The Most Radioactive Places on Earth

Key Takeaways

[Music] so I'm not be H it's overloaded radiation is frightening at least certain types of it are I mean my guer counter doesn't go off near my mobile phone or the Wii router or my microwave that's because a geiger counter only measures ionizing radiation that is radiation with enough energy to rip electrons off atoms and it's measured in units called CTS if you're exposed to more than two CTS all at once you'll probably die shortly after that but we're exposed to low levels of ionizing radiation all the time bananas for example are rich in potassium and some of that potassium is naturally radioactive so when you eat a banana you're actually exposed to about 0.1 micro CTS of radiation that's 1 10 millionth of a SE let's use a banana for scale of radiation doses you know since people eat bananas we become radioactive too so you're actually exposed to more radiation if you sleep next to someone than if you sleep alone but I wouldn't worry about about that because that dose is insignificant compared to the Natural background radiation of Earth I mean there's ionizing radiation coming out of the soil and the rocks and the air and even from space the level of radiation here in Sydney is about .15 micro per hour and that's about average globally the levels usually between .1 and2 micro CS per hour but there are places with significantly higher levels so who on Earth do you think receives the maximum dose of ionizing radiation let's answer that question by going to the most radioactive places on Earth some places you'd expect to have high levels of radiation might surprise you I'm in hirosima and that is the peace Dome it was about 600 m above that Dome where the world's first nuclear bomb was detonated over a city it was detonated there to have maximum destructive impact with a level of radiation today almost 70 years later is only3 micro CS per hour I'm about to get into the uh an elevator we're going down in a m shaft this is an old uh uranium mine this is the mine where uranium was discovered it's also the place where Marie kir obtained her raw material 17 micro per hour it's about 10 times the natural background that you would have nowadays most of the uranium has been removed but in this wall there's still a small piece and you can see under UV light it flues look at that fluorescent uranium ore this is the lab of Marie C she won two Nobel prizes one in physics and one in chemistry and uh she conducted a lot of her work here and this is her office she would have sat right there apparently there are only a few parts of this area which are still radioactive one is this door knob well it climbs not not much but but that's like 10 times the background yes more that's in and another is the back of her chair you can still detect alpha particles coming off this spot right here apparently after she was working in the lab she would come open the door leaving traces of radium here and then go and pull out her chair welcome to New Mexico this is the Trinity bomb test site where the world's first nuclear bomb was set off right here right in this spot this whole area was vaporized in fact there was so much heat liberated by that bomb that it fused all of the desert sand into this Green Glass and you can still find it here they've actually named this mineral after the test it's called trinitite yeah this is the only place on Earth that this has ever been made the level of radiation here is about 8 micro an hour the trinitite itself is a little bit more radioactive I've got readings of two or three micro an hour off them now which place has higher levels of radiation than anywhere we've seen so far the answer is an airplane you know as you gain altitude there's less atmosphere above you to Shield you from cosmic rays so the level of radiation inside the plane can go up to.5 micro per hour at 18,000 ft up to 1 micr per hour at 23,000 ft over two micr per hour at 33,000 ft and over three micro cerss per hour at even higher altitudes and towards the poles [Applause] that is Chernobyl nuclear reactor number four it melted down on April 26th 1986 so what happened was so much heat was generated inside that reactor that it basically blew the top off spreading radioactive isotopes throughout this whole surrounding area and over into to Europe and that is why we can still detect the contamination here today now right now it's reading around 5 micro an hour if I stayed here for 1 hour my body would receive a similar dose to what you'd receive when you get a dental x-ray so this is not a huge amount of radiation and one of the reasons why the radiation level is not too high is because they actually removed a couple meters worth of top soil from this whole area then they dumped it somewhere that's why we can stand here we're uh driving into the Fukushima exclusion zone now I'm just watching as the levels on my Geer caner go up as we approach the Zone see those black bags at the side of the road the Japanese are doing now exactly what the people in Chernobyl did collecting up meters and meters of top soil the mask is probably Overkill it's just to stop radioactive dust from getting into my lungs this is definitely one of the most radioactive places where I've been even though the release of radioactive material was less than Chernobyl only about 10% because it's much fresher only 3 years since the accident much less of it has decayed so I've been getting readings up around 5 to 10 Micro an hour and uh I think we won't be staying here for too long because of that I'm about to go into the hospital at Prat and this is where the firemen were taken after they bought the fires at the Chernobyl reactor and in the basement of this building they have left all of the firemen's clothing once they realized it was so contaminated they they chucked it down there out of the room that she there is but you can see there's a huge pile of that gear there right outside the door I'm getting 500 micro sus an hour just outside the door 1,500 micro CS an hour you know if we stayed here for a couple hours we'd receive an annual dose of background radiation that basement was the most radioactive place I visited and it's one of the most radioactive places on Earth if ID stayed down there for 1 hour I would have received 2,000 micro seers that's a Year's worth of natural background radiation every yellow pixel here represents a banana now that might seem like a lot but consider that in a CT scan the patient receives about 7,000 micro CS that's 3 years worth of natural background radiation it's been estimated that the people living around Fukushima will receive an additional 10,000 micro over their lifetime due to the nuclear power disaster for comparison us radiation workers are limited to a maximum of 50,000 micro certs per year but that's less than another occupation astronaut an astronaut on the space station for 6 months will receive about 880,000 micro SS worth of radiation but not even they are exposed to the highest levels of ionizing radiation so can you guess who is the answer is a smoker's lungs a smoker's lungs on average receive 160,000 micro CS worth of radiation every year that's due to the radioactive polonium and radioactive lead in The Tobacco that they're smoking so not only are they exposed to carcinogens and toxins they also receive very high levels of radiation so it's not the people of Fukushima or Chernobyl or radiation workers or even astronauts who receive the highest doses of ionizing radiation that honor goes to your ordinary average smoker hey as you can see over the last few months I've been traveling around the world actually filming a documentary for television it should be on in the middle of next year but being in places like Chernobyl and Fukushima reminded me of this book The Day of the Triffids it's about a post-apocalyptic World in which plants take over I know it sounds like a crazy idea but it's actually a brilliant book so you should really 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