(Narrator) Right now we're making our way to the site of an abandoned nuclear power plant
it's been over 25 years since the plant last operated.
- There's cameras.
I don't know if they're active though.
Oh that's a door open, holy shit.
Holy shit.
Alright.
We did it.
We are-- you okay?
- Oh wow, look how far up the roof goes.
- Oh my god.
- So, I highly doubt there's gonna be anything still radioactive
in here.
But,
for our own safety, and also mostly just out of my own curiosity
we got a Geiger counter
for this exploration.
So,
yeah
[Geiger counter startup beep]
we're gonna use this thing and see if we detect anything in here.
So, I'm guessing the reason that we have a lower reading
inside here then outside
is because,
uh, the walls of this building are concrete-- actually no, there's some metal,
but,
it's probably blocking a lot of the background radiation.
- Yeah, I'm sure there's like
radiation like insulation or whatever you call it.
- We were getting more radiation standing outside.
than you are, in here.
- Yeah.
- It doesn't even come across on camera how huge this building is.
This is pretty insane right now.
There's so much to see here.
- I know.
- So yeah, that's where we were before.
- Yeah.
- Let's go to the top first and work our way down, I wanna see
what this looks like at that huge open space
at the top.
- Yeah
Oh look at the size of this turbine.
- Yeah.
- Wow.
- That's a turbine right there I think.
(Narrator) So, a nuclear power plant works by using radioactive fuel rods to heat up water
the hot water is then pumped out of the reactor into a heat exchanger
where it's used to boil a separate loop of water into steam.
The steam creates enough force to spin a turbine which then generates electricity.
This is of course an extremely simplified explanation, but hopefully this gives you some sense of what you're looking at.
- This,
right here,
looks like what would go inside that.
- Yeah.
- Like these are probably the blades for the turbine.
And this is what it goes into.
Into where that's, uh, boarded off over there.
These walls
were to prevent radiation
these were radiation insulating blocks.
- Definitely.
(Transcriber note: No, they're not. Things that big spinning at 15,000 RPM tend to move.)
- Look how thick that is.
- This is solid.
- That is crazy.
So this was to block out radiation over here.
(Transcriber note: Lookup the Hanford reactor, you could stand right next to it while it was running, this is not shielding.)
- The "hear-here"
Obviously, it was like an intercom, 'cuz look above you.
- There's a, there's a dial tone.
- No there isn't.
- Should I press the page?
- No, no, no. Look up.
It's an intercom! It's an intercom.
This is interesting.
- Oh yeah.
- It's the clean zones.
So which one's the most extreme?
Zone I is the most extreme.
- Yeah.
- And the only rule for Zone IV is just "no use of tobacco or eating"
- Zone II
- Nothing
- There's a basement too
- Yeah of course
- So theres a beeping going on and this row of lights just turned off
- I have no idea
what's going on
- It could be nothing. If they turned off it could be random.
- Yeah
- But it started at the same time as that beeping started
- I think we're okay
- I just think you should be quiet
[both talking at once]
- We'll hear them before they hear us
- Yeah
- That's a big turbine
Whoa
Massive
That beeping has me freaked out over there though.
[irregular beeping continues in background]
What'd ya think, is it too irregular?
- I don't think it's an alarm.
- Yeah it's way too irregular, we're good.
I dunno what the deal is with the lights though.
- It could be like a bat or a bird or something.
- Yeah.
- What was zone four again, just no smo--
- Level IV is the highest zone--
- No, it was the lowest.
- Food or drink, use of tobacco only is banned
- I don't know what its talking about.
- It's talking about like air pressure
- Pressure differential
if door does not open
do not force, contact the control room
- [talking over] Why is this room air locked?
- Let's go in.
- Seriously?
- Oh, this is a crossover passageway
- Between two buildings
- Yeah, this means it must be getting closer to the reactor building
- Yeah
- Still only a Zone IV though.
- Whoa its hot in here
- Yeah.
- Very yeah.
- Oh shit look down
- Neat huh
- This, this is the reactor right here,
- Yeah
- This cylindrical thing.
- Oh my
- Where to first, I don't even know.
Look how far down it goes to.
- I know.
- We can get to the top.
- Wanna go to the top first?
- Yes, walk that way.
- Wait, let's look around at some of these little tiny rooms though
- Yeah.
- Could be cool.
[Geiger counter startup beep]
- There's like big tanks down there.
And it sounds like a door open to the outside.
- Yeah, sounds like crickets.
- Alright, let's go up.
- Check this out, energized big-ass cables.
- Oh shit, you're right!
- You can still hear it buzzing.
- Let's stay away--
- 480 volts that'll kill you in like half a second
- Holy fuck
- Cable energized, temporary power supply
- 480 AC
- Holy shit
- Yeah, let's not touch that
- Let's keep going
- It's above us
- That's cool
- Yeah
- Don't touch any wires
- Oh shit, are you kidding me?
- Oh, oh my god
- It can't be that dangerous, its touching the metal
- Yeah but
it's insulted but like... I guess it can't be that dangerous
- There's a camera
- It's not a camera, that's a smoke detector.
- Look, it's like a vent, a grill
- Okay
[Geiger counter startup beep]
- That's old
- This video is sponsored by Pepsi
- Jk, we don't have any sponsors
- Yeah
[loud cricket chirping in background]
- It just keeps going
- There's no words for this dude
- Yeah, its insane!
- Why didn't you guys think we'd be standing inside, a nuclear power plant?
- I don't know--
- We're not inside the reactor, yet.
- Yet
- We're gonna go in the room surrounding the reactor
- And we're hopefully going to get a reading
- There's a cable on the floor too
- That's insane
- Let's step over that
- Its a power cable?
- Yes
- But it's off
- I don't care, I still go over it
- They're all cut here
- Alright do we go up?
- Well we need to go higher unless that's it right here
- These wires are absolutely insane
- Do you want to check this room while I go up?
- It's like a maze
- Oh, we've gotta turn around
- Look this is like a, this looks like some sort of dampener
- Yeah definitely
- I have no idea how this would've worked
- But
I dunno, I have no clue what that is.
Yeah, there's a shock absorber on it over there
Definitely some kind of dampener.
- Yeah, it is
[loud footsteps and clanging noises]
- Now this floor seems like a labyrinth
- You wanna just go up again?
- Yeah
- I don't feel like
crawling through all this shit.
- Alright, too the top.
[sudden gasp]
- Dude!
There's like ten more floors above us!
- And look at these wires just goin' right down the middle
- I was expecting like two more floors above its
- This thing
goes on and on.
- Heh
- Holy shit
- Let's better get movin'
- Yeah we've just gotta start goin' straight all the way to the top. You know.
- Is it an electrical room?
- Yeah, its just breakers
- Like a distribution board room
- Yeah
- Alright, let's keep goin' on then
- It says level fifty but it has to be like
fifteen, maybe?
- Feet?
- Okay, let's explore this floor because it's flat at least.
- It's crazy to think there were people who knew
what every single one
of these gauges meant.
- Well, I would hope so, if they're
in charge of a nuclear power plant.
- Yeah, this doesn't really go anywhere.
- It's such a dead end
- That's a cool hole
- Circ-ulur
- This is like the control room. No, this is like the engine room of a space ship basically.
- I mean hey maybe one day we will have nuclear powered space ships.
And this is what their engine rooms will look like.
- [sigh] These stairs are tiring.
[light buzzing in background]
- A lot of these, uh, these power loop speaker things.
- Yeah.
- Probably the only way to communicate around here.
- You imagine yelling for your buddy on the other side of this place?
- No way
- You're hopeless
- Oh wait, are you on the wrong stairs?
- We're not on the right set of stairs.
- Yeah, we need to be on that side of stairs.
- Yeah, that's what I figured.
- This is it dude.
- Holy shit
- The entire building is a circle so this gantry crane can rotate.
- That's awesome
- Is this the reactor?
- Yeah
- Careful, been a ways
- There's like two rooms
- Let's see what's over there where that light's on.
- It's just another staircase with a light.
But there's control panel stuff in here.
It looks like a lot of it was removed.
- Yeah. Oh! These are metal detectors!
- Oh.
- That's a big transformer in there.
- This is probably one of the higher security areas.
- Yeah, these are metal detectors!
This looks like a really old metal detector, wow.
- This is kinda funny, inside the metal detector there's a radiation warning.
Oh let's test the Geiger counter on it!
- Let's do it.
- Okay.
(Transcription note: This is an X-ray tube and doesn't emit radiation when unpowered.)
- Is this thing on?
[Geiger counter clicks slightly faster.]
- Okay, that's definitely higher than background.
- Oh, it's going a bit more
than it was
out there.
- Yeah.
- I think it's because it's like
directed straight into that thing.
- Mhm.
[extremely lound clang]
- Stop!
- I'm trying to get close.
(Narrator) This is where nuclear fuel rods were stored before they were to be used.
(Narrator) The reason the texture on the walls appears so strange is because the surface layer had to be removed as it was contaminated with radiation.
- I'm getting slightly higher than average readings on the Geiger counter but nothing unsafe yet.
- Look, there's catwalks all up in the top there too.
- Alright, now we're going all the way back down a 180 feet worth of stairs.
- Come on dude.
- Can your footsteps be a little bit more quiet?
- It's the boots.
- Ah man, I've got tactical sneakers on.
[lound metalic clang]
[loud electric buzzing in the background]
- Now we're on to something.
- This
is not safe.
- Let's look at the doors right here.
- First,
we have this thick-ass door.
- Yeah.
- So this is like part of the [unintelligible].
- Now let's look at the next thick-ass door.
- Whoa, holy shit.
- This entire thing, wait
this entire thing is a wall.
- Holy shit.
[short gasp]
- Look at this! You've gotta see this, this is like a
- I know, I know
pressurization chamber.
- So this is not just the door to the reactor chamber, this is the door for the airlock.
- Yeah.
- And then this would be like
an insulation door right here.
- Mhm.
that goes over this.
- And then this entire part here
is insultation.
- So I think this is probably a good spot to get out the Geiger counter considering we're going into a fucking nuclear reactor that was once active.
[Geiger counter startup beep]
- Watch your step here.
- Oh my goodness.
- Dude there's just so many-- I don't even know what to look at.
- It's just, it's huge.
- Yeah this had to be like a cooling
you think this was water filled though?
- Yeah
- Because there's like lights and stuff hanging
- Okay, maybe it wasn't water.
- But it probably had different air pressure then and that's why like the chamber is here.
- The Geiger counter readings are extremely low actually.
(Transcription note: Normal background is ~0.17 uSv/h)
considering we're inside a nuclear reactor.
- For reference normal background radiation, like if you were standing outside the power plant right now
would be like point-one
to point-two.
(Narrator) The low radiation readings make sense considering the plant was supposed to have been decontaminated in the 90s.
(Narrator) All the scaffolding that can be seen is probably a leftover from the decontamination process.
- Look at this, its like a multi-layered door. It's like doors on doors.
And there's a phone inside the door.
- Holy shit.
[loud metalic clang]
- I think that's a bag of sand.
- Yeah it is. It's there to hold it.
- What's this right here?
- It looks like insulation.
- This is where the fuel rods would've been.
- It could've been.
- Yeah, I think it's sort've been filled with water
up to a certain height.
- Yeah
- That's why it's rusty, there.
- Yeah
- Yeah, the fuel rods would've been right here.
- Oh look
you can go down there though it says notify HP prior to entry.
- I don't think you should go in there. It's taped off.
- Nothing radioactive... oh!
- Nah, nothin'
- Wanna go inside this thing?
- Maybe.
- Dude it looks like the fuckin', it looks like an alien nest or some shit.
- You can tell they cut a lot out of here though.
- We're in the middle of so many layers right now.
Do you know how many layers of like walls and stuff we went in through?
- Probably don't have a cell signal.
- Oh there's no way we have a cell signal, let me check.
- That has zero service, Michael you too?
- No service in here.
- Which is also why there is like pretty low radiation levels in here.
- Yeah
- Because nothing can penetrate these walls
from outside.
- Yeah.
- Except for those!
- Hey Brian, check it out. Its an abandoned scaffold!
No really, its an abandoned scaffold!
- Wow
- So it's super abandoned, if something's abandoned within an already abandoned place then it's super abandoned.
- Is that how it works?
- Yeah.
- More of the same.
- Yes.
- Alright, let's go back outside.
- I want to get some pictures with the door.
- M'kay
- So, in the first Alien movie, when they go to the planet
and they find all the eggs in that grid formation
this is like exactly
what that reminds me of.
- Alright, so we saw
everything inside the reactor
that we can get to at least.
- Um,
- It's time we head back down.
- We're gonna head down the stairs, well, this is the floor we came in.
No, we came in one above this into this room.
- Well, let's go down even more
- Alright.
- because there is a lot more for us below us.
- There's an arrow here
that says "cool shit".
- Which direction?
- The other way you're going.
- Let's check this room first.
- Yeah, there could be an arrow pointing every single direction that says "cool shit" here and none of them would be wrong.
- Yeah.
- [unintelligible speaking]
- Brandon shh! There might be an open door.
- Down there maybe? Might be open to the outside.
(Narrator) The reason we're so concerned with keeping our voices down is because although a nuclear power plant is abandoned
it's within a larger facility that's still active.
We didn't want to risk a worker on a night shift hearing us.
- Spiral staircase.
- It sounds like there's an opening into the outside really close by.
- It's probably right around this corner.
Yeah.
- Alright we're gonna go back to those other stairs we saw because we're back at these stairs,
and we're going to go down.
- More abandoned scaffold
- You can tell there's no-one around here.
This smell-- [loud metalic bang]
- Alright, so this is the bottom bottom, oh!
There is some flooding
going on here.
- This looks scary with the power.
- Yeah, I'm not going in water at all.
- It's red.
- You coming down?
- Yeah,
[unintelligible talking]
- No, well a little bit over here.
I mean, people's footprints are all through it.
- Then I should be fine.
- Yeah.
- I was hoping there would be like another room of the reactor
we could get into down here.
- I'm not seeing any doors or anything though.
- Whoa, what's in here?
- Let's go inside of it.
- That's flooded in there.
[clears throat, the sound echos noticeably]
- Shh, smell that?
- What?
- Did you fart?
- Smells like a toxic gas leak.
- Oh my god
- [chuckling]
- Oh that's deep. That's deep, deep, deep
- This is some crazy looking shit.
And this part's too flooded I think.
- Yeah, I know, there's a lot of cool stuff in here.
- It's about the same as it was over--
- No, I'm not going in here.
- Yeah, it looks like an engine or something, err-- A pump?
Look at the springs up there...
- Wow.
- Alright, so we've officially seen everything
of the reactor chamber.
Pretty amazing.
And now we still have a bunch left to check out
- [mutters] The control room.
in the rest.
- Yeah, we've gotta find the control room.
- That feel nice.
- Oh it's a lot cooler in here.
- Yeah.
- It's refreshing.
- That's where we're headed next.
- Which is technically where we started, it's all connected down there.
- Well I think that goes deeper down than where we started.
- Maybe.
- No, that's the same amount of levels, three levels.
- 1, 2, 3.
- Oh, maybe.
- There's poop!
- That's disgusting.
- Damn. [chuckles softly]
- How does that even get in here, somebody had to take a shit here.
- Or an animal?
- How would the animal walk on grating like this?
- That's not human poop, it looks really thin.
- That's-- How could the animal get on these stairs?
- It looks like animal poop,
and look, there's like a nest right here.
- Alright, maybe it is an animal.
[very loud electrical humming in background]
- Low clearance, these pipes.
- There's animal tracks down here, look.
- Yeah, I told you.
- There is an animal.
- Looks like racoon tracks, honestly.
- Yeah.
- These things have like, chemical meanings.
- They do, yeah.
- Depending on the numbers and what's in it. I don't know what that means 'cuz I'm not-- I don't know what's in here.
Looks like a lab of some sort.
- A what?
- Oh,
- Let's go in.
- Yeah, a lab, this is cool.
- Look at this! There's still chemicals out.
It doesn't stop!
It gets better and better!
- Tur-bid--
- Tur-bid-a-mur?
- Turbidimeter?
- Oh yeah, you don't have a surface scatter turbidimeter? Whoops.
- Kind of disappointed that I haven't found one radioactive thing
in a nuclear power pla-- [loud metallic bang, takes a sudden breath]
- My bad...
- None of this stuff is radioactive...
- So we haven't pointed it out yet but there's like these radiation
monitoring stations all throughout this place.
- Yeah.
- It makes sense, safety-wise.
- And it has 'lil buzzer on top for an alarm or somethin'
- Turn on.
- [muttered] Yeah
So cool.
- Alright, let's get going.
- So this is like underneath the turbine area.
- Uh huh.
- That we were in right before...
- And whaddya know, it's more cooling stuff.
- Why, why do I keep calling everything cooling stuff? I don't know what it is.
- Yeah.
It's just pipes and wires.
- That is not...
Yeah, that is not your regular everyday valve.
- For lighting surge protectors.
- Oh, really?
- It's what it says right here.
- "Future surge...
capacitor and lighting arrestors"
- Do they mean natural lightning or lighting that might happen--
- No, no, no. Lighting-lightning.
Lightning like lightning strikes.
- That's a fuse, that is massive, like
the biggest fuse I've ever seen.
Crazy.
- Oh my god, there's poop everywhere!
Holy fuck.
- Look at this.
- Behind the net?
- Yeah, it's probably dangerous stuff man.
- Yeah, yeah it says "hot"
- And it all sounds super loud
[extremely loud electrical buzzing can be heard from panels behind the net]
[buzzing gets even louder]
- Loud.
- That's like the scariest sounding thing in here so far.
- Not this.
- Yup, is it this thing?
- Just think of the power going through that.
- Oh yeah.
Let's get away from it.
- Are these like cubicles?
- What?
- Look, these are old cubicles.
- Yeah.
- Hey, isn't this where employees would pick up their paychecks?
- Yeah.
- Yup.
- Mail or paychecks--
- Paychecks.
- I think yeah, or time cards?
- Time cards maybe, yeah.
- I don't know what that is.
- Holy shit.
There's so much stuff in here.
I don't even know which room to start with.
- [with emphasis] There is. So. Much. Stuff.
Got lots of circuit boards.
There was probably repair guys, in here, toiling away.
- Yeah.
- To fix stuff.
- Yeah, this is a map of the reactor.
- Yup.
Each floor of it.
- And then here's the other building.
Radiation waste-- or rad waste. Interesting.
- There's more.
- The turbine building...
- Alright, let's go in here.
- That's a really old fridge.
- Jeez.
- You want to open it?
Ew. The fuck is that?
- Oh, probably like, uh, a four year old something.
- Look at the freezer part of it.
- Yeah.
- Here it is. Found it, the.
- Well that was easy.
- Yeah.
Holy shit.
This is insane.
[chuckles]
Oh my god...
- Mechanical buckling switches--
- Of course it is.
Literally every single control in here
is mechanical.
It's all analog.
Everything.
Look at the, like, grid diagram here.
Like everything connects to something.
- The craziest part though--
- They're all relays.
- This stuff is still like part-way activated.
- It's all, yeah, there's power through it.
But like I would not touch any of these buttons because some--
- Look, let's fire this bad boy up!
- Something is gonna happen!
The fact that the lights are still on here too is insane.
- There's so many controls.
- Yeah, it's SCUBA gear.
- Damn', this must've been like a super computer back here. Look at these rows
and rows of stuff.
- What's goin' on back here?
- I dunno but this stuff is still on.
- A few more controls.
- It's just an everyday household hydrogen recombiner.
- Yeah.
(Transcriber note: This is used to make the hydrogen that is split from the water by the radiation back into water. All nuclear reactors have one of these.)
- I can still hear all this humming.
- This place does not end, it just keeps going.
- Yeah, this is basically a supercomputer-- look these are like server rack
- I know
units.
- Yeah, I think this was like a big-ass computer.
Each unit did somethin' different.
- Yeah, I know I've said this point like five times
but the more buttons I see in this place the more the point,
uh,
you know, sort of,
becomes relevant.
But how the hell
were there people trained to know what every single fucking button
in this place does.
Every
knob, switch, lever.
- It trips 120 volts if something happens.
- These keyboards are one of the coolest things in here, to me
just like the aesthetic of the keys
and the way they feel.
- Found something that's on
and green
and ready to go.
It's an exhaust fan.
- I wonder why a diagram of the solar system
is useful in a nuclear power plant.
Here's another one
this is so strange.
- It's obviously a conspiracy if they're launching rockets into space at this facility right here.
- Yeah man.
- They're gonna launch it from here and get it into orbit and blow that up.
- Bro, don't you know we've never been to space?
- Yeah man, yeah.
- The moon landing was obviously faked.
Gosh.
A lot of these papers really aren't that interesting. They're like
breakfast menus, and restaurant menus
it's kind of weird in itself though.
Do you remember when we were in the reactor and there was plus signs everywhere?
- Yeah.
- I think those correspond to these plus signs.
- Yeah.
- So they can like locate them
and there were those colored dots also.
- Mhm.
- Brian, do you think they would have a person sitting at every one of these stations?
- Uh, I don't think all of them. Just a few.
- I really like how there's like a file 'pocket'.
Probably.
I bet when they were doing like tests and stuff though like
getting up and running they probably needed like a full crew on deck.
- Mhm.
- Oh look, this is the reactor though.
- [while yawning] Yeah.
- Remember how it got like skinnier near the top.
- Mhm.
- What is this?
I feel like I shouldn't touch that.
[both speaking at once]
- There's Japanese writing on it.
- It looks like, it looks like a tape of some sort
but it's like in a container.
- Precision device
handle with care.
That's all it says.
- Yeah, I know.
- "CDC Model
8-7-7"
- It's probably
something disk cartridge or something like that.
- Yeah.
- Oh this probably like a CD drive for the supercomputer.
- No, not a CD drive
like a tape drive.
- Look, it says "formatted" though.
- Yeah, it's like a tape drive thing.
- Like a formatted drive. Storage.
- Yeah.
- Look see, it has a track list, so it has like
defective tracks. Eh.
- Time to say goodbye.
- Alright, so we're gonna call it here. 'Cuz this place is so massive that I think we saw most of the really good spots.
the sun's gonna come out, we need to use the darkness to get out safely.
- Not light at all.
- It's pretty dark still.
- Oh it's cold out.
- Ready?
- Yeah.
- I hate misty rain.
- I know, it's really strange.
- Yeah.
We were up all the way there.
That is insane.
Then there's more over there.
This is just unfathomably huge.
- Mhm.
