The video begins as we are walking through the deaerator corridor, also known as the golden corridor, which is used by workers to access the control rooms, dosimetry, etc, and includes an interesting experience we had riding an old elevator.The Unit 2 reactor is an RBMK reactor, very similar to the Unit 4 reactor that was destroyed in 1986.
image/text credit: Carl Willis
The RBMK is notable for its circular reactor lid where the control rod drive mechanisms reside and where loading and unloading of fuel occurs by means of a massive crane-mounted machine. In essence, the hall is a heavy-walled hot cell designed to shield potentially high radiation levels while fuel operations are underway.
The hall also contains the short-term spent fuel storage basins, fresh fuel storage, a fuel transfer hatch to ground level, and access panels into the upper steamwater communication lines linking the reactor channels to the steam separators on either side.
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Unit 2 at Chernobyl has been shut down since a fire in 1991 damaged its generators and feedwater system. The reactor is defueled and dry, as are its spent fuel basins.All of the reactor fuel has been removed from the reactor and the spent fuel pools and placed in the ISF-1 common storage facility until the ISF-2 facility is constructed and the assemblies can be placed in dry casks for storage.
