26. Chernobyl — How It Happened

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Am absolutely not on the level of these students, but can still understand and follow this lecture. This professor is superb in making a difficult subject understandable. Thanks for posting this video.

I love when a teacher says “let’s just wind down a bit since your other classes are going full throttle”

I'm an engineer and am very impressed and humbled by how well spoken and clear this professor is with such a difficult subject.

I would like to thank MIT for this superb presentation. It has brought closure to my wife's passing nearly a year ago from thyroid & bowel cancer. She was living in Sofia Bulgaria at the time of the disaster. I remember her telling me that she accidentally ingested rain water that tasted metallic & bitter. First her thyroid failed no matter how much iodine she took to correct the issue it got worse, then a few years ago, no matter how much food she ate she lost weight & strength, now I now why.. Again Thank you for bringing closure to a painful situation.

I am thrilled by the simplicity and understandability of this class.. This teacher made me think about returning to school, with my age of 50... Hats off to you. Mr. Michael Short... If I only had 1 or 2 teachers like you, I would have been the best student of the class..

Knowing the science is one thing, but teaching it well is a completely different beast. The professor tamed both

This guy is excellent. The students taking his class are really lucky to have such a responsive, alert, intelligent person to present the issue - and answer the questions coming from it.

A really good explanation of the Chernobyl event. I was working at a nuclear site in the UK, at the time. We had just started our evening shift at 14:00 on a Friday i think, one of the guys had some work to do in the Reactor equipment building, he entered the building through and then realised that he had forgotten some tools, he decided to go straight out, and had to go through the exit radiation monitors, which alarmed to high haven one they started to monitor him. The radiation protection engineer was called, and he explained that he had just come in from outside and had not been in any contamination areas within the building . We had just had a shower of rain and so decided to use portable radiation detectors outside, to our horror, we were having reading 200 - 300 counts/sec... this was baffling to us at the time as to where i the contamination had come from, we eventually found out the following day, i think, what had occurred at Chernobyl. Reactor Safety systems are designed to keep us all safe, shame they by-passed them, but they guys who tried so valiantly to contain the contamination spread at the time were real heroes.

Graduated in nuclear physics, and not once had the pleasure of having a lecture dedicated to chernobyl. Guess this makes up for it, thank you very much!

I'm 73 years old. I spent most of my working life teaching science. This class makes me want to go back to school. I used to explode hydrogen and oxygen when I taught chemical reactivity, I used to always warn my colleagues when I was going to do it, one time the Head of Department didn't listen and the bang made her fall of the steps she was using to put up a poster!

Never did I think i'd find myself watching an introduction to nuclear engineering

I watched the mini-series about Chernobyl, found this, and ended up going through the whole course. Thank you for uploading!

I'd give this lecture a rating of 3.6 roentgen. Not great, not terrible..

I get the feeling that none of his students ever skip class. In fact, they probably smuggle in their friends.

That any human can get to this level of understanding is quite impressive, but that you can teach and entertain the mind with your talents as an instructor is quite rare and motivating to me as a 4th grade teacher. I dreamed of getting to this kind of level of knowledge, and failed. But this lecture motivates me to have my students accomplish what I could not. What a great post, thanks for the OCW, MIT.

This professor is a rock star, and I wish I could have been in the front row. Nicely done.   And I loved one of the last things he said. "The data isn't out yet. Hopefully it never will be." I kind of think that people who are very intelligent in these STEM areas have a reputation for being uncaring or emotionless but what he said, to me, is the evidence of real understanding and humanity. It was just phrased in his way. I thought it was kind of poetic.

Great lecture. I am a simple blue collar guy who is fascinated with subject matters that are usually well above my pay grade. As a craver of knowledge, this lecture was interesting, and he keeps your attention. I wish I would have had a few teachers like this.

I’m impressed that at 20 minutes in to the student’s question he had the confidence to answer “I’m not sure.”

Trained as an ex-Navy Nuclear Submarine machinists mate / Engineering Lab Tech from pre-Chernobyl days, and after seeing the HBO series on Chernobyl- this was a fascinating look at some details I did not know, and very well taught. Much thanx to Prof Michael Short for this presentation. Great job!