hello really welcome back to mega-projects my name is Simon and today we're looking at the Chernobyl new safe confinement so let's just crack on shall we [Music] Friday the 24th of April 1986 it ended just as any other day would at the Chernobyl power station as the clock ticked past midnight those inside in the 47,500 Abbot's of nearby Pripyat remains unaware of the catastrophe that was about to unfold an event so disastrous that its effects are still being felt today over 30 years later it was just after 1:00 a.m. when a test on an RBMK type nuclear reactor began at this point it was ten hours behind schedule meaning the inexperienced night crew was now in charge of this delicate operation and I can tell you when you are testing things on nuclear reactors not a good idea to use inexperienced people as we now know anyway as the test began all seemed normal power was slowly decreased in line with a protocol but suddenly it plummeted to almost zero those in the control room were only able to restore some power which essentially left the reactor dangerously unstable a combination of poor quality design flaws and mismanagement led to the world's first nuclear meltdown and there's three things hardly a surprise when you realize that this was run by the USSR anyway astonishingly or maybe not considering it was the Soviets it took a few days for the magnitude of the disaster to take effect Soviet authorities were quick to downplay the events while those on the ground in Chernobyl forensic Glee did what they could but even they did not fully understand the implications of what it just happens I realize we're doing a bit of a history of Chernobyl here I guess this is for everyone which is what one person who hasn't seen the HBO special on this someone has to start telling the truth but we'll get into the new confinement in just a moment this is kind of really important to set the scene now it wasn't until May the 4th that the fire was brought under control and the wreckage of Chernobyl could be properly surveyed [Music] an exclusion zone of 10 kilometers that 6.2 miles for those of us who don't speak metric were set around the stricken power plant after 36 hours and this was later increased to 30 kilometers that's 19 miles as the entire population of Pripyat was evacuated and as you probably know that they would never return I believe that exclusion zone is actually now 50 kilometers a little bit of insight here I've actually been to Chernobyl I went a couple of years ago I think in 2018 extremely interesting and that exclusion zone is massive back to the story nothing like this had ever happened before and while no doubt there must have been contingency plans for such an event the Soviet authorities were acting blind it quickly became apparent that it would be impossible to fix what happens with radiation levels within the reactor now just unimaginably high and as you know you can't just get rid of those robots were sent in and they basically suffered a ton of mechanical problems and then the authorities basically were left with a decision to send thousands of workers into the area including many who were sent up to the roof of the reactor who removing debris now it's probably safe to say that there were a few places on the planet at that time that were more dangerous than that reactor roof these men would have been exposed to insane amounts of radiation and in that HBO series you can see when they go onto the roof they're only allowed to go out for was it like 60 or 90 second he was even less just to collect such a throw some debris off the roof or collect it and indeed these people and around the area there's increased levels of cancer because of the radiation the World Health Organization estimates that 240,000 people were brought to Chernobyl between 1986 and 1987 with others claiming that the figure was closer to a million and they came to be known as the liquidators one spoke with the BBC a few years back and said we worked in three shifts but only for five to seven minutes at a time because of the danger after finishing with there are codes in the garbage the number of those who died as a result of the Chernobyl disaster has been intensely debated ever since while initial fatalities were set at just 42 the numbers in the following years were enormous with estimates ranging from 4,000 to beyond a hundred thousand and that's one thing with radiation it very rarely kills someone instantly just like that and you probably seamless and movies and stuff the fatalities happen much later eventually it was decided that the entire reactor would need to be covered in order to prevent any further radioactive emissions 24 days after the disaster planning began and what came to be known as the sarcophagus and it's easy to focus on numbers here more than four hundred thousand cubic meters of concrete as well as seven thousand three hundred tons of metal framework went into the construction of this enormous structure over the course of 206 days but this only begins to tell the story before this coal miners were brought in to burrow beneath the reactor in order to install a cooling slab and prevent the nuclear fuel from burning through the efforts of those 400 miners who dug a 168 meter 551 feet trench under the leaking reactor in the sweltering heat it remains one of the most astonishing if underreported tales from Chernobyl so this sarcophagus it was completed by November 1986 but the relief if there wasn't he was pretty short-lived in 1988 so just two years later Soviet scientists announced that the structure would only last 20 to 30 years before major restoration work was needed in their haste to construct it many corners have been cut a lot of buildings joints that not being correctly sealed while openings in the roof it eventually allowed rainwater to enter and corrosion to set in and it's easy to blame the Soviets for you know these errors in construction but the fact that they built such an enormous building in such a short time to contain it is impressive in itself and that it could last 20 to 30 years is somewhat impressive anyway this all comes to the crux of today's video and that's the fact that a new structure is needed and well this one needed to last a lot longer [Music] in 1992 an international competition to design a replacement for the concrete sarcophagus was launched this was new grounds for everybody involved unsurprisingly there hadn't been any nuclear disasters previously so no one knew how to build a giant sarcophagus for containing one essentially what they were gonna design has to be completely unique now the function of the structure it might be obvious but was actually broken into the first was to limit radiation impact on the public the personnel working there and the environment and there's an interesting thing about Chernobyl when I was there there are people still working at Chernobyl I mean the power plant was actually I believe it was making energy until the year 2000 now this protection would not only need to be a structure that could hold the radiation at bay on a daily basis but it had to be designed in such a way that it would continue to function correctly even after further accidents or if there was some sort of disaster the structure would need to be able to survive an f3 tornado significant snow accumulation on top of it as well as general impacts that steel casing anything from a missed hammer blow to a vehicle striking it it's gonna be there for a long time so they have to account for all of these possibilities then there's also temperature to consider Ukraine has seriously volatile weather and they needed to build this thing to withstand minus forty three Celsius which is minus forty five Fahrenheit all the way up to plus forty five Celsius which is a hundred and thirteen Fahrenheit secondly and perhaps often overlooked it had to provide technical support this wasn't simply a structure that was going to cover the reactor and then they could just forget about it once the new safe confinement was in place it would need to provide support for cranes in order to begin basically clearing the damaged structure within so within that thing there are lots of cranes going to work both the concrete sarcophagus and parts of the original building they need to be painstakingly removed so essentially this structure isn't just there to encase the reactor is the job of slowly decommissioning it as well but even this is just the tip of the iceberg this would need to become a fully functioning system that could monitor radioactive waste water level as well as general maintenance throughout the site for years to come in short they needed to design an impenetrable fortress a building site and a sophisticated monitoring system all in one and it was going to be absolutely massive out of a total of 392 entries to the competition a French design was chosen second place was a British design and this was slightly different for everything else because it proposed a sliding arch mechanism rather than an immovable structure a European study then followed this contest in order to ascertain the best qualities from each design and the British Ark was eventually incorporated into the French model that one while a French consortium named Navarro was chosen to design the new sliding arch this zoo was a radical design that would eventually lead to the creation of the largest movable object in the world an enormous arch would be constructed in front of the reactor and then it would slide over it on these purpose-built rails and then sections on the front and back would complete the structure and I mean it sounds immense but fairly simple now the size of the structure was staggering at ninety two point five meters high that's three hundred and 3.5 feet is higher than the Statue of Liberty and its internal arch spans 245 meters that's 803 points 8 feet which makes it larger than Wembley Stadium and I don't know that maybe that's a bit of a British wafer at reference but Wembley Stadium is absolutely massive indeed to give you some perspective on this the Coliseum in Rome could easily fit inside Wembley Stadium so just keep in mind when you're imagining yeah then you safe confinement bigger than that now this thing is a technological wonder when you look at pictures of it kind of looks like a massive shed or an aeroplane hangar but don't let that deceive you and going up and seeing this thing when it's over to Noble it is absolutely massive but this mega structure deserves to be studied and marvels and not just simply because of its size but because of the dangers that lie within this is one of the most contaminated areas in the world so the new safe confinement needs to be much more than just an eye-catching monument human achievements it needed to be an airtight prison [Music] work was a really slow and crawling process since 1998 the shelter implementation plan s IP had been painstakingly moving through a series of steps that would clean up the area and eventually set the foundations for the new safe confinement office blocks were built to house those working on the project that would last for another 20 years sheer scale of just preparing to get started with the project's incredible to put this in perspective there were over 300 separate sub projects that needed to be addressed to achieve one common goal making the area safe they were broken down into five objectives number one decreasing the probability of collapse number two mitigating the consequences of a possible collapse number three improving nuclear safety number four improving human and environmental safety and number five a strategy and feasibility study to turn the site into an environmentally friendly area now many other sub projects further had to be broken down in a careful set of stages so as not to cause problems in other areas and don't forget this all needs to be done next to radiation levels which if not properly managed can easily be deadly many people believe that outside of the structure itself this was one of the most complex building sites in history what preparation work had been ongoing at Chernobyl for nearly ten years it wasn't until 2007 that vinci construction grands projects and Boise's Trevo public's not sure about the french clumsy ation there announced that they would partner with anna varka to construct the Chernobyl new safe confinement the estimated cost of the project was 432 million euros but as you might imagine things got just a little bit higher and it ended up costing over 2 billion euros at the time it was thought that it would take 53 months to fully plan build and install with an estimated finish date sometime in 2012 pretty sure when I visited in 2017 or 18 it wasn't done yet it had definitely been slowed over but work was still ongoing yes because the structure was only finished in 2019 while on traditional building sites there are numerous potential risks that need to be addressed nothing can quite compare to what those work is faced actionable while radiation at ground level is low enough that most workers can remain there for around 40 hours a week levels time significantly the high you are with this in mind an innovative system using enormous Jax was devised to ensure that the workers never needed to be above 30 meters it was much safer but it would take considerably longer there are sensors throughout the building constantly measuring radiation levels while individuals carry to dosimeter x' which do the same thing and when I visited should no ball to go and wander around and see what was about you're given one of these dosimeter is only one and it just measures kind of your acute exposure one of these measures is that acute one it just measures short-term exposure and they've got another one which measures long-term exposure because both of these can be fatal for some examples if you went out onto the roof of Chernobyl where they were throwing the debris off previously when it actually happens you could spend just 12 minutes there and that would be an entire years worth of acceptable radiation exposure the rules were very simple if you're decimeter goes over the daily or weekly limit that your body can healthily take you're just finished until further notice it was a far cry from the thousands of men who were sent to the rubes back in 1986 [Music] On February the 30th 2012 the first sections began arriving on the site after their long journey much of the structure had been preassembled in Italy and a total of 18 ships and 2,500 lorries have been needed to transport it all to Chernobyl on the 24th of November that senior work began to hoist pieces into the air what we see today it looks like one single arch but it's actually two separate arches this was a decision taken to mitigate the vast challenges involved in lifting such a giant structure building two arches and joining them together it was basically just seen as significantly easier than building a single arch the eastern section was the first to be completed but because of high restrictions people could work at it was this long and difficult process these enormous jacks they were mounted on tents specifically installed towers and basically they hoisted the giant steel structure skywards the jacks have really only been used in a real world situation once before to raise the sunken Russian submarine the Kursk from the seabed in 2001 not so many uses for giant jacks the first section of the eastern arch which was actually the very top was initially raised to 22 metres and locked in place so that the construction could continue with the workers safely under the 30 metre limit in June 2013 the structure was again lifted but just 5 metres so the lower sections could be added finally on the 15th and 16th of September 2013 the arch was raised to its final height of 110 metres and work was completed on the site segments at this point the structure weighed a hefty nine thousand nine hundred and sixty eight tonnes the external arch was then pushed back on the rails 112 meters from the erection zone to the waiting zone just in front of reactor number four the western section followed exactly the same pattern but as things tend to be the second time around it moved today considerably quicker pace and was constructed and raised in just seven months once completed this section was again rolled backwards in on the 4th of October 2015 the final bolts were tightened to unite the eastern and western arches a total of 650 specifically designed bolts were used to fuse the giant structure together on the 29th of November 2016 the mighty structure began its short final route despite being just 300 metres away the process of rolling it back over the reactor and sarcophagus took five to complete with the front and back sections being added after essentially sealing everything inside after more than 20 years of planning and construction the structure was at last complete and what a structure it had become 36,000 tons is pretty difficult for a human brain to consider but if you combines two Brooklyn bridges and one Eiffel Tower you might just be there its vast steel paneling on the outside covers 86,000 square meters but underneath the numbers are equally impressive a total of 650 thousand bolts were needed along with an additional 5700 main components mostly piping and 4,000 auxiliary components mainly drunk connections if we move further down the whole structure sits on 81 thousand cubic meters of reinforced concrete with 400 concrete piles driven 24 meters down which add a lot of further stability in terms of the number of those who have worked on the project it's difficult to get a firm thicker but at least 10,000 people have participated in some aspect of the new safe confinement including planners specialists cleaners and builders but as I said this has always been more than just a building project at least 50 people are always on site whose sole job is monitoring the radioactive levels on the 3rd of july 2019 the new safe confinement was opened to international media with many eager to finally set eyes in a project that had begun in the least 30 years before it was of course no secret what was being constructed everyone knew about this indeed I went to see it but the Ukrainian government's had limitations in place for members of the public visiting Chernobyl ever since the fall of the Soviet Union it wasn't a building site that you could really get a good look at however despite the fanfare the completion of the structure merely signaled the start of the next stage in a much larger plan one of the most significant challenges that still remains is to remove the concrete sarcophagus as well as some of the damaged reactor the sarcophagus actually rests on parts of the reactor building which itself was badly damaged during the meltdown during the construction of the sarcophagus steel beams had been lowered from helicopters but not attached properly leaving a structural nightmare minor repairs haven't been needed to keep the shaky structure standing while the new safe confinement was completed the structure needed to be airtight not simply to prevent radioactive particles escaping naturally but in the worst-case scenario of reactor and sarcophagus collapsing the dust would be completely sealed inside preventing a further disaster as I mentioned briefly earlier the total cost of this project it came to 2.1 billion euros now it's difficult to compare it to other structures because simply there's nothing quite like it it was more expensive than the Burj Kalifa which is the tallest building in the world and certainly not cheap up 1.3 billion euros however it pales in comparison to China's Three Gorges Dam which cost thirty three point five billion euro isn't make sure you subscribe to this channel because that's coming up and while we're on the subject of finance this was certainly an act of international cooperation a lot of people chipped in to build it unfortunately the Soviet Union who were sort of responsible for the disaster weren't really around to tear up their mess the operation has currently received contributions from 54 different countries and organizations from around the world the largest single contributor has come from the European Union which pledged nearly four hundred million euros with individual European nations also contributing separately as well the US has donated the most of any single country with 240 million euros as I said earlier this is not an impressive building simply because of its size and its scale while it's easy it's a marvel at this wonderful structure from the outside in the future and the work done on the inside will be considered vastly more importance initial estimates say that the sarcophagus could be completely removed by 2023 with each part needing to be extensively cleaned before disposal or recycling but even after the completion of the new safe confinement and the projected removal of the sarcophagus scientists still estimate that the cleanup process involving vacuuming radioactive particles and dealing with the larvae mixture left over from the Soviet cleanup process will likely go on until at least 2016 5 when you think about it it's quite incredible I was born in 1987 so just a year after Chernobyl happens and that is essentially a full human lifetime like of disaster cleanup because of the ongoing work will eventually eclipse the building work by at least five times with Ukrainian officials estimating a yearly operating budget of 55 million euros for the structure even the archers installed have a lifespan of only a hundred years so inevitably this will not be a construction that can remain indefinitely who knows what may come next and what humanity may dream up in response to this awful disaster unless we discover a way of removing the radioactive waste completely the new safe confinement is likely to need rebuilding or altering for hundreds if not thousands of years to come it may need to become one of Earth's most enduring structures so this has been mega-projects I do hope you enjoyed this one a little bit dark this one considering all of the you know death and horror from Chernobyl if you haven't seen that HBO miniseries definitely worth a watch also worth subscribing to this channel smashing that like button all of that good stuff and we'll be back really soon
