A Brief History of: The Tokaimura Criticality Incident (Short Documentary)
Vložit
- čas přidán 11. 12. 2019
- #nuclear #atomic #history
Fancy another Criticality accident • A Brief History of: Th...
In 1999 japan's largest civil nuclear industrial accident took place at a fuel reprocessing plant at Tokaimura, and it would hold the honour until 2011 with Fukushima .
Help the Channel Grow Like, Comment & Subscribe!
Subscribe Here: czcams.com/channels/b0M.html...
Equipment used in this video:
Rode NT1a:
Focusrite Scarlet:
Check out My Twitter:
/ plainly_d
Check out these other great channels:
/ dominotitanic20
/ cynicalc. .
/ jabzyjoe
/ @qxir
Sources:
1. www.world-nuclear.org/informa...
2. www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publica...
3. mysteriousfacts.com/hisashi-o...
4. www.safetyonline.com/doc/jco-...
5. www.radioactivity.eu.com/site/...
6. www-ns.iaea.org/downloads/iec/...
Additional:
safety.productions/2019/02/17...
large.stanford.edu/courses/201...
Drinking game, take a shot for every time I say precipitation tank!
I tried this, now I'm blind
Pleeeease take a minute to pronounce units in the future, not a big deal, but its a bit of a downer looking at your otherwise very nice work ;) (Roentgen, not Rotegen, "Becarell", not Becule ^^)
or when you say 'however' (pun)
They definitely need to be charged, the public already has a bad view of nuclear power, they need to be made aware that these accidents were avoidable.
Solvent extraction columns are not storage tanks.
Yeah.. any plan that involves replacing a complex device engineered for safety with 'a bucket', is probably a bad plan.
Very true!
I feel like Japan, of all places, should be more cautious than most when it comes to this.
Unofficial round three then? xD
I once drank at a bar in Brockton that served happy hour drinks in buckets. I can attest that buckets are harmful.
It worked so well...
Everybody gangsta till the water start glowing
Just down a rad-away, lol
It actually glows blue
@Just Some guy Which sample in your collection tastes the best?
Bath in the glory of atom.. 😂
Just Some guy xD I think we all did at one point just to see...
It is always scary how some nuclear accidents are almost silent. Imagine you doing your job. Basically doing the same thing you usually do (as far as you know) and then an alarm tells you something went terribly wrong before you notice anything physical but at this point it is already too late for you…
Indeed. This channel did a video on the "Demon Core" that's quite scary. It actually happened but it could easily have been a plot for the original "Outer Limits" TV series.
@@deadfreightwest5956 perfect example. What's worse to you guys? Something sneaky like the demon core basically being a ninja assassin or SL -1 going conan the barbarian and pinning someone to a roof w a crazy nuclear shrapnel javelin ? At least the latter was quick in that case..for the 3 present i mean
In criticality accidents, those involved know something extreme has occurred without any alarm sounding. With the initial intense flash of blue light, and a fiercely boiling mixture in this case, there can be little doubt that your day just went downhill. With well-educated victims, there's an awareness that they're pretty much already dead, perhaps after days /weeks /months of horrific suffering during medical treatment (which is almost invariably futile). I'd prefer a lethal dose of morphine, or, failing that, a bullet!
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 I'd rather drink myself in a coma than have a lethal rad dose. Wouldn't feel anything but a tingling, bubbly, numb feeling between my eyes as i passed out in that case lol
@@anhedonianepiphany5588 Bone marrow transplants are able to save many radiation victims, who would have died before the technique was developed. So medical intervention is not futile in general.
"This... Is a bucket!"
"Dear God!"
"There's more"
"No!"
To bad they wern't just teleporting bread instead of U-235...
I have done nothing but ignore safety protocols for 3 days
Nice reference bro
@@doobywoopy3264 You WHAT
The way my eyes widened when every single bit of safe processing was erased and replaced with possibly one of the least secure carrying and mixing containers they possibly could have chosen. Perhaps a dollar store plastic pail or old fashioned wooden one would have been worse but not by much...
It amazes me how that in nearly every one of the accidents you've covered, it comes down to human laziness and deliberate fuckery. Its amazing we haven't had another Chernobyl-level disaster
Well, give it time, there are still several RBMK reactors in service.
@@ZGryphon I hear people all the time say “well it won’t happen again because the control rods were retrofitted” but there are still so many problems and the fact that there is literally no containment structure
@@-zgizmo224-5 I keep coming back to the remark quoted in _Midnight in Chernobyl,_ said by a Soviet Navy vet who went to work at Chernobyl after his service, on first getting a look at an RBMK: "How can you possibly control this hulking piece of shit?"
We have. Fukushima was an INES 7.
And they hire lads who look over safety details.
"Here's your protective radiation gear and radiation monitor to keep you safe from all the radiation."
"This is all so professional and technical."
"Now mix this stuff up in a bucket and dump it in here."
Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if that conversation went that way
The funny thing is, there is no gear you could wear that would provide any protection from gamma and neutron radiation (alpha and beta are easy to block). Unless you are wearing some sort of power armor that is made with about a foot of lead. The shielding in reactors is usually several inches of lead, and then several feet of concrete and other materials in layers. "Radiation protection" gear is actually not designed to protect from radiation itself, it's designed to protect from radioactive contamination (to stop you from inhaling radioactive dust, and getting it all over your clothing). The only thing that can stop neutron and gamma is pure mass, and a lot of it.
@@StormsparkPegasus I really want to read through and nod understandingly about the difficulty of protecting from these dangers but when my brain hears gamma radiation it's real hard to control the impulse to become the Incredible Hulk.
@@johnladuke6475 You'd become the Incredible Tumor
@@StormsparkPegasus there's been some nice tests with metamaterials for that, so that's good news for the future.
Read "A Slow Death"...it was written by a Japanese journalist who extensively covered the story at the time. Absolutely heartbreaking
I have, and to say it's heartbreaking is an understatement ...
It is also a tragedy that should never have happened, due to the serious breaches in radioactive and nuclear safety. Neither man whom died should of been in the poistions they were, literally and figuratively. Both families should have recieved victim compensation due to those major breaches, the company heavily fined, and the senior management arrested, charged, and sentenced to lenghty jail time (>10yrs apiece) for corporate manslaughter, if such exists in Japanese jurisprudence.
The other half of the tragedy is the huge mess of the medical ethics of the care involved. Granted, whilst Ouchi-san, when he was still conscious, and was able to communicate, he did say to the doctors to do their best, but that the chromosomal studies showed he received a massive radiation dose -- a mind-boggling 20Sv* -- meant that anyone with knowledge of radiobiology ought have known he was going to die from day 1. Granted, they did what any medical professionals would do, and that is never give up on a patient. But, on day 59, when he suffered three, prolonged, episodes of cardiac arrest, at that point the question had to be asked: whom exactly were they treating ...?
Granted, the doctors were in completely unknown territory; in most, if not nearly all, criticality accidents, especially invoving exposures of >8Sv, the patient succumbed in a few weeks, if not days. Ouchi-san survived for months, although one can debate how, due to the sheer intesity of the medical treatment given to him.
I don't know how Japanese medical ethics differs from, say, more Western, Anglophone, nations. But it does raise serious questions: knowing full well that a patient has recived, in this instance, a way above lethal dose of radiation, how can a doctor not talk themselves into thinking that, with sufficent treatment, the patient may recover, especially when talking to the parents & relatives, whom are equally encouraging continuing treatment ...? After all, most doctors and nurses don't _want_ their patient to die.
But, at the same time, and long before the events of day 59, the lead physicians should have been more honest with themselves, and Ouchi-san's wife and family; that the chances of his eventual recovery was practically zero, and that, from the moment he was placed on artifical respiration, that a DNR should have been seriously concerned.
Of course it is very easy to say all of this in hindsight, but given the knowledge gained from those whom where exposed the most during, and especially after, Chernobyl, even if he did survive much longer than they did, initally, it still seems there was a point where continuing the intensive care was just prolonging the inevitable ...
Like you said, no matter which way you look at it, it remains a heartbreaking accident that never should have happened in the first place ...
@@nigelft most doctors probably aren't really accustomed to knowing for absolute certainty someone is going to die. Taking as much radiation as he did, he absolutely was going to die, but there was probably only a handful of doctors who had ever treated similar patients
This is the link to the full documentary. czcams.com/video/ZWomuWd7-to/video.html It’s been done very well. It’s very sad but goes through how the doctors tried desperately to keep him alive for his family, it’s definitely worth watching. It’s in Japanese with English subtitles. The doctors tried everything they could to keep him alive as he didn’t want to leave this world and neither did his family want him to either,
@Prairiedoggen saw the thumbnail and back out.. How is that a human being? I can't even imagine how his family reaction was....
@@davedebang-bang6168 I tried the link and it's coming up age-restricted, I'm in my 30s and normally that would irk me, but in this case I think it's probably for the best that I don't see it. Some things are hard to watch at any age.
Let me make sure I understand: the 6 workers who followed the operational procedures they were told to use got charged by the government, but the educated engineers who deliberately short-circuited a set of nuclear safety protocols in the process and whose training and supervision of the 6 workers was directly responsible for the accident walked away? Governments have an uncanny way of coming down on the people lowest on the ladder, the ones who can't do anything about it, while the truly responsible or wealthy walk away.
Japan's entire judicial system is absolutely fucked
Welcome to government.
@@aurktman1106 no there was a video on the Japanese judicial system and it is fucked. You are guilty almost all the time.
@Frauenarzt Dr. Stefan Frank whats backwards? the whole engineering got thrown out the window and no engineer or manager or owner gets blamed?! the workers are to blame????!?! are you kidding?
@@squatchhammer7215 "You are guilty almost all the time." That's because court-session only starts after the prosecutors know that they can prove you guilty in court for 100%. Most people come free before court-session if the prosecution can't guarantee a 100% win, thus people who actually are guilty, walk free as well. That's why the prosecution-rate is that high.
It's like my old math professor who always boasted about how he had the lowest failure rate in his exams. He accomplished that by only allowing you to write the exam after accomplishing a list of certain tasks like 100% attendance-rate, more than 90% in all mini-tests and stuff like that, therefor weeding out 70% of all students. In the end it was only the 30-40 top-students writing the actual exam and thus there was basically no failure rate, because the other 70% weren't even part of the exam and thus not part of the failure-rate-calculation...
Whoever designed or altered the process or ordered the alterations should have been charged and imprisoned. People died of mismanagement.
Who ever altered the process should have done the honorable thing
the photos most people think are hisachi aren't actually him, they're from a chapter on burns in a medical textbook, and the guy in the photos supposedly survived. they're still horrifying, but they aren't of hisachi.
I just saw another YT narration of this, but it went into every excruciating moment of his treatment before he died. (Peaked Interest is the name of the channel). He is called the most radioactive man in history. And as accidents go, it appears to be accurate.
if you are talking about the man that is stretched completely out and missing a leg, then that one I would agree isn't him
however the photo of the naked man on the table with his backside displayed I think is him due to the swelling and the white patches on him that look like skin graphs
@@gaslitworldf.melissab2897 as far as I am concerned he was tortured, you don't put a man through that amount of pain for nothing
jesus, if he was fully conscious I'd bet he'd be begging for death - I know I would
@@annabelle1572 yeah I know that, my stepmom had my dad taken off life support because his brain died before he was revived after having a heart attack
@@blastyfs2 it was his family’s request for medical team to do everything for him to survive…
We told Hisachi to put an extra bucket of aqueous uranyl solution in the reactor and the madman actually did it!!! Absolute lad!
MAD MAN!
As a lay person with no particular understanding of nuclear material processes and a poor science A level (U.K.) obtained 30+ years ago, I would have probably done the same if ordered to.
The poor individuals were basic factory workers with little or no specialist training.
@@markhorton2920 I feel so bad for every worker there
+1 for being very British
Hey Hisachi, come pour this last bucket for me, my hand hurts! Imma be over there 4 meters away at the desk, looking at some papers detailing what could go wrong. Don't worry you'll be fine!
Proceeds to receive 17Sv (2xdoubledose+1), while the guy at the desk only got like 5Sv(3shortoflethal)
I'd be on the phone with the IAEA within minutes of anyone even suggesting using hand pouring buckets in a process involving enriched Uranium.
Whoever thought that of such a drastic change to the process was an idiot. Most charitable interpretation is that he was a chemist optimizing a chemical process and not understanding the radiological hazards.
His bosses, deciding to go ahead with it without getting licensing approval were grossly criminally negligent. If they actually thought the change was sensible, they'd have applied for approval. That they didn't means they knew it was dodgy. Maybe not how dodgy, but they knew approval would not be given.
I've been told working safety standards in Japan are piss poor compared to western ones.
@@bdf2718 Any chemist suggesting dissolving anything in nitric acid in a random steel bucket got his degree from a dumpster. My guess would be a non-technical management level idiot wondering why all the expensive equipment is necessary.
You're probably right.
If the company had a culture that allowed such a thing to happen, it deserves punitive fines to the point that it goes bankrupt. There should have been safety manuals, QA manuals, design manuals, design amendment procedures, etc. that would have prevented even the most senior management idiot from being able to make such changes. At the very least, those manuals must have insisted that any proposed changes to plant or procedure *must* be approved by the regulator.
Both the industry & the regulators in Japan were negligent until at least Fukushima. For example, a few months before Fukushima there was an earthquake that damaged some piping at one of the nuclear plants... because the interconnects between building & equipment had not been made earthquake-safe _in Japan,_ a country _famous_ for earthquakes.
My heart stopped for half a second when you mentioned the name Hisashi Ouchi. I've done a lot of research into his case.
It's so sad. Do you know why there's so many fake pictures and misinformation? It's really hard to sort through
@@CourtneyHammett Someone finds an unrelated photograph of a burn victim, claims it's him, and it spreads through hearsay and sensationalist "science" articles.
@@numbersstationsarchive194 it's really upsetting because his story is tragic enough without some fake stuff
@@CourtneyHammett yeah i watched some videos abt him a while ago and remember the narrative being that the doctors kept him alive just to see what severe radiation did to the human body, after learning it was his family that pushed for them to try to save him i was furious tht people tried to blame the doctors who just did what they could
@@CourtneyHammettthere's really only one "fake" picture in question. It's the one of the person with their limbs suspended and appears to have had a leg amputation. That is unfortunately a real picture but it's not Ouchi, its a 16 year old burn victim in a hospital in Galveston Texas, his picture was featured in an article in a medical burn book. Had to do a deep dive on Reddit to find out all the details.
5:25 Even if you've never heard abot this incident before, and you hear that workers are pouring uranium solution into a tank from a bucket and don't have the proper training, you already know what's about to happen.
Only if you have a basic grasp of some of the physics.
How many people know that if you shut down a fission reactor you *must* wait 3 days before restarting it? And how many have even a vague idea of why?
@@bdf2718 : You don't _have to_ wait 3 days, you just have to _very carefully & attentively_ adjust the startup procedures.
That's what they said at Chernobyl.
There are a lot of factors that come into play, but for most commercial reactors generating useful power, there is no degree of being careful and attentive that is going to prevent a big problem.
What I think you might not be able to grasp is how many sites operated in similarily shoddy ways and everything happened to work out fine. The reason you knew what was about to happen was because there was a video about it on this channel.
@@bdf2718 RBMK was a dual use reactor with graphite and water moderation that gave it a large positive void coefficient; it teaches you almost nothing about any other reactor.
Reactors are designed and modelled extensively; it is well known what they can and cannot do and it depends very greatly on what kind of reactor it is and most specifically on the size.
The amount of xenon-135 poison in the core depends on previous power history. It is perfectly possible to for a reactor to be ramped up and down depending on what that power history is and it is possible to make a safe design that can insert enough reactivity to overcome the xenon deadtime without being unsafe and unstable (e.g. every nuclear sub).
It is also eminently possible to make a reactor where xenon cannot build up (e.g. a molten salt reactor where it can be continously purged from the fuel).
Take something like the TRIGA research reactor. Compact size and high enrichment gives you the ability to eject the control rod with a pressurized gas piston and go from hundreds of watts to hundreds of megawatts or even over a GW in milliseconds (that's way into prompt super critical territory; no need for delayed neutrons at all). Without inserting the main burst rod back in, the distance between fuel atoms increases (because it becomes hotter) so more neutrons leak out, the fuel temperature is higher so the collision energy between a moderated neutron and a fuel atom becomes less well defined (smeared out by doppler shift) which turns out to reduce reactivity for the average collision. Increasing power by a factor of millions in a few ms is a common every day occurence in this reactors and it does not rely on any active safety mechanism; it is passively self-limiting. Does xenon-135 matter? You never operate at high power continously so there really isn't any to speak of; but if you could, still no.
10:56 “100 MSv” - that’s megasievert! You would’ve had to stay next to Chernobyl’s Elephant’s Foot between April 1986 and March 1990 continuously to get that total dose, and even then it wouldn’t be 100 MSv since the rate of radiation decreased since the meltdown.
Great video!
was just about to mention that, big difference between capital and lowercase M
Sweet JESUS
A Brief History of The Tokaimura Criticality Incident: *What if we removed all the safety features and just poured radioactive fuel directly into the core?*
Are we sure that Tokaimura wasn't really owned by Union Carbide?
@@tcpratt1660 bet my ass its harbor freight
Wasn't Hisachi Ouchi the person they kept alive to see the affects of extreme radiation exposure against his and his family wishes.
....very much so! There is a REASON why he has not shown on this site. Horrific!
that's not entirely true...the doctors' increasingly desperate efforts to save him were NOT undertaken without the family's consent
it was only after they agreed to remove him from life support (and cease the near-constant re-infusion of blood and fluids) that he expired
read "A Slow Death"
He had three heart attacks on day 59 which damaged his brain. He no longer reacted after that.
The doctors kept him alive because of statements Ouchi made pre-coma indicating he wished to go home. Japanese law prevented passive euthanasia unless the patient gave consent, which, of course he couldn't, being unconscious. It's really sad what he went thru. The photos are horrific.
@Jacob Bauer he wasn't brain dead but the problem was his frontal lobe was damaged inhibiting speech. The man suffered for days but it's thought eventually most of his nerve endings were gone and he couldn't feel anything
Radiation exposure in movies: *gets awesome super powers*
Radiation exposure IRL:
*I am Death, Incarnate* 💀
Other possible side effects include: -Cancer
-Internal Hemorrhage
-Pneumonia
-Chronic Vomiting
-dry mouth
-Night terrors
-Definitely not super powers
Thank you for noticing me, senpai.
dilbert.com/strip/1991-04-11
bdf2718
Yea, totally clicking that shady link...
*doesn’t*
Nice try, Hillary.
One day you should take the trouble to learn how youtube comments handles links. And then figure out how to use google to figure out if a link is actually shady or not.
Mayor West you have lymphoma, what were you thinking?
"That I would get super powers?"
It seems like the Simpsons is a surprisingly realistic depiction of the nuclear industry.
It isn't. For the most part is well monitored and security is the main focus because of international agencies inspections. Neglicence causes incidents. Bad design causes incindents. Ignorance causes bad reputation.
@calcog5716 this happened after The Simpsons began airing
I always remember my first lesson from a Submarine Nuclear Engineer commander.... "Just remember the fundamentals, Hot Rocks make steam, makes the boat go bruummmm..." he was not wrong.
Ended up picking up "A Slow Death: 83 Days off Radiation Sickness" after this video. It's worth a read. Definitely tough watching what seemed to be a good person decline and eventually pass, but it's surprisingly accessable to laymen for what is essentially a medical text and is incredibly important. The sheer lack of medical interventions available are shocking considering, while rare, these incidents have been occurring for 70 years. There seems to be an institutional refusal to acknowledge the danger exists and with it any need to develop triage methods. It's wild....
The issue is that, despite everything, they're rare, and very publicized nowadays so it seems like they're more common.
what do you mean by lack of medical interventions available? There is nothing you can do about it other than be put to death in some cases
I've worked at a nuclear facility and I can assure you, it's not for lack of trying that medical science hasn't tried to create more effective treatments for Radiological events; it's that the human body, despite it's propensity to bounce back from a lot of things, is as vulnerable as a new born baby to being thrown down the stairs in terms of Radiological resilience. Sorry for the harsh mental image, but that is now little our physiological make up is capable of handling events such as this. Keep in mind that as a species, we were messing with Radiological materials before we managed to isolate what caused cancers, before jet aircraft took to the sky, before we understood what a virus was. This is how new this construct of understanding the consequences of our endeavours were.
The moment we approach fatal total body doses, it's over for us, and there is very little that science has been able to achieve, despite billions being spent to research potential solutions. That's not to say that solutions won't come in future, but we were harnessing coal for heat thousands of years ago and it was only around 50 years ago that we discovered that poorly combusted coal fuel is a very potent carcinogen.
We are not made to handle it in our natural state, and that's okay......providing organisations such as Tepco, Sellafield Ltd/BNFL, EDF Energy, Nuclear Management Partners LLC, The USSR and many more don't take shortcuts to maximise profit and minimise outgoings at the cost of safety. We are now in a position of sufficient knowledge to understand the half life of materials, to calculate with genuine accuracy the risk of criticality related incidents, the required specific dosimetry for harm and we have discovered dramatic improvements in overall process safety that will live on for generations. The issue is not that nuclear is inherently harmful; most industrial processes are, it's about creating a safer and more consistent attitude of safety and propriety.
@@sloeginandsleep1170 a vet/doctor friend pointed out that DNA was discovered damn near a century after we'd started messing around with radiation so for the majority of the time we've been playing with it as a species we didn't know what bio structure it was even interacting with let alone how to mitigate damage to it. It's easy to lose track of how new some of that knowledge really is. Really appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective especially as someone with actual boots on the ground experience. I get to be a little less ignorant today thanks to you and I genuinely appreciate it.
@@oganvildevil Your friend is bang on the money there. Thank you for the kind words man, I'm always happy to share the wealth so to speak. I truly believe that nuclear energy has potential for greatness, if shortcuts are not taken and true mitigations are put into place. Mixing radiological components by hand in a bucket prior to use is much akin to filling a car airbag with broken glass and ball-bearings and just hoping no-one hits anything hard enough to set it off. It's such a grossly hideous idea that thinking about it gives me literal shivers down my spine. I'm fortunate that I've always been safe, careful and followed every procedure to the letter, my cancer risk is genuinely the same as everyone else on the street and I still work in the field today, so we are doing something right I guess!
I can't remember when exactly, but when I was working at a live nuclear power station (opposed to now working in a nuclear site decommissioning service), there was a memo about how the UK government had spend something insane like 10 billion quid since the 60's to present at the time, on research to mitigate harm and treat injuries caused by Ionising radiation, with very little success. Serious radiological exposure like this incident in Japan is the equivalent in harm as being hit face first by a 787 flying at full speed, that's how destructive it truly is. I hope I live to see the day that there is some breakthrough, here's to hoping eh!
At 3:30 when you're saying "corners would get cut" and the video shows the top-right corner getting altered, was that on purpose?
The thing in the top right corner is a cue mark, notifying the viewer that an advert is soon, it’s a practice used in UK television letting you know to put the kettle on
@@PlainlyDifficult or... zap to another channel ... hehe
@@PlainlyDifficult i noticed these in another video and asked in a comment. Alrhough there was no advert. You lying bro ?
@@bentboybbz I got an ad after that cue mark but not after the second one at around 7 minutes
@@PlainlyDifficult That's so British
Seems like having the facility surrounded by residential areas wasn't a good idea.
most likely the facility was there first the the towns grew around them, taking up any available more or less flat land. That's just how it goes.
@@jwenting The video at 1:10 would suggest otherwise. Tokaimura was established in 1889, long before the JCO plant.
@@sarjim4381 the town was there before the plant, but it wasn't nearly as large as it was at the time of the accident when the plant was built.
@@jwenting Possibly, but I wasn't answering that contention, only that the plant was there first and the town grew up around it. However, the population of Tokai in 1995, four years before the accident, was 32,727, compared to 37,885 in 2015. It obviously was nearly as large then as it is today. Continuing to guess doesn't help your case.
@@sarjim4381 : What was the population when the processing facility was first built?
Came for the story. Stayed for the cutting edge graphics.
I do try to bring you guys the best animations BBC documentary style Circa 1990
OH GOD, NOT THIS ONE!
The way they treated that guy makes me feel great dread of the universe, wish I had never heard about it.
yeah it gives me bloody nightmares😰
if you heard the story from reddit... that's not the real story. and the photos are of an American burns victim lol
They actually treated him quite well, it was the family who wanted him to stay alive, not the doctors, the whole experimenting on him and him begging for death are both myths.
It's especially shocking that Japan of all places would torture someone to death slowly from radiation exposure.
@@dmhendricks then don't look up Japanese experiments in WW2 ...
Just rename the channel “fission products vented to atmosphere.”
XD
I think a more appropriate name would be "a bunch of nonsense about nuclear stuff" since he clearly doesn't understand basic concepts of nuclear reactors.
@@rars0n Would you make your complaint more specific so that we all may learn, or is it just unsubstantiated criticism?
@@rars0n could you show us what you are reffering to to back up your argument?
@@rars0n Please elaborate my good sir
For those who don't want to look at the photos, but want to know how bad it was for him, the dude looked like a ghoul from fallout ...he melted.
The entirety of his body’s surface was an open wound that wouldn’t heal.
Pretty much describes it... Just looked it up. Radiation is scary.
And they couldn't give him morphine since his veins were too badly damaged
they tried to keep him alive, but honestly they would have done him a favor by just letting him die
We take for granted the single most protective organ of our body: the skin. Lose that, and you are at Death's door.
I heard at one point they opened him up to check his organs and his intestines were seizing so badly they were wriggling like snakes
Stainless bucket and nuclear fuel shouldn’t even be together in the same sentence very interesting cheers
MrAli171
That was the exact comment of Billy Connolly at the time.
"Lets save time" in a nuclear plant should never be uttered.
One would think that the Japanese, more than any other nation in the world, would be extremely sensitive and particularly careful with nuclear matters.
It's one thing to see accidents form the 50s-70s where out knowledge of the dangers and safety were low. But to not only disable, but REMOVE the safety equipment, and then replace it with a BUCKET for enriched uranium is so unbelievably stupid.
Great vid!
Cutting corners??? It went from an entirely computerized process to a bucket and a mixer!
Why have all those controls and steps, just a bucket and stir!. What could possibly go wrong?.
I just finished reading "A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness" by NHK and would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the fate of the victims and what radiation can do to a someone. It is a good general read (that was meant to accompany the TV documentary NHK produced) but does not go into a lot of details of the accident or the science behind it.
Guess im not the only one who's read about ouchi's horrible experience in "a slow death:83 days of radiation sickness"
Dude literally asked to die multiple times... but was kept alive far longer. Ouchi's story is documented, intriguing but most of all (as plainly difficult says) absolutely harrowing.
Here's a little simple description, imagine if your entire body looked like charred skeever meat, but somehow got even worse
F
i thought he looked like a defective twizzler
What the hell is skeever meat? 😬
@@kenanacampora it's a Skyrim reference
That is a burned victim and not ouchi.
"Some noble gases escaped", riding gracefully into the night with mustaches and feathered hats.
Edit: Also, I blame no one who has unknowingly shared misinfo. Unfortunately the more accurate stories are either buried or not free.
I hate commenting before watching the entire video, but judging by the first little bit as well as the comments, I can already tell that this is, unfortunately, the media's version of the story. And Im sure it goes without saying that the media tends to exaggerate, misinterpret and even straight up lie.
Firstly, the photo you see of "Ouchi" everywhere isn't him. I don't remember the exact source, but it's actually of a thermal burn victim. Claiming its him is extremely disrespectful to both persons.
Secondly, there was no "keeping him alive against his will for study." His family as well as all of the doctors kept him alive because they hoped modern medicine could do what soviet tech couldn't. In fact, many of the nurses were terrified of residual radiation, yet they did their job anyway. One also speaks about constantly talking to him even after his responses stopped, playing his favorite music, etc. The nearby waiting room was completely refitted to allow the utmost comfort for his family.
Please read "A Slow Death" if you get the chance. It was mainly written by a medical person (unfortunately I can't remember who and Im on mobile) and his media staff that personally followed this story.
Sadly, your comment has been buried under the hundreds of comments parroting the sensationalist version.
@@numbersstationsarchive194 The worst part is, I was very much expecting this. Me and a few others have tried to get a more accurate version out over the years, but its only been posted wrongly, so much that credible sources take it as fact. :/
Thank you for reading this though (or skimming. I need indents haha)
ik this comment is pretty old but i just wanted to say that wendigoons vid about him was so respectful and it was refreshing to see him talk about the situation in the way you did. sorry this comment just reminded me of that video hahaha but i am glad you commented this
Nobody was evil except the company who deliberately violated all protocols to make a few extra rods. The doctors did their jobs and went above and beyond for hisashi and his family. The family just wanted him alive and well like we all would. There was always the conflict of "do we keep going?" So many things were wrong but there was always a silver lining that gave them hope.
@@okaycaeaIkr, his compassion for everyone was so relieving and refreshing when everyone else condemns everyone but the real culprits
I had heard about this accident, but your level of detail here is excellent, as always, and really helped explain what happened.
Thank you!
I've heard Hisachi Ouchi's part of this story, but never the technical side. Odd to think how so many people look at incidents like this and say "See? Nuclear power is unstable, unpredictable and should never be used!" when a majority of incidents are caused by either cutting corners, improper procedures, under-trained staff, or just plain hubris.
Amen. We need to put down this feel-good lie of renewable energy and start building nuclear plants with breeder reactors everywhere asap. It's the only way we're going to meet energy needs
Well, it's human kind that's - because of always cutting corners - not ready to deal with radioactive stuff. We have to grow up as a society before we should be allowed to.
duh, this is exactly the reason why we shouldn't have Nuclear Power. History repeated itself already for multiply times
That’s part of why modern reactors are being designed to be almost idiot-proof.
Imagine surviving this and getting charged for something that wasn't your fault.
Hey so you know this really safe method we've been using?
"Yes?"
Why dont we StArT UsInG bUckEtS?!?!?! WhAt cOuLd pOsSiblY gO wRoNg??!?
Minor nitpick: assuming the usual transliteration 'rules' (well, lack thereof, really), his name would more accurately be pronounced 'O-o-chi' - that is to say, you hold the 'o' for two beats. However, given the somewhat inconsistent ways in which Japanese words are transliterated, this is an understandable mistake.
Maybe a bit of explanation is called for.
Ordinarily, the preferred way to write Japanese prolonged vowels in the Latin alphabet would be with a macron over the vowel (meaning the surname probably would be 'Ōchi'), but that presents a problem when just using a standard QWERTY keyboard, so one of the ways around this is to simply write the letter twice; however, while this sort of works for 'aa' or 'ii', it runs into a problem with 'oo' or 'ee', as those are read/pronounced in in a different manner in English.
So, two other ways came into common use for them: one is to have a dash, meaning it would be 'O-ochi', but that presents a problem because it looks as if it is meant to have a pause; or 'ou', which is also a problem since that becomes the diphthong sounding like 'ow', hence the pronunciation in this video.
Basically, it is the same reason that the Japanese kana were developed in the first place: just as Chinese ideograms didn't map directly to Japanese grammar and idioms, the Latin alphabet as used in English doesn't map to Japanese sounds and writing, either (or rather, the Japanese doesn't map directly to the English usages).
Although i appreciate your ( probably ) polyglot level lingual passion .....im sorry...but i read like maybe 15 words in before i gave up. Good job though!
Crazy long explanation for something very simple. The transliteration "ouchi" is perfectly valid (and I would say preferred).
As far as pronunciation goes, it's certainly not the english pronunciation of "ouch-i"; more like "ohuh-chi" (but really fast). The trick with vowel diphthongs is just to say both the vowels but smoothly transition between them. The true diphthong is right in the middle, but saying them both is acceptable.
The whole "two beats thing", is a thing, especially for repeat vowels, however the "just say them both" trick is a pretty safe way of getting the vowel length right and avoiding comments like these.
David Bowen I'll go with Alice on this one, "acceptable" is your opinion when it is phonetically incorrect. English speakers have a very distinct view on what is and isn't an acceptable way to pronounce something, and their acceptable is typically just plain wrong to a native level speaker. Not only in Japanese but in a great number of other languages, and IMO they should preface this with 'my pronunciation is incorrect but it reads to me as X'. That said native Japanese pronunciation of most other languages is just as incorrect.
@@noth606 The point is, for an English speaker pronouncing Japanese on a video in English; close-enough is fine. And in-fact, no; when I said "acceptable", I did mean based on my experience talking a native Japanese speakers in Japanese.
Nitpick
>uranium
>moved manually in bukets
What a place to work
"Hey what are you doing for work?"
"Oh you know, moving liquid uraniun in buckets with bare hands"
Homer Simpson levels of absurdity
thing is, uranium is hardly radioactive. Many kitchen countertops are more radioactive. Buckets would be fine, if they kept it under a critical amount.
@@GigsVT The uranium was highly enriched, making it much more radioactive than natural uranium. Nitric acid is also extremely nasty stuff, depending on the concentration. I'm sure they had protective gear on, but still a really stupid stone-age process to be handling those kind of materials.
@@bubba99009 that's not how enriched uranium works. U-235 has a half life of 703 million years. It's also hardly radioactive. Fissile is not the same thing as radioactive.
@@GigsVT I was about to say the same thing! I'm so sick of the simple-minded arrogant folk whose comments only serve to mislead others. Knowledge of natural uranium isotopes is rudimentary in the understanding of all things nuclear. How can people so badly misjudge their level of comprehension?!?
A: The Dunning-Kruger effect...
I heard Michio Kaku briefly mention this incident years ago. He made a reference to transferring nuclear material in buckets. He said there have been many other instances but his security clearance prevented him from talking about them publicly.
poor guy had all his dna damaged, so his cells could not replicate themselves because they no longer had a blueprint. horrific death
you are damn underated for the content u r creating bro, it's more in depth than if i heard my history teacher squabble about it for 3 hours
"A cherry on the glowing cake of screw-ups...." - you made my day with this one-liner! :))
Interesting video.
I like how you had the old style black and white "advert incoming" box half way through before an actual advert. Nice touch!
Thanks for not showing an unrelated but horrific image of a severe burn patient. Good video of more history dating back before 99 👍👍
Thank you
It pisses me off so much to see sensationalist "pop-sci" videos that show that photograph, and drone on about how he was some kind of medical experiment, and that he and his family begged for him to die, etc. All bullshit.
Ouchi received the highest dose of radiation any human has ever received 17 Sv (17,000 Msv). RIP poor guy and Shinohara too.
Another brilliant example of japanese nuclear r&d and managerial criminal blunders. All would lead to Fukushima. I just discovered your channel. So glad I did.
“Cherry on the glowing cake of screwups” ROFL 😂😂😂
last time i was this early, Chernobyl wasn't well known yet
Well known before 1986?
Timothy Simpson well that’s wrong , 8 sieverts and up is the mortal death point of humans
*lifts glowing finger*
"Ouchi."
Goddamned
Yea that’s pretty fucked man
not funny man. Have some respect for the dead. Imagine if that happened to you.
Show some respect man, besides i think its supposed to be pronounced more like oochi or uuchi
Raven shut the fuck up you overly sensitive twat. Its a fucking joke
The doctors must've known that there's no chance for Hisachi to pull through after seeing him. Nobody was saving his life, just prolonging the suffering.
His family also played a role, it's they who wanted doctors and nursed to keep him alive, waiting for a miracle to occur. They had approved every treatment that doctors used on him.
@@kanesadakuji2748 didn't they do the opposite?
@@senimanbahadur6811 no
If I were ever exposed to such a high dose of radiation, I would just kill myself. At this point, it's already over and you save yourself a ton of suffering.
@@professorgrimm4602 Not sure you'd have the physical capacity to do so. By the time you'd realize the radiation would likely debilitate you before you had the chance to try. 😬
Hey. I came across your channel yesterday, and have since binged almost all of your nuclear -related videos. I barely know anything about the subject, but it interests me like crazy! Especially accidents/incidents related to nuclear power.
Hey! If you're still interested in this stuff and need more videos, and haven't come across him yet, you should check out Kyle Hill. There's some overlap of nuclear incidents but told differently so you learn more about them. ✌️🍍
ive looked up a lot of information about this out of sheer curiosity and came across autopsy imagery of ouchi and shinohara including a picture of shinohara's face presumably after his death, and it's absolutely more terrifying than any fiction could ever achieve
may they rest in peace
Based upon the photographs of Shinohara's face released to the public, those photos were taken on the 3rd and 6th January 2000 (compare the skin that has hardened on the forehead and side of the face). Shinohara was still very much alive in those photos.
@@stonefob6792 damn, how do you know all of this?
@@metarotta A lot of research over several months.
@@stonefob6792 good to know as I have more of skimmed through a lot of the information, thanks for that :)
Wow I just looked up those pictures and they are the worst I’ve ever seen...
Ps recently found your channel and have been bing watching, I have seen nearly all your videos, you must spend most of your time researching into the wee hours of the night but bravo your videos are excellent very informative and quite well put together. Realy enjoy watching keep up the hard work your doing awesome 😊
Thank you!
Thanks Mr. Difficult! Good one...keep up the good work!
Finally. You are the first user who has uploaded a video which, aside from using the wrong nuclear fuel facility in images, has not used wrong information in the production of this video. I commend you for that.
Ok but we need a video on the Therac-25 accidents
Stop giving away lesser-known radiological incidents! They're not hard to find, but I know of scores of these accidents that are yet to be presented on CZcams, and I'd like to save them for when I eventually, one day, get around to not procrastinating any further and start a channel which focuses _accurately_ on such events.
That would be great.
I watched it earlier today, so I guess you got your wish
Hell yeah, I knew this would be the next incident you'd cover, awesome work!
3.6 workers affected
not great...not terrible
Don't quit your day job - a comedian you, most certainly, _are not!_
I wish you went into more detail about the guy that literally started decomposing while still alive because of the radiation, I feel it would help drive home how catastrophic this incident was
Funny, I was thinking the opposite. There are plenty of sources detailing his fate that don't go into the factors behind what caused the incident and the aftermath; it's interesting to hear more about that aspect, IMO. ✌️🍍
Wendigoon covered it in great detail and with great compassion to everyone involved except the company bc they're to blame for it all. No reason for all safety measures to be neglected like that.
Doesn’t radiation events in Japan generally result in a giant Kaiju? Godzilla, for instance.
@jason nordstrom
🤔... so they all got crushed by the giant kaiju rampaging through those cities?
@jason nordstrom
Lol.... smh 🙄
"Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast, I would catch it!" ~ Drax the destroyer
Get a sense of humor smart guy. Geez. 🤪
@@ras22273 i think his account got deleted. I am curious of what he said now lol
i think ouchi's name is pronounced more like "oh-chee"
that poor man went through so much. i can only hope that if there's an afterlife, he's resting peacefully there
yes, "ou" in japanese is a double o sound, like "oh"
@@thunderjellyfish3680 But it's a double-double. His family name 大内 is actually written "Ōuchi" and thus it's pronounced "Oh-Uchi"
It's more like "Oh-Oh-Chee".
There is no afterlife
Really like your videos, and the Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov clip is kool too!
I can believe you haven’t done a video about Fukushima just yet! Thanks for the hard work 👏🏼👏🏼
>short documentary
check video length
>13min.
that is short
I’ve logged probably hundreds of hours watching & rewatching content on Chernobyl & other nuclear calamities & even as a layman with no schooling, I can say that Ouchis death was likely the most brutal among all I’ve watched.
probably because the doctors kept him alive for so long. other workers have been exposed to even higher levels of radiation in past incidents and passed away quicker. watch videos from goiana to nesvizh to soreq to the therac 25
I have watched Wendigoon’s harrowing story more on the side of the medical treatment and outcomes for the three men, soeicifically about the very long treatment of the one with the highest dose. But now seeing yours I enjoy what you report on as well and it really allows me to have a more technical understanding of what occurred!
I had no idea that the accident of this magnitude occurred...keep up the good work and do more .
20% enriched...........easily enough to get a reaction going, not to bright these guys. Pouring mixtures like that...........out of a bucket...........?!? Whoever decided to cut corners to the process are directly responsible for giving rise to the accident.
"easily enough to get a reaction going" Clearly you, too, have no idea what you're talking about.
@@rars0n so the accident was "impossible" ? Please explain how?
You make it sound like the guys pouring the solution decided to replace sophisticated chemical handling equipment with a bucket. It sounds to me like some middle manager got the engineer to explain the process so an elementary-school drop-out could understand it, and decided he could save the company a lot of money by telling the peons to "just stir it up in a bucket and dump it in the _important_ tank."
@@jimstanley_49 Tbh, im not sure that sounds much better. Someone up the chain should have realized that they were pushing for using buckets.
How the hell did it go from a very safe process of filtration and layered protection to just pouring it in from bucket ?
Always great account's of incidents involving radioactive isotopes. The windscale story was a real eye opener ! Truly shocking Plainly difficult. Blue UK.
Should have more subscriber by now. Keep up the good work!
Good job Plainly.
Can't understand why Ouchi was forced to live. Horrendous.
It is old tradition of japanese doctors. Counting from old good ww2 times.
He wasn't "forced to live", as he expressed a will to live, his physicians were obligated by law to treat him and prolong his life to the best of their abilities.
20% enriched uranium "can" go critical with no moderator. You'd think they'd be more careful, or did they just not know the enrichment?
It's very rare for Asian nuclear workers to be taught theory outside their particular job requirements. You should be thinking of these guys as general laborers not nuclear workers.
@@m0314700308891515 makes you sleep great knowing china has more nuclear infrastructure than japan and are a hell of a lot worse than japan in every regard that caused this incident
You're forgetting the water and organic solvent around it, which contains carbon atoms, which are awesome neutron moderators.
Does anyone on CZcams actually know what a moderator does? I don't think so, judging by this channel's videos and comments like this one.
@@rars0n The vast majority of people know about as much about neutron temperature as I do about acquiring female humans for procreation.
new sub here your vids kept coming up in my feeds so i figured fate! so here i am. keep up the good work
"precipitation tank" is now my new favorite word
I feel like it should be a requirement to have a practical, not simply theroretical, training course in nuclear chemistry/safety in order to work with or around the processes. Also, you need to be tested to ensure you have a high degree of tell-the-boss-to-shove-it attitude.
So, that last part, not exactly something you're going to see a lot of in Japan...
I think the managers are the ones who should demonstrate the technique!!
Please make a video on
"Upton Sinclair's, The Jungle" and how it effected the natural ecosystem and the river itself
Thanks for the suggestion and the comment!
This incident and the meltdown at Fukushima have one thing in common - both facilities are own and operated by the infamous Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) which is notorious for their incompetence and scandals. Along with the 2 aforementioned disasters, TEPCO has lost nuclear fuel rods which have never been found, caught at least 29 times falsifying records (especially repair records) at nuclear plants, lax security which allowed unauthorized access to nuclear powerplant control rooms even when the security officers were alerted they did nothing. During the booming Japanese economy of the 1980s, TEPCO went outside of Japan to buy nuclear powerplants in other countries and among them the facility at the South Texas Nuclear Project (STNP) in the US. Fortunately, the regulators at the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) denied the sale because even as far back as the 1980s TEPCO's reputation was already so bad that the US regulatory agency was not going to take a chance of allowing TEPCO to own and operate a US nuclear powerplant. I hope no other country in the world has made the mistake of allow TEPCO to operate or build any of their nuclear powerplants because they are going to be ticking time bombs.
Dude, I love your channel!
"Hey, Ma! I finally got a great job! I am now an "Enrichment Associate"! No experience needed, no tests, and the pay is phenomenal!"
Really, it is no joke how the one poor guy suffered and died because of this terrible accident. All of their lives after the accident contributed greatly to the knowledge and treatment of radiation poisoning. May they all rest in peace.
Would have been interesting to include issues with the geometry of the mixing tank, and moreso (in my opinion at least), the neutron activation of items on the individuals, like the gold playing on one watch, and the copper watch strap pins etc.
But that said, criticality excursions are fascinating, so it's nice to see a vid about one.
The whole Video is Awesome and very informative! My favourite parts are finding out where they are.
"About here on a Map."
Great video. It focused more on the incident itself rather than the effect on its victims. (I don't mean that the human cost wasn't important but that most documentaries focus on that aspect and partially or completely omit the details of the actual incident itself.)
Does Japan want more Godzillas?
Because this is how you get more Godzillas....
Just be careful when writing down units. There is usually a BIG difference between a capital prefix and a lower case prefix. At 10:51 you say 100 milli Sieverts of radiation but write 100 MSV, which is 100 Mega Sieverts of radiation. It is only a difference of a billion times. Which figure is correct?
Quite obviously milliSieverts (mSv). A dose in the order of MegaSieverts would be immediately fatal to all organisms.
MegaSievert exposure usually result is conversion of organic matter to gas form.
Allan Gibson hence the name ionizing radiation
Great video! Just love your channel.
Thank you!
I freaking love you channel man. keep it up
My mother (born and raised in Japan) and my uncle, and aunts, discussed this incident soon after it occurred. They believe that at least one yakuza family has its claws in Sumitomo Metal Mining, and possibly other mining and production firms in Japan's nuclear industries. In their opinion, corruption and a mindset of "profits above all other considerations, including safety" had helped to create the conditions that led to the accident at Tokaimura.
Hell yes. I’ve been waiting.
Great content just subbed! When can we expect the next video?
Always love a new plainly vid
Thank you!
Thanks! This is EXACTLY the kind of story that keeps me totally satisfied working a dumb but generally non life threatening job.
You really downplayed what happened to Hisachi
Yeah, I felt that as well. It was torture what he went through and those doctors did some unforgivable things to that poor man. He was all one big experiment that went on for months and months of utter pain. I don't know why he just glossed over it like what happened was no big deal, it should have been explained way more than it was. What happened to Hisachi Ouchi should have been told, since he's not around to tell of what he went through. People need to know this, because what the doctors did to him needs to be prevented in the future.
This video focuses on the acceden, not the full effects it had on the people involved.
There are enough videos on the internet about the particular circumstances of Mr. Ōuchi. I found it rather refreshing to see this accident from the technical perspective.
I think there's enough videos on that. It's really sad though
@@James_Sunderland_ tell me this, it’s rare to study affects of Radiation on a person, you see this person exposed and studying it could save and understand the affects of Radiation. Would you study this? Or would you throw away research that could save others?
Just found your channel and it’s great. Haven’t watched all your videos yet and I have a suggestion for a video. There are several already done but would like your point of view on Rocketdyne (Santa Susana Field Laboratory) from the 50’s in to the 80’ with one reported accident proof of two accidents but probably more. May the worst in US history.
I can't believe this is the only video that comes up when I look for it on CZcams. I've read about this many times and I've seen pictures of the men who survived... it's awful..