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Just over 33 years ago in
1986 the worst nuclear accident in history took place at a nuclear power plant here in Chernobyl
Located only about 60 miles north of Kiev a city of almost 3 million people during a late-night
safety test a
Combination of critical reactor design flaws and human error built up to cause a massive steam
explosion in nuclear reactor four of the power plant which caused an open-air graphite fire over
400 times the amount of radiation
Released by the Hiroshima bomb was unleashed into the atmosphere by the accident and a radioactive cloud spread over the entire
European continent
Contaminating places as far away as the United Kingdom but the vast majority of the radiation
Affected the communities immediately surrounding the power plant at Chernobyl
the radiation was so intense in certain parts of the reactor building following the explosion that an
Unprotected worker could receive a fatal dose in less than a minute over the coming days and weeks
134 servicemen who responded to the fire heroic alia were hospitalized for acute radiation syndrome or
ARS of whom 28 firemen and operators died within months
The Soviet army then began establishing the Chernobyl exclusion zone
Forbidding any civilians from entering within a 30 kilometer radius around the exposed reactor
That was the most severely contaminated
area and evacuating everybody inside this zone still exists in Ukraine today and is roughly the same size as
Luxembourg, it was once home to
120,000 people across cities like Pripyat and Chernobyl, but it's been almost entirely uninhabited now for over 30 years
today exactly
197 people still choose to live inside of the exclusion zone for whatever
Reason, but it's not as dangerous today as it used to be the radiation levels are significantly less than what they could have been
Thanks to the efforts of the Chernobyl Liquidators back in
1986 the Soviet government called up on
600,000 people to come in and work cleaning the zone up after the disaster
It was no stretch to say that the reactor for building was the most dangerous place to be at in the entire world in
1986 but that didn't stop the liquidators from constructing the
Sarcophagus a giant concrete and steel tomb to lock away the most dangerous place in the world forever
the sarcophagus entombed over 200 tons of highly radioactive
Corium lava 30 tons of highly contaminated dust and 16 tons of exposed uranium and plutonium
By the time that the core was sealed away inside over
26 days worth of additional natural background radiation had already been unleashed onto the planet
There was only one problem though. The sarcophagus wasn't designed to last forever. It was only designed to last for 30 years until
2016 the liquidators had constructed the
Sarcophagus and as quickly a time as possible in order to minimize their own exposure and the world's exposure to the radioactive
Poison inside and as a result, the building was pretty shoddy and this is partially why Chernobyl still poses a massive problem today
repairing the sarcophagus from the inside is considered to be impossible because the radiation levels inside are still estimated to be as high as
10,000 roentgens per hour
That is enough to kill you
If you step inside for just three minutes and enough to fry any robots the deterioration of the sarcophagus over the years since its construction
Threatened to release all of this poison back out into the world
but that wasn't the only danger on the inside of the sarcophagus rests the upper biological shield or
Ubs a concrete slab that was thrown upwards by the reactor explosion and now rests at a 15 degree angle
Inside of the tomb it's only supported by debris, which means that it could likely collapse at some point
Exacerbating the dust problem inside and possibly damaging the sarcophagus itself further which could result in radioactive dust
Leaking onto the outside
something had to be done before the sarcophagus fell apart and everybody knew it and so
Work began on a new structure that would cover the entire
sarcophagus inside of it which covered the entire
Reactor building inside of it sort of like the deadliest and least pleasant nesting doll to ever exist
The new structure became known as the new safe confinement
building and unlike the sarcophagus
It was designed to entombed everything inside and last for the next century until at least
2117 it took 1200 workers seven years and
2.15 billion euros to finish constructing equal to about 2% of Ukraine's entire GDP in
2017 if the United States spent 2 percent of their GDP on a single project it would cost about
388 billion dollars as the biggest movable structure ever built the new safe confinement was finished in 2016 and slowly
Rolled into place over the old unstable sarcophagus and reactor building over a period of two weeks
hopefully trapping the nightmare inside forever about
3,000 people currently work inside and around the building today as they work to dismantle the unstable
Sarcophagus and eventually remove the tons of dangerous radioactive material inside of it for a safe burial somewhere else
There is no time estimate for how long this process is going to take
But it likely will last for at least a decade or more
It's still potentially highly dangerous and workers are required to carry dosimeter x' to keep track of their radiation exposure at all times
if a workers
Annual limit is ever reached their site access is canceled and they're banned from returning the annual limit can be reached by spending just 12
minutes above the roof of the 1986 sarcophagus or a few hours around its chimney the exclusion zone gives off a
Feeling that the disaster was contained to that area
But that's not really true dangerous levels of radiation were dumped all across Belarus
Ukraine and parts of Russia and not to everybody who died as a result did so immediately
many victims and liquidators came down with dangerous cancers later on in their lives and the UN estimates that at least
4,000 people have actually died from cancer directly related to the accident other studies claim that the number is actually somewhere closer to
93 thousand cancer related deaths some health officials estimate that over the next 70 years. There will be a
28% increase in cancer rates across the heavily exposed areas of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia
So the nightmare is far from over the Ukrainian government alone is currently paying out survivors benefits over
35,000 families and the economic impact in Belarus alone where most of the radiation landed has been estimated to sit at
301 billion dollars more than five times the annual
GDP of Belarus the total cost of the disaster has been estimated to be at least
350 five billion dollars, but that was back in 2009
so that doesn't factor in any additional costs in the decades since
Considering for a moment that the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami and subsequent nuclear
Disaster at Fukushima is the most expensive disaster that's been properly calculated at a staggering
411 billion dollars. It's likely that if the ongoing costs of Chernobyl were properly calculated up to today
It would probably steal that number1 spots. Despite a weird tourism
Boom to the area around the disaster in recent years the long lasting effects of cancer in the ongoing
Confinement and demolition work at the reactor itself
Means that Chernobyl is still a global problem in it isn't over yet
it will still be anywhere between 20 and several hundred years depending on the source you take until the area around Chernobyl is
Completely safe to live around a permanent again
If you came to watch this video after watching the Chernobyl miniseries on HBO, you were probably not alone
I was specifically inspired after watching the series myself to create this video and do more research into what's going on there now
One of the most common questions that I get asked all of the time though is how I got started making videos like this on
YouTube I'm sure many of you watching this right now want to make a video about something that you're passionate about
But you may be where I was about three years ago and not really know where to begin learning how to do all of that
Thankfully though this is one of tens of thousands of skills that
Skillshare can teach you their animation for illustration course is taught by Abby lossing a
Former staff illustrator from BuzzFeed and vice news that will teach you how to make animations using Photoshop and After Effects which are the exact
Programs that I use for my videos if you want to learn these skills or really almost any other skill
Skillshare is the place for you and best of all it's also incredibly affordable at less than $10 a month for an annual subscription
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