Walking into a radioactive waste dump

Please visit http://www.simonreeve.co.uk for more information.Simon Reeve walks into a radioactive waste dump in Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia, while making his TV series Meet the Stans. The Meet the Stans series took Simon from the far north-west of Kazakhstan, by the Russian border, east to the Chinese border, south through Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the edge of Afghanistan, and west to Uzbekistan and the legendary Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.
The Guardian said it was a thrilling postcard from the edge
The Times said: Simon Reeves journey through Kazakhstan is a first-class Boys Own adventure on film and illuminating too. I cant imagine anyone switching off who stays for the first five minutes.
Simon Reeve is a bestselling author and broadcaster. In recent years hes travelled to scores of countries around the world for a series of BBC television documentaries.
The 2008 BBC TV series Tropic of Capricorn took Simon around the line marking the southern border of the tropics. His accompanying book, also called Tropic of Capricorn, is published by BBC Books.
In the BBC series Equator, Simon followed the equator through troubled areas of Africa, Asia and Latin America, including Colombia and the Congo.
In Places That Dont Exist, Simon travelled through a group of unrecognised nations countries so obscure they dont officially exist.
And in Meet the Stans, Simon visited the Central Asian states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Simons book The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism, which warned of a new age of apocalyptic terrorism, was the first in the world on bin Laden and al Qaeda. Originally published in 1998 it has been a New York Times bestseller.
Simon has contributed to other books on organised crime, terrorism and biological warfare. His book One Day in September: the story of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, is also an Oscar-winning feature documentary film narrated by the actor Michael Douglas.
Simon has received a One World Broadcasting Trust award for an outstanding contribution to greater world understanding.
You can find out more information on Simons journeys, and see more of Simons films, at his website: http://www.simonreeve.co.uk or at http://www.youtube.com/shootandscribble
Thanks for watching!

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Walking
• into
• radioactive
• waste
• dump
• uranium

[omnomnom85]

@kardas666 10 times the normal radiation is nothing, thats treu. But 5000 times will kill you if you stay to long in a area with such a high background radiation. So maybe YOU should be better informed, you idiot.

[TheAmigoProductions]

@GeologistRob I'm definitely on the same page as you, 4 times larger than background radiation, is not a lot at all. most humans are exposed to 2.0 mSv a year. and U.S. Radiation workers, are allowed to be exposed up to 50.0 mSv a year, without any longterm affects. so as a town being affected with 8.0 mSv of radiation a year, they are hardly going to notice a difference at all. even if they all were exposed to 10 times the amount of a background radiation constantly, they would be fine.

[MrDrimogemon]

Fuckin radiophobos

[0HippyHunter0]

This is painful to watch. Did you know Chernobyl is a tourist attraction now? The scientist doesn't wear protection. Not only that, he doesn't tell us what he's measuring in. Another video Geiger Counter/Radiation Monitor shows a guy getting the same readings walking down a street, measuring bananas, and at the beach. He arbitrarily states "above background" but that number varies widely. This video is bunk.

[totoritko]

I somewhat dislike that they said "radiation" and "radioactive waste dump" and never care to qualify what that actually means. When people hear "radiation" they immediately go into a craze-freak mode where they imagine high-level spent nuclear fuel or nuclear weapons fallout. This is more in line with toxic waste dumps where people get ill/die slowly if they live too close to them. They are dangerous and need to be sorted out, but not the "you'll die in minutes" kind of dangerous people imagine.

[totoritko]

Oh boy, what a crappy video. The presenter shows little knowledge of radiation. The site is a U238 dump where they buried unusable DU from Pu239 production. U238 is an alpha emitter, so holding the geiger counter HALF A METER from the sample won't register shit. Of course, with a 4.4Gy half-life, it's not all that much of an acute radiation hazard anyway. The danger with U238 is in breathing in an aerosol. The protective clothing is a bit overkill. A small nose+mouth mask would have been enough.

[Ricokz]

I'm pretty sure the guy said suits are for protection againist dust and avoiding radiation somehow staying onto the clothes, he clearly states they don't protect againist radiation, so where's the problem?

[geonerd]

Pure horseshit! 10x normal is NOT 'highly radioactive.' It's roughly the level you're exposed to during an airline flight. See XuQgVGDENbU Simon is a f*ing idiot.

[JanusKramer]

I suppose the security is the best and cheapest you can get. you have to be more than the regular jihadist zealot to bother going to Kyrgyzstan and did up low level radiactive waste. You're probably dead from boredom even before you get enogh crap for to contaminate a 100th of an acre. Kyrgyz, i think, are not excactly stuid in these matters :-D

[Davidivov]

@Onefoot08 Yes i know. What i meant was that the locals have no protection against the alpha and beta partices, and the gamma radiation was apparently so low that it wasn't directly harmful.(According to some of the other comments)

So what was trying to say was that it's not only gamma rays that are dangerous; many people seem to believe that.

[Onefoot08]

@Davidivov Other types of radioactive particles such as alpha and beta particles are easily stopped. Alphas are stopped by a sheet of paper and betas by a few mm of metal. Those become serious hazards when the are ingested or inhaled. Gamma rays are the main concern and if they are high enough energy they will pass right through the body with no interaction.

[Davidivov]

Well there's alpha, beta and other rays that can give you cancer when you breathe them in. These rays only affect really thin skin. The gamma rays are the ones that makes the skin boil and shit. The gamma rays are also what the background radiation consists of. So even if the gamma rays aren't strong enough to hurt you; other kinds of radiation might.