Europe's Deepest Mine is Not What You Think...
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- čas přidán 12. 12. 2023
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No.
Is there a secure platform I can speak with fact boy or 1 of his writers?
@megaprojects9649 please consider doing a video on The Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, OK. It has the largest collection of art from the American West and has been undergoing a massive rebuild in recent years and just recently got fully funded after inflation drove up the budget. A great place, worthy of more attention.
hello, can you make a video about Euronav TI class tankers
INCOMING Head of Pudding ......Fingers in ears and Run Away Run Away
Britain doing a megaproject correctly......what a time to be alive.
give them time
@@matteofabbris7877 as a British person.
Yes.
@@DarkSitesChanneltbf we do them pretty good only problem is they're usually announced decades before being finished so things like inflation, housing market and other unforseen issues ramp up the price.
Except we will probably let the Americans have it like we did our oil
We've done loads of megaprojects correctly, but doing it correctly doesn't make the news quite nearly as much as fucking it up
Just looking at the price and complexity of the tunnel and underground facilities tells you all you need to know about the value of polyhalite
I worked at a surface coal mine in Wyoming,USA that used two conveyer systems that totaled 14 miles between the two. Both of these system were on the surface so they were not as hard to build. The thing about conveyers is that they are so much less expensive to run than using many other systems are.
This British mine is fantastic news for the world,it will help to feed the world and thats incredible.
Yes, they are doing it to help feed the world :D
I work in an underground coal mine that crosses from Indiana to Illinois. I think we're ~11 miles in with a conveyor all the way out.
Great to see this project gain more attention! It's crazy how few people seem to be aware of rapidly decreasing food security. This mine will feed a billion people.
and encourage people to make 10 billion more ! Fertilize Mars !
@@murrayscott9546are you intentionally being a moron?
@@murrayscott9546oh! You are one of those 😂
Well whenever Peter Zeihan? Hears about this I can stop hearing him harp on about running out of potash
@@murrayscott9546why Mars? Earth needs help also.
A video about an epic hole always gets my attention
And it sounds like it's called.. the Booby Mine??
always good for a deep-dive
You dont wanna miss it for sure
🎼 Brothers of the mine rejoice! 🎶
As much as it's great to have a more environmentally-friendly version of fertiliser, this kind of glosses over the fact that the problem we are having with the desperate need for fertiliser isn't farming per se but the intensivised farming, we've been using in recent decades which is unsustainable and destroys the soil microbiome, slowly making the soil lifeless and unusable.
Btw: Couldn;t the compounds we need from polyhalite be made by evaporating water from brine? We currently have a bit of an issue of disposing of brine from the many desalination plants we have, so why can't we use that?
How about the most natural fertilizer, Manure!
Good to see the Woodsmith Mine getting some Love online at last. Wonder if Britain's Dark matter Lab will move from Boulby Mine to Woodsmith eventually?
It’s unreal and you wouldn’t know it there . I drive past it a lot .
not like it big enough to see 🤏
The way he pronounces "Tagebau Hambach“ is so ridiculous. Made my day, great video.
Tagaabachambaag
I pass this place a LOT and am always amazed how much you cannot see from a close road.
About the takeovers, many locals and workers got their entire savings and pensions wiped out when they were sold the idea of investing to basically secure their jobs and then it tanked and got bought out for pennies on the pound.
sadly thats how investing works. My father has invested before and never seen even pennies back. Investments are a risk
@@ashleygoggs5679 agree but this one seemed a bit different, if I remember correctly it was during the £500m funding phase and it was pushed by the company directly to employees and when it didnt reach the target the money was gone and it was sold for maybe 30% value of the funding phase, and for something that is expected to pull out £2B a year worth of one of the rarest minerals in the world, I dont think it should have happened the way it did without some negligence or being fraudulent IMO.
Which is why you don't invest if you know nothing about financial economics. I am still hesitant about it even with a bachelor's in business and economics and being well on my way to a master's in economics. You need to be able to afford to lose everything (this ignoring the pension system which is an entirely different can of worms in itself.)
@@nicolainielsen7700 even Cassandra misses once in a while and ignorance can be bliss, just ask Peter Thiel 🤣
Yes due to the locals not wanting it, and putting so many barriers in the way
Love all your channels,and your silky tones keep me watching your gr8 content .so nice one simon and team ❤❤
edit: People are correcting me that this isn't a Nitrogen fertilizer replacement, so this is still nice, but big-badda-boom is still a fertilizer problem we need to approach carefully.
Fertilizer that doesn't cause container ships or warehouses to explode sounds pretty awesome. Also I'm impressed by the scale of the operation under a (deliberately) lame exterior. Really cool!
Just about a year ago in the middle east a warehouse full of fertalizer exploded and destroyed a lot of the city around it.
@@matthewbaynham6286Yea I've seen the videos and it's absolutely terrifying. Replacing that with a bunch of gravel/sand that's non-explosive is a game changer.
@@danielhale1 polihalide has no nitrogen content so i am afraid it sadly wont be replacing amonium nitrate.
It’s NOT a fertilizer and does not replace nitrogen!
It’s a soil amendment that replaces minerals in the soil. That’s it. Nitrogen is still required to grow our food!
Polyhalite might be a nice fertilizer to replenish sulfate, potassium, magnesium, and calcium, however it won't replace ANY of the "explosive" shiploads of ammonium nitrate as the latter replenishes nitrogen, something that is completely absent in polyhalite yet on many soils is THE most limiting nutrient (consequently nitrogen fertilizers make up more than half of the global fertilizer consumption).
Ammonium Nitrate isn't legal in most of Europe, due to its tendency to explode. Nitrogen can be obtained through other means though and I wouldn't be surprised to see a future form of extraction from the air, since the majority of our atmosphere is made of Nitrogen. We humans also need nitrogen, we just can't obtain it from breathing, so we have to ingest it.
@@Arterexius The vast majority of nitrogen fertilizer is made using the Haber-Bosch process, ie. we *are* already pulling the nitrogen straight from the air and we have been doing that for more than a hundred years.
Ok this is actually incredible and still so "new" that this makes it very interesting for production!
Wow. Such an amazing Megaproject and the second nearest to me from this channel. The first was Hadrian's wall if you wanted to know.
Looking at the map alone, it appears the literal entirety of Denmark has Polyhalite potential. Given that Denmark also is almost entirely comprised of farmland, it's clear exactly how extremely valuable that info is
The workers will be encouraged to use the bus or carpool while the supervisors get to drive, eh?
sounds so british to me
really? In that case you haven't got a clue what Britain is actually like in the 21st century!@@matteofabbris7877
Don't worry, from 2027 they will be able to get the conveyor belt in.
That video was pretty deep!
Mined over matter! I fully believe that this sort of development can be done while respecting the environment. Kudos to GB and the companies doing the project! The world really needs this right now.
Wow! Cool subject covered well! 👌 👍🏼
This kind of stuff!
More of this kind of stuff everywhere!
I’m home sick with Covid and I just woke up to see this video waiting for me to watch it , made me feel a little better.
Good luck Houpfully you will recover quickly 👍
protect society. get the jab. stay indoors.
Man, covid is still a thing?
@@notmadeofpeople4935
Yeah Covid is when 2 Social media people do a link up video
Vid&Co/Co-Vid 👍👍
Get well soon
Simon is the Emperor of CZcams😎
Agree
Or the harlot, depending on how you look at it ;)
At 11:55 "you might have the world's deepest mine to thank for the food in your local grocery store."
Food available in the grocery store?
So, Brexit has ended?
That conveyor would be an amazing ride.
There is only one TBM,the one launched from Wilton. The 2 TBM option was scrapped a long time ago and was never delivered.
Winsford salt mines had 140 miles of tunnel below Cheshire according to the BBC documentary I watched 9 years ago. Still collecting road salt from there today.
Can't be the only one to think this but if I am.....go me
Would the lads done making the tunnels fancy taking on a half made train line from London to Leeds at a reasonable price......asking for a friend living in London house number 10 I think (maybe not for 2 long more)
How long before we have the "JSPH" Protesters all over North Yorks? It certainly is a beautiful part of the world there, not forgetting Fylingdales though! That's another high tech installation belonging to the MOD, hope it doesn't interfere with their ops!
Can't wait for Britain to completely privatise it and not see a penny!
and then buy back on the brink of bancrupcy
It literally says in the video, the project is being built by Anglo American, a private company.
It is private.
@@bujler ...... no shit🤨 👏🏻.....👏🏻.....👏🏻
After watching brain blaze on loop I get confused when he does a sensible video
same with watching the good old "onion news network" (when they still made the news show) & then real news
Perfect video for this channel
looks like a giant Death Star exhaust port
Very cool and educational! Might be an interesting investment opportunity as well! 🤔
but shares..go long!
This is so cool!
Wonder how bgga share the Roal Familly has innit ? Sounds right up their alleyr !
This sounds like good news, and I always love good news.
LETS FUCKING GO!!! I love mega projects that perfectly seem with the natural landscape around it!!!
The maintenance for that conveyor system should prove interesting. Roller bearings require grease and the lube system will have to be pretty skookum.
“Not what you think” haha I love it
Watching this video was like watching archived film in an episode of Doctor Who that the Doctor and his companion watch in a museum to explain what caused the underground aliens to rise up and fight back and kill all the humans before they are wiped out themselves.
Just me being that nerdy, then?
Nah, I got you Fam. :)
All Whovians get you 💜
I want to know how they plan to maintain 15 *miles* worth of conveyor bearings
They'll give the work experience boy a torch and a can of 3-In-One and tell him to get on with it.
@@steve.b.23 They'll build a conveyer belt underneath it for the boy to use to inspect the bearings and replace the worn ones. 😏
WD-40
@@steve.b.23 lmao
Quick google will tell you that the world's longest conveyor belt system is 61 miles long. I think they'll cope with 15 miles.
Just for clarity. This will not replace the explosive portion of the fertilizer mix. NPK is fertilizer. This will replace more or less the the P and the K, but not the N. Nitrogen still comes from petroleum-based sources.
What are they filling the mine voids with after extracting large amounts of polyhalite?
Not What You Think posted on the wrong channel 💀
"Aaaand this week's episode of Not What You Think Is... Noooot What You Think!"
Shut up. 😂
LOL. I thought the same thing.. but it is a mega project. Now Simon has to make a Not what you think projects channel. Soon we will get multiple hours daily of just Simon teaching us stuff
...What the heck are you talking about? Simon's channels are the ONLY channels on youtube.If you're seeing anything else posted,it's likely because you're still trapped in the matrix.Base reality is just Simon.
@@jeffdroogdead joke
I’m trying to figure out the sustainable bit. Sustainability means being able to put back what you took out.
Of course excellent projects like this show that Britain can do things very right, and its why its not very well known or reported about.
News organisations all over the world focus on problems (except in totalitarian states).
A wealthy country with a good education system is meant to execute major engineering projects. That’s normal.
This mine is fascinating and cool but ‘project goes according to plan’ is rarely news.
Oh boy. That conveyor belt is going to be a pain in the ass. I’ve worked on hundreds of them, they break, a lot.
Petition for the editors to add 20 seconds to all videos so that Simon can breathe normally
mega-fascinating 🙂 !!!
it's got what plants crave
electrolytes 🪴
Was there a big fire around the mine? All the black and brown looks like the aftermath of a forest fire.
Possible, but probably not. I think it's probably bracken which goes brown in the winter. However, fire is a controversial aspect of the management of some moorland in the UK, used to suppress growth and keep it a suitable habitat for introduced game birds on shooting estates. This is very environmentally damaging and contributes to problems such as biodiversity loss, bad air quality during burning and rapid water runoff making flooding in the lowlands worse. If you look at the damage caused to provide a leisure activity for a tiny percentage of well-off people, I find it astonishing that this practice hasn't been banned. However I doubt they would do it around expensive industrial infrastructure like this.
Touché, Simon, I was convinced it was a scientific mine of some sort. So I indeed didn't know what it actually was
Being as polyhalite is a finite resource, like oil, coal, Himalayan Pink Salt etc., I'm not quite sure how this is a "sustainable" industry.
I do get that it will probably last a couple of hundred years and appears to be much more environmentally friendly than most other fertilisers. However, there will still need to be a replacement at some point.
You can say that about literally everything
almost expected a Halite investment to be pushed at the end there! 🤣
thanks for not deafening me on the outro
Finally some happy news
That long belt system is going to be a disaster to keep running.
Nice! A local MegaProject to me as I live in Teesside.
Sunny Stockton here, but originally from Guisborough.
I'm in Middlesbrough
Question is, how to change polyhalite into water soluble K2O [Potash] useful spreadable fertiliser or its equivalent? It has valuable sulphur that replaces sulphur that used to be airborne due to industrial and cars burning high sulphur fuel, which is a bonus.
Look at the chemical makeup in Wikipedia. It can be used straight as polyhalite. All the elements in it are soluble and soil processes will make it available to roots.
@@brianjonker510 Sounds good. If it as spreadable as muriate of potash then there are no downsides.
@@hedydd2 As a straight product it will lead to an excess of sulfur if this is the sole product used to meet potassium requirements.
@@brianjonker510
Yes, the sulphur content is very high. It should suit the modest extra potash requirement of intensive dairy farms that spread a whole lot of slurry on cut ground.
I remember the north Selby coal mine being the deepest for a short period.
It also has europes deepest laboratory
Dark matter
I thought that was Bulby.....
I thought they covered this. That guy is the narrator for so many channels its hard to tell
Very interesting
The Zechstein sea expanded all over northern Germany as well. And there are companies already digging out the salt. I guess there is also a big layer of that mineral underneath it. And they are not at the edge of the remains of the Zechstein sea. They are right in the middle.
Essentially any or the northern European countries that are in or border that area has access to their own deposits as well.
I'm always surprised when people seem to know "what I think" - how do you know that?
I live nearby glad yorkshires still making a mark on the world in this day and age, hopefully bring abit more prosperity to the north
It's the next Bond villain's secret bunker.
I work on the woodsmith project building the tunnel and there isn't a second TBM we only have 1
For a moment there I thought Simon was gonna pivot to talking about the Lost Mines in France, you know, the ones filled with high explosives meant to blow up German trenches in World War 1.
not what you think definitely felt this title
That conveyor tunnel is gonna need to be cleaned...often. My only real question is this. What does mining at those depths do to the earth around it ? I dont know the geography of britain, or if there are any tectonic plates or whatever nearby. Obviously, the tunnels support much of the weight of the displaced earth & all, but still, it creates open space where there previously wasnt any. This does take a toll, if only over 10s or 100s of years. Which is the basis for my question. What might the long term effects of this mega mine be for the grand/great grand children living there ?
Great! We've pushed off the agriculture Armageddon by about 100 years...which doesn't sound that great now that I'm reading it back to myself.
Edit : forgot how to grammar for a second there.
10:15 my auto generated closed caption "scheduled to begin production in 20127". Big Project indeed!
Simon I wish you ranted on all your channels hahahah. Somehow, it makes me pay attention more. Still love all your content though!!
It sounds like a great project, but curious, if they are taking a layer out of the ground, how are they filling the excavated area to prevent it collapsing? 🤷♂️
Because, of course, mining engineers, who have been at the mining game for hundreds of years, haven't got a clue about how to do that and just dig willy-nilly.
There is no need to fill it in. It's in 1500 m depth. There are so many rock layers above it that even if it caved in, nothing would happen to the surface. It's not like they excavate giant caves there.
It’s been done for thousands of years
If you fell into the hole would you pass out before you hit the floor?
Never expected Teesside on an episode of Mega Projects lol
Kinda funny that the UK can´t dig a short tunnel under a city for a railroad but the deepest mine in europe can dig a mega tunnel without any issues.
Is it just me or does this say some really unflattering things about the UK government and their abillity to make a plan and then execute said plan?
It has issues. Lots of investors have already lost their shirts due to this mine. Several years ago I was tempted to buy shares in it. Shares that dropped like a stone at the time. The problem is the massive capital cost of the thing. However when seen in perspective with HS2 it is surely very much a long term winner. Pity that like most such projects, it is no longer owned by a British company so the profits, when they eventually arrive [if ever] will go mostly abroad. I suspect that the maintenance and repairs of the conveyor belts will prove problematic to say the least.
No, what it says is digging a tunnel, no matter how short, under a city carries MANY more risks than digging purposefully away from populated areas.
@@captainspaulding5963 and still other euro nations can do it with far less karfuffel.
What happens to the excavated area? Does it just remain naturally hollowed out? Or does it eventually cave in? Or do they leave supports in place? Wouldn't any seismic activity, or just the slow pressures of geological forces eventually create some sort of problem?
This is no different from any other traditional mine in that regard. Wikipedia is your friend there.
@@FreeManFreeThought Most " traditional mines" collapse over time. And this is definitely not a traditional mine.
I think it's been thought out well as in the vid they said they tried to avoid danger to houses
At 1.6Km deep sounds like a good place to store nuclear waste. Also the ground should be around 50C at that depth maybe heat for homes may be a useful thing.
Luckily Britain isn’t really subject to much seismic activity being one of the few countries hundreds if not thousands of miles from the edge of tectonic plates. Any earthquakes in the UK tend to be very minor and rarely cause any damage or are even noticed.
A lot of old mines were just left but this being a newer project I imagine there’ll be supports and probably back filling when it’s exhausted of resources.
It also quite some way from inhabited areas and stretches out under the North Sea rather than further inland.
Although it could pose some minor issues, it’s unlikely that it will ever cause any serious harm or danger if it were to collapse.
And Howard Hughes was going to use that big odd-looking ship to mine manganese nodules from the sea floor. What's really going on down there? Making a bloody-big underground cavern. A lot of people could live down there.
10:08 name of the song?
3min into the video you still haven't started talking about mine itself, and started a commercial
Thanks. It did indeed have a shaky start the early investors in Sirius had a serious haircut and lost much of their investment.
Good to see it proceeding, Anglo have the money and power to see it through to reality.
And who owns the mine we don’t own anything in our own country 🥱
Anglo American , he said so several times in the video, which considering its a major construction project is probably better than the UK government having anything to do with it.
@@medler2110 and what do we get out of it ?….
@@windingroadelven I didn't mention getting anything out of it.
@@windingroadelven A massive boost in your economy, which in the long run will improve your life. People, (especially big corporations) need to stop thinking in the short term. Not to mention if it replaces traditional fertilizers, that's really great news for the whole world, because they are VERY toxic to the humans that work with it and the environment.
"Good things come to those who wait" - Abraham Lincoln
@@superkirk11 so it’s owned by Americans….. I highly doubt we get anything out of it except rent.
I hope they have to pay a lot of tax being as we all own this mineral and they are not having to purchase it, just mine it.
Great idea, let's just hope Anglo American plc haven't just taken it for the price of there shareholders. And keep there promise of giving back to the country of orgin. As they seem to be blaming everyone but themselves in Zambia with the extraction on copper...
1:20 - Chapter 1 - Polyphalite
3:00 - Mid roll ads
4:00 - Back to the video
5:05 - Chapter 2 - Out of sight
10:10 - Chapter 3 - Around the world
I don’t know why you do what you do but I love it
Poly-halite ,,means Halites um , group 7 elements , Chlorine mostly, but flourine, Iodine ,,,,Good for crops that need halites ,,Berries etc
as a yank it's pleasing to see my cousins across the pond embark on this venture.
I definitely spread some of that before it was fully commercially available, but I don’t know the outcome of the trials, clearly it worked
I am pretty sire TBM's were invented for digging the channel tunnel, ...also used since for the Hadron collider infrastructure...useful bits of kit really but often left underground after use
No, you absolutely do not leave TBM´s underground after finishing their job. You essentially need them to move through the whole tunnel to build it behind them and to exit the site so you can use it otherwise.
Please educate yourself.
And yes, TBM´s with defect that cannot be repaired undergound will stall the whole construction for weeks at least, because it cannot go back the way it came in - it is larger then finished tunnel behind it, so you either dig a big hole to replace the behemoth from the ground, or stop all work and slowly dismantle that thing underground while doing maximum for the tunnelhead to not collapse, as you need to replace/build another TBM there to finish the job of the previous one.
On neither case you do not leave a TBM undeground
@@siriusczech cool.. thanks for the input
Just so unfortunate that those of us that invested in it in the early days lost every thing.
Wait. Was that a shot of a "gorgeous national park"?
National Parks in the UK are not like US ones, they usually include a lot of farmed landscapes.
this sounds like a Factorio build
The Tyne Tees water tunnel is 34km in one go so its a bit bigger
This is so cool. Can more mines be built for it or is that one deposit all there is to dig out?
Its mostly one huge deposit. There are similar compounds in other places however Polyhalite is basically the holy grail becuase it has everything plants needs for fertilisation without any drawbacks. Most deposits dont have all the minerals needed and there for would need to be dosed with another fertiliser to make up for the difference.
@@ashleygoggs5679 Cool so now the mine is dug it makes more sense to expand it underground than build another entrance? That's wicked. I believe to UK has quite a lot of unexploited mineral wealth. It seems this project shows it's possible to get at it without massive environmental issues so perhaps this success will spark interest in other areas.
@@ashleygoggs5679 what plants crave....
@@bashisobsolete.pythonismyn6321it’s got electrolytes
@@ashleygoggs5679 We struck eco friendly -oil..that'll the economy for next 100 years starting 2027!
This mine has a Tom Scott site visit all over it
15 miles worth of conveyor is a terrible idea.