There's an error in this video: I say "200,000 tonnes of gold", but that's actually 200,000kg. The 200,000 tonne figure is for arsenic dust. You can see all corrections for this channel at www.tomscott.com/corrections/
Mine produced 8 billion of gold, and went 'bankrupt', Canadian tax payers are paying 900 million to contain the deadly arsenic for 100 years. The lake and surrounding area are still off limits. One of the worst trade deals in history.
@@Captain_Yorkie1 That is a bogus way of looking at it. People always do this when it comes to govt expenses. It's still 900 million. 900 million could accomplish a lot more than freeze arsenic for 100 years.
There are posters up in Yellowknife, advising of free arsenic tests for people who've lived there a long time. Do pull down the description for more about the history - it's a story that one person visiting for a couple of days definitely isn't qualified to tell!
It may have been 9months, but that's still a stupid statement to make. The ocean has enough water to drown everybody. There are enough bullets in the world to kill everyone(several times over). When it takes only a small amount of something to kill, it's a distribution problem, not a problem of quantity.
@@Thelegoterrapin The point is: People are so short sighted, and ignorant for the long term; with no concern for the enviroment, or people themselves. Greed.
Thank you very much Scott. I once studied at *McGill University* , and one of my peers actually worked on the thermodynamic aspects of Arsenic Oxides. The experimentations were very challenging and required complex approvals, but it would be very rewarding for him to know that his work contributes to remediation projects exactly like this one, and more people could come to appreciate the endeavor thanks to your channel.
You would also need to consider their expenses. If they pay 999$ for every 1000$ of gold they make then their profit is slim and can easily be eaten up with a single problem. I don't know the details in this case, but as already has been said - in most countries companies that produce permanent waste or damage or anything of that sorts have to pre-pay for the removal such that they can leave or go bankrupt at any point in time but the cleanup is already payed for.
The hell, is Tom Scott trying to get himself killed in Canada? Tempts fate at the US/Canada border, goes to the fatherland of Asbestos, makes a video about floods and fire, slips on ice, now he's trying to get hypothermia AND being poisoned??
When you said that mine was close to the city, I thought it was a fair bit away. Until I looked at google earth. Holy crap that is terrifying. The mine is basically within the city limits.
The TRUTH is more likely that the CITY Grew and Surrounded the Mine that supported all the Citizens of the City . It’s a PARADOX and CRIMINAL ACTS were committed and those Owners and Managers were NOT held Accountable .
The Yellowknife settlement is considered to have been founded in 1934,[2] after gold was found in the area, although commercial activity in the present-day waterfront area did not begin until 1936. Yellowknife quickly became the centre of economic activity in the NWT, and was named the capital of the Northwest Territories in 1967. As gold production began to wane, Yellowknife shifted from being a mining town to a centre of government services in the 1980s. However, with the discovery of diamonds north of the city in 1991,[14] this shift began to reverse. In recent years, tourism, transportation, and communications have also emerged as significant Yellowknife industries.
Yes, just like the oceans contain more than enough water to drown everybody several times over. Unless you go there and dig your way down you won't ever come in contact with this arsenic, which incidentally, was present in the rock before mining began.
@@karhukivi my God it's worse than we thought, I'm gonna need you as my commander in the war against h20, we need someone politically suave on this mission
Speaking of the oceans and this massive pile of arsenic dust if you were to collect all the loose dust and dump it in the ocean spread far enough apart would it dilute to a harmless concentration?
Even though the company went bankrupt, there's no way the directors themselves were held personally liable (hence "Limited Liability Company", etc.), so they no doubt made off like bandits with a healthy personal fortune each. I doubt any one of them would have been saying *sorry*.
It's disgusting how mining companies can get away with declaring bankruptcy and then bugger off without having to do anything about the poisons they've left (since, "obviously", it would be wrong to hold the owners of the company responsible for the company's actions and debts /s).
SpeakShibboleth yea, but thats on purpose so no one has to take responsibility. Harmful decisions were made, as Tom said, so you can't claim no one was calling the shots.
that's not possible. when a company goes bankrupt, it is bankrup, there is no money in that company anymore so how the hell do you expect them to clean up the mess with no money? sure you can throw the owners in jail but that won't fix the problem either.
What is even more disgusting is when companies _plan_ to start a mine, finish polluting the surrounding environment as much as possible, and bugger off when they're done. There are companies that actively do that.
In some countries, companies are forced to set aside money for remediation into a seperate trust that would not be effected by bancruptcy. That way you can at least mitigate some of the "tragedy of the commons".
Whenever people bring up 'nuclear waste' as a concern for power plants I really can't help but think about things like this, and how much safer and easier to deal with nuclear 'waste' actually is compared to so many other kinds of industrial waste.
Spend nuclear rods can be recycled and reused up to 5 times so there's really not much of it. 90% of what is considered nuclear waste are just contaminated clothes and such
I'm not aware of any people dying from nuclear waste contaminating the environment. However, people dying from the toxic sludge from overflowing dams of mining waste, seems to be a yearly occurrence.
Tom, thanks for the video. I am now completely outraged about how poorly managed mine cleanup has been regulated in my country. Since 2004 I'm sure legislation has been enacted to hold those accountable for environmental damage and careless disregard for the environment doesn't go unpunished...but then I remembered the Mt. Polly mining disaster of 2015.
I like that in Canada they use hockey rink technology to freeze lethal poison. You can just imagine the pitch meeting, some executive just sat there not understanding the science and the scientist just says "like they do for hockey" and the executive's just like "I'm in"
for anyone wondering, the difference between a "thermosiphon" and a "heat pipe" is that a thermosiphon uses gravity to return the working fluid to the source end, and a heat pipe uses a porous "wick" layer on the walls of the tube. They are otherwise identical in operation and theory.
how do you continually manage to find subjects and titles that immediately grabs my attention and makes me think "hmm that sounds interesting". always quality content Tom and team, thank you
This solution reminds me very much of the solution they have been trying to contain the, now radioactive, groundwater in Fukushima. In terms of method it's almost identical, although using different methods to reduces temperature; not to mention it might actually work up in Canada, due to the extremely cold temperatures. Anyways, thanks for the great video Mr. Scott & others!
Great video Tom. A story of multiple B'stards. The mining company directors and shareholders who were not compelled to lose their assets until the problem was fixed. The local and national Govt officials who were not compelled to lose their assets until the problem was fixed. And so on.
@@kv4648 Mining regulations 50 years ago were nothing compared to today's standards. At the time literally nobody cared about the environment, nor the gobernment nor the people, so it was really easy to follow said regulations
@@thekramer1097 considering that just this year Rio Tinto blew up a 40000 year old indigenous site in Australia there has been less change than there should have been
They did not make 8 billiosn in revenue. That's the value of 200,000kg of gold at 2018's gold price. The mine made $867 Millions in profit and payed $464 millions in taxes over its lifetime.
As2O3 powder is *slightly* soluble, it happily sits ontop of the surface of water. It is also great fun to find out you got some in the lab . I've spent half a day unknowingly handling it... 200,000 tons make roughly 151,000 tons of metal, which could be stored in a roughly 30^3m cube. That's something I'd go out of my way to visit on an other continent.
One thing I've always been curious about when watching Tom's videos is how all his travel is financed. Does RUclips pay that well for a channel of his size? Or is he being sponsored by someone, like a university or business? Inquiring minds want to know!
He made a park bench video on it a while ago, about the economics of youtube, but it's just generally a bit of ad revenue, sponsorship, and outside revenue like speeches, hosting and doing freelance tech work
I think Tom has mentioned before that he does conference speaking gigs, and those sometimes pay for the expensive parts of the travel. So he can extend his stay relatively cheaply and do his own videos with that extra time. It's also way less expensive to travel when it is your day job, since you can travel on the days that fewer other people want to travel so the rates are cheaper.
No Arsenic and all of its compounds are toxic because the body mistakes it for phosphorus. Phosphorus in the form of phosphate is needed for all kinds op biochemical reactions, and arsenic (most likely as arsenate) interferes with those reactions by blocking the enzymes that facilitate these reactions. Think of it as a key that fits a keyhole but not quite good enough. Arsenate can also get used instead of phosphate in one of the steps of glycolysis (the breakdown of glucose) but the product is unstable and breaks down spontaneously, which causes the 'burning' of glucose to yield less energy then if a phosphates were to be used in that step
Garrison Fox Yes I know. But even if you precipitate it with something like lead or react it with sulphur, which gives very insoluble compounds overtime it will still leach out with groundwater. (The lead thing is an assumption btw) So i do beleave containment in a frozen box of rock is the best way for now.
I imagine the biggest problem is that there's just *so much of it*. It'd be hard to ensure you reacted all of the stuff, even if you had some really easy way to do that.
I bet the ex CEOs of that company are still alive and CEOs of another company. They should still be liable for this. Put a lean on them and their million dollar home
You mean their multi million dollar houses, including but not limited to a hawaii vacation house in a tropical river gorge, a huge ranch in Arizona, an Aspen ski resort...
I lived most of my childhood in yellowknife and there wer times when the arsnic problem felt like our own Armageddon looming over everyone heads. Thanks giant mine very cool. Also the near by lake of great slave lake is still accessible to the public despite one of the most popular docks being very close to the mine. The sign that he showed in the video was for a lake that is in the heart of yellowknife itself that I believe is considered unsafe for separate reasons though I could be wrong. Didnt stop me from running in their and freezing my balls off one spring
PS the sign itself does specify aresnic apon rewatching and I remember there is a problem with many small ponds around trails being near leathal levels of arsnic. Fortunately said ponds already look gross enough to deter any people from drinking from them. Unfortunately the same can't be said about the dogs and wildlife
Hmm, I wonder if Tom ever made it to Britannia Beach. It's a place in BC, Canada where a remediation project like this has more or less played its part. There was some major acid rock drainage issues (basically, water leaching sulfur out of the rock and becoming acidic) in that mine, and then flowing out of the mine and into the environment - they sealed up most of the exits, and fed the other ones into a water treatment plant. Again, not a perfect solution, but it's effective and will remain so as long as the government maintains their policy about fixing the industrial mistakes we've made. Plus, that one does have a time limit. Eventually all that rock will be weathered out, same as the rock that's naturally exposed on the surface of sulfide deposits, at which point the acid formation process will stop; a while after that, the water being drained from the mine will become neutralized, and the need for water treatment will stop.
Oh you'll find stuff like this everywhere, in Denmark we have several millions tons of toxic dirt just left there by a company, not to mention former mines in which nothing can grow
Hey Tom, some time back i watched a Periodic videos video, and the professor said that all the gold in the world occupies a 20m cube. I calculated the weight of that cube and i got about 154000 tons. In your video you said about 200 thousand tons were extracted from the mine. I know the cube is a rough aprox. but the values are completely off. I dont know about gold extraction but that value is absurdly high. Love your videos and your channels. Cheers
placer dome campbell mine had the same problem and got it cleaned up. it was moved back to the surface mill and put it through what is called an autoclave
How come they don't do anything like vitrification (collect the dust and then encase it in moltern glass), which is what they do to radioactive waste. Glass is really durable long term and makes a lot of sense for radioactive waste, and surely that less maintenance and as such less cost than dealing with these cooling pipes which lets not forget if they fail the arsenic will become dust again and be just as dangerous
999 gamerdude I don't know for sure, but here's my guess: there's just too much of it, and it gets away too easily during processing. I looked at Hanford stats, and it looks like there's actually about 200,000 tons of that too. But it's in liquid form, so it's not going to fluff up into the air while being handled. And I'm guessing 200,000 tons of fine dust takes up a bunch more volume. Another reason: they still have some hope of finding a way to make this stuff chemical innert. If they finally find that way, fine powder will probably be almost the optimal input format for that process, whereas glass blocks would be much harder to break down and chemically reprocess.
Here's an idea to make it inert: Get the chemicals the body (and anything else you don't want it to be reactive with) is made out of and mix with a sample of arsenic. If the product is inert, welldone. if the product reacts with something, mix all the arsenic with that something. Finally, it prefers to be bonded with this than the chemicals in your body, ie, it's inert. Welldone.
So... with the correction to 200,000 kg (7,054,792 ounces) of gold that was extracted from Giant Mine. At today's (Feb. 2013) gold price of $2300/oz CDN, that would be $16,226,022,497 (or a tad over $16 billion) CDN.
So this is a problem because the mining company removed the rock above it? Can't they just... put the rock back? Or, rather, use concrete? Alternatively, if they've got these giant vats full of of arsenic dust, why not put them on trucks, bring them further north, where there IS permafrost, and bury them there? I'm sure they thought this through and came to the most logical, cheapest, most effective solution, but I'd still be interested to know what the issues were with any possible alternatives.
You can't just put rocks back, the permafrost has already melted, not to mention, it wouldn't be the same, there would be holes, and the would just be as bad as not putting rocks. As for moving it, it's a fine dust, essentially, it's a toxic flour that would poison all of humanity of you mess up, better to not move it.
@@midnightgear2616 Aww. I was just looking up the capacity of the Space X Starship, and calculating how many launches it would take to send this mess to the moon.
@@peripheralarbor Your solution to a deadly, toxic dust is to put it on a rocket, which if fails will kill literally thousands of people, if not millions.... genius...
Hey, they use thermosiphons in Alaska (and some other places in the arctic) to keep the permafrost frozen year round around buildings as global warming is causing more and more issues because foundations get unstable when the permafrost starts to defrost in the summer. I think they also use them in Oak Ridge, TN to keep some pools of toxic waste frozen as well.
Jonathan Fraser about 30 years ago. As he said in the video, this sort of thing doesn't happen anymore due to increased regulation. We're just stuck with the mistakes of the past.
Nah, this crap is still going on today. They make companies put money into a remediation fund but the fund is no where near large enough to clean up disasters, it's only there to restore the land with the expected level a damage. If there is a major disaster the companies still don't pay. The company will go bankrupt but the shareholders will have cashed out long before that.
The mine closed in 2004, I assume the regulation wasn't that different a decade ago, but they seem to have gotten away with not paying the billion dollar bill.
The solution could be Chem grouting / HaywardBaker does sodium glycol with diabasic Ester to stop erosion and stabilize soils particular sands and rock but will stabilize silts or atleast seal them from water as the chem grout does not breakdown from water. I have use this process many times for construction of drill shafts and MSE wall foundation stability. The material is fracked in but is a basic mix and pump material, then hardening will occur based on time and component percentages. Sometimes other disciplines can be the answer. Good luck as this could be your answer I hope.
So this system depends on having a thermal differential between the ground and the air, what happens when global warming comes along and fucks that up?
What Tom Scott doesn't say is that the gold was contained in arsenopyrite ore. So when the ore was processed, the arsenic oxide was the residue after processing. Given that arsenic can be used in solar cells, maybe the arsenic residue may be reclaimed for other uses in the future. Arsenic has uses in treating timber to make it termite resistant as well as other uses. Another example of arsenic poisoning was the aid schemes to dig wells or put in bores to get clean water in third world countries. Problem was the underground water in some areas had high levels of arsenic.
Apparently, Devon Great Consols, a former copper mine in England, has been cleaned up. When I visited almost 60 years ago, there were arsenic minerals laying all over the site. I wonder if they test the water?
I seriously wonder what future civilizations will think of places like this. When they're no longer being maintained, will there be big obelisks planted to ward off explorers?
How convenient for the board of directors of the mine. The mine goes bankrupt, no money left over to clean up, so it becomes the government's (and thus taxpayer's) problem. Meanwhile, the board of directors get millions of dollars and move on to another project.
Did you even watch the video? They said that's only a *temporary* solution and that they'll be funding research in the hopes that a more permanent solution arises
The shocking thing about this is that in contrast to for example radioactive materials, nobody talks about it despite it arguably being even more dangerous.
hi this is the future, we decided environmental concerns can be put on hold everytime the political parties switch, so we're probably making the same mistakes
200,000 tons of gold is 400,000,000 pounds, meaning the price in today’s (US) Dollars would be 8 TRILLION dollars, not 8 billion. I think Tom meant to say they mined 200,000 POUNDS of gold, not tons.
Arsenic Trioxide is very hard to process because it's oxidized and already released a ton of energy. It made the gold extraction process very easy. What you're suggesting is what they do now when they produce gold. A more energy intensive process, but without the lethally toxic byproduct.
It looks like 50,000 tones are produced annually for other uses (per wikipedia). This is 4 years worth of global production. I'm somewhat disappointed that instead of freezing it they don't just subsidize it's acquisition by legitimate users instead.
kind of surprised mining companies dont have to kick in to a remediation fund as they are mining. Build their fund large enough to cover any mess they leave behind. Either they clean it up or we clean it up. After the site passes inspection they can have any unused funds back.
Would locking the dust in polymers like plastic or resin be an option? Finely mixing the arsenic into the mixture so that the only way that escapes is by actual grinding down of the material, but encasing that mixture in pure polymer and sealing away this statue of arsenic underground? Possibly reuse the underground chambers system that is currently holding the frozen arsenic?
That option is not on the table. The Arsenic dust is already sealed in the empty chambers, and even if it wasn't attempting to mix two hundred thousand tons of one of the most toxic materials on the planet with different Plastics would disturb it end more than likely deliver a dose of arsenic to the local population
Generated billions of dollars and 200,000 tonnes of toxic waste, then went bankrupt and left someone else to clear up the mess. Classic negative externalising right there.
This is incredible. Look all the work to be done after mining, for ever! At least with the technology we have nowadays. Lot of work, energy, and money to fix something the companies who profit with the mining won't ever fix. Devastating.
I thought it was going to talk about the Fukushima solution where they are freezing the ground as well. But that's way worse because heat cannot be dissipated into atmosphere there.
There's an error in this video: I say "200,000 tonnes of gold", but that's actually 200,000kg. The 200,000 tonne figure is for arsenic dust. You can see all corrections for this channel at www.tomscott.com/corrections/
Thank you for the clarification.
Tom Scott Tom I love you bro. For real, I’d love to have a crumpet with you one day
Hey Tom big fan, I wish you could have gone into detail into why the giant mine shut down I.e giant mine union murders, the strikes, and miss Peggy
Can we have Tom Scott POP figurines with all of his outfits used to venture into dangerous work sites?
just put in in a box and bury it with the nuclear waste
Mine produced 8 billion of gold, and went 'bankrupt', Canadian tax payers are paying 900 million to contain the deadly arsenic for 100 years. The lake and surrounding area are still off limits. One of the worst trade deals in history.
And it's all gone already >>> GREED !!!!!
@hawkturkey Maybe mix with cement to get a block less prone to leaching than a heap of powder.
@hawkturkey probably just mine somewhere not filled with arsenic i would assume.
900 million divided by 100 is 9 million.
Divide that by the population of Canada 37.6 million. That's ¢24 a year per Citizen a year.
@@Captain_Yorkie1 That is a bogus way of looking at it. People always do this when it comes to govt expenses.
It's still 900 million. 900 million could accomplish a lot more than freeze arsenic for 100 years.
There are posters up in Yellowknife, advising of free arsenic tests for people who've lived there a long time. Do pull down the description for more about the history - it's a story that one person visiting for a couple of days definitely isn't qualified to tell!
amazing video!
Scottish Baconator I believe it is in yukon
Pinned by Tom Scott - 1 week ago. Hmmmm i wonder how long this video has been uploaded for. Seriously though fantasic video Tom keep up the good work.
Tom Scott I'm actually in Alberta in Canada right now!
Why does the timepin on your comment is 2 weeks ago when you just upload this video half an hour ago?(hmmm intensified)
“our work here could literally kill everybody on earth multiple times”
“yea but g o l d”
It may have been 9months, but that's still a stupid statement to make. The ocean has enough water to drown everybody. There are enough bullets in the world to kill everyone(several times over).
When it takes only a small amount of something to kill, it's a distribution problem, not a problem of quantity.
@@Thelegoterrapin The point is: People are so short sighted, and ignorant for the long term; with no concern for the enviroment, or people themselves. Greed.
Oo shiny rock
@@kris_2403 but very useful shiny rock.
@@niklnik1008 it do be shiny doe
Thank you very much Scott. I once studied at *McGill University* , and one of my peers actually worked on the thermodynamic aspects of Arsenic Oxides. The experimentations were very challenging and required complex approvals, but it would be very rewarding for him to know that his work contributes to remediation projects exactly like this one, and more people could come to appreciate the endeavor thanks to your channel.
> mines 8 billion USD of gold
> goes bankrupt
That's what happens when your only source of income runs out. It's not like a company saves up for retirement.
Br3ttM a more likely scenario is that the owners/CEOs took the money and ran when they realized that the mine was empty.
Maybe a company that produces enough toxic waste to kill everyone on Earth SHOULD save up some money for the clean up since they created the mess.
Companies are REQUIRED to save for "retirement". Insurances for example, and the banks in some countries excluding the US.
You would also need to consider their expenses.
If they pay 999$ for every 1000$ of gold they make then their profit is slim and can easily be eaten up with a single problem.
I don't know the details in this case, but as already has been said - in most countries companies that produce permanent waste or damage or anything of that sorts have to pre-pay for the removal such that they can leave or go bankrupt at any point in time but the cleanup is already payed for.
The hell, is Tom Scott trying to get himself killed in Canada?
Tempts fate at the US/Canada border, goes to the fatherland of Asbestos, makes a video about floods and fire, slips on ice, now he's trying to get hypothermia AND being poisoned??
cesariojpn Canada is not so nice anymore
And all of that just in time for the USA to start a trade war with them over something infantile. Timing is solidly on point.
We'll just have to see what happens* next week.
*(Obviously, the videos are recorded way in advance, but you know what I mean.)
He's one-upping Rasputin
"Hi my name's Tom Scott and welcome to Jackass"
When you said that mine was close to the city, I thought it was a fair bit away. Until I looked at google earth. Holy crap that is terrifying. The mine is basically within the city limits.
The TRUTH is more likely that the CITY Grew and Surrounded the Mine that supported all the Citizens of the City . It’s a PARADOX and CRIMINAL ACTS were committed and those Owners and Managers were NOT held Accountable .
Towns tend to form around mines. Who would have thought people may want to live close to work?
The Yellowknife settlement is considered to have been founded in 1934,[2] after gold was found in the area, although commercial activity in the present-day waterfront area did not begin until 1936. Yellowknife quickly became the centre of economic activity in the NWT, and was named the capital of the Northwest Territories in 1967. As gold production began to wane, Yellowknife shifted from being a mining town to a centre of government services in the 1980s. However, with the discovery of diamonds north of the city in 1991,[14] this shift began to reverse. In recent years, tourism, transportation, and communications have also emerged as significant Yellowknife industries.
"This project has gotten approval for 100 years." Has it gotten funding for 100 years?
Approval implies funding, or rather, in corporate speak, it *means* funding
So yes
Your tax dollars at work to help the guys who made billions. Enjoy!
Coal and Sinatra Kittie Cats As soon as it become tax dollars, then it are not your dollars anymore. Got to keep facts straight.
And it's all gone already >>> GREED !!!!!
@@coalandsinatrakittiecats7358 actually, the project freezing everything is an entirely different entity.
"Enough to kill everyone on earth several times over" is something we need to focus on more I think
Yes, just like the oceans contain more than enough water to drown everybody several times over. Unless you go there and dig your way down you won't ever come in contact with this arsenic, which incidentally, was present in the rock before mining began.
@@karhukivi good point let's make a petition to dyry the ocean up so it never kills anyone again
@@kidbogus3731 Yes, that hydrogen monoxide is terrible stuff and nobody exposed to it has ever lived beyond 150 years, usually only 85-90 years.
@@karhukivi my God it's worse than we thought, I'm gonna need you as my commander in the war against h20, we need someone politically suave on this mission
Speaking of the oceans and this massive pile of arsenic dust if you were to collect all the loose dust and dump it in the ocean spread far enough apart would it dilute to a harmless concentration?
_Leaving 200.000 tons of toxic mess_
*Sorry*
"We're sorry"
Don't worry, future generations have to take care of it. So it's totally OK to do for short-term profit.
Even though the company went bankrupt, there's no way the directors themselves were held personally liable (hence "Limited Liability Company", etc.), so they no doubt made off like bandits with a healthy personal fortune each. I doubt any one of them would have been saying *sorry*.
sixstringedthing I feel sad with your humour sense as im refering to the Canadian "Sorry" jokes. So sorry about that
Alpha Adhito No worries eh, I got your joke but I guess the video just got me a little pissed off down in mah feels. Peace out.
It's disgusting how mining companies can get away with declaring bankruptcy and then bugger off without having to do anything about the poisons they've left (since, "obviously", it would be wrong to hold the owners of the company responsible for the company's actions and debts /s).
Generally these companies don't have owners. They have shareholders and if you have an IRA or 401k you might me one of them.
SpeakShibboleth yea, but thats on purpose so no one has to take responsibility. Harmful decisions were made, as Tom said, so you can't claim no one was calling the shots.
that's not possible.
when a company goes bankrupt, it is bankrup, there is no money in that company anymore so how the hell do you expect them to clean up the mess with no money?
sure you can throw the owners in jail but that won't fix the problem either.
What is even more disgusting is when companies _plan_ to start a mine, finish polluting the surrounding environment as much as possible, and bugger off when they're done. There are companies that actively do that.
In some countries, companies are forced to set aside money for remediation into a seperate trust that would not be effected by bancruptcy. That way you can at least mitigate some of the "tragedy of the commons".
Tom thank you for the time and effort put into these videos
Whenever people bring up 'nuclear waste' as a concern for power plants I really can't help but think about things like this, and how much safer and easier to deal with nuclear 'waste' actually is compared to so many other kinds of industrial waste.
(Mining/processing/burning) coal puts more radioactivity in the air than anything but a meltdown will do.
what people don't realize is, we already figured out nuclear waste. those toxic yellow barrels of green goo are just in movies.
Yup.
Spend nuclear rods can be recycled and reused up to 5 times so there's really not much of it. 90% of what is considered nuclear waste are just contaminated clothes and such
I'm not aware of any people dying from nuclear waste contaminating the environment. However, people dying from the toxic sludge from overflowing dams of mining waste, seems to be a yearly occurrence.
Tom, thanks for the video. I am now completely outraged about how poorly managed mine cleanup has been regulated in my country. Since 2004 I'm sure legislation has been enacted to hold those accountable for environmental damage and careless disregard for the environment doesn't go unpunished...but then I remembered the Mt. Polly mining disaster of 2015.
Got 8billion D worth of Gold and went bankrupt, now need billions and decades to clean up the mess. Hats off
It's basically the Balrog.
We got so greedy digging for riches that we dug up something that could kill us all if it doesn't stay dormant forever...
The worst part is that the arsenic wasn't dug up, it was used in the mining and refining process. They created that mess themselves.
@@GadgetSteelmare wow. That is really insane
oh absolutely
Spot on, and the greedy dwarves horde all the gold in their caves, and let it's sit there only for them to look at in their growing madness.
tolkien fans when they learn about metaphor.
This was very interesting, but also extremely scary... Still nice video as usual!
I like that in Canada they use hockey rink technology to freeze lethal poison. You can just imagine the pitch meeting, some executive just sat there not understanding the science and the scientist just says "like they do for hockey" and the executive's just like "I'm in"
for anyone wondering, the difference between a "thermosiphon" and a "heat pipe" is that a thermosiphon uses gravity to return the working fluid to the source end, and a heat pipe uses a porous "wick" layer on the walls of the tube. They are otherwise identical in operation and theory.
"It has no scent, no taste, and dissolves in water."
Arsenic trioxide is iocane power!
yes it is actually
Inconceivable!
I was looking for this comment.
I don't think you can build up resistance to this stuff though.
@@Treblaine Think the Queen tried? May be an old wives tail.
how do you continually manage to find subjects and titles that immediately grabs my attention and makes me think "hmm that sounds interesting". always quality content Tom and team, thank you
Excelent video. As a canadian I've been loving this series and hope you come back through my country again in the future.
This solution reminds me very much of the solution they have been trying to contain the, now radioactive, groundwater in Fukushima. In terms of method it's almost identical, although using different methods to reduces temperature; not to mention it might actually work up in Canada, due to the extremely cold temperatures. Anyways, thanks for the great video Mr. Scott & others!
Great video Tom. A story of multiple B'stards. The mining company directors and shareholders who were not compelled to lose their assets until the problem was fixed. The local and national Govt officials who were not compelled to lose their assets until the problem was fixed. And so on.
Remember folks, government regulations kill jobs, but lack of regulation kills all of humanity several times over...
I'm sure that there were plenty of government regulations in places, and the mining company followed them to the t.
@@deltasword1994 doubt it
@@kv4648 Mining regulations 50 years ago were nothing compared to today's standards. At the time literally nobody cared about the environment, nor the gobernment nor the people, so it was really easy to follow said regulations
@@thekramer1097 considering that just this year Rio Tinto blew up a 40000 year old indigenous site in Australia there has been less change than there should have been
@Rvxputïn Why
8 Billion of Gold
Bankrupt
1 Billion to cure
Not a bad deal, if they had done their preservation of the arsenic powder properly...
They did not make 8 billiosn in revenue. That's the value of 200,000kg of gold at 2018's gold price. The mine made $867 Millions in profit and payed $464 millions in taxes over its lifetime.
Recently discovered your channel, and I've got to say ,I love it. Interesting, well informed, and not opinionated. Just facts. Very well done indeed
"summer of 2020" - well that didn't age well
I didn't have "Arsenic Dust Cloud" on my 2020 Apocalypse Bingo card.
@@theoriginalshew I did should I be scared
The way they contain this stuff really giving me SCP vibes
As2O3 powder is *slightly* soluble, it happily sits ontop of the surface of water. It is also great fun to find out you got some in the lab . I've spent half a day unknowingly handling it...
200,000 tons make roughly 151,000 tons of metal, which could be stored in a roughly 30^3m cube. That's something I'd go out of my way to visit on an other continent.
Andreas Aristokrates look at with a telescope sitting on the moon?
that would be cool to make a giant cube out of it
I wouldn’t believe it was a dispatch from Canada if there weren’t a hockey analogy 🇨🇦
Finally someone said it! Hehe thx!
One thing I've always been curious about when watching Tom's videos is how all his travel is financed. Does RUclips pay that well for a channel of his size? Or is he being sponsored by someone, like a university or business? Inquiring minds want to know!
bonecanoe86 bit of everything.
I do wonder two
He made a park bench video on it a while ago, about the economics of youtube, but it's just generally a bit of ad revenue, sponsorship, and outside revenue like speeches, hosting and doing freelance tech work
As far I know he pays his travels mostly himself. He does also other things than only youtube. Check his web page.
I think Tom has mentioned before that he does conference speaking gigs, and those sometimes pay for the expensive parts of the travel. So he can extend his stay relatively cheaply and do his own videos with that extra time. It's also way less expensive to travel when it is your day job, since you can travel on the days that fewer other people want to travel so the rates are cheaper.
What a huge mess. Thanks for shedding light on this
I live in Yellowknife. Having this arsenic right next to my home is sometimes nerve racking lmao.
Wow, that would just be the worst luck if a bolide/meteor hit right around that area...
Wouldn't even be unlucky if some lunatic nuked one of those chambers.
Technically, I don't think bolides are allowed to "hit" anywhere on the planetary surface.
2020
n o
This feels incredibly ominous.
Super interesting! Did an entire project about this issue in one of my Environmental Studies classes.
Can it be reacted with something to make it less lethal or even inert?
Árni yer, I wonder about that. But a guess it's because it's in the rock layers too, so they can't get all of it.
No Arsenic and all of its compounds are toxic because the body mistakes it for phosphorus. Phosphorus in the form of phosphate is needed for all kinds op biochemical reactions, and arsenic (most likely as arsenate) interferes with those reactions by blocking the enzymes that facilitate these reactions. Think of it as a key that fits a keyhole but not quite good enough. Arsenate can also get used instead of phosphate in one of the steps of glycolysis (the breakdown of glucose) but the product is unstable and breaks down spontaneously, which causes the 'burning' of glucose to yield less energy then if a phosphates were to be used in that step
Garrison Fox Yes I know. But even if you precipitate it with something like lead or react it with sulphur, which gives very insoluble compounds overtime it will still leach out with groundwater. (The lead thing is an assumption btw) So i do beleave containment in a frozen box of rock is the best way for now.
I imagine the biggest problem is that there's just *so much of it*. It'd be hard to ensure you reacted all of the stuff, even if you had some really easy way to do that.
Maybe someday, we've got multiple ways of destroying PCBs into fairly harmless products and that was a nightmare chemical for many years.
I bet the ex CEOs of that company are still alive and CEOs of another company. They should still be liable for this. Put a lean on them and their million dollar home
(Facepalm) LIEN..........
You mean their multi million dollar houses, including but not limited to a hawaii vacation house in a tropical river gorge, a huge ranch in Arizona, an Aspen ski resort...
@@tomsoki5738 what about donald trump
@@pianochannel100 Jealous much? JAJAJAJAJAJA
@@tomsoki5738 that's not true
I lived most of my childhood in yellowknife and there wer times when the arsnic problem felt like our own Armageddon looming over everyone heads. Thanks giant mine very cool. Also the near by lake of great slave lake is still accessible to the public despite one of the most popular docks being very close to the mine. The sign that he showed in the video was for a lake that is in the heart of yellowknife itself that I believe is considered unsafe for separate reasons though I could be wrong. Didnt stop me from running in their and freezing my balls off one spring
PS the sign itself does specify aresnic apon rewatching and I remember there is a problem with many small ponds around trails being near leathal levels of arsnic. Fortunately said ponds already look gross enough to deter any people from drinking from them. Unfortunately the same can't be said about the dogs and wildlife
Hmm, I wonder if Tom ever made it to Britannia Beach. It's a place in BC, Canada where a remediation project like this has more or less played its part. There was some major acid rock drainage issues (basically, water leaching sulfur out of the rock and becoming acidic) in that mine, and then flowing out of the mine and into the environment - they sealed up most of the exits, and fed the other ones into a water treatment plant. Again, not a perfect solution, but it's effective and will remain so as long as the government maintains their policy about fixing the industrial mistakes we've made.
Plus, that one does have a time limit. Eventually all that rock will be weathered out, same as the rock that's naturally exposed on the surface of sulfide deposits, at which point the acid formation process will stop; a while after that, the water being drained from the mine will become neutralized, and the need for water treatment will stop.
Could they put some dissimilar metal structures in that pind from the mine and make a battery ?
Its probably grounded
So, between this and Asbestos, Canada has kind of a sh*tty history when it comes to industry and environmental protection, doesn't it?
history? *cough* tar-sands *cough*
The secret to Canada is that it is really, really big and hardly anyone lives here. So pollution can be politely ignored for the most part....
Superbun better than us
Oh you'll find stuff like this everywhere, in Denmark we have several millions tons of toxic dirt just left there by a company, not to mention former mines in which nothing can grow
Yeah, our laws are slighty better than the US's laws, but they're still kind of shite
Hey Tom, some time back i watched a Periodic videos video, and the professor said that all the gold in the world occupies a 20m cube. I calculated the weight of that cube and i got about 154000 tons. In your video you said about 200 thousand tons were extracted from the mine. I know the cube is a rough aprox. but the values are completely off. I dont know about gold extraction but that value is absurdly high. Love your videos and your channels. Cheers
He probably meant ounces
I'd love to see more videos about hazard containment - I think it illustrates really well the value of this work.
placer dome campbell mine had the same problem and got it cleaned up. it was moved back to the surface mill and put it through what is called an autoclave
How come they don't do anything like vitrification (collect the dust and then encase it in moltern glass), which is what they do to radioactive waste. Glass is really durable long term and makes a lot of sense for radioactive waste, and surely that less maintenance and as such less cost than dealing with these cooling pipes which lets not forget if they fail the arsenic will become dust again and be just as dangerous
there might just be to mutch, also moving the dust will probebly create dustclouds
999 gamerdude I don't know for sure, but here's my guess: there's just too much of it, and it gets away too easily during processing.
I looked at Hanford stats, and it looks like there's actually about 200,000 tons of that too. But it's in liquid form, so it's not going to fluff up into the air while being handled. And I'm guessing 200,000 tons of fine dust takes up a bunch more volume.
Another reason: they still have some hope of finding a way to make this stuff chemical innert. If they finally find that way, fine powder will probably be almost the optimal input format for that process, whereas glass blocks would be much harder to break down and chemically reprocess.
Here's an idea to make it inert:
Get the chemicals the body (and anything else you don't want it to be reactive with) is made out of and mix with a sample of arsenic.
If the product is inert, welldone.
if the product reacts with something, mix all the arsenic with that something.
Finally, it prefers to be bonded with this than the chemicals in your body, ie, it's inert. Welldone.
vitrification is very costly and would be near impossible on this scale... not to mention the added risk to workers to complete it.
The world is running out of sand to make glass. There is actually a sand mafia in China and sand gets stolen from beaches and rivers.
I live in Yellowknfe and I did a heritage project on giant mine
Could you possibly do a video on the geothermal center in Yellowstone if you get the chance?
What
I'm comfused by what you mean by "Yellowface"
William Roberts Iceland has a better geothermal system
Masked Smoke, but is it a time bomb?
I live in Yellowknife and was searching up Yellowknife on youtube but little did I know that TOM SCOTT has been here
So... with the correction to 200,000 kg (7,054,792 ounces) of gold that was extracted from Giant Mine. At today's (Feb. 2013) gold price of $2300/oz CDN, that would be $16,226,022,497 (or a tad over $16 billion) CDN.
And with inflation, it's probably gone up to 20B in the past 10 months...
So this is a problem because the mining company removed the rock above it?
Can't they just... put the rock back? Or, rather, use concrete?
Alternatively, if they've got these giant vats full of of arsenic dust, why not put them on trucks, bring them further north, where there IS permafrost, and bury them there?
I'm sure they thought this through and came to the most logical, cheapest, most effective solution, but I'd still be interested to know what the issues were with any possible alternatives.
Someone else mentioned how it being a dust means if its moved it can go up in a cloud(like flour i guess)
You can't just put rocks back, the permafrost has already melted, not to mention, it wouldn't be the same, there would be holes, and the would just be as bad as not putting rocks.
As for moving it, it's a fine dust, essentially, it's a toxic flour that would poison all of humanity of you mess up, better to not move it.
@@midnightgear2616 Aww. I was just looking up the capacity of the Space X Starship, and calculating how many launches it would take to send this mess to the moon.
@@peripheralarbor Your solution to a deadly, toxic dust is to put it on a rocket, which if fails will kill literally thousands of people, if not millions.... genius...
@@shawnpitman876 ever hear of a strange concept called a joke?
Hey, they use thermosiphons in Alaska (and some other places in the arctic) to keep the permafrost frozen year round around buildings as global warming is causing more and more issues because foundations get unstable when the permafrost starts to defrost in the summer. I think they also use them in Oak Ridge, TN to keep some pools of toxic waste frozen as well.
+Zzyzx Wolfe They use them in Fukushima to contain radio active water, not working too well there apparently.
@@dogphlap6749 sauce?
Mining company extracts 8 billion in resources and leaves 1 billion dollars worth of mess. When will these companies start paying the true cost.
Jonathan Fraser about 30 years ago. As he said in the video, this sort of thing doesn't happen anymore due to increased regulation. We're just stuck with the mistakes of the past.
Nah, this crap is still going on today. They make companies put money into a remediation fund but the fund is no where near large enough to clean up disasters, it's only there to restore the land with the expected level a damage. If there is a major disaster the companies still don't pay. The company will go bankrupt but the shareholders will have cashed out long before that.
The mine closed in 2004, I assume the regulation wasn't that different a decade ago, but they seem to have gotten away with not paying the billion dollar bill.
When you stop driving that gold-plated Ferrari, Mr Fraser.
If anyone thinks we're better today I've got a pipeline to sell you.
I see by that tag on the wall that you were on the 750 level. In 1975 I trammed on that level. Crazy job.
The solution could be Chem grouting / HaywardBaker does sodium glycol with diabasic Ester to stop erosion and stabilize soils particular sands and rock but will stabilize silts or atleast seal them from water as the chem grout does not breakdown from water. I have use this process many times for construction of drill shafts and MSE wall foundation stability. The material is fracked in but is a basic mix and pump material, then hardening will occur based on time and component percentages. Sometimes other disciplines can be the answer. Good luck as this could be your answer I hope.
...no pressure!
So wait, the taxpayers are paying to clean up this corporate's mess?
welcome to late stage capitalism
Would you rather no one cleans it up?
I love how you immediately ask a stupid question with an obvious answer.
+Shaunak De Makes sense. At the same time this sort of thing is arguably the purpose of a government
@@666Tomato666 But Canada is socialist.
So this system depends on having a thermal differential between the ground and the air, what happens when global warming comes along and fucks that up?
What Tom Scott doesn't say is that the gold was contained in arsenopyrite ore. So when the ore was processed, the arsenic oxide was the residue after processing. Given that arsenic can be used in solar cells, maybe the arsenic residue may be reclaimed for other uses in the future. Arsenic has uses in treating timber to make it termite resistant as well as other uses. Another example of arsenic poisoning was the aid schemes to dig wells or put in bores to get clean water in third world countries. Problem was the underground water in some areas had high levels of arsenic.
Apparently, Devon Great Consols, a former copper mine in England, has been cleaned up.
When I visited almost 60 years ago, there were arsenic minerals laying all over the site.
I wonder if they test the water?
If the freezing stops, couldn't the resulting thawing create cracks in the rock resulting in more water entering the Chambers?
200,000 tons of gold taken out in the 20th century? Isn't the world total of mined gold about 175,000 tons?
I think he meant to say 200,000 kg. Wikipedia says that 220,000 kg of gold were produced there.
Phil P
Makes sense. I figured he got it from the 200,000 tons of arsenic. Maybe some of each.
I noticed that as well. Besides, 200,000 tons of gold would be 8 trillion not 8 billion dollars worth.
8 trillion in the short system is 8 billion in the long system: 8.000.000.000.000 or 8*10^12
He's probably talking about the ore, not the pure metal.
Hmm! I am surprised there isn't a stable compound that Arsenic can't be made into. Might have to research this.
Like ferric arsenate?
I seriously wonder what future civilizations will think of places like this. When they're no longer being maintained, will there be big obelisks planted to ward off explorers?
YO I live here and I just realized Tom Scott has visited my home town.
How convenient for the board of directors of the mine. The mine goes bankrupt, no money left over to clean up, so it becomes the government's (and thus taxpayer's) problem. Meanwhile, the board of directors get millions of dollars and move on to another project.
How is this a solution? A billion + and will need to be serviced , maintained, powered forever?
Did you even watch the video? They said that's only a *temporary* solution and that they'll be funding research in the hopes that a more permanent solution arises
Whoa, hidden cost of Canadian gold coins right there
One of the best T.S. videos in ages
its fascinating that there are so many videos of tom with a hardhat on
Anyone else feel like this is a bit SCP feeling?
A lot of Tom's videos can be worked on to SCP material
Why this dont pop up on my sub?
The Student Official
RUclips is an ass.
RUclips changed the way the sub works, they keep making it worse than it already is. I think they changed it last week or so?
Sub feed is now *_optimized_* by YT giving you less say what you see
please make a video on the amazon warehouse robots, or just do a robot series - would be dope!!
The shocking thing about this is that in contrast to for example radioactive materials, nobody talks about it despite it arguably being even more dangerous.
Yet fossil fuel pollution kills millions of people per year, and no one talks about that.
And people still think nuclear waste is the problem...
hi this is the future, we decided environmental concerns can be put on hold everytime the political parties switch, so we're probably making the same mistakes
I didn't have "Arsenic Dust Cloud" on my 2020 Apocalypse Bingo card.
" *I DECLARE BANKRUPTCY.....!!* "
It's already end of 2021, what's with that project now, Tom?
So how cold is this in units, canada?
Aboot a hockey rink 3:08
200,000 tons of gold is 400,000,000 pounds, meaning the price in today’s (US) Dollars would be 8 TRILLION dollars, not 8 billion. I think Tom meant to say they mined 200,000 POUNDS of gold, not tons.
luke sumberg 200,000kg of gold according to Wikipedia.
Gordon Richardson that makes more sense, he must of just misspoke
Why dont they reuse the arsenic? Just get a couple hundredthousand tons of gallium and you never run out of GaAs / circuit material. :D
Arsenic Trioxide is very hard to process because it's oxidized and already released a ton of energy. It made the gold extraction process very easy. What you're suggesting is what they do now when they produce gold. A more energy intensive process, but without the lethally toxic byproduct.
It looks like 50,000 tones are produced annually for other uses (per wikipedia). This is 4 years worth of global production. I'm somewhat disappointed that instead of freezing it they don't just subsidize it's acquisition by legitimate users instead.
200,000 tons of gold? I think you're getting those pesky numbers mixed up mate.
kind of surprised mining companies dont have to kick in to a remediation fund as they are mining. Build their fund large enough to cover any mess they leave behind. Either they clean it up or we clean it up. After the site passes inspection they can have any unused funds back.
All this to store Pharoah's shinies.
“We’re going to use a technology called thermosiphon technology and it’s basically a technology...”
Isn't there a small percent of people who can smell arsenic?
it has no taste or smell when dissolved in water. everyone can smell arsenic trioxide dust in the air, it smells like garlic
They can, but only once
Hugo Iwata hahaha
but only once.
Angelika Ichticola they can. But just once
Haha if you look on Google maps Great Mine is tagged a a three out of five Tourist Attraction. Two stars for lethal levels of arsenic :)
On the topic of nwt canadian mining towns, you should do a video on pinepoint, the town that dissapeared. Super interesting!
Would locking the dust in polymers like plastic or resin be an option?
Finely mixing the arsenic into the mixture so that the only way that escapes is by actual grinding down of the material, but encasing that mixture in pure polymer and sealing away this statue of arsenic underground?
Possibly reuse the underground chambers system that is currently holding the frozen arsenic?
That option is not on the table. The Arsenic dust is already sealed in the empty chambers, and even if it wasn't attempting to mix two hundred thousand tons of one of the most toxic materials on the planet with different Plastics would disturb it end more than likely deliver a dose of arsenic to the local population
Everyone’s pop bottles made into a polymer and encase the. Area
Corporations are only the friends of their stock holders. Everyone else, not so much.
Lacombe57 do you work for one?
that's why I own stocks - you can never have too many friends
Generated billions of dollars and 200,000 tonnes of toxic waste, then went bankrupt and left someone else to clear up the mess. Classic negative externalising right there.
Capitalism at its finest!
arsenic is toxic under any economic system
Ferb, I think I know what we’re gonna do today!
If you're in Canada you should do a video on Point Roberts, an exclave of the USA only accessible by going through Canada
This is incredible. Look all the work to be done after mining, for ever! At least with the technology we have nowadays. Lot of work, energy, and money to fix something the companies who profit with the mining won't ever fix. Devastating.
I thought it was going to talk about the Fukushima solution where they are freezing the ground as well. But that's way worse because heat cannot be dissipated into atmosphere there.
So I shouldn't use it as sugar?
Tom, love the videos! Started watching during furlough. Thank you! So many cool videos!!!
Are those just very big heat pipes?