WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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This is how you contain the worst nuclear
disaster in humanity's history. This is the

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New Safe Confinement structure, at Reactor
4 at Chernobyl.

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In 1986, the nuclear power plant here exploded
-- and that is a sentence you never ever want

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to hear. The local area was evacuated, and
it won't be safe to live in for millennia:

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to get here you need special permissions,
although it's become a bit easier in recent

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years.

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In the months after the disaster, a concrete
sacrophagus -- it's called the Shelter Object

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-- was built around the damaged reactor. It
was constructed rapidly and desperately. It

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cost a lot of lives, and used a megaton of
concrete and metal. It worked, but it won't

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hold forever, and it was built on top of the
unstable debris of the old reactor.

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But over there is its replacement, still under
construction. It's the New Safe Confinement,

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and it has cost more than one and a half billion
US dollars. It is enormous, a steel arch a

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hundred metres high. When it's done, it'll
be hauled by steel cables on enormous tracks

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over the reactor over the course of a week.
And once it's there: the sides will be filled

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in, and the reactor will be contained again,
ready to be decommissioned safely. This is

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the world's largest movable structure -- although
it's only going to have to move once.

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And it's got some pretty astonishing design
requirements. It can't let anything leak out.

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And it has to withstand everything that Ukraine's
weather can possibly throw at it for a hundred

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years.

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But just think about that. One and a half
billion dollars for something that'll last

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a hundred years. That's great -- provided
in that hundred years, we can find the money,

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time and technology to safely dispose of all
the radioactive waste that's going to be in

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there. Will we do that? Or, once there's not
an imminent threat of disaster, will we kick

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it down the road for a future generation to
deal with?

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In a hundred years, when this arch is at the
end of its lifespan, will we be dismantling

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it and celebrating a job well done? Or will
we be spending another huge sum building its replacement?

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