The story of Chernobyl's New Safe Confinement

[Music] [Music] I was supposed to go and work that night but my mission that say was canceled by my manager [Music] around half past one we heard couple explosions [Music] called the control room of unit 4 surprisingly nobody picked the phone which was extremely unusual so I called unit 2 and I asked him about unit 4 was it shut down he made a several seconds pause and then he just said look out of the window [Music] Chernobyl still matters because the 1986 accident remains the worst civil nuclear accident ever and I just hope that it will remain so [Music] Vinny - Vinny - Virgil America very shame jarek wilkiewicz neuroglia patata website versus it's a very natural level of soccer is ergonomic resilient marry you until you feel for you or Chile GT with Nikolas Nicodemus travesty Rhiannon no you ever written [Music] 200 tonnes of uranium molten uranium and plutonium are still in the old hastily built shelter and until this shelter is enclosed we will not be safe the rest of doing nothing were simply that what was built after the accident was built in immensely heroic circumstances in unimaginable radiation conditions in if we look at back at of what we've had to deal with today and but it is simply never ever built to last the old sarcophagus was rusting it was leaking at a huge holes in it and sooner or later it was going to collapse [Music] I am proud of the bank that is accepted this challenge because it's risky and it's difficult but it is have extreme significance for our regional operation [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] what this is where the mr. Blair no pollution area this is a a very major piece of kit that was put in by us and it's a whole monitoring system of the existing object shell so it covers structural monitoring seismic monitoring and radiation monitoring because of course the stability of the existing object shelf is absolutely crucial [Music] [Music] [Music] the dimension of the arch itself is 262 meter of span a hundred and ten meter of ID and 160 meter of length [Music] the total weight including the cladding including the system including the Menken system will be 36 thousand ton and we will push these 36 thousand ton over a length of 320 meter [Applause] [Music] [Applause] is a cosmic environment that the [ __ ] relationship see the attackers are addicted [Music] [Applause] laboum priciest risk pasadena weapon threat the police presence pollution Apollinaris always watching so mr. Bellamy asked Aramis written in the construction a personal cloud kappa dylan pochamma real results are top rack [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] in front of us the yellow thing is the main crane system which is the essential part of their equipment for deconstructing the object shelter after use which is the essential reason why we have this magnificent arch which is structurally nearly complete but a lot of auxilary systems have been convicted in their sin another komova surgeon acquit himself this area which is very important to have a major ventilation systems now because ever active control corrosion control system in there which means of controlling humidity throughout the lifetime of the art 400 years which is an enormous engineering task our big headache our big challenge was to get the end walls completed to the point that no warka could slide New York [Music] that was one of those operations where a lot of people thought it it couldn't happen that you've never get it done we did [Music] [Music] as it is a challenging project with a lot of a lot of different job we are more than 20 different nationalities so you have to coordinate everybody is especially free [Applause] it's unique nowhere in the world you can find anything really similar and I'm very proud that I work over here not in some other office but over here because for sure I will have plenty of things to tell to my children hopefully grandchildren and so on [Music] [Applause] [Music] it was a day that I dreamed off I confessed I had doubts it would ever be done at times and actually for me I was quite surprised it provoked a bit of an emotional reaction for me because it meant I'd invested so much time in it but also I saw how much it meant to our Ukrainian colleagues that this had been achieved and it was a very very special [Music] the shipping box reported the working in government with radiation creates an additional constraint that we have to consider every day and I must say that we have been quite successful to put in place an organization which enable to have zero accident or even incident radiological incident [Applause] so behind me you can see rep 2 unit 3 and to my left you can see the new safe confinement which closes the destroyed reactor unit 4 and we're at the place where the confinement interacts with the old facilities and we obviously have to ensure there is a hermetic seal between the two this is the work you can sleep undergoing of fear and this membrane is an example of a membrane which goes all around the entire circumference of the new safe confinement with the destroyed sarcophagus overall we have about 2 kilometers of membrane [Music] we are now in the ventilation center of the new safe confinement new safe confinement very broadly speaking has two key functions one is to provide the facilities for deconstruction of the object shelter the second one is to protect the environment through confining it from any capacity to release radioactivity outside of the confinement area this area is absolutely crucial for the second function of the new safe confinement to confine because it provides essentially two things the equipment in here will provide a forced air through the between the inner and outer layers of the arch to ensure you have an element of overpressure so there's no capacity for contamination to reach the outside and crucially it also allows for drying of the air because when you have a huge steel structure like 32,000 tons over 100 year lifetime is going to corrode it's impossible to paint the arch because the levels of radiation in parts of it is simply too high so we keep it corrosion free by ensuring that the air that circulates it is dry [Music] - eh I didn't have mainly care of [Music] [Music] nasha nashe Nadine Atomos mobile it's Petrovic because that the Molotov at the project especially is a Baathist we told him the mighty Minotaur could take the dekotora route waton reunion No so unless you wanna sit in is Amal Shara [Music] when Chernobyl happened in 1986 I never thought that I would be a part of trying to complete the the work that started after that to make this place a safe place for people to live I think my message to donors and to taxpayers who supported the donor governments is that this is something they can be immensely proud of it was a decision their governments took that they needed to be able to provide Ukraine this region and the wider European region with a possibility to look to the future with confidence that the challenge of Chernobyl is manageable in a long-term view and that is what this provided and I think it has been unprecedented level of international cooperation to achieve that so I have absolutely no doubts that they should look back on this with immense pride [Music]

Channel: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Views: 1,465,826

Rating: 4.878304 out of 5

Keywords: chernobyl, nuclear, nsc, new safe confinement, ukraine, NuclearDisaster, ChernobylHBO, Pripyat, Sarcofagus, Belarus, USSR, history of nuclear disasters, engineering, megastructures, chornobyl, European Bank for Reconstruction and development, EBRD, nuclear energy

Id: mdnutU2m71o

Length: 23min 19sec (1399 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 25 2019