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 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..

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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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 find this video to be a perfect demonstration of what a perfect teacher is. Someone that has both passion for the topic as well as the ability and motivation to teach that topic. He not only made a disaster many of us have little knowledge on seem easy to understand but also managed to teach his already knowledgeable students. He also showed something I see little of in high school which is a teacher staying within their subject and not getting swept up in politics. This hour long video seems so short after your third time watching and I can’t help but thank every teacher in the world that has passion for what they teach along with the passion to grow their students. Thank you, Michael.

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.

I have no background in nuclear (or any other) physics, just wanted to say I appreciate a person with extensive knowledge speaking from a position of expertise and legitimacy. Very well done, professor.

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

Excellent presentation!!!!! I taught the event many times to newer operators at a nuclear power plant, they were preparing to take their reactor operator or senior reactor operator exam. Very well done, very well articulated. His comments about the media are spot-on. We could see it every single day as to how the industry was covered in the press. And the industry did nothing to counteract it, they're their own worst enemy. The one thing we had that added to the class for even more emphasis on operating safely was one of the engineers wives was a teen in Kiev at the time, and we had her on a video shown in the class describing what the effects were on the population in the area. It really brought home the importance.

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 is one of the videos from MIT that makes me think about how bad my lectures really are... Concretions MIT and the professor for sharing this great content with the humanity

I've been searching for a WHILE to find someone who could explain this too me in a way that I understood. If I'm being honest, MIT was the last place I thought I'd be able to learn this because I'm not on that level of education. This teacher was BORN to teach. He breaks it down in such a way that anyone could learn. I feel confident that I could explain this to someone else.

My physics and math abilities have faded away since school and college, but I was mesmerized by the lecture. Very well presented and lots of aspects covered.