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Kind: captions
Language: en

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This is the Old Royal Naval College in
Greenwich. The World Heritage listed site

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that most Americans and

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let's be honest, most Brits, know as
 "that place that got blown up in Thor 2".

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But that blowing up would have been a heck of a lot different

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if it'd happened a couple of decades earlier. See for many years this was

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a working Royal Navy training base. That's
why it's got the name: "Old Royal Naval College"

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That's not centuries ago.

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There were sailors being trained here
up until the mid 90s.

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And, well, the Royal Navy has nuclear submarines.

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Nuclear submarines have nuclear reactors.
Nuclear reactors need people to run them

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and so what do you do, if you are the Royal Navy and you need

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sailors to run your nuclear reactors?

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Well, you build a nuclear reactor in the
basement

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of a 17th century building just miles
from the centre of London.

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Seriously, right here,

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somewhere in this complex, somewhere in the 
basement of this, the King William building,

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there was a working nuclear reactor for
many years, from 1963

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to the mid 90's. At the time when
Greenwich called itself a nuclear

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free zone. This area was specifically
exempted.

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And, why was there no outcry? Well, first of all

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not many people knew about it. The Royal Navy is
quite good at operational security

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and secondly, well, despite the words
"nuclear reactor" being quite scary

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it was only a tiny reactor. It produced
10 kilowatts that's enough to power

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about five electric kettles. I mean the amount of fuel and waste it

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produced are actually pretty tiny. There would
never have been

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a Chernobyl here. But, well if Thor 
had invaded a couple of...

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I don't know what Thor did, I-- I haven't seen the movie.

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If Thor would have invaded a couple of  decades earlier, who knows?

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There might have been a bit more 
radioactivity, to power his hammer-

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I-- like I said, I haven't seen the movie, I don't know what happened.

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This is the first videos powered
by the things you sent in. Thank you very much

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David and Olly who tipped me off about the reactor in the middle of Greenwich.

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