This is the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. The World Heritage listed site
that most Americans and
let's be honest, most Brits, know as "that place that got blown up in Thor 2".
But that blowing up would have been a heck of a lot different
if it'd happened a couple of decades earlier. See for many years this was
a working Royal Navy training base. That's why it's got the name: "Old Royal Naval College"
That's not centuries ago.
There were sailors being trained here up until the mid 90s.
And, well, the Royal Navy has nuclear submarines.
Nuclear submarines have nuclear reactors. Nuclear reactors need people to run them
and so what do you do, if you are the Royal Navy and you need
sailors to run your nuclear reactors?
Well, you build a nuclear reactor in the basement
of a 17th century building just miles from the centre of London.
Seriously, right here,
somewhere in this complex, somewhere in the basement of this, the King William building,
there was a working nuclear reactor for many years, from 1963
to the mid 90's. At the time when Greenwich called itself a nuclear
free zone. This area was specifically exempted.
And, why was there no outcry? Well, first of all
not many people knew about it. The Royal Navy is quite good at operational security
and secondly, well, despite the words "nuclear reactor" being quite scary
it was only a tiny reactor. It produced 10 kilowatts that's enough to power
about five electric kettles. I mean the amount of fuel and waste it
produced are actually pretty tiny. There would never have been
a Chernobyl here. But, well if Thor had invaded a couple of...
I don't know what Thor did, I-- I haven't seen the movie.
If Thor would have invaded a couple of decades earlier, who knows?
There might have been a bit more radioactivity, to power his hammer-
I-- like I said, I haven't seen the movie, I don't know what happened.
This is the first videos powered by the things you sent in. Thank you very much
David and Olly who tipped me off about the reactor in the middle of Greenwich.
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