The Soviet Union’s Deadly Abandoned Nuclear Generators

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or RTGs (sometimes incorrectly called Nuclear Batteries) are usually utilized in deep space exploration. But during the 1970s and 1980s, during the height of The Cold War, The Soviet Union manufactured over 2500 terrestrial RTGs to power its unmanned Lighthouses and Radio Navigation Beacons on the Northern Arctic seaboard, or deployed in the USSR’s remotest hinterland rural regions. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, all these highly dangerous, intensely radioactive devices were simply abandoned in situ, and left to rot for the next 2 decades.... until they started to kill people in the 21st century, with Acute Radiation Exposure. This finally caused the international community to start to take the hazard they posed seriously. This 30 min video is a documentary on the reasons the Soviet Engineers chose to use dangerous Radioisotope Thermal Generators to power equipment, the technology and nuclear physics behind them, with the help of Matt Damon in the movie ’ The Martian’ (2015) . We explore some Abandoned Places in the Former Soviet Union that are still home to decaying RTGS , such as Aniva Lighthouse, on Russia’s Sakhalin Island. Finally the video tells the story of the Lia, Georgia Radiation Incident of 2001, when 3 Georgian woodsmen, accidentally stumbled upon an abandoned, highly radioactive RTG core. Which sadly killed one man and seriously injured the others. An incident that needed human radiation clean up techniques not seen since the ’bio-robots’ of the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster. Despite several years of The Russian Federation and the EU/US West cooperating to decommission and make safe many orphan Soviet RTGs after the Lia Incident, since 2014 Vladimir Putin’s government has withdrawn this international cooperation, leaving 100s of these highly radioactive and deadly devices unaccounted for across Russia, posing a deadly threat to its unsuspecting rural population. Chapters: 00:38 Intro 01:02 Space RTGs (featuring Matt Damon) 02:48 Soviet Kerosine Lantern Radios 05:50 Soviet Terrestrial RTG Technology 15:20 The Post Soviet Years 20:15 The Lia, Georgia Radiation Incident - 2001 29:36 The present situation and ominous future #coldwar #soviet #nuclearphysics #abandonedplaces