Chernobyl; Fukushima; The Spill at Dan River | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

some tragedies never end ask people to name a nuclear disaster and most will probably point to Fukushima in Japan three years ago the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl in Ukraine was 30 years ago but the crisis is still with us today that's because radiation virtually never dies after the explosion in 1986 the Soviets built a primitive sarcophagus a tomb to cover the stricken reactor but it wasn't meant to last very long and it hasn't Engineers say there's still enough radioactive material in there to cause widespread contamination for the last five years a massive project has been underway to seal the reactor permanently but the undertaking is three quarters of a billion dollars short and the completion date has been delayed repeatedly 30 years later chernobyl's crippled reactor still has the power to kill it's called a Zone and getting into it is crossing the border into one of the most contaminated places on Earth the 20-mile no man's land was evacuated nearly 30 years ago the drive to the center of the Zone today and you'll see a massive structure that appears to rise out of nowhere it's an engineering effort the likes of which the world has never seen as funds from over 40 different countries 1400 workers are building a giant Arch to cover the damaged reactor like a casserole it will be taller than the Statue of Liberty and wider than Yankee Stadium the largest movable structure on Earth Nicholas Kai is overseeing the Arches Construction you know when you think about it he had this massive project going on all these people working here billions of dollars being spent because of one day 30 years ago yeah yeah yeah you're right it was the biggest disaster of the nuclear industry yes the disaster was sparked by massive explosions that tore the roof off of chernobyl's reactor number four spewing radioactive dust into the atmosphere the Soviets drafted over half a million troops to put out the fire and clear the nuclear debris thousands got seriously ill from radiation exposure today three decades later the cleanup continues but as this recent video shows the reactor is still packed with poison heaps of gnarled steel and concrete pools of nuclear fuel that have hardened into a dense Mass called the elephant's foot there's still so much radiation coming from the reactor that workers have to construct the arch nearly a thousand feet away shielded by a massive concrete wall when finished the arch will be slid into place around the sarcophagus then sealed up we will push it in once the average speed it will be around 10 meter an hour so it's approximately the speed of of a snail right but it's pretty rapid considering the size of this thing it is yes but the construction itself will have to move a lot quicker the old plant and sarcophagus are falling apart just two years ago a snowstorm caused the roof of one of the buildings to collapse forcing workers to be evacuated and raising fears of further contamination radiation is not subject to the usual rules of life and death it is virtually Eternal when Kai took us on a tour of the site we were fitted with the scimiters to tell us how much we were being exposed to suddenly a sound we didn't want to hear hey this is this peep is going off no no it's not uh it's normal you're sure yes yes yes I'm definitively sure I don't like a beeper and Chernobyl I don't I don't like that sound building the Arts under these conditions is challenging enough but some of the biggest obstacles have nothing to do with radiation as violence gripped Ukraine this year one of the Arches contractors backed out the project is also 770 million dollars short and has been plagued by repeated delays no matter when it's completed vast stretches of the Zone will never recover this is the city of pripyat two miles from the reactor thirty years ago the population was fifty thousand today it is zero pripyak was where many of the plants workers lived grateful for their posting in a town that was the model of Soviet modernity nine-story apartment buildings lined this Boulevard they're still there but you can't see them anymore the forest has taken over a vision perhaps of what the whole world might look like were people to just disappear it was Springtime in pripyat that day in 1986 and an amusement park was due to open in a few days Andre glucoff lived here then so that Ferris wheel never had any kids in it never had any kids these bumper cars on your left right had never kids on it too when you talk to your former Neighbors what do you call it the accident the catastrophe we just call it 26. which was the date of the accident 26 26th of April sort of like the Americans call 911 exactly back then gugkoff worked for chernobyl's nuclear Safety Division he took us on a tour through a part of the plant that had not been destroyed he was off duty that night but what he saw when he drove past the damage reactor was like nothing he or anyone else had ever seen this was a terrifying picture it looked like a sunset in a distance about 100 200 yards from you and this was the glowing core of the reactor that was the first and the only time you saw it no that was the first time when I realized the scale of the disaster Blue Cross told his family in pripyard to stay inside and close the windows Soviet authorities covered the area with secrecy told people they had nothing to worry about but 36 hours later over a thousand buses were sent in to evacuate everyone authorities told people it would only be for three days one of many lies the people never came back and pripyat is being overwhelmed by the elements one of the only things still recognizable is that old Soviet iconography foreign and you'll find that many villages suffer the same fate as pripyat a row of simple markers has been planted with the names of each one but amidst this Wilderness The Stranger side of all people just a few Ivan Ivanovich and his wife Maria were evacuated to an apartment Block near Kiev after the accident but couldn't take it they weren't made for the city so two years later they came back today there are three other people living in this Village just a few miles from the old Power Plant when you decided to come back to live here did anyone tell you it was dangerous it's really okay here you know when I lived in that apartment block I got sick all the time but when I came back here I was fine and I've been fine ever since you should never leave home I would be long gone if I'd stayed there I'd be in the ground despite the danger Tim Musso also chose to be here for the last 15 years the University of South Carolina biologists has been studying the contamination's impact from a makeshift lab inside the zone aren't many uh serious Labs I've seen that look like this yeah this is a an opportunistic lab it's an old villager's house we saw his research has shown that the catastrophe continues to take its toll and we're going to attempt to measure just how radioactive these mice are what's the comparison between the immersive radiation a mouse would have here and the mouse somewhere else some of these mice have on the order of ten thousand times more radioactivity in their bodies than in clean areas the human tool has been profound as well thyroid cancer and Leukemia affected thousands though the exact number of deaths is still being debated there certainly is evidence that some of the genetic damage that occurs at the level of the DNA can be transmitted from one generation to the next so a nuclear disaster is never over there will be areas that will be contaminated for thousands if not millions of years this makes the Zone like no other place on Earth which is why it's attracting tourists if you've done Paris and Rome why not try a holiday in Hell check out the apocalypse how did your friends react when you told them you were coming on vacation at Chernobyl uh they thought it was very strange yeah but I mean people have been coming here for a while so I you know guess it must be safe you guess it must be safe what makes you believe it's safe well you know would assume that the guides wouldn't bring people here if it wasn't safe all right well I hope you're right so do I thousands of workers fled into the Zone every day to look after what remains of the plant others live here year round in one of the few places safe enough for inhabitants the town of Chernobyl itself was our guide he lives here too why are you living here and not in Kiev because I like this place for me and it's very um interesting um maybe even a sacred plays a sacred place for me yeah he spends much of his time writing music on his bass guitar music as desolate as the landscape surrounding him as desolate as the remains of this Empire that has long since disappeared a decade after the disaster workers he had built a monument honoring their colleagues whose lives had been destroyed the workers and the firemen made the monument themselves yeah yeah exactly yeah and what does it say s to those who saved the world to those who saved the world that may sound a bit hyperbolic but when the reactor exploded in 1986 radioactive Dustin debris were carried as far away as Italy and Sweden until the arch finally seals up that stricken reactor and no one knows when that might be something like that could happen again unlike other historic relics Chernobyl does not belong to the past its power will never die Chernobyl is forever the magnitude 9 earthquake that struck Japan on March 11 2011 not only shook the ground it shook the Japanese people's faith in their government and the nuclear power industry you can see the impact of the disaster in the towns right around the plant only you can't get there the earthquake did some damage the tsunami did more but the reason many of them are empty and off limits today is because of the nuclear accident at the Fukushima power plant next door the whole area is now a radioactive Wasteland and the people who live there don't know if they'll ever be able to go home many don't know if they'll want to three years later the events of March 11th darkened their lives so deeply that many speak of it simply as 311. the hell that broke loose on March 11 2011 was the strongest earthquake in Japan's history when the shaking stopped the tsunami raced towards Shore with as much Fury as nature can muster almost all of the more than eighteen thousand people who died that day on Japan's Northeast Coast died in the flood damage to the Fukushima daiichi nuclear power station but the tsunami shut down the reactor's emergency cooling systems and they started to melt down hydrogen gases inside the buildings then exploded spreading radiation into communities more than 25 miles away today in the town of tomioka the radiation levels are considered safe enough to allow people in during the day like [Music] loudspeakers warn visitors that they must leave by 3 pm [Music] we were alone on the day we were there the disaster seems to have stopped time the clock shows 2 46 the moment the earthquake hit and the damage to shops and homes looks like it could have happened yesterday the stack of newspapers we found were dated March 12 2011 the day after the quaken tsunami you can see people had to leave in a hurry that was the morning the government told people of this town and neighboring towns to get out quickly welcome to okumu says the sign population today three years later zero more than 11 000 people left town that day and never returned would you ever want to go back to Okuma to live there again yes I would like to before I die lived with his wife and two daughters next door to his parents the tsunami killed his father his wife and his youngest daughter Yuna a bright and cheerful seven-year-old this is what their homes looked like before March 11 2011. this is what's left today foundations and scraps of memories that he keeps in a small box by what was once the front door this is a shoe she was wearing that day which was found in a heap of rubble six months after the disaster radiation Kimura can only visit his former home 10 times a year and stay only five hours in February here's a lot of day came in the middle of a blizzard on each visit Kamura brings flowers to a small Shrine he built to honor his family they were among the 111 people who died in Okuma that day the remains of 110 have been recovered the only one still missing is norio kimura's daughter Yuna 10 times a year he goes back home to search for her on Saturday you were digging again in Okuma it was snowing it was freezing why you know to find Yuna of course and also if I stop searching or gathering her things I will lose the connection with her to be honest the reason why I can live my life every day is because I have to find her and her things I need to do this to keep my sanity volunteers now help Kimura dig through the piles of debris left by the tsunami everyone's dressed in protective clothing to limit their exposure to radiation the digging seems futile but on this day committed Unearthed clothing he says belong to his surviving daughter Mayu on March 11th the day of the tsunami Kimura made a mistake for which he will never forgive himself he was at work on a farm and he stayed there did you think then that there would be a tsunami there was a radio at my work and my boss told me that the tsunami was going to be three meters tall my house is five to six meters above sea level so I was convinced that our home would be fine and didn't worry about it after that at all do you think there's anything you could have done to save your family I should have gone home right away I regret believing the information easily while my family was in life-threatening Danger even now I say to myself what was I thinking we're in radiation forced the evacuation of okumam the Town leader told norio Kimura to stop searching for the missing and start caring for the living sahena's daughter moved here to the Japanese Alps where the brisk air and the snow-capped mountains made radiation and tsunamis difficult to imagine has traded farming for a guest house he's planning to open his daughter mayum talks about her mother more than her missing sister and doesn't ask why her father continues searching for her the new Mountain Home is 2 000 feet above the Perils of the sea and 180 miles from the Fukushima plant ghost towns surround the plant now but three years later there are still more than four thousand workers there all of them wearing layers of protection because of the exposure to radiation the men in this building are only allowed to work two and a half hours a day they're not producing any electricity they're just cleaning up we're tepco workers adequately trained to handle the emergency I don't think so within months of the accident a former newspaper editor headed an investigation into what went wrong and why it was the only investigation not sponsored by the government and its conclusions were brutal I was very much concerned about the government not telling the truth to the public the revelations in funabashi's report added to the Public's anger and dismay he wrote that from the beginning the government had conspired with the industry to convince people that nuclear power is safe so the government effort at the time was to convince people that there was nothing to worry about he's happy nothing to worry about don't worry okay even don't prepare for that the uh severe accident okay because that would cause that unnecessary a needs and unnecessary misunderstand and there's no reason to prepare no reason to prepare so this avoidance ultimately translated into unpreparedness Mother Nature threw a real curveball to the Japanese with that huge tsunami last year tepco hired American nuclear engineer Lake Barrett as an advisor Barrett directed the cleanup at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant after its accident in 1979. it's estimated that the cleanup is going to take 30 to 40 years to a lemon that sounds very very long to me that's that's not long at all that that's what I would expect for that uh kind of thing it's a huge challenge it's it's a big on-site mess that they have to clean up and it's going to take them decades to do it it took us 10 years to do Three Mile Island and Three Mile Island accident was much simpler than they have at Fukushima are they where you thought they would be three years later uh I'd hope they'd be further along uh it's been challenging technically it's been challenging culturally and politically for them but they're making good progress now sounds like you're being a little diplomatic well decision making process in Japan is is complicated decision making in Japan requires consensus and reaching consensus often takes a very long time the most difficult job will be to dismantle the melted reactors but radiation is too high for workers to get there for now tepco is inundated with groundwater that leaks into the reactors and gets contaminated every day a hundred thousand gallons of radioactive water has to be pumped out before it reaches the ocean tepco is filling storage tanks almost as fast as it can build them and they're notorious for leaking another enormous cleanup is happening outside the planet entire communities are being cleared of contaminated materials that will have to be stored for Generations this part of Japan is known for its agriculture but the only crop growing now is the multitude of black bags holding the radioactive waste filling the empty spaces in towns like okumur [Music] no some of the kids from Okemo live and go to school 70 miles away how many of you would like to go back to Akuma everybody how many of you think you will go back to Okuma what's keeping you from going back to Oklahoma now you can tell me there's a lot of radioactive material there these kids will be middle-aged before the cleanup is finished their homes could have been rebuilt quickly if it had just been an earthquake and a tsunami it's the man-made disaster which will take decades to repair this is the class that norio kimura's daughter you now would have been in if she were alive her friend quideum remembers they ate lunch together where is she now [Music] she's lonely being alone in the town of Okemah all this time I think she must be lonely about a third of the residents from Oklahoma decided to stick together and moved into what the government called temporary housing temporary is lasting a long time the three generations of kabutas that ones live together are now split apart norio and his daughter live in naganob five hours away from his mother to Moe she lives in the temporary housing alone in a cold and cramped room furnished with photographs the kimuras like many Japanese have a strong connection to their dead and feel obliged to help them be at peace as long as the dead are in limbo so are the living you've lost so much of your family why aren't you together with your son now I'm with my husband's ashes now once I find a proper place to put him I'd like to go to Nagano what do you think the right place will be a cemetery in Oklahoma is contaminated with radiation now I could come back two or three times a year to burn incense for him but my grandchild would not be able to come I don't want to keep him or his grandchild when he used to adore so much can't even come to visit 10 times a year norio Kimura visits his ancestors in the Family Cemetery a place where he thought he would be laid to rest one day and where his children would come to visit him but he won't find any peace he says until after he finds Yuna do you think there's any chance you'll ever find your daughter I know that the chance is very slim but no matter how slim the chance is I still cannot stop from the outside looking in I know that this is very unlikely but I still can't stop even if I cannot ever find her every year coal burning power plants generate not only electricity but a staggering amount of leftover coal ash that contains heavy metals unhealthy to humans yet do in part to intense industry lobbying there are no federal regulations on its disposal it's left to the states to oversee some of the most powerful utility companies in the country so coal ash is often just dumped into giant pits that are dug by rivers and lakes where toxins can leach into nearby water and soil there are over 1 000 Ash pits or ponds dotting the nation many of them old poorly monitored all but forgotten but every few years we are reminded that the status quo can lead to disaster like the coal ash bill this past February into North Carolina's Dan River at a power plant owned by Duke Energy the biggest utility company in the country The Spill at Dan River happened when a drainage pipe that ran underneath an ash Basin and Dam collapsed sucking out six Decades of waste and spewing Gunk directly into the river it was an accident it didn't work the way it should have worked it did not meet our standards or expectations Duke Energy CEO Lynn good then only seven months on the job had a crisis on her hands how many tons of Ash do you know went into the river yes we released between 30 and 39 000 tons of Ash into the river I we moved immediately to repair the pipe and also begin cleaning the river and we've used this as an opportunity at Duke to raise our standards even higher of all of our bases to ensure and confirm that they were operating safely once the water spilled out of the Basin this is what was exposed canyons and Ridges of Industrial Waste the size of 20 football fields buried right by the river where people fish and swim and get their drinking water but the accident at Dan River wasn't the first time a coal ash Pond collapsed it happened to another company six years ago in Kingston Tennessee that spill was more than 100 times larger smothering homes in toxic muck and choking up the river after Kingston in 2008 did Duke raise its vigilance yes there were inspections that went on throughout the industry and certainly at Duke where all of the basins were reviewed actually inspections had been going on for years including this one in 1986 the Duke itself paid for it recommended quantitative monitoring of the very pipe that collapsed saying it was expected to have less longevity so that first report urging Duke to watch that pipe was 30 years ago but there were others 1996 2001 2006 advising you to keep watching that pipe over and over 2009 the EPA warned about the pipe how could you neglect those the results of those inspections indicated that we should monitor and we were monitoring and what we were looking for is that the pipe would leak before it failed but it didn't fail in that way it failed without leaking I don't think Duke even knew what was underneath some of their dams and knew the structural issues The Spill infuriated Pat McCrory the pro-business Republican governor of North Carolina he knows Duke well having worked there for 29 years how would you describe or rate Duke's record on dealing with coal ash disposal well actually there has been no record regarding coal ash disposal they haven't done anything very little very little I I think the record's been quite poor because frankly it's been out of sight out of mind Leslie we have been generating electricity in this country from coal for decades and that means coal ash and that Ash that has been produced has been stored in accordance with industry standards and practices for decades we're at a period when the Electric System is certainly Duke's system is modernizing or adding natural gas we're adding Renewables and we're closing Some Coal plants fact is do close the Dan River plant in 2012 and that perplexed the governor when I heard about the Dan River plant having a coal ash spill my first reaction was wait a minute that plant's been closed for years why are we having a spill at a plant that's not even open that's because when they close the plant Duke just left the ash Pond where it was in an unprecedented program Duke has closed half their coal ash plants in North Carolina in the last three years blowing up one after another after another as the company switches to Natural Gas in all cases they just left the coal ash ponds and basins behind this is no way to store Industrial Waste in large quantities in such a primitive way Frank Holloman an attorney at the southern environmental law Center says it makes no sense to store coal ash that usually contains toxins like arsenic Mercury thallium and cadmium in basins right next to waterways that doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if you dig a Earthen unlined hole in the earth next to a river that and you put in and a substance that has toxic substances that is going to leak into the groundwater that's not it doesn't take a genius to figure that out your organization you have been suing Duke Energy that's correct well what we have hoped is that we could convince Duke get the coal ash out of these unlined pits move it to Safe line dry storage away from the Waterway that's what Duke is already doing with most of its newly generated Ash Trucking it to dry lined landfills away from waterways or sending it off for reuse as building material but the company's big problem is what to do with the hundred million tons of old coal ash it's accumulated in their 32 ponds in North Carolina some like this one up against people's backyards where children play Leslie we're committed to closing all of the sites when you say close what do you mean by close so there are various methods that can be used to close certainly Excavating them to align landfill is one of the methods that method would cost up to eight billion dollars but Duke is considering two other options lining the bottom and top of the ponds but leaving the ash there which would cost somewhat less or least pricey at 2 billion cap in place which means just covering the top of the pond with no lining on the bottom and typically cap in place is not lined on the bottom but we would not move forward with a cap in place unless we had a certainty that the water is safe and so that's where the science comes in that's where the study needs to be completed so that we develop smart Solutions it's called CAP in place tap in place right now would that satisfy your organization no it would not an online pit next to a river a lake or drinking water reservoir it stays wet only if you have a lighting in it do you separate this Industrial Waste from the water table and the groundwater it's a cap in place is only pollute in place well obviously I'm not a scientist but shouldn't you just say okay we're going to line them off I'd love to tell you there's a simple solution to this I'd love to tell you that isn't that a simple solution that Ash has been stored for decades can be solved quickly we we like quick answers we like to pull our cell phone up and do research and get answers right away but in order to do this right we do need to do the study we need to understand what is the groundwater where is the groundwater we need to understand the stability of the Basin we need to understand the soil type I cannot immediately move 100 million tons of Ash it's not a a response that makes any sense doesn't make common sense as much as I'd love to tell you there's a simple solution it's one that requires study and it's one that requires time to complete but environmentalists say studying is code for stalling because this problem isn't new Duke has been conducting tests around their Ash ponds for decades and five years ago when State Regulators demanded to see the data they found something alarming the coal ash ponds in all of Duke's 14 plants were either leaking toxic chemicals into rivers and streams or contaminating the groundwater some of the readings that we have found are for elements like iron and manganese which are naturally occurring but nine of your plants have been found to have groundwater violations for contaminants including lead sulfate Boron chromium thallium selenium and arsenic so we have had exceedances and when I set iron and manganese Leslie I was talking about the majority of them we have had instances of other readings as well well I'm citing your own monitoring statistics which do say that there have been hazardous chemicals that have entered the groundwater or surface water at all 14 plants by your own admission and what we have recommended and we'll be moving forward with and the state has recommended is further assessments so that appropriate steps can be taken so Leslie assessments I know I think it's important to understand this even you have to throw your head back and say further assessments but these results go back years and to say we need to study more you know is a very frustrating thing to have to hear and I'm not even a citizen of North Carolina we have very openly and transparently disclosed these results to work with The Regulators to determine whether it really represents a risk does Duke's coal ash today pose any health risk at all I believe our system is operating safely but local environmentalists showed us leaks from several of Duke's Ash ponds like this one at Cape Fear The Stream is like this uh leaking Coalition of the river 24 hours a day 365 days a year after we asked the officials about this particular leak lab tests were done showing notably elevated concentrations of sulfate aluminum iron manganese Boron and strontium the state says the leak doesn't impact the overall health of the river but is illegal a violation of the Clean Water Act yet environmentalists like Frank Holloman say that over the years the state never forced Duke to clean up its Ash ponds under both Democratic and Republican administrations how powerful is Duke Energy in the state of North Carolina it's the most powerful entity in the state of North Carolina it spends millions of dollars on political contributions and it has traditionally had a very close relationship with the state Regulators just this year Governor McCrory cut the budget and staff of the specific Department that inspects the ash ponds the state legislature did pass a law in August requiring Duke to clean up its plants but only after the company had already volunteered to do that earlier when Holloman tried to sue Duke he was thwarted by the state which stepped in and negotiated a settlement that allowed Duke you guessed it more time to study and imposed only a paltry fine tell everybody how much the fine was I don't have that list but again it was ninety nine thousand one hundred and eleven dollars does not sound like a big fine it wasn't a big fine all this has made Federal prosecutors suspicious they impaneled a grand jury to investigate whether duke or The Regulators has done anything illegal to get the state to go easy on the company virtually every newspaper in the state of North Carolina came out with editorials claiming that Duke was lacks and lawless when it came to the environment and acted like a bully with State Regulators I recognize that I disagree with that characterization uh there's been it's been a challenging time a difficult time lots of voices weighing in certainly lots of scrutiny and criticism but you must you might take this to heart if there's so much of it you know of course we do we take this very seriously and we're using this as an opportunity to raise our standards even higher to ensure that our operations are safe it's our highest priority at Duke later this month the Environmental Protection Agency is set to announce whether coal ash will be regulated by the federal government as hazardous waste meaning potentially much tougher disposal rules and oversight

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 339,812

Keywords: nuclear meltdown, 60 minutes, cbs news, lesley stahl, nuclear reactor, nuclear power, 60 minutes full episodes 2023, bob simon, chernobyl documentary, chernobyl, fukushima nuclear disaster, fukushima exclusion zone, fukushima explosion, fukushima nuclear disaster footage, fukushima documentary, fukushima today, fukushima now, fukushima 2023, fukushima 50, fukushima nuclear disaster explosion, fukushima disaster, fukushima earthquake, dan river coal ash spill

Id: KkaJ6LIE8JQ

Length: 41min 59sec (2519 seconds)

Published: Sat May 06 2023