The Fukushima Daiichi Disaster 2011 | Plainly Difficult Documentary 

Oh, definitely. On your scale, Shit, Yeah!

Yes.

Yes, just make sure it's FACTUAL or you will be hearing from me.

Fuck yaaaaaaa

Yes please. You should bring up how an architect of another nearby NPP insisted on a super high seawall, which they called all these years a mistake or a folly. Until the tsumani. Then that NPP itself became a emergency shelter because it completely survived the disaster with no incidents, thanks to the super high seawall.

👀

true

Some say that stolen battery has more power than bought one

Well, if you have access to a lot of batteries, a soldering iron, solder, lots of wires, and some electronic components (can be salvaged from things if need be), you can indeed take the 12V DC and convert it into whatever you need. The big issue is that there is not a whole lot of power in a car battery. You will do better with marine batteries. Of course, this can be compensated for if you have a LOT of car batteries.

@@NotSoCrazyNinja r/whoosh plus you should do a little reading up before your next stint as a keyboard professional.

Haha, amazing comment! Nailed it right there. Sadly, that sort of thing happens more often than it should. Emergency response planning always looks at the obvious and ensures it is robust, but fails to consider the simple but less obvious things...

If it was airtight the water wouldn't have been able to get in

@@bmxerqf882 the control room was air tight But the generator for the room, meaning the electricity, was in a different place beneath sea level and wasn't air tight. So people could safely stay in the control room. They just would be in the dark with no electricity.

@@bmxerqf882 i would read the comment again.

Yeah, but... All they really needed were some batteries out of the cars in the parking lot, and the company didn't even have to buy those. That's how you meet tight margins in the highly competitive, man vs nature marketplace.

It didn't explode, it experienced an unplanned rapid disassembly.

Stormspark to be fair not all unplanned rapid disassembly is unplanned.

And this comment is the reason I justify paying a little more for RU-vid premium lol

@@TheFalseShepphard I really don't care about ads. Just startled me that an ad that started with a massive explosion played just at that moment.

If all ads would be placed so properly, I wouldn't mind them 🤣

Did you remember to turn on the auxiliary cooling to prevent him from exploding???

*Just imagine designing this nuclear reactor, by the sea, and not locating a secondary backup diesel generator a couple miles away, on top of the large hills nearby.* If there is only 1 backup generator, that's where it should be. Cost over safety is still a primary problem with nuclear power plants, but it doesn't have to be. We spend tons more on solar, which produces massively more expensive electricity for consumers. Wannabe-Environmentalists are ruining our world. They prevent reservoirs that mitigate droughts for HUGE population centers, because they care much more about 1 species of minnows than they do about tens of millions if people. They prevent nuclear power installations because they're "scared of them". They would rather have batteries and solar panels, pretending that neither have massively bad impacts on the environment (those rare metals have to be mined). They pretend to care about the planet, but they are ignorant as to how to protect the planet. Quasi-environmentalists need to go. *Environmentalism NEEDS TO BE FACT-BASED INSTEAD OF BASED ON WHIMSICAL INTERPRETATIONS MADE BY PEOPLE WHO REJECT FACTS, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.*

*The Japanese govt spent $27bil.. if you compare this to other expenditures you'll realize this is a PALTRY amount.*

@@jonslg240 they threw lives at it.

Followed by an "unscheduled waste disposal"

Unscheduled rapid disassembly

Official Incident Report: "The reactor got a little bit wet in a slightly bad way".

Don't forget about the crow that flew into the emergency warning system

Seperation of the forward structure from the rear ward structure

Make that the Military and you have it right. BWR reactors are indeed very safe when you only plan to put them on ships that float in their coolant. Not so much when you try to adapt that tech to dry land though.

After watching all of Plainly's disaster videos, I'm not so sure calling the early days 'fail-safe' is the right term to use.

@@FlyingSavannahs - I mean the EBR-1, which never had a failure, despite being pushed to the point of ruining the fuel rods.

Ahhhh "better faster cheaper" the theme song of kapitan krazy! We were taught in the "ol days" you could only pick 2 of the 3

It is important to remember how much of our nuclear tech was designed for it's military benefits first, then they tried to cram it into a non military roll.

This, and better protection for active safety systems as well. Other nuclear plants in Japan struck by the tsunami survived as they had better locations for active safety equipment and higher sea walls.

These GE BWRs with Mark 1 containment design have passive reactor safety. It should have assured passive cooling for 24-36 hours. For reasons still unknown or unspecified, it failed after just a couple of hours in the units that ended up melting.

@zolikoff The reasons aren’t unknown. The convection powered cooling systems were inadvertently thwarted by operator actions. Those had never been tested by the staff on hand so they did not recognize the inadequacy of cooling. For example, each of the two Isolation Steam Condensers on Unit 1 had more than ample cooling capacity. Too much in fact and shock cooling damage was feared. So per procedure, the operators were manually cycling the system. When the tsunami hit, taking out the power, the control handle had just been moved from “shut” to “open”. Lucky right? Not so. The man on the control suspected the actual valve had not had time to open. (And he was correct.) But how to know? To verify they sent someone outside to see if steam was coming from the exhaust port. And it was. But because nobody had ever seen that system in operation, they did not know the volume of steam was far too little. Confident the passive system was operating, they were baffled when the core overheated, blew a gasket, (probably at the PCV head) and then the building exploded.

This is why Thorium reactors are a good idea. They are always a hairs breadth from shutting down. IE you have to actively and constantly fiddle with them to keep them going.

@@JoeMoross Thanks for that info I was not aware the operators messed with the IC. However the buildings exploding weren't caused by the meltdowns or RPV failure, they occurred much later. They tried venting the generated hydrogen from somewhere around the wetwells to outside the building. However somehow some of the hydrogen got trapped in the superstructure where the machinery and spent fuel pools are. The hydrogen explosions blew apart the superstructure, but that part of the building is designed to give way to an explosion deliberately. This protected the primary reactor containment from rupturing.

Right? That's humans for you. Ignore close to a thousand yrs. worth of high water markers, and trust in a breakwall.

well, i'd say that putting the emergency generators and their pumps in the basement, which is going to *definitely flood* and then stay flooded in the event of a tsunami that might top any such seawall is really the big issue. japan like you said has had a lot of major tsunamis, and if they simply built above the waterline for the worst of them, you'd be left with half the usable land in japan designated a flood zone : do not build here. it's fine to build below those markers, just make the absolute fuck sure that it's gonna survive the tsunami when it does happen.

@@wyattroncin941 Yeah. Literally the biggest issue here was the sea wall. "Hey guys, we have some of the worst tsunamis in the world, how are we going to protect the nuclear plant?" "Eh. 5 meters of concrete is more than enough." *_literally has larger tsunamis frequently_* "Perfect!" Also yeah, the generators and pumps not being waterproofed was fucking stupid, even outside of a tsunami zone. If you put something on the coast, fucking waterproof it.

@@wyattroncin941 even if you have no choice but to put the generators there they make water tight engines that can run underwater plain lack of caring went into the design of these plants

@Non,Player, Adeptus coastal lowering is known and common in subduction zone earthquakes and it was already know that the coast would slip by that amount before the earthquake, though it was believed it woul be a gradual process and not in one event. GE themselves raised concerns over the location of the generators when the reactor was built at a lower elevation than originally intended, but the constructors ignored the concern and went ahead with the original plans, now at an elevation that put the reactor at risk. seawalls are supposed to stop a tsunami. if japan ignored the ground beneath their feet when building the sea wall, that's japan's fuckup. and it's not like nobody was telling them, the nuclear industry from around the world has long been critical of corruption and lack of safety in japan's nuclear endeavors.

When the scale of 1 to 10 goes to 11, and 11 goes to 11 itself.

I doubt the designers of the original INES scale considered the option of having multiple reactors melting down at the same time all the while dealing with exploding buildings, earthquakes, tsunamis, power failures and inept company management. On the other hand, the PD scale is designed to perfectly capture the moment when you realize that you are knee-deep in radioactive poo.

@Andy Wehrle pretty sure Chernobyl will rank as Sh?t! level as well. Hopefully we won't have to go past that..

I think the rating was pretty excessive to be fair, the event was contained with no direct fatalities and the radiological situation has been under control since. This is not worse than the Seveso disaster which was only a 7 and it had health effects on a huge area itself... not that it matters, since the scale is a bit for fun, but I wish it was consistent :')

*Just imagine designing this nuclear reactor, by the sea, and not locating a secondary backup diesel generator a couple miles away, on top of the large hills nearby.* If there is only 1 backup generator, that's where it should be. Cost over safety is still a primary problem with nuclear power plants, but it doesn't have to be. We spend tons more on solar, which produces massively more expensive electricity for consumers. Wannabe-Environmentalists are ruining our world. They prevent reservoirs that mitigate droughts for HUGE population centers, because they care much more about 1 species of minnows than they do about tens of millions if people. They prevent nuclear power installations because they're "scared of them". They would rather have batteries and solar panels, pretending that neither have massively bad impacts on the environment (those rare metals have to be mined). They pretend to care about the planet, but they are ignorant as to how to protect the planet. Quasi-environmentalists need to go. *Environmentalism NEEDS TO BE FACT-BASED INSTEAD OF BASED ON WHIMSICAL INTERPRETATIONS MADE BY PEOPLE WHO REJECT FACTS, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.*

moral of the story don't build Nuclear reactors in Earthquake and Tsunami prone regions...

Look on the bright side. Free instant cooling!

Don't design a bad power plant........

Esp the gennies

​@@Strothy2 There are designs which can be used in these type areas. The Fukushima reactors are 1960s designed reactors. In the New Orleans' Charity Hospital disaster during Katrina, the backup generators and power systems failed in the basement when it flooded. The city is mostly below sea level. Who could have foreseen a failure here? Why do architects and engineers put this equipment in the most vulnerable places? It is a lot cheaper. Putting heavy vibrating equipment on top of the buildings means a lot more reenforcing to the top and at the top, and sound dampening materials. I think they think if water starts gushing in, it will be able to be pumped out faster than it comes in. Storing a lot of water on top of a building also weighs a lot. Don't worry, all that needs to be done is to pump the water, no need to have expensive gravity drop water systems. Do these concepts seem to be working? No-one is going to build 1960s designed reactors anymore.

Yes, I've had to stop this video, & several others on the same subject, to look up radiation units. I'm familiar w/Roentgens(used in the US)..., but Sieverts, milli-Sieverts, and penta- Becquerels!?(also what is Grays????)

@@xtremenortherner i recommend looking different types of radiation exposure , sieverts are the unit of measurement of ionizing radiation on the human body i know that for sureee i know the rest of them but the definitions are quite vague 😅😅😅 hopefully he makes one but i doubt such as its been a year since this comment was posted aha 😅

@@xtremenortherner rads measure the same as grays or roentgen. Basically, it says how spicy the air is when it’s given as unit/hour or as an absorbed dose. rem measures the same a sieverts, which says how fast you’re going to die. basically it looks at how much you absorbed and where. Becquerels measures basically how much spicy got released, and I believe curies do the same. And I think I’m forgetting one but I’m not sure. I may have grays and sieverts confused, it’s so convoluted

@@vthegoose No, those units are not "the same"

*Just imagine designing this nuclear reactor, by the sea, and not locating a secondary backup diesel generator a couple miles away, on top of the large hills nearby.* If there is only 1 backup generator, that's where it should be. Cost over safety is still a primary problem with nuclear power plants, but it doesn't have to be. We spend tons more on solar, which produces massively more expensive electricity for consumers. Wannabe-Environmentalists are ruining our world. They prevent reservoirs that mitigate droughts for HUGE population centers, because they care much more about 1 species of minnows than they do about tens of millions if people. They prevent nuclear power installations because they're "scared of them". They would rather have batteries and solar panels, pretending that neither have massively bad impacts on the environment (those rare metals have to be mined). They pretend to care about the planet, but they are ignorant as to how to protect the planet. Quasi-environmentalists need to go. *Environmentalism NEEDS TO BE FACT-BASED INSTEAD OF BASED ON WHIMSICAL INTERPRETATIONS MADE BY PEOPLE WHO REJECT FACTS, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD.*

Good to hear other nations taking all steps to prevent this happening, regardless of how likely it may be

One hopes they are also training and testing for the worst case, if the defences fail for whatever reason.

@@onastick2411and store some 12v car batteries for backup of backup systems

@@DD-zh4by spoken like someone that doesn't understand a joke

NOT TO! The main goal is NOT TO provide future content for "Plainly Difficult"!

They are also used to detect fault lines

😂🤣🤫😂🤣🤫

@@toymachine2328 "Ooops. Might have missed a few words when we typed that contract."

I'm glad its not just me. I remember this so clearly and I'm stunned at how long ago it was.

GOD, yeah. It really doesn't feel like all of this was a decade ago.

Just the story of how many robots have been destroyed trying to get into the damaged areas is interesting enough.

Wait wait, it’s still ongoing?

And yet no one died of radiation exposure.

@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk Lol

@@darksu6947 Show a Fukushima radiation death. LOL

The batteries weren't used to pump water. The batteries were used to power the instrumentation used to monitor the reactor condition.

@@daryllect6659 Pass they Air max plus😳!! An you look good in a Mullet!!

What the hell does this mean?

@@astoraan6071 What? Don't you speak Gibberish?

*(sees comment before video)* "What is this gibberish?" *(18 minutes later)* "NANI?!"

Thank you!

@@PlainlyDifficult Does the highest risk level roughly translate to: "OH GOD RUN" ?

That coffee though, needed work.

@@binkycatfish Pretty sure the highest is instant death. No time to run. Just silence.

@@binkycatfish No. That rating would be just before 'Bollocks', which in turn is second only to "My god, it's full of stars!"

Sure!

Haha Hillary said that

It's all fine here.

THE EVENT!?

Now let's play the quiz! (I am so disappointed that only one other person got this.)

Chernobyl is the only other Level 7 incident, there have only ever been 2

Chernobyl is the only other one

We need to pump up those numbers. Release the glow! Bathe in Atom's majesty!

CleanerBen or be divided in Atom’s sight

Alex V thanks for that I stand corrected

😂😂

talk about venting to atmosphere ...

Me too - I was imagining the tension, and the endless brainstorming and attempts at troubleshooting... It was turning into something of a mental J-horror film - very weird and psychological, and you know everyone is screwed.

Some great acts of cowardice were also made that day. I'm suprised he didn't cover them since he must have read some of the interviews given after the event.

I remember reading that older employees and retired nuclear plant workers, as well as other skilled retirees, volunteered to work there after the disaster so that younger employees could be spared.

yES. but this video portrays none of that, its very bland

@@EFCasualI wish you were willing to give me any useful information here, who was cowardly? What actions? Give me a name, or action. I’m sure someone was scared and ran but I can’t research vagueposting.

The worst part of the nuclear accident was the absurdly large evacuation… which seems to have killed around 2000 people needlessly.

The major narrative of showing those things : If you haven't done so already, run.

Busted out the ti graphing calculator for this one I bet

@@floodstreet2961 got my TI 84+ Silver Edition. Ballin'

Quick maffs

000

009

Same. Given the amount of mass & momentum water has, it's like pissing on an oil-rig fire. Futile and foredoomed to failure.

I hope you enjoy all the videos here!

Big facts

What Chernobyl documentary, you are mistaken there was no graphite. RMBK reactors don't explode. But in seriousness I really want that video lol.

MrCP merely an explosion of the hydrogen tank, now I need fresh fucking water flowing in to the core.

Your choking my reactor!

You didn't see Chernobyl documentarys, just like the Graphite on the ground.

By 'how bad it was' are you referring to the fact that it was actually a worse disaster than Chernobyl?

No, it was no where near as bad as Chernobyl!

@@slateslavens Chernobyl caused an entire town to become uninhabitable for *thousands* of years, and Fukushima is partially cleaned already, expected to be done in the 2030s or 2040s. No comparison, Chernobyl was worse. Unless you count the deaths caused by the tsunami and earthquake, of course.

@@specialopsdave I guess there's a couple of ways of looking at it. Using the metric of 'when can we move back in', Chernobyl is definitely worse. By the metric of.... Hmm. Nope. That doesn't work. Even though three reactors melted down vs. one exploding, Chernobyl was still worse. There was absolutely no containment of the explosion. The reactor building _wasn't_ a containment-type building. I guess the only metric left is how much total radiation was leaked. We know fairly well how much radiation contaminates the CHNPP Exclusion Zone. With Fukushima Daiichi we have a very good grasp on how much contamination is in the surrounding land environment, but we're kind of clueless on how much has ended up offshore. So even with that one unknown, I think I'm going to have to agree with you. CHNPP was the worse of the two disasters, based on our current understanding of both.

😂😂

thats awful...... that's not the desired REACTION you expected

ELECTRO HALO8 Hey now. It was just a joke. Don’t have a MELTDOWN.

It would appear we’ve found our CORE audience

What a MASSIVE WAVE of puns

Thank you so much!

sounds like it! I want that video too!

😉

Plainly big D*

Unit 3: open the valve pls im boiling as heck 😖

Trust me I had to look it up. Radioactivity is measured by becquerels/curies. Absorbed dose in gray/rad. Dose equivalent in Sieverts/rems. Exposure in coulomb/kilogram/Roentgen. I also had to lookup petabecquerels and found that its 10 to the fifteenth power so when he says 500+ petabecquerels he's talking about 500 quadrillion becquerels. Some crazy shit.

Agreed, I work in medicine so I realize there are multiple units of measure/dose but this is very confusing

jinto1980 Damn boy, Thanks for the info!

Well, you probably already know the answer. He has alluded to it in various videos: "if you're watching this channel, you probably already know that [...]" We are his audience, so it seems peculiar to us that anyone wouldn't be captivated by these videos. But most people don't hunger for in-depth (relatively speaking) videos about nuclear disasters. 😂

@@bsadewitz that's a good point

Agreed. Drive by it every week thinking exactly the same thing.

For funsies; the sister station to the one near me has just been shuttered thanks to large cracks in its graphite core that are apparently unfixable No idea if the one near me has the same problem, the owners claim its a slightly different design, but then they also claimed the cracks in the graphite at the other one were not growing and not a problem 👀😳

Lol we lived near avila beach and this was some shit that made you keep an eye on the tower outside your kitchen window

@@mor4y what country?

@@mor4y (there’s no graphite moderated commercial power facilities in the US)

Like the object show but no show 😅

That IS a good one, as far as industrial accidents go. I'm wondering if a "perfect" shipwreck, like the Edmund Fitzgerald, would fit on here...

Thanks for posting it. I didn't know of it and looked it up. This would be among the reasons as much as can be done should be done with remotely operated vehicles.

"Where are you?" " Over there, over there, and up there."

Thank you!

*russian hard bass intensifies*

3.6r/h not great not terrible

I'm reasonably certain those aren't seconds you're going to particularly enjoy.

If I recall 5Sv is the ld 50 i.e 50% death rate. 10 Sv is a death sentence in less than a month. There are ways to mitigate the risk even at 5Sv an hour. Not all radiation is the same and the most damaging types is the most easily stopped by clothes or lead.

@@robincray116 1 Sv is 100 Rads, so 5 Sv is 500 Rads and 10 Sv is 1000 Rads. Yep, sounds about right.

I’m glad they don’t, I can’t stand a British accent even if it’s a funny individual. It’s something I have to look past to pay attention to what they’re saying.

Well, if you consider strategic nuclear bombing a "disaster" and not just "war," then yes.

@@Horseshoecrabwarrior it was hardly strategic

@@mrcydesign It was literally strategic. What do you think it was?

cybae It was hardly strategic? You think they dropped those bombs without a strategy?

I see your point. Although in some ways, the Fukushima disaster is worse, because of the damage done to the environment. There's a huge difference between the radiation half-life of a nuclear weapon compared with a nuclear meltdown.

They thought it'll probably be ok and if it isn't then the Japanese government will pick up the bill

"Defense in depth? That's what the seawall is for! Lol." - TEPCO management.

If your japanese manager asks you to build it upside down, you build it upside down. Just do as you're told and don't ask silly questions.

But it's cheaper!! I'm sure they saved a few yen not having to build a big tower and install more powerful coolant and fuel pumps. You get what you pay for.

@@igotes cause towers are great during earthquakes, right?

There is no after the disaster. It's not like a bomb going off where it explodes n is done. Its gonna continue irradiating the planetfor the next 4 billion years

@@douglasd327 Wow, an idiot! Fukushima didn't explode and no one died from radiation.

@@douglasd327 you read way too far into my comment yo.

@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk actually, there are areas around Fukushima that won’t be habitable for about 100 years due to radiation. So yes, there will be radiation after effects. And he has the right to say “after the disaster” because there are still after effects. And 1 person was confirmed dead by radiation.

@@PalladlaChouette Nope, you fell for a fake news story, I debunked that one years ago with my video titled, "Origins of a fake Fukushima news story and the media that buys into it". As far as the "100 years" nonsense, you could have just read the report from British scientists, "For The First Time, World Learns Truth About Risk Of Nuclear" where they very clearly show "No one should have been evacuated due to Fukushima radiation".

Neoliberalism has corrupted you lots minds so much that you think there is a point to be made in calculating the worth of human lives

@@MajorLeagueBassboost it is a worthwhile calculation. Fossil fuels and green house gases are going to render our planet uninhabitable, just because their effects aren't seen within days or weeks like a nuclear meltdown doesn't mean they aren't extremely dangerous. An analysis as suggested is a way to determine the risk of nuclear power versus other alternatives to fossil fuels. He wasn't being callous and suggesting that meltdowns weren't terrible events, he was suggesting a look into wether it's a worthwhile while risk. While this channel does explore nuclear incidents, on a large scale, they happen rather infrequently and nuclear is considered a safe source of energy.

@@nicholasbrassard3512 yeah until you have to get rid of the fuel... Nukeheads have been claiming that molten salt nuclear waste reactors would be coming any Minute now for the last 50 years or so

Technology does not exist to "clean it up" it's an ele.

@@MajorLeagueBassboost there are methods suggested to store the spent fuel, such methods as used in the Onkalo spent nuclear fuel repository in Finland. It isn't ideal, but eventually technology will progress to allow us better alternatives to such disposal. Until then, i'd rather have deep pits of nuclear waste than to see the planet heat up to the point droughts and famine will exterminate our species by the time my daughters are my age in 2050.

Me too! I never knew i would be as fascinated by radioactive events as i am. I started with your windscale video and was on the edge of my seat with my jaw on the floor. LOL... seriously though, the way you lay everything out is really good for the not so atomically educated. Its very easy to follow and understand more about how this stuff works... Thanks for all of them; I finished all your nuclear videos in 1 day! lolz. PS: Please do Chernobyl or Fukishima Danai soon! I really want to hear more about those three guys at chernobyl that got the right valve opened and stopped a much worse outcome.

The greatest tragedy is that Germany shut down its nuclear power plants due to this. Germany became much more dependent on Russian gas. This gave Russia a large war chest + a permanent blackmail option towards Germany, which led to a weak reaction to the 2014 invasion of Ukraine and made Russia brave enough to invade again in 2022.

Check out Ordinance Lab here on youtube, they had a very good video on their thoughts of the explosion. Done by a former EOD and current (and legal) explosives chemist.

@@codyblea3638 ahh ok ! Didnt get the notification then. Im subbed and have the bell on on their channel... 🤔

@@HRM.H glad to have been your notification then. It's a great video.

That’s what I always wonder too. I also feel like there has to be a better way to observe the reactor other than having to step into the room and take a peek in person.