

Apparently "transformator" is how you say "transformer" in Russian.

[@patrick_test123]

Or german for that, seems like someone reused the figure ; )

[@dalm1504]

Well theres your problem confirmed russian psyops

[@Huntracony]

Here are all the languages supported by Google Translate that use the spelling 'transformator' or, in case of non-latin alphabets, pronounce it as 'transformator': Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Frisian, German, Indonesian, Kazakh, Macedonian, Mongolian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Tajik, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Uzbek.

[@DahVoozel]

Hammer Arrestor.... isn't that the chief law enforcer in Dwarf Fortress?

[@OhShitSeriously]

You let nobles live?

[@jimboblordofeskimos]

@@OhShitSeriously You dont give the dwarf who looses both of their arms a cushy retirement job as hammerer?

[@OhShitSeriously]

jimboblordofeskimos I've never had a dwarf lose both arms and live! But seriously who doesn't just lock nobles in a room to starve, or else drown them as soon as they show up? They're nothing but trouble.

[@jimboblordofeskimos]

@@OhShitSeriously pfffft. Uncreative solutions. Not dwarfing hard enough I say. killing nobles just makes for more issues with ghosts and annoying things like that. The royal guard and the like are a great pension posting for cripples and the like. Last time id played nobles had also stopped demanding things that where impossible to make, so them wanting wild things like... a table and chair shouldnt exactly be a big deal when you are probably pumping out solid gold coffins for fun.

[@OhShitSeriously]

@@jimboblordofeskimos Yeah, ok. I dropped off a while back, so maybe nobles aren't the problem they used to be any more. Shame not to be able to build miasma towers any more, though.

[@nightw4tchman]

Your explanation of nuclear reactors reminds me of when I had to drunkenly explain to a friend of mine the basics of how they work. I should have just said "spicy rocks made things hot"

[@heralds]

I'm here from 4 years in the future and I'm shocked that this isn't over an hour

[@ellenbryn]

You guys and gal are my new favorite channel. I've been mainlining this channel all weekend hearing you teach me stuff while talking sense and ethics, making me laugh, and providing that peculiar disaster porn empathy which I hope is not reveling in other people's suffering but catharsis. Sometimes it's easier to process feelings of despair and anger by processing similar feelings about some historical event. I've got one important thing to say, but first, the boring personal anecdote. I grew up in Chester County in the 70s. The news in those pre internet days was radio and local newspaper once a day, so we were mostly in the dark about what was happening at Three Mile Island, except that "everything was under control, no, really." Unconvinced, Mom had me sleep in the basement for a week. Part of her pessimism was because she was Jewish, and part was because my Dad was an engineer, and she judged engineers based on him. He was once given a Total Destruction Award by his grad school department. (I thought it was cool.) So now I gotta apologize for my soapbox, although we basically agree: OIL BAD. I live out in California now, where there's like, sun, and I've barely seen a decent thunderstorm in decades. In spring and fall, our solar and wind farms occasionally generate enough surplus energy now to sell the extra to Arizona. But that's annoying. It's OUR sun juice. We should be able to save it for later. Which, in fact, we can. At least a little, and hopefully much more within the next decade. So I have one thing to say to the oil and coal companies putting up billboards: HAVE YOU NEVER FLIPPING HEARD OF BATTERIES?! No, not the ones Pokemon Go players use to keep their phones from running out of juice. Not just the powerpacks attached to solar cells for glamping. I'm talking big stonking industrial rechargeable lithium ion batteries like the Mira Loma storage facility. Right now it's used for load shifting, to avoid having to fire up gas-fired power plants during peak hours by feeding in power banked during low-demand (and cheaper) hours. There's pilot programs for energy storage in many countries, and domestic models for houses with solar panels. Since big stonking rechargeables have only been on the market for 5-6 years, and nobody's giving Tesla competition yet, the cost of the batteries makes them meh for individual houses, but each generation of battery is more efficient. Sun set. Big stonking battery play back juice from sun. Energy storage gives renewables a vital component they needed to be viable. The US government needs to stop paying Big Oil the subsidy it gave the oil industry to get it STARTED as an emerging public good, but then never stopped feeding it. Instead, use that same exact subsidy to encourage improvements in renewables and energy storage. (Solar roadways have been looking for mass production for how many years now? They work fine. They just need an initial outlay, same as nuclear.) And no, I'm not totally anti-nuclear, but look up a nuclear power plant called San Onofre, halfway between LA and San Diego. It's had... its own problems. More importantly, it's sited riiiiight down by the ocean. it's literally built on sand, and you know we are expecting an 8+ earthquake at any time. Just for funsies, geologists recently discovered an offshore creeping slope, the Palos Verdes underwater landslide, which may add a megatsunami to the festivities. And unlike Fukushima, San Onofre doesn't have a seawall! Maybe you'll be doing a podcast on it someday.

[@Gantradies]

to be fair, from (what relatively little) ive read, allegedly the shift who dropped the ball had a buncha things throwing them off- allegedly, the layout of the control room readouts was horrible (random indicators ect willy-nilly instead of being organized by location/type), the mainframe had a pathetically slow connection to the printer that was its only/main output to the control room (the alerts it was printing were significantly delayed- we're talking minutes), and they were quite literally trained (ex nuker boat service) to treat water hammer as a instantly lethal hazard to be avoided at all costs (to be fair, water hammer damage on a submarine in hostile waters is potentially lethal/an instant mission kill)- and they werent properly retrained...

[@CommieGIR]

Thank goodness for containment buildings, but I wish TMI hadn't happened, since we kinda need them now as AGW gets worse and worse...

[@Shredderbox]

"What is an RBMK reactor but barbequing too close to the vinyl siding of your containment vessel?" absolutely sent me 🤣

[@lazyidiotofthemonth]

Graphite was never used as a control rod, the graphite in Chernobyl was used as a moderator, where western Reactors use Water solely as the moderator, and western control rods are made of Boron or Hafnium, which are metals that readily absorb nuetrons

[@user-ms8km7lh1l]

i was surprised when they actually (kinda) started talking about tacoma narrows, i was hoping they'd get into a tangent about it and accidentally do a mini episode

[@Mythriak_]

You should do an episode about the Chinese Dam that is making all the rivers in the southeastern asia run dry.

[@a.holland2262]

That smiling sun DOES have a fan. Me. Big fan.

[@CurtisSobie]

really surprised you all got through this without a Simpsons reference

[@BadWebDiver]

Me too.

[@cl3mb0t]

53:24 I’m choosing to believe that “control room asplode” is a Strong Bad Email reference.

[@HelixFlame33]

Congrats on that new mic! That's going to make listening to my fave podcast even more pleseant :3

[@Bakamoichigei]

"Spicy Rocks" I am in _goddamn tears._ 😂😂😂

[@warmachineuk]

I find it odd there weren't flow sensors, which would detect if a valve is open.

[@BadWebDiver]

We're talking 70's technology here...

[@CoastalSphinx]

IIRC there was a temperature sensor after the valve, intended in part to identify when the valve was open (since that would mean live steam in the pipe and therefore a high temperature). Unfortunately the valve had developed a small leak before the accident, so the temperature was always elevated, and the further increase due to the open valve was overlooked (the indicator was at the actual temperature but it was mis-read as being lower).

[@whitewampa2910]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.!!!! Stalker!!!! Roadside Picnic!!!! Woooo!!!! That is all.

[@eagletanker]

Metro?

[@jeanlucdiscard]

Comrade, you noz Stalker until youz watch movie by Tarkvosky while doing Slav squat. BLYAT!

[@whitewampa2910]

Tanker one ehhh, not my thang. Maybe your thang, and awesome! But not my thang.

[@jeanlucdiscard]

@@whitewampa2910 The original Stalker and Call of Pripyat are so memorable. Classics. Mention Clear Sky tho....don't. JUST DON'T.

[@whitewampa2910]

Sub Stantial already have played all 3

[@Tebbylous]

Ooh, a Piper Alpha episode? Love it. On that front: Byford Dolphin. More of a small-scale thing, but it does involve a person having all of their organs ejected out through his neck hole -- some ending up ten meters away. Also the reason why huge pressure differentials scare the crap outta me.

[@jayphailey]

And I will never stop calling uranium "spicy rocks" now.

[@DiamondKingStudios]

Around the 56:30 mark they begin talking about the Croydon tram derailment, and I heard that after I saw the _Plainly Difficult_ video on it...

[@JerichoTheBeagle]

"So this was a known problem with this model of reactor, but they didn't do anything about it." "This is why we need standardization so they're all the same!" I mean, I don't disagree about the need for standardization but that was not the failure point, here

[@zerg0s]

Where's my bridge, guys? I've been promised a bridge, guys!

[@j2simpso]

zerg0s seems like a bridge to nowhere 🤣

[@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot]

It's next episode, don't you watch the podcast?

[@j2simpso]

@@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot I could be mistaken here but isn't a podcast a regularly scheduled audio based programme? Last I checked people don't watch audio but maybe I'm just weird!

[@midnite1112]

@@MrxstGrssmnstMttckstPhlNelThot I honestly checked to see if the TNB had just not collapsed yet and that's why we were still waiting for the episode.

[@superyerfdog]

I also support nuclear power but I think you guys overstate the issues with solar/wind. Also, hydropower is overall pretty bad in terms of environmental damage and, depending on the location, indigenous rights.

[@ashleyelgin9808]

Transformator is a real word.... in German. It translates to English as transformer.

[@Huntracony]

I happen to have already made this list... Here are all the languages supported by Google Translate that use the spelling 'transformator' or, in case of non-latin alphabets, pronounce it as 'transformator': Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Frisian, German, Indonesian, Kazakh, Macedonian, Mongolian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Tajik, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Uzbek.

[@ashleyelgin9808]

@@Huntracony impressive

[@csours]

These rocks are too spicy!

[@BlisaBLisa]

I think the reason people have such different reactions to the risks of nuclear energy than the risks of any other kind of energy is that radiation is kind of incomprehensible to most people, in that you can know how it works but it still feels almost supernatural in a way other energy sources do not. people have an intuitive understanding of fire, poison gas, electricity, floods (when a dam breaks) and how these things harm us and the environment, but with radiation its something invisible that you cant detect on your own and you initially wont feel anything until your body starts to break down. its just different in the emotional sense, it feels more like some kind of magic like this cursed object that kills you invisibly by destroying your very chromosomes. even if other energy sources can kill you in a more painful way radiation has a unique kind of horror to it. obv i am pro nuclear, but i understand why people have this emotional response to it. honestly im not sure how you can get past this instinctive fear in anti-nuclear people to convince them that nuclear is better also proud of my state of illinois for being the state with the most nuclear power plants in the country💪💪

[@jwhiteside91]

The thing is Met Edison employed ex-US Navy nuclear submarine engineers, where not letting the pressuriser 'go solid' was drilled into them and they brought this across to civilian reactor ops. Great podcast though, could I suggest you do an episode on the UK's current AGR reactors and how they're at the end of their lifespan with no replacement thus far.

[@benhogan7036]

Ahh I see the towers out of my window! Thanks, love the podcast!

[@G14N14RI12]

The real axe was a screwdriver.

[@BadWebDiver]

Interesting...

[@ContentSafe]

"Transformator" is the german word for transformer, so I guess that error might have been some lost in translation thing.

[@frrascon]

I suspected that.