After Fukishima: Cleaning up Japan's Nuclear Disaster

[@megaprojects9649]

Get Surfshark VPN at Surfshark.deals/MEGA and enter promo code MEGA for 83% off and 3 extra months for free!

[@bhuvaneshs.k638]

Please do a video on LIGO and ITER Tokamak

[@Sdc1008]

Make video on ✌🤨🤔world biggest lift irrigation project - Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project 🙂🤗🤗

[@donkimble]

Fukushima is misspelled in the title. Be well.

[@devins4686]

I dont need surf shark, if my youtube channel gets hacked ill pretend it didnt happen and sell it to some random bald guy with an annoying accent.

[@FWtravels]

it would be cool to do a video on the ARECIBO OBSERVATORY!!!!

[@rickgrendel1]

Hi, I would like to see a video on Arecibo the radio telescope in puerto rico that just collapsed.

[@ianr]

I second that! 👍

[@MySkybreaker]

Let's make sure we upvote the hell out of this. Arecibo deserves the attention for all it's done.

[@trevordavis9390]

Yes!

[@MySkybreaker]

@@GlenHunt it collapsed even further on sunday/Monday.

[@OneMouseGaming]

@@GlenHunt no the collapse was total. the tower with the bad cables lost another cable due to an earth quake. This caused the load to shift. the towers were designed to be strong in compression..... think stacking elephants on your head, when that cable went the load transferred to the ones left on that tower equate to having your arms ripped out of their sockets. huge lateral load- the telescope was built in the 50s. never designed for that kind of lat load. This caused the entire support structure to swing towards the two remaining towers. at some point in this swing the Gregorian dome section ripped from the main structure and fell separately to the dish bellow. Finally again the last two towers experience massive Lateral loads as the structure falls into the "dish". like the first tower that failed, the remaining two also lost their entire top segment. Those towers are only 2/3ish the height they were before. That dish face btw is actually metal slat panels that are 20 feet above the ground. There are/were buildings and some support structures underneath the dish matrix.

[@purplemoonshoes]

Both Fukushima and the hospitals in New Orleans during Katrina are excellent examples of why you don't put backup generators in the basement in a flood zone. (Katrina cleanup could be a good Megaprojects episode)

[@MrChainsawAardvark]

It must be pointed out, that ionizing radiation travels in straight lines. An underground cavern would be out of direct "shine", as well as shielded by material over it. So this was actually a very safety conscious decision.

[@kimweaver3323]

Had the generators and switchgear in the basement of the turbine halls NOT flooded and become inoperative, it would not have changed a thing. The 37 pumps that fed water to the facility were at the breakwater's edge. 34 of them were rendered inoperative. So, there was nothing to feed the power to. The batteries were good for about a day and a half to operate the valves and instrumentation. There should have been a reservoir up on the bluff using gravity feed. Boron BBs could also have been mixed with the water to enhance the neutron absorption.

[@johnhobson9165]

Also, don't put the computers in the basement.

[@kirklucas1332]

You can't fix stupid! Stupid enough to build things that potentially devastating. Nukes built by stupid people. What could go wrong. Now what DA?

[@AbhisarRawat]

@@kirklucas1332 plz shut up

[@EjNappe]

You should do a video on The Arecibo Observatory!

[@Absaroka]

Absolutely

[@ProfessorUnggas]

I always wondered how it's work

[@josh_1518]

So sad it collapsed last night :'(

[@toufikmolla1291]

It has collapsed, watch Scott Manley's video

[@ralphyarl7346]

@@toufikmolla1291 Thats why he recommended it

[@SwiftOnSports]

Areciba Observatory, since it just went down for good yesterday.

[@kimweaver3323]

"Scott Manley" channel did an excellent analysis and history.

[@shreyashraj84]

What is Areciba observatory? Where it is?

[@velder5050]

How about the Arecibo Observatory and if that isn’t enough info then also include the FAST telescope that surpassed it in 2016 as well

[@anarchyantz1564]

I keep mentioning FAST as well as its a fantastic piece of Chinese engineering, they are only having issues getting enough people with the skills over there to work on it. Now Arecibo is trashed, they could perhaps go there.

[@boksininkas_ltukaras5005]

@@anarchyantz1564 I wouldn't go to work in China even if the dictator himself asked me by promising 1 milion € salary for year

[@MySkybreaker]

@@boksininkas_ltukaras5005 we it's a good thing you probably are a nobody and not a world class scientist huh Science doesn't care about politics and the FAST telescope is pretty much outside the control of the party because the Chinese know meddling doesn't get things discovered

[@whatever_12]

@@boksininkas_ltukaras5005 looks like the propaganda got you... What makes China so bad euh?

[@tjzambonischwartz]

@@anarchyantz1564 FAST is an amazing radio telescope, but can't replace Arecibo's radar capabilities and there isn't any facility on Earth that can.

[@Jsh0w]

Simon! How about a mega project on the Global Positioning System?

[@my__socrates__note]

Navstar, GLONASS, or Galileo

[@SkunkApe407]

@@my__socrates__note GPSS and GLONASS merged in 2010, so they're basically one in the same now. That said, the absolute failure that was Magellan would be a decent Business Blaze.

[@my__socrates__note]

@@SkunkApe407 Roscosmos might disagree that GLONASS was merged comme ci comme ça

[@SkunkApe407]

@@my__socrates__note here's an article from 1997. www.newswise.com/articles/merger-of-us-and-russian-satellite-gps

[@SkunkApe407]

@@my__socrates__note here's one from 2011. www.gpsworld.com/how-gps-and-glonass-got-together-and-other-recent-events/

[@MausMasher54]

The biggest issue was the placement of the back-up generators, on the Sea Side....otherwise the disaster might not have happened.

[@SupremeRuleroftheWorld]

and batteries in the basement....

[@danoneill2846]

They knew this might happen , but they saved about $$ 3 million $$ in cost to fix the problem . 2-3 years before the fact .

[@Urgleflogue]

@@thetowndrunk988 You can't just "bring back the reactors online" once they have shut down. This is not a battery.

[@andyb1653]

@@thetowndrunk988 It takes time to bring the reactors back up to power. Time they did not have.

[@NickTrouble]

@@thetowndrunk988 As someone that works at a nuclear power plant, bullet proof is not the correct word. In most cases, risk is about 2.0E10. So very low, but a risk is always there. Thinking that there is no risk, is where issues like Fukushima happen

[@hukaman88]

The ultimate mega project, how he keeps up with all his channels

[@Leskitsafrenic]

Great stuff, just one small thing: the Richter scale isn't used anymore. We use the moment-magnitude scale, or just magnitude.

[@CatsMeowPaw]

In late 2018 I visited Fukushima and got within about 2km of the plant. In the carpark of an abandoned retirement village I measured 70uSv/h on a pile of leaves. Normal background is about 0.2. There is still a long way to go in decontaminating the area.

[@sandybarnes887]

Atecibo radio telescope, please. It totally collapsed yesterday

[@johnsmith34]

03:09 "measured nine on the Richter scale" "Because of various shortcomings of the ML  scale, most seismological authorities now use other scales, such as the moment magnitude scale (Mw ), to report earthquake magnitudes, but much of the news media still refers to these as "Richter" magnitudes." (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale)

[@reubenvogt5942]

Love your videos Simon, they have kept me grounded during the pandemic stuck at home. Any chance you could do a video on Australia’s Snowy Mountain Scheme? Cheers mate.

[@scottM278]

You should also do a video on the Chesapeake Bay bridge tunnel, it's 17 miles from shore to shore and goes underwater twice for ships coming in and going out to sea.

[@pikmaniac2643]

slightly glossed over is the fact that the reason the backup generators failed was because they were located below each reactor building, making them especially vulnerable to flooding. If that one mistake hadn't been made in the design process, this could've been far less severe, and potentially avoided altogether.

[@Awesomekraken677]

oh it's even worse, they were repeatedly warned over a decade that this exact situation could happen

[@alexmarshall8187]

Would love a video on the rebuilding on the Bay Bridge. Pretty cool they built the new one right next to the old one before tearing it down and if I recall correctly there was a decent bit of drama behind the scenes with its construction.

[@shockwavecity]

Japan played a stupid game, and won a stupid prize. Literally every international nuclear watchdog and nuclear engineering think tank told them it was a horrible idea to build this thing on the coast of an active fault line. Basically cancelled green energy for the rest of the world, because everyone just points to this and chernobyl when thinking up their imagined horror scenarios to block new nuclear development.

[@angelarch5352]

/looks at Diablo Canyon Nuclear power plant built on the coast of California right next to several fault lines/... oh... ffs!

[@kollerbrian]

Cry everyone a river because they all are crying a river too. BAK

[@adder3597]

Not even so much the location, but the decisions taken in the building such as having the generators where they were and the plant so low down to the waterfront. I agree though, it didn't do the image of nuclear energy any good.

[@jackfanning7952]

@@angelarch5352 Ahhhhh, Diablo Canyon - waht a perfect name for a nuclear reactor. It is my "most likely to be the next meltdown" site.

[@sunflowerheather7019]

Nuclear = green/clean energy is an oxymoron. Let alone the obvious considering nuclear will never be ‘green’ it takes coal to power a nuclear power plant.

[@michaelwhitesell9125]

Simon, how many videos do you film in a given day? You have so many channels that post so frequently you've got to be the most prolific KZbinr out there.

[@SolarAbyss]

"This reactor is leaking, how do we stop it?" "Eh, cram some newspaper in there"

[@jackfanning7952]

Answer - you can't stop it.

[@tomw6947]

@@jackfanning7952 r/woooosh

[@bartjohnson8139]

Ahh you foolish newspaper proponents! Sawdust is the answer! Sawdust I tell ya!

[@Mrgunsngear]

thanks

[@MlTGLIED]

I didn't expect you here dude 😉

[@spacepeanut8993]

@@MlTGLIED Right? Same here!

[@catman422]

I always get a laugh seeing Simon talk about The Hobbit in the ad-read when Business Blaze taught me that he hates The Hobbit.

[@benkleschinsky]

The reality is, zero deaths or workers harmed from Fukushima meltdown.

[@mary9983]

I think he hates it because it bothers everyone so much lol

[@NealB123]

All of this because TEPCO ignored numerous recommendations to move the back-up generators to higher ground. Multiple safety exercises had revealed the vulnerability of the generators to flooding and recommended that they be moved to a safer location. TEPCO didn't want to spend the money to move the generators. This cleanup will be going on for centuries.

[@a.r.s.e.n.i.o.]

I have a suggestion: Mexico City's water supply: the Cutzamala System and the Eastern Drainage Tunnel

[@davidanalyst671]

thats a seriously screwed up problem, almost as bad as san francisco

[@will891410]

The problem itself was not the Earthquake but the underwater banks closer to the beach colapsing and enforcing the waves even more.

[@leobezard5998]

I live in California and they actually tried to put a nuclear power plant in the Pt. Reyes park, on cliff, in a high risk zone -_- ...sigh

[@crakkbone]

Cool story bro.

[@will891410]

@@crakkbone It is true, search for it, the underwater banks just felt to the botton of the ocean.

[@paulmobleyscience]

@@leobezard5998 San Ononfre is being eroded

[@DirtyRobot]

The problem was corruption. There were a few suggestions to improve the site at a cost. These were rejected by a couple of officials that were getting bribes.

[@Iocanthos]

Simon the Hydrogen reactors did not 'leave the plant in ruins'. The hydrogen exploded in the upper structure which was covered with blast panels, designed to do exactly that: to reroute exploding hydrogen's energy outwards which it did. The way you presented this sounded like the whole thing got leveled.

[@campbelldutch75]

What the hell does it matter! Everyone on the planet is getting cancer and when they dump that water in the ocean hundreds of millions of not billions of people will also get cancer! Nuclear energy is to dangerous!

[@Iocanthos]

@@campbelldutch75 Yes the energy source that competes with lowest power generation emissions, lowest fatalites per energy produced is too dangerous. Obviously. Try doing some fact checking, the safety systems did their work, three cores melted down and were contained, the contaminated water is low level waste which was held on site in tanks for years to lower its content. Once that gets pumped backed into the ocean the worldwide radiation level wont even register a thing. Check how much radiation people have gotten in tokyo and how much a stupid banana irradiates you with its unstable potassium isotopes. Literally a smoker or airlineworker gets more radiation per year than those people did. Stop spreading fear and misinformation.

[@adder3597]

@@campbelldutch75 WRONG. The tritium in that water is very low in activity. Plus, compared to natural radioactivity that exists in the oceans already from geological processes, it's literally a drop in said ocean.

[@revenevan11]

More people get cancer from the radioactivity released by a coal burning power plant. Still not a great situation, but nuclear power isn't the absolute devil people make it out to be. We need fundamentally more fail-safe reactor designs though, imo, especially in places prone to natural disasters!

[@fahadkorai3842]

Another amazingly informative video Simon

[@jodi_kreiner]

“help us deal with the worst nuclear disaster in history by lending us the water decontamination ship we bought for you” russia: ....nahhhhh

[@pills-]

Russia be like: "If we don't lend them this ship, we won't be the worst anymore!"

[@theenzoferrari458]

Well I mean japan was a axis power and they did bomb Hawaii.

[@jodi_kreiner]

@@theenzoferrari458 yeah and we nuked them back... twice... helping them clean up their environment after a natural disaster wouldn’t have radically altered their political or military power 🤷🏼‍♀️😂 plus this happened in 2011 so we’re kinda past WWII. but like definitely not defending japan and their political decisions and I’m not at all surprised that russia basically said f*ck you. just was pointing out another reason why russia ain’t anyone’s friend lmao.

[@--enyo--]

@@theenzoferrari458 What does that have to do with the current situation?

[@deemariedubois4916]

The Russian government are assholes. This isn’t just a Japanese disaster, it’s a world wide disaster. The more contaminated water that enters the Pacific Ocean, the bigger world problem it becomes.

[@tristianwilson3497]

Hey, side projects idea, 3 mile Island comparatively to this

[@leddygee1896]

That's like comparing a hiccup to a heart attack...

[@TheFirefox516]

Yeah the two aren’t hardly comparable. TMI was a very tiny radiation release. Fukushima was a much more serious disaster

[@tristianwilson3497]

@@leddygee1896 That why I'm saying its a good video for side projects and not mega projects

[@garretth8224]

@@leddygee1896 its called side projects for a reason.

[@Austin_Niepołomice]

@@garretth8224 I mean he called lifting Chicago, at the time, the ~4th largest city in the world a side project. By his logic no that isn’t even a side project.

[@LMacNeill]

Man, I can't believe it's been over 9 years since that happened. Time goes by *way* too quickly!

[@ctychen7964]

Simon, have you done a video on the Arecibo Observatory? It would be amazing to hear about all the incredible work done there and honor it given the recent news...

[@FangornAthran]

Speaking of Nuclear Power, you should do the USS Nautilus SSN 571, the First Nuclear Powered Submarine

[@KarlKarpfen]

You know that there is quite some difference between INES 7 and INES 7? It's just defined as "major release of radioactive substances with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures." If any of those 5 criteria is met or highly likely to be met, the rating is set as INES 7. There are still orders of magnitude separating Chernobyl-4 and Fukushima Dai-ichi while both will need cleanup efforts as they exceed the rather low level of "major relase" of an equivalent of 1 TBq of I-131. This limit would be met by less than 50 mg of Pu-239, basically a grain as large as a grain of very fine sand or approx. 0.00022 grams of I-131 that is almost exactly a cubic millimeter of iodine. How much release above that out of a reactor that is about the size of a truck's tank carriage is of no difference to the scale, as it already is at the highest level. The difference between Chernobyl-4, that was basically a big campfire burning the graphite moderator and the metal of the fuel rods themselves, and the three leaking containers that were reactor buildings at Fukushima Dai-ichi is huge, as almost all radioactive substances at a power station are non-water-soluable metals and ceramics who flew off as soot in Chernobyl and stayed inside the reactor buildings in Fukushima. For a few minutes of boredom the user's manual of the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES): www.iaea.org/publications/10508/ines-the-international-nuclear-and-radiological-event-scale-users-manual It's just 226 pages long.

[@joshuahudson5336]

Here is a megaproject. The USS Monitor. She may not have been huge, but the impact on naval warfare was massive. She ended wooden sailing warships and warships with rows of guns, had more than 40 patentable components, and the world's first rotating turret ever to be used in battle. She is the true ancestor to all modern warships.

[@DaOneJoel]

Heck yeah, and a swede designed it! (coming from a fellow swede)

[@gaius_enceladus]

Another great and informative video!

[@kaspersrensen1891]

You should do a megaproject: Simon whistlers vast KZbin empire, behind the camera and coworkers 😄

[@chrisdekker1180]

This is a great idea.

[@KINGCURTIS_YT]

You should do a video on Arlington in Washington DC. You tend to cover alot of aspects in a mega projects (however this could be good for Geographics) and some really interesting people are buried there as well as how Arlington was acquired by the US government

[@cshayes2]

Soviet’s: we will put a tomb around our nuclear reactor. Japanese: hold my blanky

[@jackfanning7952]

The Japanese - STFU and go back home.

[@rosaliasupatonah4022]

Thank you for the clear and continuous photographic information and videos. How many radioactive leaks were reduced from reactor coolant released into the Pacific Ocean?

[@jeffa7292]

Simon please do a megaprojects video about the original world trade center that was destroyed on september 11th,2001

[@danoneill2846]

Building #7 Please , & just how the jets crashed into the field & pentagon . Or did they ??

[@danoneill2846]

@DaGe PaPo this video has rare photos & video near the middle .. one of the best I have seen >> kzbin.info/www/bejne/qJ-WcmaZlKt0hdk

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

This demonstrates how safe nuclear energy is. No one died from Fukushima radiation.

[@bhuvaneshs.k638]

Please do a video on LIGO and ITER Tokamak

[@brianwillaman1776]

Love your videos! Great job.

[@peterdyers5807]

The richter scale is exponential though so the difference of 0.1 from Sumatra is quite a big different right?

[@crakkbone]

Logarithmic, but yes. You have the absolute right idea.

[@sandybarnes887]

Size or amplitude differences are big - but energy (or strength) differences are huge, USGS says. “One whole unit of magnitude represents approximately 32 times (actually 10^1.5 times) the energy,” USGS says. “This means that a change of 0.1 in magnitude is about 1.4 times the energy release.” To calculate how much stronger one earthquake is compared to another, you’d take the difference in magnitude, multiply it by 1.5, then raise 10 to that power: I hope that helps.

[@peterdyers5807]

@@sandybarnes887 that's actually super helpful, I think the richter scale is often seen as a linear mean of measurement. This has helped me to quantify it a bit better in my head.

[@peterdyers5807]

@@crakkbone cheers man, I didn't realise it was logarithmic. Also, super useful thanks 😊

[@sandybarnes887]

@@peterdyers5807 yeah. Linear, exponential and logarithm scales are totally different beasts.

[@ak047]

Great topic that Simon. Right up my street

[@SinsGamingChannel]

Nuclear vs. coal/oil power... I'd go nuclear every single time.

[@davidanalyst671]

windmills are cheaper tho, so nobody going to build any nukes anymore

[@ratreptile]

@@davidanalyst671 There is however not always wind around to spin them.

[@davidanalyst671]

@@ratreptile go climb a mountain and tell me that again

[@LuciusKyrus]

Nuclear is the dirtiest form of energy known to man that is currently in use. No other form of energy pollutes the environment for millions of years at a time. And if we were to dismiss the silliness that is Man made Climate Change, then pretty much coal and gas are a great sources of power.

[@LuciusKyrus]

@@davidanalyst671 What do we do with the windmill blades that are 100% NOT recyclable? They currently go into land fills, but if we could pay some war lord in Africa to take the spent blades then I'd be for it. However, how do we stop the killing of endangered birds? Seems to be a serious issue according to environmentalists.

[@loupiscanis9449]

Thank you

[@thomasstuart2936]

I am surprised to find that you have not done the Trans-Alaska Pipeline yet.

[@ChickenLiver911]

Ahhhh, nothing like capitalism ruining natural beauty.

[@thomasstuart2936]

@@ChickenLiver911 you misspelled "mosquitoes", it's a common error.

[@Ian_P]

Thank you.

[@priyag6806]

Make a most powerful nuclear reactor video

[@Rusty_Gold85]

My friend in Kyoto District has near her house a large land area turned to a sponge of dirt and water due the Earthquake . They constantly have 5 or 6 Richter size rumbles . Plus the constant Typhoons . They believe the whole land mass has dropped half a metre lower

[@billbaker3565]

Wonder how many other nuclear plants are similarly located on the oceans?

[@whyjnot420]

I know there is one over on the west coast of the US..... but it sits on top of a cliff that is something like 200 feet high. I forget which state it is in as well as the name of the plant. I think the real question to be asked is "How many other nuclear plants are similarly located in questionable locations?"

[@KarlKarpfen]

@@whyjnot420 You mean Diablo Canyon. That is nowhere near as missplaced as Fukushima Dai-ichi.

[@whyjnot420]

@@KarlKarpfen That is why I mentioned it being on top of a cliff. It is right on the sea like the original comment was asking, but I pointed out that it is, just as you say, nowhere near as misplaced. edit: thanks for the name, I had totally forgotten it.

[@jamesturner1525]

Great idea for a video

[@CT-8024]

I honestly feel for the workers on site during the disaster. They did everything they could and still they are shamed forever in the eyes of Japan. At least that is what I have heard. I think the shame is in building the damn things where they did in the first place.

[@Hevethee]

And then you notice that plant stood safe and sound around 40 years nothing happening.

[@whyjnot420]

Whenever people talk about the positioning being a bad idea only apparent in hindsight all I do is remember an old George Carlin joke where he mocks people who build a house on the side of an active volcano complaining about lava running through their living room by saying "maybe you shouldn't have built your house on the side of an active volcano". The original height of the sea defense aspect of the project shows clear proof that at least some people involved in designing the plant knew damned well that the event that happened was not just a possibility but a near certainty.

[@CT-8024]

@@whyjnot420 So I am not allowed to feel for people I think should be held in a much higher regard by their own nation?

[@whyjnot420]

@@CT-8024 Just how in the hell did you get that from what I said? I was simply agreeing with your statement of "I think the shame is in building the damn things where they did in the first place." Let me spell it out for you just in case: I was talking about how the site was poorly chosen by referencing a George Carlin joke about building things in a bad location. Nothing more, nothing less.

[@CT-8024]

@@whyjnot420 I meant that for the commenter above. I'm sorry, I rarely comment on video threads because it is hard to have a shared conversation in this format. I Love Carlin, he is on my Rushmore

[@06colkurtz]

Great vid as always. Cover the Cascadia subduction zone

[@peterdyers5807]

This must've been a logistical nightmare

[@rsrs8632]

You don’t know the half of it.... www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367473/Elderly-hospital-patients-left-die-Japans-nuclear-zone-400-000-fight-survive-tsunami-humanitarian-crisis.html After the tsunami medical staff accompanied patients in busses out the area. But at a certain point they were not allowed back due to the nucleair disaster. And then the problem of pets and lifestock, not being fed after. Most died in terrible circumstances. Visiting the area, it puts things in perspective.

[@Admlcamus]

Nice Channel. Very Instructive. Idea for video: Panama Canal, it expansion and future.

[@D0P1C3]

hey Simon do ThrustSSC first land vehicle to officially break the sound barrier thx :D

[@tonylafon8716]

I can't get enough of your material. Thank you for making history entertaining and fun.

[@ericalbers4867]

Honestly given everything that happened the reactors faired very well. It's sucks for sure but I hope they build more reactors. Nuclear power is currently out only viable option for our power consumption and to truly help climate change. Not virtue turbines and whatever else. Those are horrible for wildlife and the materials used are arguably don't more harm than nuclear power has or will. It should be common knowledge by this point that nuclear power is the safest means of generating power by far.

[@alekspen]

You should do a video on the Bugatti Veyron.. not massive in size but the scale of the engineering involved would have been colossal

[@alexroge6495]

I just researched the contaminated water problem and well its not actually a real problem. The water in those tanks are only “contaminated” with tritium, and actually have a lower level that in the ocean! Its just a irrational paranoia around the water that’s stopping them from putting it in the ocean. Also it will potentially be more dangerous(and be extremely expensive) to get rid of it in other ways such as evaporation. I wish the writers would have included this information.

[@GoldSrc_]

This, the so called "contaminated water" would get even more diluted in the ocean to the point where you wouldn't know what's normal radiation or Fukushima. It's sad to see people still afraid of the word "nuclear".

[@diegobergen1942]

And you trust them???? Did you believe there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, too?

[@milokojjones]

One thing I did not - and still do not quite understand is, why didn't they just reuse the contaminated water again - I would say that it would be better to deal with less liters of more contaminated water than more liters of less contaminated water - but I assume that Im missing some important detail.

[@anarchyantz1564]

Megaproject Suggestion. Longest deep bore ice core in Antarctica. Took years, loads of drama with it and they found some cool stuff like a fresh water lake under the ice containing previously unknown lifeforms. Would go Well with the other hole projects that are popular Speaking of deep holes, how about the Kidd Mine as well?

[@mikester1290]

"Would go Well" I saw that!

[@EMBer3000]

I think it's a little weird that they class Fukushima the same as Chernobyl. Chernobyl had an exposed core and fuel elements that got vaporized and spread over a large area and a core that was directly exposed to air for weeks whilst Fukushima had a few cracks in containment and a release of short lived isotopes. The soil in Fukushima will be fine in three decades... in Chernobyl they have areas that will remain significantly contaminated for a thousand years due to long lived isotopes having leached into the soil. The water used and captured has probably already lost the most of its radioactivity since the half-lifes of most of the released material being quite short. Iodine-131 and Ceasium-134 have short(er) half-lifes, the iodine has already decayed away and the Ceasium has lost 90% of its radioactivity already, neither of these isotopes are a big problem anymore. The only problematic isotope left should be Cs-137 and I haven't found information on how much there is but one statement I read called the amount negligible, it has a longish halflife but if you don't release much of it... People have already moved back to the towns around the nuclear site and they are not exposed to greatly elevated radiation levels, the same could not be said of Chernobyl only 9 years after the accident.

[@Shuffledudee]

Underrated comment.

[@criticalhard]

Nice comment omg 🥺🥺🥺

[@adder3597]

True- the thing is with the INES scale that this does in fact meet the criteria for Level 7, regardless of whether the consequences were anywhere near as severe as at Chernobyl. Severe damage to plant, total failure of safeguards and containment, and a significant contamination release off-site. That's why it was classified as a 7.

[@MikaKullu]

Minor error I noticed you made in this video: the magnitude of the earthquake was indeed measured to be 9.0-9.1, but NOT on the Richter scale. Modern authorities use the Moment Magnitude scale (Mw), which measures earthquakes differently than the Richter scale. So saying the earthquake was a 9.0 on the Richter scale is wrong - it was a 9.0 on the Moment Magnitude scale (i.e. 9.0 Mw).

[@adeletaylor6143]

Did we do this already? Or was that one of the other million Simon channels?

[@Zyo117]

I think it was a geographic video possibly? I had that feeling too

[@chrisdekker1180]

It was Geographics, but that video was more about the disaster itself and not the cleanup.

[@ignitionfrn2223]

1:05 - Chapter 1 - Fukushima nuclear power station 3:05 - Chapter 2 - Hell arrives 5:45 - Mid roll ads 7:30 - Chapter 3 - Clean up begins 11:55 - Chapter 4 - Cold shutdown 13:05 - Chapter 5 - Cleaning the surrounding area 14:15 - Chapter 6 - Just the start

[@Batmanderp38]

The sword of Damocles is hanging precariously over us

[@Awesomekraken677]

The disaster itself not only could have been avoided if they built the backup generators in a higher location, the facility was warned since it's construction that if it ever were flooded what eventually did happen could happen.

[@matthewwadwell6100]

This article is unfairly critical of the cleanup efforts, especially how long it is going to take. Consider that Three Mile Island took 14 _years_ to be even partially completed, stating that Fukushima Unit 3 isn't going to be defueled until 2021 (i.e. after 10 years) and totally ignoring that Unit 4 is _already_ defuelled is incredibly *unreasonable* . Especially when you consider that the Fukushima reactors are more heavily damaged that the Three Mile Island reactor.

[@Kirovets7011]

Almost 10 years before the Fukushima disaster, the IAEA inspected the Fukushima reactors, and the surrounding area. They pointed out to Tepco, that the seawalls were much to LOW!! They had to be raised at least 10 meters. Tepco promised the IAEA to raise the seawalls. However, they never did! And then came that faithfull day in 2011......

[@redparth]

So early that the title still has a typo.

[@coltoneverett9636]

Simon keep up the amazing content. Keep giving me more mind blowing and terrifying numbers.

[@eFeXuy]

I've told the radiation is equivalent to twice an stardard x-ray, so if you're overdue for a check up... Are you going do the Arecibo radiotelescope?

[@samrussell9264]

The biggest measure in securing the safety of the reactors wasn't Tepco, not even the Self Defence Forces specialist units, it was the Fire Brigade. As in most disasters, and like Chernobyl, they were asked, they did what they had to, and here they succeded. Few firefighters see themselves as heroes.

[@fvckyoutubescensorshipandt2718]

A yen is not even worth a US penny anymore? Guess that's why it sucks to have world's highest debt to GDP ratio.

[@tommorris3688]

!! ! ... "Fukushima" is a geographical district of Japan, referred to as "Fukushima Prefecture". Hitherto, it was a very beautiful part of Japan with rich agricultural soils, vibrant fishing industry, and a place where tourists like to come. Fukushima Prefecture had beautiful orchards with plum trees that used to blossom so very beautifully in Spring time. At a coastal location in Fukushima Prefecture, the location being referred to "Fukushima Dai'ichi" there was build a civil nuclear facility for producing and electricity, as well as Plutonium for manufacturing nuclear weapons. The civil nuclear facility included multiple Westinghouse AP1000 reactors; this is a reactor design where reactor designers at Westinghouse resigned because they were convinced that the AP1000 reactor deign was unsafe. in year 2011, there was a earthquake and tsunami (Japan being a seismic active region) that flooded the coastal region of Fukushima Prefecture, causing havoc with the reactors and resulting in a triple meltdown, wherein reactor 3 of the Fukushima Dai'cihi facility suffered a hydrogen explosion that ejected large amounts of radioactive material into the jet stream as well as locally in Fukushima Prefecture. At present, the site at Fukushima Dai'ichi is so radioactive that it is hazardous for human beings to work there; if we had the technology, the work at Fukushima Dai;'ichi should really be done by humanoid robotic apparatus. The cores of reactors 1, 2 and 3 at Fukushima Dai'ichi are believed to have melted into the ground and are being cooled to try to avoid a re-criticality of the cores. The cooling water, as well as water runoff from surrounding hills to Fukushima Dai'ichi, is becoming contaminated and running into the Pacific Ocean, although some of the water is being collected and passed through an ALPS filter arrangement (that is partially effective at removing contaminants from the cooling water, but also makes the filters themselves highly radioactive and hazardous) to storage tanks, where the water can be stored for a period for some of its radiation to be dissipated. The whole situation at Fukushima Dai'ichi is a dreadful tragedy. Nobody sane would have wanted this terrible situation to arise. Unfortunately, the ambient radiation of the three melted cores makes it extremely difficult to get near the melted cores, some of which are believed potentially to have burnt into the ground underneath the reactor buildings. Hopefully, some sort of robust robotic apparatus can eventually be devised that allow the melted cores eventually to be cut up and stored in suitable protective containers in some form of safe geological repository, but the possibility of such robotic apparatus is sadly a distant hope at the present time. We are therefore faced with an extremely sad situation that radioactive contamination will be leaching century-after-century into the Pacific Ocean, with potentially highly negative effects on the biosphere of the Pacific Ocean, namely the largest carbon dioxide sink of the World. If this carbon dioxide sink is damaged, we risk huge increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations with a risk of rampant anthropogenically-forced climate change. Prior art year 2011, when we reflect back on the beauty of Fukushima Prefecture, it is an utter tragedy what has happened. A lot of the problems could have been avoided had the Fukushima Dai'ichi facilities been designed more robustly. In my view, there are serious concerns regarding inadequacies in implementation and operation of the Fukushima Dai'ichi facility. In my view, the Japanese government should be assisted to try to ameliorate the Fukushima Dai'ichi facility, for example international expertise. Moreover, there is a compelling argument that the Japanese government should close all its nuclear facilities as soon as possible in view of seismic risks in Japan, and start an intensive programme of renewable energy systems (solar, wind turbine, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave energy). Moreover, there is also a strong argument, if Japan has to use nuclear power, to pursue molten salt reactors located inland operating at high temperature (700 oC) that can "burn" (i.e. transmute) the nuclear waste stockpile that Japan has accumulated from its conventional fission nuclear reactors during the past few decades; in particular MR technology devised by Seaborg AS in Denmark is likely to be appropriate for Japan. There is hope for Japan, despite the large amount of radioactive contamination that has arisen, even in Tokyo (i.e. "hot" radioactive particles), but the Japanese government would be well advised to abandon convention nuclear power as soon as possible. The sad thing is that this would cause a lot of "stranded assets" in terms of nuclear plant in Japan, but that is the bitter pill that arises from past sub-optimal strategic decisions that have been made on behalf of Japan by the USA, and decisions by the Japanese government.

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

Wow, fact checking isn't a strong point with you, is it?

[@MrCreamster20]

So where to start; I'll initially cover Chernobyl... That was more of a political disaster than anything; the night operational crew decided to run the "lack of power test" on reactor #4 of which it's containment chamber roof(seperate from the building complex roof itself) was rushed so thus was 50% weaker and the turbine generator system for that reactor in particular had major problems when it came to maintaining charge while powering up/down; the rest is history as we know it. Fukushima while sat at 7 on the nuclear disaster scale within that 7th level it's more of a 10/100 compared to the 150+ of that of Chernobyl. The Fukushima operators had 10min of warning in that amount of time the internal activity of the reactors fuel rods would've been around maybe 15-30% of normal operational levels; power got low so the backup generators kicked in and kept this emergency shutdown procedure going until they of course went down too. The video clip showing the explosion of the #4 building with its top going boom wasn't the reactor itself but a somewhat failsafe part of the overall system overloading and to the outside observer blowing up. The explosion itself was irradiated hydrogen gas entering the nitrogen gas filled inert space above everything until it couldn't contain it anymore. But before that irradiated material, liquid and gases made there way through all of the additional systems including the coolant one which had the negative side effect of converting coolant to explosive gas. Overall on a scale of 10 the response by the Japanese in every way would have to be a 8-9; there emergency systems worked until they inevitably failed for obvious reasons, disaster management was excellent and they already had a plan in place to get things stable. Another major comparison to look at that most people seem to ignore is the human side of this; Chernobyl spread lethal radiation to half of Europe!!! and still to this day 50+ something years later there would be people suffering the genetic diseases that ionising radiation causes let alone the 100?+ that the surrounding area needs to fully recover. Fukushima on the other hand only affected a radial area of 30ish km and to this day probably hasn't killed anyone yet due to the excellent management. Yes while it is a disaster it is by no means comparable to Chernobyl.(dang YT why you have to be 4 days late with the recommendation...)

[@--enyo--]

He's actually done a few videos on Chernobyl. See the very first video on this channel.

[@boatymcboatface666]

So is there contaminated water spilling into pacific ocean?

[@adder3597]

@@boatymcboatface666 Not now, no. The release was contained after it was picked up, though some low level tritium contaminated water is discharged at times once it is deemed to be radiologically safe enough to do so.

[@WarpFactor999]

Fukushima was primarily caused by the electric company trying to be cheap by not placing the plant at the original designed height above sea level (30m). Due to layout considerations, it was cheaper to put the emergency generators on the sea side without sufficient embankments, again not according to the original plans. Japan at the time desperately needed the plants on-line quickly to meet growth needs, so it was pretty much rubber stamped to go ahead with the "cost saving measures." The management figured that they would never get a huge earthquake in just the right location to cause a tidal wave that would cause a problem, so they were safe enough... What they ignored of course was Mr. Murphy's Law, which led to their destruction.

[@ScalDZ]

Please make a Video about The Bismarck

[@leddygee1896]

Truly Horrific Disaster. My wife & I were off work that day, and watched the whole thing unfold on T.V....

[@theenzoferrari458]

Horrific? I consider it poetic justice after what they did in Hawaii after they bombed it. I bet they screamed godzilla.

[@jordanjohnson7285]

They were just recently able to see the bottom of one of the reactors to access the damage because of radiation killing robots. World ending catastrophe, everyone just doesn’t know it yet.

[@mikeyronen2952]

Why do you believe so?

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

Show something that has been killed by Fukushima radiation.

[@jordanjohnson7285]

Huge cancer spike in newborn children since the reactors blew. Massive marine die offs in the Pacific Ocean since the explosion. The proof is everywhere.

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

@@jordanjohnson7285 No reactor blew at Fukushima. Nothing in the Pacific Ocean has died due to Fukushima radiation. No increases in cancers since 2011. Facts aren't your strong point, are they?

[@lulyarcagni]

I love your videos! I would like to see a video the colosal move of the Temple of Abu Simbel in Egypt. PLEASE!!!!!

[@boksininkas_ltukaras5005]

Maby do Arecibo next. It whould be nice to see what a useful instrument we just lost because of stupidity of people who don't see the point of space exploration. And thats why they just take money from science projects and place it for army and others Sh#T

[@meola69420]

Arecibo really had nothing to do with space exploration anymore. Yes it was a large radio telescope; however it really isn't up to the standards today. This is probably a similar reason to why funding was cut and eventually led to poor upkeep that inevitably led to its demise. Also Arecibo was already surpassed in abilities by the FAST telescope in 2016. This has absolutely nothing to do with military funding. That would be like complaining when they deorbit or graveyard park the Hubble when James Webb goes up. Why keep dumping money into a useless piece of old tech?

[@danielsharp2012]

L

[@boksininkas_ltukaras5005]

@@meola69420 FAST is not a RADAR telescope it's only radio telescope. Arecibo had a radar.

[@terenceconnors9627]

I was working with a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief team when this happened. "Horrifying" doesn't even begin to cover it. Almost as bad was watching the Japanese government insist everything was fine, while satellite imagery clearly showed it was badly damaged.

[@paradox7358]

The fact that the power plant was hit by an earthquake and a tsunami and no one was even injured, just shows how safe nuclear power is.

[@nitescuvalentin6872]

You mean how well built and how many procedures were in place in case of a such accident. Practice practice practice.

[@jolttsp]

*how safe nuclear power can be.

[@DeeperWithDiego]

Nuclear is the safest form of energy man has discovered yet. You are correct. That's like Chernobyl, next to nobody died at from the radiation or any issue with the reactor meltdown itself. The overwhelmingly amount of people that died were due to Government mismanagement after the disaster. It's a shame there's so much misinformation and propaganda against nuclear out there. That's the actual tragedy of all of these incidences.

[@purplemoonshoes]

Yeah but look at how much money it costs to make it safe. Compare it to solar and it makes little sense.

[@johnucc1]

@@purplemoonshoes Solar also provides a fraction of the power, also has high production costs (and a large space footprint due to how many are needed to generate anything substantial)

[@mrlucasftw42]

The one thing I don't understand - the decay heat (even during the start of shutdown) is enough to overwhelm the reactor - so shouldn't that heat be able to generate power to run the pumps? If it is enough heat for meltdown (that is more heat than normal operation of the reactor itself), why can't it be utilized to power itself directly?

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

All nuclear power plants in the world cannot operate once they lose the grid power sine wave signal. They SCRAM automatically.

[@justinhannan1713]

Funny question [not ha ha funny]. The test the russians were running at Chernobyl was for that exact situation. kzbin.info/www/bejne/p2THZKWwe7mlgsk

[@k.5152]

biographics idea: dr suess. he once signed a painting with a fake name so he could trick people into saying they know of stroggo von m.

[@byod]

Great video

[@johndough3943]

"Nuclear energy is clean energy." Lol, D'ohkay.

[@milokojjones]

But it is ?

[@angelarch5352]

@@milokojjones OF course Nuclear energy is clean energy... until it isn't.

[@milokojjones]

@@angelarch5352 It is clean ... all the time. It is clean because it doesn't release carbon emisions - or any other emissions really. That does not mean that it can't damage the environment if mismanaged, but if managed properly, it is clean in both ways.

[@johndough3943]

@@milokojjones spent nuclear fuel in containment facilities such as Yucca Mountain in the USA is not clean just because it's managed in a containment facility. The waste product is by far more dangerous for a longer period of time. It's half life is more easily verified than a study of carbon emissions.

[@milokojjones]

@@johndough3943 As far as I know, there is no nuclear waste in Yucca mountain, as the project faced big backlash from local residents and never got finished ( Megaprojects did great video about Yucca mountain if you are interrested ), but to the point - nuclear waste is not really as much of a waste, it is rather un used radioactive material that can be used as fuel again or something else ( which is being done to some degree already ). Only 5% of the fuel's energy is released during it's lifetime as fuel. I also did some quick research on nuclear waste composition while back and I found out, that majority is uranium ( around 96% ),the rest ( around 4% ) consists of some plutonium, stroncium 90 and caesium 137 ( also + some other but those decay into those three in few years ), plutonium can be used to enrich uranium ( if Im not mistaken ) and stroncium and caesium can be used in healthcare or to heat up probes in space. Also byproduct of refining the uranium from nuclear waste and ore is so called depleted uranium, which is less radioactive than uranium ore, but it is toxic metal ( similarly to lead ), while it may not be usefull now due to it's health concerns, it could be used in future to build objects in space such as ships and stations, as it is quite durable metal with good mechanical properties.

[@Fuchswinter]

Since you mentioned it, perhaps the earthquake safety systems in Japan? Could be a side project too, it sounds fascinating

[@TheBuckteeth100]

"It is equivalent to a double x-ray" ah so a little higher then 3.6 roentgen. Not great but also not terrible. Let's hope that's just not where their meters max out.....

[@KarlKarpfen]

It isn't, there just was no release of radioactive material that could change the radiation level by a relevant margin. The Fukushima exclusion zone still is way less dangerous than Tokyo, regarding environmental hazards.

[@TheBuckteeth100]

@@KarlKarpfen thanks for the info man. My comment was a joke/reference to the chernobyl series

[@suesutherland9782]

Ty simon, can't find much updates on this.

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

You haven't looked then. Enter "Fukushima" in the search box. A hundred new videos every day.

[@suesutherland9782]

@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk I have, in Canada.

[@suesutherland9782]

Do you believe that @#$%.

[@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk]

@@suesutherland9782 No need to believe anything, I do it everyday.

[@Quickdraw2359]

Hello Simon! I was watching the Fukushima nuclear disaster clean up video, you mentioned that there's ton of contaminated soil. Why can't they just throw all that into a volcano?

[@KPearce57]

I would still rather have Nuclear Power that all these BFUgly wind turbines .

[@jugs554433]

Can you do a similar video on the cleaning up of the nuclear attacks on japan during WW2 that would be super interesting

[@TeamLegacyFTW]

This is a global problem, not just a problem for Japan. The fact that a Japanese funded Russian ship refused to help is typical human behavior. Most likely a money issue😒

[@Albert-oo1wk]

Also the fact that Japan is considering releasing the contaminated water to sea just because "the tanks are getting full". Japan is supposedly the 3rd largest economy in the world and is approximately the size of California, but apparently don't have the money to build more tanks nor any land to store them. Releasing the contaminated water to sea would not only affect Japan but also all of East Asia's seas due to the circling currents in the region, but Japan is willing to make other nations take that risk just because they want to cut corners in owning up to their responsibilities.

[@adder3597]

@@Albert-oo1wk The water being released has been decontaminated as far as possible, only tritium is left as a contaminant and even then its levels are expected to be within acceptable levels, which will dilute once it gets into the ocean. Plus, the oceans are naturally radioactive anyway so they won't be overly bothered.

[@shawnainge2369]

I think videos on the clean from the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan during World War 2 would be interesting.

[@cristiandemirel1918]

only "smart" people could build a nuclear power plant right on the ocean's shore in the country that came up with the word tsunami.

[@davidanalyst671]

the japanese have been really smart about this too. the country that loves robots still hasn't built a robot to remove the fuel. How many years does this stupidity take?

[@Saberlena]

@@davidanalyst671 Nuclear fuel tends to destroy most robots that come too close to it. The radiation is severely destructive to circuitry.

[@Steph.98114]

@@davidanalyst671 fuel rods weigh tons, not the simplest things to remove, as well as the radiation interferes with the robot

[@revenevan11]

So I disagree with your comment just because there's more nuance to it, it's a complicated situation, and you shouldn't judge a whole people or country based on the actions of a power corporation (not even the entirety of their government)... but I gotta admit the bit about them coming up with the word tsunami is a sick burn and made me literally LOL 🤣

[@cristiandemirel1918]

@@revenevan11 I disagree with your disagreement, because "smart people" refers to the company that built and operated the plant and to the state officials that let them do it. It has nothing to do with the Japanese people, who had no saying in the decision making process.

[@derekarnst4498]

You should do an episode on nuclear power decommissioning. The Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in nebraska, USA is currently being decommissioned.