The Chernobyl nuclear disaster

During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese VietCong guerrillas built a vast network of tunnels in the south of the country as part of the insurgency against the South Vietnamese government and their American allies. The tunnel network was a key base and shelter for the North Vietna ...  Show more

In 1943, the cellist, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. She expected to be killed in the gas chambers but survived because she was recruited to play in an orchestra set up by the women prisoners. In 2015, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch told Sim ...  Show more

In 1986, the Chernobyl power plant became the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history. Poisonous radiation caused over 100,000 casualties, and cost billions of dollars to clean up. Even now, the exclusion zone is one of the most polluted and heavily-patrolled regions in the ...  Show more

Welcome to When It Goes Wrong, the podcast about disasters, accidents and when things fall apart. On this episode I discuss the the 1986 Chernobyl Disaster in which the reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl Power Plant suffered a full meltdown and explosion resulting in the worst nuc ...  Show more

To mark the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a special edition on episodes from Ukrainian history.

In April 1986 a reactor exploded at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Soviet Ukraine. Sergii Mirnyi monitored radiation levels in the exclusion zone around the plant. How t ...

NOTE: IN THE PORTION WHERE I EXPLAIN NUCLEAR FISSION, I MIX UP NUCLEI AND NEUTRON! I realised this post editing but I think it generally makes sense, but when I explain how the nuclei is hit, I say it releases a nuclei, it actually releases a neutron, the neutron then hits the ne ...  Show more