I had to study the Bhopal incident in college. I can't say this clearly enough: that was not sabotage. That's not even a realistic assertion. A lot of things went very wrong nearly simultaneously. At the end of the day, the most likely culprit from where I am sitting is a design flaw. The machinery was not designed to handle a water blow-through. Also, communications and staffing were ridiculous. There was one dude trying to cut off the water and he had no way of communicating with the control station. From there, it got nothing but worse. But it was absolutely not sabotage, that's a ridiculous statement.
The concrete used in the Deepwater Horizon disaster was provided by Halliburton and was _known_ to be defective. When I say known, I do not mean in testing. I mean they used _this exact same concrete_ in another drilling platform and it _also_ catastrophically failed. It just happened on a smaller scale, in Asia, so no one cared or reported about it. Also, before they were sued, BP initially wasn't on the hook for almost any of the damage because of deals they made with the local government. The entire thing was just insanely corrupt. The Justice Department legally could have sent people to jail for it but they didn't bother to pursue charges, they just gave them a massive fine.
and add on to that the massive underfunding in the government department that oversaw the inspection of the well. If i remember correctly, the guy that inspected deep water horizon did it alone because of lack of inspectors, and he was still in training.
Halliburton also is a major player in "fracking" (Hydraulic fracturing of marcellus shale for extraction of natural gas) and uses grout on those wells also. "Oh what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive."
Actually, having gone to school for drilling and blasting I can tell you Deepwater Horizon was far worse than it seems. The idiots used normalized pressure 'mud' (ie lubricatant) for the drill hole, and only used a single casing, when international safety protocol calls for a MINIMUM of double casing the drill rods and the hole (basically the hole is cased in steel, and then cased in another casing that is purposely sealed to the ocean floor that is actually WIDER then the borehole.) They used normalized moderate pressure bentonite compounds for their lubricant/drill medium/ pressure release/hole clearing (see the term 'mud') They cheaped out and didn't invest in the specialized high pressure bentonite compound because on average it is about 200$ more expensive per bag. They cut corners worse than any company in history in the drilling industry, and overall the resource drilling industry is pretty pissed off that they got away so cleanly. They should have lost their legal corporate rates to exist in this industry. What they did was in the face of even the most basic of safety protocols you learn in high school physics and in COLLEGE in Lindsay Ontario when you go to school for this profession!
drizzt102 BP also used the dispersant Corexit underwater at the wellhead to try and make cleanup on the surface easier. What they didn't anticipate was that using a dispersant at depth would create a massive and diffuse plume of oil at about 1km water depth. Although the water might look ok, this action caused a significant amount of non-point source pollution.
drizzt102 interesting also this might be a little off topic but still a little relavant FNAF is actually in violatsion of OSHA 1st 2 games were in the 80s OSHA was established in the 70s in fnat 2 you have some PPE (personal protective equipment) in the form of the mask but in one you have jack squat heck one phone call to OSHA and you can have you superiors fire or even imprisoned if the deaths of the prior night guards can be confirmed in the court of law
Yeah, I have trouble watching individual chips. Sometimes if I watch one individual chip I end up watching 55.3 million chips. You want to know what else is 55.3 million? The estimated death rate each year. Every year 55.3 million people seize to exist, and 131.4 million children are born. Eventually those original 55.3 million people will be forgotten in time, and eventually all 131.4 million babies will also be forgotten. All these births and deaths, and for what purpose? Everyone has their own reasons wether it be one of the many gods of the world or nihilistic views mixed with atheistic ideology. However, it should be in people's best intentions to make a difference for the betterment of our present future and our children's future. We are selfish creatures, but that's forgivable. We tend to only see from the center of our manifested and fabricated visions of our own tangible realities, and it's due to the limitations of our brains to comprehend the world. Once our brains die at the end of our lives what is it that ascends the afterlife? Is it us? Our brains? Or something out of our control? People are easily manipulated, and people are subject to changing themselves, and it's all due to our brains having the ability to adapt to it's surroundings and conditions. All this while the brain is dumbfounded on how to comprehend its own fact of existing, that's the reason why we can't imagine not existing, and it's also the reason why we can't segregate a spirit from a brain. There is not real individuality, just variation, and phases of life. TLDR: kil ur selph fgtt m80? Also its 3:00 am and im dead inside. fuck. U. •u•
Now I'm picturing Michael's voice being the countdown timer for some sort of horrible self-destruct mechanism. "Hi, I'm Michael Aranda and the fusion core will overload in... 12 minutes and 43 seconds."
Acer Scout Yeah, I once read a book about someone who died from tuberculosis, which causes your lungs to bleed, leading to coughing and vomiting blood and internal drowning. I couldn't sleep for a few weeks at the thought of running around the block and suddenly drown in my own blood...
Technicalities Included. I would say World War II was definitely the worst Human Caused Disaster in general. Although all life included (not just human) the BP spill is literally right there alongside with it.
these are all incidents caused by specific human error. World War 2 wasn't really an incident and wasn't caused by specific human error. It was certainly a tragedy, but to put world war 2 in the same ballpark as these seems a bit trite - it was a hugely complicated global event.
I'm a vlogger myself and did not mean to sound rude. I always appreciate it when people let me know these things so I can adjust them if they have a point. Love SciShow! I've learned lots!
The disaster in India was probably caused by neglect, not sabotage. Maintenance is always the first thing to go when companies want to reduce cost. The cause of the disaster is too wide spread to be a deliberate act by a few people.
There are various valves that someone had to have opened in order for water to back flow into the tank. A simple water valve is the same today as it was back then. Someone has to physically turn the valves open - would have been more than one along the pipes length.
Sadly, the great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 was not one of the featured disasters. It's not to the scale of these disasters (21 deaths, 150 injured), but it's more fun to talk about.
I'm surprised there was no mention of the numerous toxic substances dumped into the Gulf in an attempt to break up the oil. Not only did this add even more poison to the water, it made the crude sink below the surface making it even harder to contain and clean up.
COREXIT, manufactured and distributed by NALCO holding group. NALCO and BP share a couple board members and are bed buddies. There are several other alternative safer less toxic dispersants available just not as cheap as the COREXIT brand dispersant.
You have taught me in 8:05 what no News Anchor, History Channel episode or other documentaries could have taught me hours. Thank You for getting down to brass tacks and saying what we all need to know about our humanity.
TheSapientity Like in the video itself, that is a very gross oversimplification. The misuse of the reactor started a couple hours prior to the test. The delaying of the test was crucial to the event chain. If it would have been performed on shedule, everything would have worked just fine - probably - we will never know for sure now.
Yup, and modern reactors don't really have the same problems of wanting to heat up excessively. Modern reactors have the ability to dial into a certain heat configuration, whereas chernobyl had reactor dynamics that when the power increased, it wanted to keep increasing until a human stopped it. Modern reactors are thusly said to have a negative heat coefficient, because as they get hotter, the core becomes less able to heat up further unless humans send commands to it.
Another important incident was the one in Seveso (Italy here not far from my home). A hole number of European law are named after that chemical plant! You could cover it in a next episode!
At 5:20 you can see the map of radiation spread, thing is - my grandma is from "Ovruch" city (about 90 km to the west from Pripyat), and i spent each summer there for several months during my childhood, starting from mid 80's. Everybody heard about explosion, but noone actualy knew anything. Nature was great, food too, there were never any antiradiation measures in that area. Also right there is one of main railroads from Moscow to the south part of USSR and it worked like nothing ever happened. Thing is, everything was quite all right there. Food, nature, people's health - everything was really great. I never heard or experienced anything connected to radiation effects. Area of radiation spreading looks like hourglass, and places to south and mainly to north were affected most. One more sad fact: i've read memoirs of Chief Engineer, who was at shift during that day. What he described is so incredibly, it deserves to be filmed. And sad part is that engineer got in jail for performing exactly what he was told to do. It's the construction specifics and miscalculations that lead to such disaster, and those modifications to RBMK-1000 after event proves that it was not the operators fault overall.
There are some Tschernobyl meltdown factors that were not even mentioned here. Like for example that the test was delayed several times and the reactor core enriched with xenon as a result. Xenon is a neutron absorber, which hindered the reaction but only to the point until all of it was transmuted into other isotopes again. The not properly trained crew did not realize this and removed almost all of the control rods to meet power demands prior to the test. Thus the unstable configuration was reached and the emergency shutdown procedure caused it to blow up. Maybe you should do a seperate video about this and title it: "10 easy steps to blow up a poorly constructed nuclear reactor"
My dad was on the emergency response floor for BP when the Gulf Well blew. He wasn't involved with the well since he was in the exploration department and it had been established before he was hired by BP. Needless to say, he was curious what the empty offices around him were used for in his first years there. Not long after it blew, he realized the situation wasn't getting any better, so we left BP for another company.
I heard that part of the cause was that the experiment got delayed, due to a power-outage at another power plant. By the time they got it fixed, the day-shift workers, who were trained in the experiment, went home and the untrained night-shift ran the experiment. Is that right?
The blowout preventer was damaged during drilling ops. BP engineers were under pressure because over-budget. A service crewman accidentally hit a control switch while they were testing the blowout preventer. The seal in the blowout preventer was damaged and that's why they were getting false readings from borehole pressures. As some of the mud was leaking out the pressure was actually higher than they thought.
Italy has a history of dam disasters. The Vajont Dam disaster in 1963, when a antropogenic landslide caused a 250-meter high tsunami wave destroying several villages and the Val di Stava dam collapse in 1985 caused by poor maintenance.
That's the problem with Soviet reactors. They were constructed to have what is called positive alpha T. As the temperature goes up more neutrons are slowed down and more fissions occur and then the temperature rises creating a temperature spiraling upward in milliseconds. The rest of the world's reactors (or at least boiling and pressurized water reactors) have negative alpha T thus slowing the neutron production with a rise in temperature.
Listening to this, honestly made me sick to my stomach. Having to only live through the 3rd of these disasters, I never really knew how detrimental they were. I'll probably never fully understand nor anyone else who didn't live through it; but hopefully we can all learn something from this and endeavor to prevent things like this from happening again.
dont forget that the "almighty" dollar is the reason you have cars, medicine, tv, and basically everything around you, including the computer you type on.
Zachary Buffone Actually, human lives are the reason you have all these things. The almighty dollar is an intermediary to create products. It is not more important than the people making things and treating it as such is the reason we have these terrible disasters. We need to put more value on each other and quit acting like bigger numbers of stacks of paper are the most important motivation if we want to have a world worth living in.
Oliver Caesar no but its the best way of building up innovation we have encountered. The motivation to make a profit fuels the competition needed for inventors to invent. Its why monopolies are illegal and youtube sucks. Im not agreeing with killing thousands of people to turn a profit, but with regulations we can help to avoid them.
I have an exam on Terrestrial and Marine Pollution tomorrow morning. This video could not have come at a better time - now I've got some great case studies to include in my essays :D
I really doubt the higher estimates from Chernobyl only because they use the linear non-threshold theory to get those numbers. The more reliable numbers, when estimated high, are about 5000 deaths because of Chernobyl.
The most amazing thing about the chernobyl exclusion zone, in my opinion, is the fact that the power plant's other reactors remained in use till the year 2000.
So, funny thing with the MIC. Here in WV, there was an explosion at a chemical facility adjacent to a college I was going to at the time. The explosion killed 1 or 2 workers at the plant and a piece of debris was a few feet away from a tank full of MIC. The storage tank rests in a valley next to a river, so there is a lot of bad that could have come about from a leak. 3 years later a tank of a coal cleaning solution was discovered to be leaking into the river above the water intake for the region(300,000 people). The chemical had no data on long term ingestion or exposure.
*Michael Aranda is a good presenter, but he should try to vary the tone of his voice…* Try being more expressive! More gestures! More emotions! Don't be shy!
Michael Aranda, THANK YOU! I work in the oil and gas industry (Im not employed directly by BP but my company has had regular contracts with them in the North Sea) and Im sick of the demonisation of BP particularly by US media for something that was almost completely beyond their control. When you mentioned BP I just assumed you would tow the US line on the issue but my god THANKYOU! Having had environmentalist and conservation friends do dissertations and thesis on the Deep water Horizon affair I can say with fair confidence that the resources BP invested into capping the well were above and beyond their due given base caused of the accident. Having worked along side them I can say BP are one of the most health and safety nut companies we work with.
While not exactly recent as with these examples, there's also the Halifax explosion. Basically a ship captain was too proud and in too much of a rush to change course for an approaching ship until it was too late and the two collided. One of them caught fire as a result...... Which happened to be a munitions ship fully loaded with enough explosives to flatten an area about a mile wide.
I didn't know that they were testing the electricity requirement thing with Chernobyl Plant. I had read somewhere that it was caused because of a few workers' mistakes and something like that. This video was extremely informative.
For the people asking, the guest host is Michael Aranda. I'm pretty sure he still does the sound and stuff for this show as well as The Brain Scoop and the science half of Crash Course. The vlogbrothers video on Friday was in Florida, so I'm guessing that's why Hank isn't in this episode.
Couldn't work out why a video about old news was so popular... then I read the comments and could see who was watching... Funny how the commentators with the least knowledge leave the most confident comments .
One small correction, mud is vital in ANY oil drilling operation, on shore mud works the same as offshore, for the exact same reason. It keeps natural gas and hydrocarbons from getting to the rig. And causing a fire
So it's either human error, technical flaws or just flat-out incompetence. Or all three combined... Deepwater Horizon and the ensuing oil spill was all three at once, though I think that incompetence is the worst of the three. The management at BP had no idea what to do. I believe the dumbest thing they came up with was either plugging the hole with shredded tires and golf balls OR setting the oil on fire to burn it off. At least they didn't awaken C'thulu ;-)
Actually, nobody really knows if those blowout preventers really work at full pressure. Thing is that it's relatively easy to cut the pipe shut if there is no pressure in it. It's a completely different thing though if you attempt to shut pipe that is actively resisting such action. Than the whole machine would just get stuck with the pipe only lightly scratched and everything that it was supposed to stop is happily escaping still.
I'm not sure that it can be considered a contender here but when the Fukushima plant was in the makings, the private company in charge of its designed was warned several times by specialists about the lack of security in case of earthquakes or tsunamis. But the government didn't listen so there was no one to stop the company from caring about money more than safety. That disaster seems way human-caused to me.
***** Tbh even if money had been poured into the plant before hand its debatable if the precautions would have held. With a event of that magnitude its impossible to accurately test all the relevant potential failure points and a seaming minor point of damage could easily cascade into catastrophic damage given the natural onslaught. Designing to protect from either one. Yeah, within margins of error. But both...? Of that magnitude? Yeah good luck with that. You cant design for a 3m shift in the earth. All you have to do is look at the tsunami walls. They were substantial, solid, they didnt fail in the earthquake and it didnt matter, because all 40 foot of them just vanished under 128 feet of surge.
***** Combination? You know Tsunami's are caused by earthquakes, right? And IIRC Fukashima itself had almost had a problem previously. They'd had to re-enforce the flood walls to try to prevent this kind of thing. Might to time to move your reactor when that happens. I don't give a shit that it's expensive - the clean up is incalculable. The thing is still leaking lethal radioactive waste.
Bleh, I could argue the technicality of earthquakes cause tsunamis but its not worth it unless you're particularly interested. Yes I am aware. My point was you can have earthquakes without tsunami's and equally you can have tsunami's without earthquakes, though earthquakes are generally (though no exclusively) the source of the most powerful tsunami's. Actually I disagree with you on the relocation. Its hard to put a nuclear reactor anywhere in Japan that isnt in the path of earthquakes and tsunami's. Because of its position on the Ring of Fire Japan is surrounded by potential earthquake threats, from all angles. Equally, nuclear plants require a LOT of water to function. In places like the US or France it wouldnt be a huge issue to move it inland. Rivers like the Mississippi or Loire Rivers respectively have massive catchments and travel miles to reach the shore. Because of this they are of significant size well before they reach the sea as they merge on the lowland planes. Japan on the other hand, ranges from 31 miles wide at its narrowest to 140 miles at its widest and right in the middle is a massive mountain range. This mountain range collects a lot of water to form rivers but because of the terrain these rivers dont become significant until they are basically at the sea. The biggest Japanses river, the Shinano River has an average per second discharge 40% less than the French Loire and a rather comical 97% less than the mighty Mississippi. We have of course neglected the COLOSSAL cost of levelling flat some 4km^2 of mountainous terrain in order to build it. In short, Japan had nowhere else but the coast to put it. Calling them out is all well and good, saying they should have moved. But if youre going to make such aggressive and deriding comments, you should take the time to think about why they were where they were in the first place and wether moving them as you suggest is even a viable option.
Talshere From the accounts I've seen there were plenty of warnings that the plant was in a bad area - and it was very old with terrible safety problems. By saying they shouldn't have moved it, you're saying that the cost concerns outweigh the risk factors. With the thing still releasing irradiated material, I tend to air on the side of caution. If the plant can't be made safer than that for the cost, then perhaps they need to spend more on it. And don't be a dick - of course I've thought about it.
***** But you still missed my point. Where could they have moved it to where it would be safe. The only place with sufficient water discharge to cool the plant are on the coast. Even if you ignore the cost of effectively building a mountain fortress to get it away from sea level, how do you intent to cool it? Even in its current off state it requires 45400 litres of water per day. There isnt sufficient water up their to provide that and its not feasible to pump that much water into the mountains, the energy required would eat an not unnoticeable chunk out of power generation ignoring the maintenances of the pumping system. You cant put it anywhere else on the coast line because as stated, Japan's location within the ring of fire means that an earthquake epicentre could occur all 360 degrees around Japan. You could argue it was in a natural resonance zone but those will vary depending on the amplitude of the tsunami. Moving it, its not sensible. It provides no real benefit and cost a fortune. It would be like arguing New Orleans is in a stupid place for a city, why didnt Americans realise this and make the city somewhere else. Rather than just maintain the Floodwalls and Levees.
I often use the Dust Bowl as an example of how man can negatively impact the environment we depend on. However I preface it with, no evidence that I'm unaware of that man caused the drought. There is evidence that some where warning that the tillage practice of the day could create a disaster in the event of a drought. Those making the warning where dismissed and thus the Dust Bowl.
Clicked on the link expecting Hank Green, but instead found a new monotone host (Bueller.......Bueller....Bueller) that looked like he just came off the set of Jersey Shore. Needless to say the video was immediately paused, then this comment, and now going back to search for a new video.
Pretty sure some communities have moved back inside the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. Something about the radiation not being as intense as projected it would be.
True. There is a small town of 10,000 people that live 3 miles from reactor number 4. The "disaster" at Chernobyl was greatly exaggerated. Furthermore the cancer rates around Chernobyl are all within normal averages seen around the world. As the video said, there is a slightly higher thyroid cancer rate in children but if you are going to get cancer, thyroid cancer is the one you want. It's cheap and easy to treat with iodine pills. Plus it has a 93% success rate.
Theres pros and cons with Michael and Hank. Michael has a smoother sounding voice but he seems monotone at times. Hank on the other hand is more enthusiastic and entertaining but hes also obnoxious
Good presentation Michael! As a few have stated you do give off the feeling like you're reading from a teleprompter where as I find Hank actually enthusiastic about the facts he's giving (although that might just be who hank is). Not too sure what you can specifically do about it but I found the information fascinating nonetheless, thank you :)
I actually like Michael better as a presenter - it's easier for me to understand him, he talks more evenly and imo that makes it easier for a non-native-speaker like me. And he has a nice voice in general. Not that I don't like Hank, though. I like both, but if I had to pick, I'd pick Michael for this show. ^_^
Video failed to mention the effects of the dispersants used by BP following the Deepwater Horizon failure ~ the crude oil spill, which until then was a mostly surface problem, but these dispersants poisoned the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the ocean floor ... the Gulf of Mexico will likely take decades to fully recover.
compare what? The cause of the disaster is a different, the technical specifics too, many other aspects too... Of course you should be concerned, but you shouldnt panic. Look at what caused those two, look whats your local landscape and inform yourself. And if you want a bit of relieve from the fearmongering concerning fukushima, look for thunderf00ts videos on that matter.
Hank seems like he is talking to me about something he is personally excited about, Michael sounds like he is being made to read aloud in class. But I still love the show and I am sure that he is exponentially better than I would be. So keep it up guys, Sci-Show is always amazing.
Kelpsie Sponge Hank is a concept in game theory that measures how efficiency of a system degrades due to selfish behavior of its agents. Hank is a general notion that can be extended to diverse systems.
I don't want to be mean, but you kinda sound like hank in the old scishow episodes. Don't get me wrong, you're not a bad public speaker, but you could do with a bit more inflection and excitement in your voice. But hey, don't be discouraged! You're doing a lot better now than your older videos! And you're obviously super smart! So keep up the great work. Time and practice will make you a speaking legend!
Japan is tricky to measure because we're still dealing with the aftermath and removing the fuel rods is still to come. I do think it's important to distinguish that Japan has and continues to leak radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean- this means that we really can't isolate it and create a dead zone like with Chernobyl. I think Chernobyl had more nuclear power released, but if the fuel rod removal doesn't go right, that could end up worse, so we'll have to see.
If by Japan you mean Hiroshima bombs, then I could certainly agree with that, but I think you mean the recent nuclear plant leaks, which is pretty bad too.
Quick clarification: So the control rods had two parts, the graphite tips and the main boron body. The graphite is a moderator, but the boron is a neutron absorber. A moderator speeds up a nuclear reaction, while absorbers slow them down. So in most nuclear reactors control rods only have absorbers, but the RMBK reactors had both graphite and boron. This allowed the operators more control over the rate of the reaction during normal operation. When the operators reduced power for the test, they reduced power too much and almost caused a station blackout. Their response to this was to fully remove the control rods beyond design specifications in an attempt to return the reactor to the test parameters, which caused a massive power spike. The operators then attempted emergency shutdown by inserting the control rods, but because they were tipped with a moderator, it actually sped up the reaction, because that is what moderators do and because it displaced the light water, which in this situation is a neutron absorber.
i like both. a change of pace is always good. maybe do a duo show :). that would be cool. Where Hank touches on some stuff and Michael touches on other stuff. it would make for great chemistry. Pun intended
The amount of people killed in the Chernobyl accident is widely debated, but when hearing the numbers remember that it was an older reactor type. There was no containment building and we've learned a lot since. Nuclear energy is finally what I'd call a safe energy source if you use newer reactor designs.
"The test did not go smoothly."
One of the greatest understatements of all time.
I hope you realise it's supposed to be an understatement!
I had to study the Bhopal incident in college. I can't say this clearly enough: that was not sabotage. That's not even a realistic assertion. A lot of things went very wrong nearly simultaneously. At the end of the day, the most likely culprit from where I am sitting is a design flaw. The machinery was not designed to handle a water blow-through. Also, communications and staffing were ridiculous. There was one dude trying to cut off the water and he had no way of communicating with the control station.
From there, it got nothing but worse. But it was absolutely not sabotage, that's a ridiculous statement.
The concrete used in the Deepwater Horizon disaster was provided by Halliburton and was _known_ to be defective.
When I say known, I do not mean in testing. I mean they used _this exact same concrete_ in another drilling platform and it _also_ catastrophically failed. It just happened on a smaller scale, in Asia, so no one cared or reported about it.
Also, before they were sued, BP initially wasn't on the hook for almost any of the damage because of deals they made with the local government.
The entire thing was just insanely corrupt. The Justice Department legally could have sent people to jail for it but they didn't bother to pursue charges, they just gave them a massive fine.
and add on to that the massive underfunding in the government department that oversaw the inspection of the well. If i remember correctly, the guy that inspected deep water horizon did it alone because of lack of inspectors, and he was still in training.
Halliburton also is a major player in "fracking" (Hydraulic fracturing of marcellus shale for extraction of natural gas) and uses grout on those wells also. "Oh what a tangled web we weave when we practice to deceive."
Actually, having gone to school for drilling and blasting I can tell you Deepwater Horizon was far worse than it seems. The idiots used normalized pressure 'mud' (ie lubricatant) for the drill hole, and only used a single casing, when international safety protocol calls for a MINIMUM of double casing the drill rods and the hole (basically the hole is cased in steel, and then cased in another casing that is purposely sealed to the ocean floor that is actually WIDER then the borehole.) They used normalized moderate pressure bentonite compounds for their lubricant/drill medium/ pressure release/hole clearing (see the term 'mud') They cheaped out and didn't invest in the specialized high pressure bentonite compound because on average it is about 200$ more expensive per bag. They cut corners worse than any company in history in the drilling industry, and overall the resource drilling industry is pretty pissed off that they got away so cleanly. They should have lost their legal corporate rates to exist in this industry. What they did was in the face of even the most basic of safety protocols you learn in high school physics and in COLLEGE in Lindsay Ontario when you go to school for this profession!
drizzt102 BP also used the dispersant Corexit underwater at the wellhead to try and make cleanup on the surface easier. What they didn't anticipate was that using a dispersant at depth would create a massive and diffuse plume of oil at about 1km water depth. Although the water might look ok, this action caused a significant amount of non-point source pollution.
drizzt102 interesting also this might be a little off topic but still a little relavant FNAF is actually in violatsion of OSHA 1st 2 games were in the 80s OSHA was established in the 70s in fnat 2 you have some PPE (personal protective equipment) in the form of the mask but in one you have jack squat heck one phone call to OSHA and you can have you superiors fire or even imprisoned if the deaths of the prior night guards can be confirmed in the court of law
drizzt102 Legend of Drizzt for the win!
also, if they had used duct tape to seal the hole, this wouldnt have happend.
Didn't the UK sell BP to Americans?
Volume is far too low.
your ears are far too bad ;)
***** Naaaah, the volume is pretty fucking low
***** WHAT!? I CAN'T HEAR YOU! And yes its too damn low I have speakers maxed for normal levels.
Am I the only one who thought you meant... like metres cubed?
ElegantEnsue No Mr.Scientist, you are the only one. lol
Sci show is like chips. You can't just have/watch one 😂😂😂
Yeah, I have trouble watching individual chips. Sometimes if I watch one individual chip I end up watching 55.3 million chips. You want to know what else is 55.3 million? The estimated death rate each year. Every year 55.3 million people seize to exist, and 131.4 million children are born. Eventually those original 55.3 million people will be forgotten in time, and eventually all 131.4 million babies will also be forgotten. All these births and deaths, and for what purpose? Everyone has their own reasons wether it be one of the many gods of the world or nihilistic views mixed with atheistic ideology. However, it should be in people's best intentions to make a difference for the betterment of our present future and our children's future. We are selfish creatures, but that's forgivable. We tend to only see from the center of our manifested and fabricated visions of our own tangible realities, and it's due to the limitations of our brains to comprehend the world. Once our brains die at the end of our lives what is it that ascends the afterlife? Is it us? Our brains? Or something out of our control? People are easily manipulated, and people are subject to changing themselves, and it's all due to our brains having the ability to adapt to it's surroundings and conditions. All this while the brain is dumbfounded on how to comprehend its own fact of existing, that's the reason why we can't imagine not existing, and it's also the reason why we can't segregate a spirit from a brain. There is not real individuality, just variation, and phases of life.
TLDR: kil ur selph fgtt m80?
Also its 3:00 am and im dead inside. fuck. U. •u•
Unknow User Well.
That was funny and depressing at the same time. Thank you sir/madam.
Unknow User Are you VSauce?
Kyrris did u gust assume his jender?
Default Dance did you just assume their gender because u said “did you just assume his gender”
Michael, it's so weird to have your super calm, soothing voice talk about catastrophies like these. That's a rather interesting contrast :D
Now I'm picturing Michael's voice being the countdown timer for some sort of horrible self-destruct mechanism.
"Hi, I'm Michael Aranda and the fusion core will overload in... 12 minutes and 43 seconds."
Dan Heidel haha, that would be amazing
Kram1032 BOOOOOOM
I'm really glad you talked about Chernoby as one of the disasters, it's a really important thing to teach people about.
"Internal drowning" dang..
Acer Scout
Yeah, I once read a book about someone who died from tuberculosis, which causes your lungs to bleed, leading to coughing and vomiting blood and internal drowning. I couldn't sleep for a few weeks at the thought of running around the block and suddenly drown in my own blood...
Look up their video on giant crystal cave
Right
Technicalities Included. I would say World War II was definitely the worst Human Caused Disaster in general. Although all life included (not just human) the BP spill is literally right there alongside with it.
Let's think about how many lives you have taken in Skyrim... You monster...
I agree teddy, You can hardly talk MrRhexx, just think how many innocent dragons you have slain...
***** lol... WorldHealthOrganization
these are all incidents caused by specific human error. World War 2 wasn't really an incident and wasn't caused by specific human error.
It was certainly a tragedy, but to put world war 2 in the same ballpark as these seems a bit trite - it was a hugely complicated global event.
That makes me wonder... how much environmental damage was caused by WWII?
Great episode but the audio is much too quiet :( I can hardly hear it with the volume all the way up. Had to use headphones
Get better speakers, or better hearing. Audio is fine for me.
Rawr900 he actually is talking very low. compared to other youtube videos.
I've noticed that SciShow videos are quieter than their others (Vlogbrothers, Crashcourse, etc).
Salmon3669 Like I said, get better hardware.
I'm a vlogger myself and did not mean to sound rude. I always appreciate it when people let me know these things so I can adjust them if they have a point. Love SciShow! I've learned lots!
I'm a chemical engineering major, and I've gotta say... this video is great for motivating me to study! Gotta learn how to prevent stuff like this!
Excellent video topic. Summed up the causes and effects of these events. Could be louder though on the volume.
The disaster in India was probably caused by neglect, not sabotage. Maintenance is always the first thing to go when companies want to reduce cost. The cause of the disaster is too wide spread to be a deliberate act by a few people.
If they claim sabotage they don't have to accept responsibility.
There are various valves that someone had to have opened in order for water to back flow into the tank. A simple water valve is the same today as it was back then. Someone has to physically turn the valves open - would have been more than one along the pipes length.
Sadly, the great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 was not one of the featured disasters. It's not to the scale of these disasters (21 deaths, 150 injured), but it's more fun to talk about.
They say on hot summer days, you can still smell molasses.
Guys, quit hating on Michael D: ! He just has a different way of presenting information >
His voice is so relaxing! It's like listening to velvet on your skin.
"The test did not go smoothly"
Understatement of the millennium.
You should make this guy host more often
He's awesome!
I'm surprised there was no mention of the numerous toxic substances dumped into the Gulf in an attempt to break up the oil. Not only did this add even more poison to the water, it made the crude sink below the surface making it even harder to contain and clean up.
COREXIT, manufactured and distributed by NALCO holding group. NALCO and BP share a couple board members and are bed buddies. There are several other alternative safer less toxic dispersants available just not as cheap as the COREXIT brand dispersant.
You have taught me in 8:05 what no News Anchor, History Channel episode or other documentaries could have taught me hours. Thank You for getting down to brass tacks and saying what we all need to know about our humanity.
Even with how crappy the safety measures were for nuclear reactors back then, it's funny that it took that many mistakes to cause that disaster.
Well, the entire test seems to have been "Let's turn off all safety measures and see what happens. This is a good idea!"
TheSapientity
Like in the video itself, that is a very gross oversimplification. The misuse of the reactor started a couple hours prior to the test. The delaying of the test was crucial to the event chain. If it would have been performed on shedule, everything would have worked just fine - probably - we will never know for sure now.
Yup, and modern reactors don't really have the same problems of wanting to heat up excessively. Modern reactors have the ability to dial into a certain heat configuration, whereas chernobyl had reactor dynamics that when the power increased, it wanted to keep increasing until a human stopped it. Modern reactors are thusly said to have a negative heat coefficient, because as they get hotter, the core becomes less able to heat up further unless humans send commands to it.
I'm surprised Batman Forever wasn't on this list.... It is responsible for more deaths than Spider-Man three. Tragic.
nonono spiderman is the worst. that is just 100% teen romance going on in that movie. at least batman is cool still
Milan van der Leest did you catch the reference nicolas made?
number 2 should have been batman and robin
Missed you, Michael Aranda!
Audio was low, but he didn't stumble on all that data or numbers, It was clear cut and clean. nice
How could my day be ruined when I get to watch 8 minutes of Michael?
.... also, disasters are bad and stuff... but, I mean.... Michael.
Another important incident was the one in Seveso (Italy here not far from my home). A hole number of European law are named after that chemical plant! You could cover it in a next episode!
Why is 6 afraid of 7 because it injured over 300 thousand people and killed a lot of people
cody himes Number 6 actually killed billions of humans throughout the colonies by seducing Baltar. Model number 7 was destroyed by number 1. ;)
Vincent is like my fucking name!
At 5:20 you can see the map of radiation spread, thing is - my grandma is from "Ovruch" city (about 90 km to the west from Pripyat), and i spent each summer there for several months during my childhood, starting from mid 80's.
Everybody heard about explosion, but noone actualy knew anything. Nature was great, food too, there were never any antiradiation measures in that area. Also right there is one of main railroads from Moscow to the south part of USSR and it worked like nothing ever happened.
Thing is, everything was quite all right there. Food, nature, people's health - everything was really great. I never heard or experienced anything connected to radiation effects.
Area of radiation spreading looks like hourglass, and places to south and mainly to north were affected most.
One more sad fact: i've read memoirs of Chief Engineer, who was at shift during that day. What he described is so incredibly, it deserves to be filmed. And sad part is that engineer got in jail for performing exactly what he was told to do. It's the construction specifics and miscalculations that lead to such disaster, and those modifications to RBMK-1000 after event proves that it was not the operators fault overall.
He talks so quietly.
I could hear him.
Because I did an internship in disaster recovery, I knew about these already. Good job quickly summarizing these events.
There are some Tschernobyl meltdown factors that were not even mentioned here. Like for example that the test was delayed several times and the reactor core enriched with xenon as a result. Xenon is a neutron absorber, which hindered the reaction but only to the point until all of it was transmuted into other isotopes again. The not properly trained crew did not realize this and removed almost all of the control rods to meet power demands prior to the test. Thus the unstable configuration was reached and the emergency shutdown procedure caused it to blow up.
Maybe you should do a seperate video about this and title it: "10 easy steps to blow up a poorly constructed nuclear reactor"
My dad was on the emergency response floor for BP when the Gulf Well blew. He wasn't involved with the well since he was in the exploration department and it had been established before he was hired by BP. Needless to say, he was curious what the empty offices around him were used for in his first years there. Not long after it blew, he realized the situation wasn't getting any better, so we left BP for another company.
Id hate to get picky, but your description of what caused the Chernobyl meltdown is not 100% correct.
I heard that part of the cause was that the experiment got delayed, due to a power-outage at another power plant. By the time they got it fixed, the day-shift workers, who were trained in the experiment, went home and the untrained night-shift ran the experiment. Is that right?
Toshikills Unfortunately, it is
Toshikills yep, but the narrator left out more than just that...
The blowout preventer was damaged during drilling ops. BP engineers were under pressure because over-budget. A service crewman accidentally hit a control switch while they were testing the blowout preventer. The seal in the blowout preventer was damaged and that's why they were getting false readings from borehole pressures. As some of the mud was leaking out the pressure was actually higher than they thought.
I'm gonna put this guy on whenever I can't sleep.
Italy has a history of dam disasters. The Vajont Dam disaster in 1963, when a antropogenic landslide caused a 250-meter high tsunami wave destroying several villages and the Val di Stava dam collapse in 1985 caused by poor maintenance.
"Nothing is so bad that it can't be worse..."
I won't say their names but certain pop artists with a few thousand fangirls...
1:47 ....weird smile while talking about 8000 ppl dying. I love it
The speaking volume is too low.
That's the problem with Soviet reactors. They were constructed to have what is called positive alpha T. As the temperature goes up more neutrons are slowed down and more fissions occur and then the temperature rises creating a temperature spiraling upward in milliseconds. The rest of the world's reactors (or at least boiling and pressurized water reactors) have negative alpha T thus slowing the neutron production with a rise in temperature.
What, no Boston Molasses Disaster?
Listening to this, honestly made me sick to my stomach. Having to only live through the 3rd of these disasters, I never really knew how detrimental they were. I'll probably never fully understand nor anyone else who didn't live through it; but hopefully we can all learn something from this and endeavor to prevent things like this from happening again.
As long as profit is the only motive.. the almighty dollar worth more then human lives... these events will keep happening.
dont forget that the "almighty" dollar is the reason you have cars, medicine, tv, and basically everything around you, including the computer you type on.
Zachary Buffone I'd rather live without my iPhone if it brought the population of Bhopal back.
Zachary Buffone
Actually, human lives are the reason you have all these things. The almighty dollar is an intermediary to create products. It is not more important than the people making things and treating it as such is the reason we have these terrible disasters. We need to put more value on each other and quit acting like bigger numbers of stacks of paper are the most important motivation if we want to have a world worth living in.
would you also like to live without modern medicine and die at around 40ish?
Oliver Caesar no but its the best way of building up innovation we have encountered. The motivation to make a profit fuels the competition needed for inventors to invent. Its why monopolies are illegal and youtube sucks. Im not agreeing with killing thousands of people to turn a profit, but with regulations we can help to avoid them.
I have an exam on Terrestrial and Marine Pollution tomorrow morning. This video could not have come at a better time - now I've got some great case studies to include in my essays :D
I find Micheal's voice a lot more calming than Hank's.
I enjoy listening to you Michael, you speak slow enough to understand.
I can't hear it's so quiet.
turn your volume up;)
Dear Michael, We love you. As much as you work, with Hank and Emily and everyone else, how do you find the time to be so utterly charming?
I really doubt the higher estimates from Chernobyl only because they use the linear non-threshold theory to get those numbers. The more reliable numbers, when estimated high, are about 5000 deaths because of Chernobyl.
Maybe it's just me, but I can hear him fine. And I like him as a host. He's articulate, and presents things in a clear way. Keep it up!
I am TOTALLY ok with this Michael O___O
The most amazing thing about the chernobyl exclusion zone, in my opinion, is the fact that the power plant's other reactors remained in use till the year 2000.
Can we give Michael his own show?
So, funny thing with the MIC. Here in WV, there was an explosion at a chemical facility adjacent to a college I was going to at the time. The explosion killed 1 or 2 workers at the plant and a piece of debris was a few feet away from a tank full of MIC. The storage tank rests in a valley next to a river, so there is a lot of bad that could have come about from a leak. 3 years later a tank of a coal cleaning solution was discovered to be leaking into the river above the water intake for the region(300,000 people). The chemical had no data on long term ingestion or exposure.
*Michael Aranda is a good presenter, but he should try to vary the tone of his voice…* Try being more expressive! More gestures! More emotions! Don't be shy!
Hank and Michael are opposites in this sense xD
The episode WAS about 3 big disasters soo...
Renan Paladino so?
Renan Paladino Hank is still expressive, emotional, and waving his arms when he talks about bad/depressing stuff too.
He does kind of sound like he's trying not to wake his parents in the other room...
Michael Aranda, THANK YOU!
I work in the oil and gas industry (Im not employed directly by BP but my company has had regular contracts with them in the North Sea) and Im sick of the demonisation of BP particularly by US media for something that was almost completely beyond their control.
When you mentioned BP I just assumed you would tow the US line on the issue but my god THANKYOU! Having had environmentalist and conservation friends do dissertations and thesis on the Deep water Horizon affair I can say with fair confidence that the resources BP invested into capping the well were above and beyond their due given base caused of the accident. Having worked along side them I can say BP are one of the most health and safety nut companies we work with.
That voice is so soothing.
While not exactly recent as with these examples, there's also the Halifax explosion. Basically a ship captain was too proud and in too much of a rush to change course for an approaching ship until it was too late and the two collided. One of them caught fire as a result...... Which happened to be a munitions ship fully loaded with enough explosives to flatten an area about a mile wide.
Ah humanity, straight fucking with nature since 3000 BCE.
I like when he presents sci show. He makes disaster more calming.
I like to dance. Sometimes I wanna do the worm and show everybody my moves... You ever feel like a worm ready to dance for the masses?
I didn't know that they were testing the electricity requirement thing with Chernobyl Plant. I had read somewhere that it was caused because of a few workers' mistakes and something like that.
This video was extremely informative.
Good episode.
For the people asking, the guest host is Michael Aranda. I'm pretty sure he still does the sound and stuff for this show as well as The Brain Scoop and the science half of Crash Course. The vlogbrothers video on Friday was in Florida, so I'm guessing that's why Hank isn't in this episode.
Couldn't work out why a video about old news was so popular...
then I read the comments and could see who was watching...
Funny how the commentators with the least knowledge leave the most confident comments .
One small correction, mud is vital in ANY oil drilling operation, on shore mud works the same as offshore, for the exact same reason. It keeps natural gas and hydrocarbons from getting to the rig. And causing a fire
So it's either human error, technical flaws or just flat-out incompetence. Or all three combined... Deepwater Horizon and the ensuing oil spill was all three at once, though I think that incompetence is the worst of the three. The management at BP had no idea what to do. I believe the dumbest thing they came up with was either plugging the hole with shredded tires and golf balls OR setting the oil on fire to burn it off.
At least they didn't awaken C'thulu ;-)
Let them drill near Antarctica and see what happens.
Actually, nobody really knows if those blowout preventers really work at full pressure. Thing is that it's relatively easy to cut the pipe shut if there is no pressure in it. It's a completely different thing though if you attempt to shut pipe that is actively resisting such action. Than the whole machine would just get stuck with the pipe only lightly scratched and everything that it was supposed to stop is happily escaping still.
I'm not sure that it can be considered a contender here but when the Fukushima plant was in the makings, the private company in charge of its designed was warned several times by specialists about the lack of security in case of earthquakes or tsunamis. But the government didn't listen so there was no one to stop the company from caring about money more than safety. That disaster seems way human-caused to me.
***** Tbh even if money had been poured into the plant before hand its debatable if the precautions would have held. With a event of that magnitude its impossible to accurately test all the relevant potential failure points and a seaming minor point of damage could easily cascade into catastrophic damage given the natural onslaught.
Designing to protect from either one. Yeah, within margins of error. But both...? Of that magnitude? Yeah good luck with that. You cant design for a 3m shift in the earth. All you have to do is look at the tsunami walls. They were substantial, solid, they didnt fail in the earthquake and it didnt matter, because all 40 foot of them just vanished under 128 feet of surge.
***** Combination? You know Tsunami's are caused by earthquakes, right? And IIRC Fukashima itself had almost had a problem previously. They'd had to re-enforce the flood walls to try to prevent this kind of thing. Might to time to move your reactor when that happens. I don't give a shit that it's expensive - the clean up is incalculable. The thing is still leaking lethal radioactive waste.
Bleh, I could argue the technicality of earthquakes cause tsunamis but its not worth it unless you're particularly interested. Yes I am aware.
My point was you can have earthquakes without tsunami's and equally you can have tsunami's without earthquakes, though earthquakes are generally (though no exclusively) the source of the most powerful tsunami's.
Actually I disagree with you on the relocation. Its hard to put a nuclear reactor anywhere in Japan that isnt in the path of earthquakes and tsunami's.
Because of its position on the Ring of Fire Japan is surrounded by potential earthquake threats, from all angles. Equally, nuclear plants require a LOT of water to function. In places like the US or France it wouldnt be a huge issue to move it inland. Rivers like the Mississippi or Loire Rivers respectively have massive catchments and travel miles to reach the shore. Because of this they are of significant size well before they reach the sea as they merge on the lowland planes. Japan on the other hand, ranges from 31 miles wide at its narrowest to 140 miles at its widest and right in the middle is a massive mountain range. This mountain range collects a lot of water to form rivers but because of the terrain these rivers dont become significant until they are basically at the sea. The biggest Japanses river, the Shinano River has an average per second discharge 40% less than the French Loire and a rather comical 97% less than the mighty Mississippi. We have of course neglected the COLOSSAL cost of levelling flat some 4km^2 of mountainous terrain in order to build it. In short, Japan had nowhere else but the coast to put it.
Calling them out is all well and good, saying they should have moved. But if youre going to make such aggressive and deriding comments, you should take the time to think about why they were where they were in the first place and wether moving them as you suggest is even a viable option.
Talshere From the accounts I've seen there were plenty of warnings that the plant was in a bad area - and it was very old with terrible safety problems. By saying they shouldn't have moved it, you're saying that the cost concerns outweigh the risk factors. With the thing still releasing irradiated material, I tend to air on the side of caution. If the plant can't be made safer than that for the cost, then perhaps they need to spend more on it.
And don't be a dick - of course I've thought about it.
***** But you still missed my point. Where could they have moved it to where it would be safe. The only place with sufficient water discharge to cool the plant are on the coast. Even if you ignore the cost of effectively building a mountain fortress to get it away from sea level, how do you intent to cool it? Even in its current off state it requires 45400 litres of water per day. There isnt sufficient water up their to provide that and its not feasible to pump that much water into the mountains, the energy required would eat an not unnoticeable chunk out of power generation ignoring the maintenances of the pumping system. You cant put it anywhere else on the coast line because as stated, Japan's location within the ring of fire means that an earthquake epicentre could occur all 360 degrees around Japan. You could argue it was in a natural resonance zone but those will vary depending on the amplitude of the tsunami.
Moving it, its not sensible. It provides no real benefit and cost a fortune. It would be like arguing New Orleans is in a stupid place for a city, why didnt Americans realise this and make the city somewhere else. Rather than just maintain the Floodwalls and Levees.
How frikkin awesome is this channel?
What about the Dust Bowl? Its something that looks like a natural disaster, but was actually man made.
I often use the Dust Bowl as an example of how man can negatively impact the environment we depend on. However I preface it with, no evidence that I'm unaware of that man caused the drought. There is evidence that some where warning that the tillage practice of the day could create a disaster in the event of a drought. Those making the warning where dismissed and thus the Dust Bowl.
How can I concentrate on learning about man-made disasters with a soothing voice like that, how, HOW??
Clicked on the link expecting Hank Green, but instead found a new monotone host (Bueller.......Bueller....Bueller) that looked like he just came off the set of Jersey Shore. Needless to say the video was immediately paused, then this comment, and now going back to search for a new video.
Pretty sure some communities have moved back inside the exclusion zone around Chernobyl. Something about the radiation not being as intense as projected it would be.
True. There is a small town of 10,000 people that live 3 miles from reactor number 4. The "disaster" at Chernobyl was greatly exaggerated.
Furthermore the cancer rates around Chernobyl are all within normal averages seen around the world. As the video said, there is a slightly higher thyroid cancer rate in children but if you are going to get cancer, thyroid cancer is the one you want. It's cheap and easy to treat with iodine pills. Plus it has a 93% success rate.
Theres pros and cons with Michael and Hank. Michael has a smoother sounding voice but he seems monotone at times. Hank on the other hand is more enthusiastic and entertaining but hes also obnoxious
Michael's voice is so calming. So calming while he's talking about terrible, horrendous disasters.
I've heard mouse farts louder than the sound in this video.
Good presentation Michael! As a few have stated you do give off the feeling like you're reading from a teleprompter where as I find Hank actually enthusiastic about the facts he's giving (although that might just be who hank is). Not too sure what you can specifically do about it but I found the information fascinating nonetheless, thank you :)
Dude looks tired
I actually like Michael better as a presenter - it's easier for me to understand him, he talks more evenly and imo that makes it easier for a non-native-speaker like me. And he has a nice voice in general.
Not that I don't like Hank, though. I like both, but if I had to pick, I'd pick Michael for this show. ^_^
Why isn't Justin Bieber on here
His not belong here Lmao^_^
elizabethrainDrop are you sure >->
gooby pls why what happened?
Video failed to mention the effects of the dispersants used by BP following the Deepwater Horizon failure ~ the crude oil spill, which until then was a mostly surface problem, but these dispersants poisoned the Gulf of Mexico all the way to the ocean floor ... the Gulf of Mexico will likely take decades to fully recover.
Please do a video objectively comparing Fukushima to Chernobyl. We want to know whether we should be concerned or not here on the West Coast. Thanks!
compare what? The cause of the disaster is a different, the technical specifics too, many other aspects too...
Of course you should be concerned, but you shouldnt panic. Look at what caused those two, look whats your local landscape and inform yourself.
And if you want a bit of relieve from the fearmongering concerning fukushima, look for thunderf00ts videos on that matter.
I always feel like he's the cool substitute teacher everyone wants back when the teacher is gone.
What did he say?i wasnt listening as much as just wondering where the other guy is
Love the episode. I had trouble hearing it, but that's what volume control is for. Great job!
Poor Michael.. I don't know if it's the majority of the viewers, but a lot of commentors don't seem fond of him. I like him tho c':
Hank seems like he is talking to me about something he is personally excited about, Michael sounds like he is being made to read aloud in class. But I still love the show and I am sure that he is exponentially better than I would be. So keep it up guys, Sci-Show is always amazing.
You're not Hank...
No shit...
Who the heck is Hank?
The main fuckin guy -_-
How unfortunate that the joke went over your head. You should check out the Vlogbrothers. If you watch the channel already, you should watch more.
Kelpsie Sponge Hank is a concept in game theory that measures how efficiency of a system degrades due to selfish behavior of its agents. Hank is a general notion that can be extended to diverse systems.
I don't want to be mean, but you kinda sound like hank in the old scishow episodes. Don't get me wrong, you're not a bad public speaker, but you could do with a bit more inflection and excitement in your voice. But hey, don't be discouraged! You're doing a lot better now than your older videos! And you're obviously super smart! So keep up the great work. Time and practice will make you a speaking legend!
The worst nuclear accident of all time should be Japan. Unless that doesn't count as an accident because of the Tsunami?
that wasn't even a full melt down nor man made
Not close... not even slightly close...
no, the worst nuclear accident of all time is chernobyl
Japan is tricky to measure because we're still dealing with the aftermath and removing the fuel rods is still to come. I do think it's important to distinguish that Japan has and continues to leak radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean- this means that we really can't isolate it and create a dead zone like with Chernobyl. I think Chernobyl had more nuclear power released, but if the fuel rod removal doesn't go right, that could end up worse, so we'll have to see.
If by Japan you mean Hiroshima bombs, then I could certainly agree with that, but I think you mean the recent nuclear plant leaks, which is pretty bad too.
Well, I thought I knew most important details about chernobyl, but I definitely learned something here! Thanks!
1:00 Could you please credit the openstreetmap project for that map? It'd really help bring attention to it. Thanks.
it's okay Michael, you can ruin my day. maybe all non-happy videos should be done by you haha. your voice soothingly tells us the bad stuff.
Cheryobyl was a much worse accident than Japan.
Quick clarification: So the control rods had two parts, the graphite tips and the main boron body. The graphite is a moderator, but the boron is a neutron absorber. A moderator speeds up a nuclear reaction, while absorbers slow them down.
So in most nuclear reactors control rods only have absorbers, but the RMBK reactors had both graphite and boron. This allowed the operators more control over the rate of the reaction during normal operation.
When the operators reduced power for the test, they reduced power too much and almost caused a station blackout. Their response to this was to fully remove the control rods beyond design specifications in an attempt to return the reactor to the test parameters, which caused a massive power spike. The operators then attempted emergency shutdown by inserting the control rods, but because they were tipped with a moderator, it actually sped up the reaction, because that is what moderators do and because it displaced the light water, which in this situation is a neutron absorber.
before i watch the video-chernobal?
haha i was right and spelled it wrong..
i like both. a change of pace is always good. maybe do a duo show :). that would be cool. Where Hank touches on some stuff and Michael touches on other stuff. it would make for great chemistry. Pun intended
This guy is better than Hank. There, I said it.
The amount of people killed in the Chernobyl accident is widely debated, but when hearing the numbers remember that it was an older reactor type. There was no containment building and we've learned a lot since. Nuclear energy is finally what I'd call a safe energy source if you use newer reactor designs.