@awellculturedmanofanime1246not just that, dams collect all the sediment from upriver so they slowly get shallower and shallower. You can remove the sediment but it's very costly and not economically viable.
The old picture of the village with the church being on top of a hill overlooking the village makes the intro with the top of the church tower sticking out of the sludge extra dark
I wonder how they keep up with it raising 1m/year? Are they „just“ raising the dam? I mean at some point you can’t raise the dam any higher. Be it because physics or just because you run out of area that could be raised.
When I first saw the cross in the middle of the lake, I thought, "Why would they build that there?" Then I learned the truth, and I thought, "Oh, f-word!"😵💫
It is still terrible, but I think they exaggerate everything. The fluid is only on the surface, the lower parts probably already became rock solid. You even see cracks in the sludge. That acidity is also exaggerated or else this church should have been sank down in the lake if its walls were dissolved. Same as that metal cross from the cemetery still standing. That measured ph is on the surface. And why would it become more acid if the flow in the lake stops? His explanation is not sufficient: no ph-regulator he says but there will also be not new acid. If enough matter is dissolved in sulphuric acid, it becomes water with sediments.
@duudsuufd I get the instinct to question dramatic framing - RUclips loves exaggeration. But the chemistry here isn’t hype. A few clarifications: Tailings don’t become harmless “rock solid” at depth. Sulfide tailings continue reacting with oxygen and water. That’s how acid mine drainage forms. It doesn’t stop just because the bottom compacts. The church spire and metal cross still standing doesn’t disprove acidity. They’re mostly above the slurry and not continuously submerged. Corrosion depends on immersion and exposure, not just pH numbers. Acid doesn’t need to be “added” to keep forming. Sulfuric acid is generated internally when sulfide minerals (like pyrite) oxidize. That reaction can continue for decades. Sulfuric acid doesn’t just “turn into water with sediment” once enough material dissolves. Instead, you get acidic, metal-rich solution that can remain reactive long-term. That’s standard acid mine drainage behavior worldwide. On the pH regulator point: lime used in flotation can provide buffering. If fresh material containing residual lime stops entering the basin, acid generation can continue while buffering decreases - meaning pH can drop further. That’s not dramatic speculation; it’s geochemistry. It’s fine to question tone. But the underlying chemistry and the risks of sulfide tailings aren’t controversial in mining science.
Probably not dissolved (sulfuric acid isn't nearly as corrosive as stated in the video, especially at those concentrations ... let alone to flesh: ie it's much more corrosive to iron or steel than flesh, and even that would only dissolve slowly ... it would sting like lemon juice on open cuts or mucus membranes, though). It's significantly weaker than stomach acid, both in pH and due to the lack of enzymes (the stuff that actually denatures proteins and lipids is the enzymes, the acid is a catalyst). Anyway, that village is more likely preserved below the water (sludge) line, like a toxic time capsule, except for iron or steel ... and any zinc roofing (lead roofing material as well as wood/thatch material would largely remain intact with a protective lead sulfate coating, and the wood and plant material would be preserved due to the acid + toxic metal content preventing decay). Most of the masonry would also be pretty resistant to the acid. (stone and brick would be highly resistant, and the mortar, cement, or concrete present would be fairly resistant as well, as the calcium content would still tend to form calcium sulfate, which is almost insoluble in water, and even less soluble in dilute sulfuric acid and in sulfate salt solutions due to common ion effect). It'd be a biological dead zone due to the ph being too low for most microorganisms, plants, animals, or fungi to survive, though, hence the preservative effect on all the wood and plant material there. The village would be much less dissolved and much more petrified.
I was thinking "at least it's a localised disaster" until you told me a _single dam_ stands between the valley of sulferic acid and the entire Danube ecosystem. That dam feels way to close to capacity for comfort!
I'm really concerned about what happens after it's full. Unless someone keeps dumping lime into it after the mine will inevitably need to be shut down, it will just corrode through, killing literally everything
Never mind it being full. If it gets hit by the right storm and right flood at the right spot that earth damn could very give way. Come to think of it what happens if the ph acidity levels keep rising and one day dissolves the very earthen dam walls or any ground or bed rock underneath it? It could very well be that the bottom of the acid lake valley is dissolving as we speak.
A sword eternally hovering above head only threatens one man. A large but weak wall on the edge of collapsing however concerns everyone and forces their servitude.
Wait so is there really truly no way to fix this? Can't you bury the toxic solids? And then dilute the acid with a base and then bury it so deep under ground the water table is above it? It makes sense to me at least and we are capable of digging that deep
I know right! The level is rising so much faster than I realised. It took me about 20 minutes to even find the tip of the spire with the drone, it's so small now.
It's very possible the church is dissolving into the sludge and sinking rather than the level increasing that fast. Like the video talks about, a lake of battery acid will eat up most things humans use for construction. A lot of the common building materials like limestone, sandstone, cement, and concrete are all pretty bad at lasting in acidic environments. For accuracy you'd want to measure against the dam actually, but that kind of documentation is really boring. The dam is most likely slowly dissolving, but since it's a concrete gravity dam it's just a solid hill of concrete that's going to be very hard to dissolve, especially if the PH is at least somewhat regulated.
@ajjdgj6tmgedvnmtmek there is no chance of anything dissolving in there. Even for limestone it would take ages to get spongy and then "dissolve". The pond is still in full use -- that is the rising level of sludge. They pump around 1.5cbm per second in there ... by pipeline as sludge tankers.
@ajjdgj6tmgedvnmtmek I worry that, because the pH regulator is in the inflow, the pH at the other end of the impound is much less affected by it. The liberation of sulphuric acid is a continuing process as the sulphides react with the water and air (and acid). Assuming that the dam is on that opposite end from the inflow, the tailings at that end will be 'older' and have liberated more acid while having a lower concentration of lime. The inflow was mentioned as 14,000 tonnes per day (am I remembering that right?). Wikipedia tells me that the impound was 130 hectares 11 years ago and 90 meters deep. After some math with many zeroes, I find that if the inflow were as dense as water it would raise the level 10.8mm per day. After year that's just under 4 meters. Which is a lot. I'm guessing that inflow is denser than water because it contains a high concentration of solids and dissolved minerals, but for taking the lowest density and getting a result with a higher volume gives us at least a upper limit quantity. Also the surface area is probably a good fraction larger than it was in 2015. Wikipedia also mentions there's a horror game based on the lost village. It's from Chainwolf Studio.
Not the issue of the poeple in power I guess, especially not when they're old. Basically like all things. I don't care because I'm old, when somethings happening I'm dead already or rich enough to move away
The substance will spill over the dam and the government will inevitably have to take that substance out of there at any way possible, meaning...the disastre is going to happen sooner or later..
@FighterofGDthey are not even old, they're just dumb and incompetent. And they stay in power because their relatives put them in power, and the law cant take them down.
So, playing around on Google Earth. I found there's a pond on the south edge of the mine called Lacul Toxicomiei. It's listed as a swimming lake... I think Google is trying to kill me.
@teslasharkit's a pond that wasn't there before the mine, not really a lake either. I think somebody named that place on Google, I can't find it on normal maps.
Seing that spill just randomly be in the forrest made my jaw drop. That's some pollution so old fashioned that you'd expect whoever is resposible wears an extremely long extremily elaborate beard.
If you go to Romania outside București and Cluj, you'll see that it's largely still living in the 1940s, or even even earlier. And I don't say this as an insult, I love Romania and its people, but over a century of mismanagement and oppression by every government has caused extreme damage to the nation, both its nature and society.
well, the "upside" i guess, is that every cm the levels rise, the surface increases, so unless they increase the rate of inflow, there should be a natural "slowing down" of the rising of the surface levels. Which would make the heightening of the dam more efficient with every meter you raise it.
Come to Brazil and take a look at the places that were swept away by chemical sludges from one of those mining reservoir dams that collapsed recently (Mariana, 2015, and Brumadinho, 2019). The absurdity of what happened here may be comparable to what happened in Romania.
It's still so hard to believe it happened twice. You'd expect a disaster like that to leave enough of a mark that people would never allow it to happen again, but it did, only 4 years later and less than 100km away.
You know it's bad when the Berkeley Pit, one of the most notorious Superfund sites, is being used as an example of comparatively "responsible" tailings management. 😬
Well, at least the dam is probably in good order, and wasn't built as cheaply as possible decades ago, and isn't already nearly at capacity judging by some of those shots. ...Right?
It is probably an aged neglected piece of crap. Besides the acidic sludge is still being poured in. What's stopping it from dissolving the ground and bedrock underneath it? Sure they can dilute it for now but one day the scales will inevitably tip.
@raymondhuxley2742 And the media and everyone in charge over there will be like: "Oh no, how could this happen?". Then there will be a long discourse of how they could have prevented it, how to learn from past mistakes. Until the next disaster waiting to happen strikes eventually. Surely the next generation will handle it somehow, I guess.
@HansWurst-lg1wsyou just summed up exactly how govt at all levels works. They know the problem but it's just not in anyone budget. Even if they had twice our taxes and twice the budget. Problems like this are never in the budget. Someone else's problem in charge down the road. We really need to redo how we let people govern us. Or is it too late?
I am Romanian and have settled in the UK over 17 years ago. I left Romania because living in my own country felt like a losing battle. It pains me to watch this video because it is so accurate of my experience of living there. Yeah, fixing this mess is pretty much impossible, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be mitigated if anyone ever cared to prevent an ecological mess. Here for the Romanian Government a 10 step actionable plan: 1. Reinforce the dam with external structural supports and secondary containment walls. 2. Install continuous pH, pressure, and seepage monitoring sensors across the dam. 3. Construct emergency overflow channels to redirect excess sludge safely. 4. Add controlled lime dosing stations upstream to stabilise acidity spikes. 5. Build downstream sediment traps to capture heavy metals during minor leaks. 6. Create evacuation and response plans for all downstream communities. 7. Install early warning sirens and automated alert systems along the river. 8. Secure EU emergency funding for dam reinforcement and monitoring upgrades. 9. Legally require independent engineering audits every six months. 10. Begin designing a long term secondary tailings site to reduce future load.
@LTD99649And? We wouldn't know so much about human anatomy or how certain diseases work if the Holocaust had never happened, but I doubt you'd put up a fuss over people vilifying THAT.
@defenestradoraright but you’re saying that ALL mines are owned by liars, whilst hypocritically using a device that is created by such supposedly deplorable process/industry
And I would add a sprinkling of bureaucrats, politicians and public servants into the mix. It sounds like the perfect way to get rid of thousands of them. The plus side, we get "green" energy, as they would say.
i was thinking, you could probably shut off the stream of polution perfectly, while keeping on releasing the stabiliser .. but .. of course then no mining operation would pay for adding it .. so .. at least require a way higher addition of stabiliser .. so that there would be plenty NOT to dissolve the dam when haltering operations? just look at Ukraine, suddenly the tjernobil site was near war teratory .. this is a terrosims risk! that dam needs survieullance that nobody would try to let it leak delliberatly !
@JeroenJA All of it is nonsense, that's why he did not explain it. The acidity would drop on its own with time, as long as they stop the mining operation. No stabilizer is needed for what is already in the lake, only for the acidic sludge running into it. PH of the "lake" would gradually move towards 7, if everything is left alone. (because of rain and mixing with surrounding material) Would take decades but it is not an eternal problem. The problem is that the mine is operational.
0:50 the contrast between the stunningly filmed intro with an amazing soundtrack that perfectly sets the scene, and the stupidly cheery WOEIT intro lmfao
For a visual aid of what a collapse might look like I recommend anyone to look up the Mariana and Brumadinho tailigs dams collapses in Brazil in 2015 and 2019, respectively. It wasn't nearly as toxic because they were both iron tailngs dams and not copper, but it was still massively deadly and an environmental disaster. And yes both mines are still open and Vale, the company that fully owns one mine and jointly owns the other is still doing perfectly fine as one of the world's largest mining companies and number global producer of iron specifically. Oh, and they also have other dams with structural issues and at risk of collapse around the region.
Villagers far back in time: - We'll build the church and cemetery high up so even if they would fill our valley with acidic sludge, it'd be fine The industrial society: - Hold my sour ale
To be fair, when suspended inside a liquid, a building can hold up with a LOT less structural integrity then in open air. By open air standards, we might describe these bricks as 'completely destroyed', with a human being able to crush them with bare hands, but within a liquid they only need to be able to hold their form under the weight of what little sticks out over the water. There are no currents or wind, so the only pressure on the structure is from above.
"..the valley it sits in has become a *horrific chemical scar that will outlast everyone watching this video."* Seems like this is becoming a common theme in "civilization".
genuine question, wouldnt it be possible to continue a flow of lime (as a pH- regulator) into the lake, while stopping the mine? this way, the pH in the lake is at least kept stable but no new sludge would be added.
You'd have to be prepared to pump massive quantities of lime every year, create ways to circulate it, and continue doing it for like 100 years. You can re-evaluate your dosing after the 100 year mark. (Not sure on the time scale; I might be under-estimating it!)
Seeing the Berkeley Pit get a green check mark for safety is hilarious. And hilariously sad. The bar really is in the basement for safety when it comes to tailings
Montana has a water treatment system Romania don't. They already polluted all these rivers in 2000 with the Baia mare gold mine cyanide spill. To be honest I hope this breach and pollute Romania. Maybe they'll wake up.
@JohnJ-p7odude clearly states how huge swaths of europe would be affected through the danube 10s of millions of people would be put in danger and amything in the danube would die the black sea would probably barely survive but sure let's hope it happens so that people, plants and animals that had no say in this have to suffer and die
@canifer5546 And anyone within the region too. It's pretty rough. Could obviously be worse though given the video, so at least it's not that level of terrible
Imagine if there was some kind of use for this sludge. Like to make some other product. Then some big corporation would swoop in and clear this up in a year.
I bet there is something we could make out of this but making your own sludge on site is probably cheaper than transporting this one. Our best bet is probably some kind of construction use. I mean, there's lime in it right? What if some kind of special cement could be made.
@ramonNoodles21it does but remember that water vapor that we know as steam is not real steam, True to name, real steam is not visible, it's a transparent gas, only in such a form it can be used to move turbines that then generate power. I doubt we can heat up water to such high temperatures with just acid-water reaction.
I find the argument why the inflow can't be shut off not very convincing; They could just keep pumping in the PH regulator without additional sludge? Practically that should be trivial to do, the only reason it ain't done is because it would cost money.
The current arbitrary pumping system is also less effecient at mixing in the pH regulator than an intentional process. Also, knowing almost nothing about acids, it seems to me that you could just keep raising the pH of the acid until it was no longer acid. Acid can't dissolve things forever.
There is also no way the ph regulator reaches the sludge packed against the dam, since it’s basically solid ground. So the whole dam dissolving argument is unconvincing too
So keep neutralizing it. At some point even the sludge will be exhausted. Neutralizing/filtering water and then pumping it out of the reservoir would be costly but also reduce pressure on the dam. I don't know the area well enough to know if additional dams could be built downstream to create those neutralizing/filtering places. Note that by filtering I mean removing pollutants, which might actually mean precipitating them out of the water, which might happen naturally when they neutralize the acids, which could then hopefully be collected, dried and stored more safely before processing. I know this is hugely expensive, but still. I don't live anywhere near there but I've seen documentaries about this place more than once.
So, uuh.... Close the mine, but keep pumping a new mixture that controls the PH and helps the heavy minerals sink to the bottom, then you add a closed loop system that sucks the water up, treats it, and pumps it back out, and you keep this running for the next 100 years. Probably won't solve the problem, but it'll containt it and make it more manageable for the future? I dunno, I'm just horrified and trying to think of anything at all that could be done.
I think "pumping" is not what actually happens; it's more like "let's dump some waste into the nature". The issue with this - from what I understand - is that the acid isn't neutralized completely. Sulfuric Acid has a PH under 1, the lake is said to be at 2 or roughly below that. You could probably also dump sodium hydroxide into this, but the amount of material this needs is just beyond good and evil and it's not exactly harmless either in the concentrations required.
@BeX32210 if you just add sodium hydroxide it would be wildly exothermic and would boil wherever you pump it in from. It would also produce a lot of steam that would splatter sludge everywhere. If the metallic sulphur compounds are Sulfides it would also produce Hydrogen sulphide gas that would spill over the dam and you really don’t want that. If you add it slowly enough that could all be mitigated, but lime is both cheaper, safer to handle and would create a less salty end result (since the end result calcium sulphate is way less water soluble than sodium sulphate) so if there is any runoff after the treatment it would be (slightly) less harmful.
Fiindca a repetat de multe ori, cum probabil asa a facut si pentru Ceausescu. De exemplu iti dai seama ca nu repetase de multe ori cum se pronunta Apuseni cand a s-a cacat in ea de pronuntie si a zis-o cum a crezut-o. Totusi un video foarte bun.
"Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money." - Cree Indian Proverb
That is depressing and horrifying to see at the same time. Thank you for raising awareness about this. Though if you do plan to visit more toxic waste sites and stand next to inputs streams coating you with dust from it, can I suggest respirators and other clothing next time? It would be great if your channel stuck around for a long time.
Haha fair. I genuinely didn't realise it was being spat out so violently! I initially filmed a section while staying in the car but it looked awful so I got out
@WhatOnEarthIsThisThing You have a drone camera. It's okay to look before you walk .. and if it doesn't look good, to give your voiceover from a safe location while the drone risks its existence to give us the cool footage.
Emphasizes "Everything below the surface is dissolved into the same sludge" (Shows footage of all the structures, the steeple, and trees, that clearly aren't floating/fallen over). As a sulfuric acid reporter, and knowing anything about it's use in industry, you should know its very strong but still needs a ton of agitation to react with other liquids and powders. Those objects are infinitely more solid than anything we dissolve in industry, and there is no stirring happening, quite the opposite considering all the stuff settling out and the water evaporating off the top.
Yeah, that disappointed me. It's bad enough how it is in reality, no need to exagerate. If anything, that downplays the real danger since people will look at the lake and see less damage than they expect
This needs clarification. It makes me question what else isn't right. Also, if it is so much worse than Cyonide, why would he be right next to it? At least clarify that it doesn't get airborne.
@CyberPhil2000He said its worse but didnt really state why. Yeah if you jump in you die but that sounds about the same as cyanide. He didnt say a thing about the water table despite this stuff being "so corrosive it will dissolve the dam if we stop"
9:00 The Berkeley Pit is definitely not an example of a normal or responsible mining operation. The pit is filled with highly acidic water caused by acid rock drainage (ARD).
@etienne8110granite dissolves and the church will dissolve the rest of the way soon after it becomes fully submerged but it's probably only partially dissolving so far due to the constant supply of lime being pumped in.
20:45 yes but sadly the shitty Canadian company and our corrupt government still try to apply pressure on the locals to leave, they didn't give up, they just got more sneaky.
@dherman0001 well seeing that in the past there have been many instances of mining in Appalachia, is it too hard to believe that contaminated water, eg, 'toxic runoff', may be a problem?
@dherman0001 Rock Creek, West Virginia: A major site of concern is the Massey Energy (now Alpha Natural Resources/Contura Energy) impoundment behind Marsh Fork Elementary School, containing roughly 2.8 billion gallons of coal slurry. Martin County, Kentucky: Site of the 2000 Martin County Coal Corp slurry spill, which released over 300 million gallons of toxic sludge into the Big Sandy River watershed, considered one of the worst environmental disasters in the Eastern US. Kanawha County, West Virginia: A 2014 spill at a processing facility released over 100,000 gallons of coal slurry into Fields Creek. Mud River, West Virginia: The Hobet 21 site has been associated with high selenium contamination, with pollution affecting fish populations up to 20-30 miles downstream. Rawl, Lick Creek, and Merrimac, West Virginia: Communities affected by slurry injected into abandoned underground mines, which contaminated local water supplies. Wise County, Virginia: Acid mine drainage is specifically noted to flow from MTR mines into Looney Creek. Environmental and Health Impact Contaminated Water: Slurry ponds and injection into old mines release heavy metals (arsenic, lead, manganese) into drinking water, exceeding EPA standards. Health Hazards: Communities report "slurry syndrome," including diarrhea, rashes, kidney stones, and birth defects linked to contaminated water. Aquatic Destruction: Leakage and spills from these sites have killed fish and contaminated hundreds of miles of streams in Kentucky and West Virginia. Toxic Components: The slurry is a byproduct of washing coal with water and chemicals, resulting in a sludge containing coal dust, clay, and toxic metals such as chromium and nickel. Catastrophic Failures: Dams holding these huge quantities of waste have broken, causing massive environmental disasters, such as the 2000 Martin County, KY spill of 306 million gallons, which was 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill. All of these sites are still toxic, all dams are temporary, no idea if your position is out of ignorance or incompetence, but it makes you look like a shill.
Early 2000s a Romanian gold mine accumulated a massive amount of highly toxic swamp like this sludge, and after a heavy snowing winter, during spring melting the swamp lake wall collapsed wiping out a huge part of the Tisza river ecosystem.... That was probably 1/100 or 1/1000 the size of swamp compare to this stuff.....
I live relative close to a town in Serbia through which Tisa flows through, and every year, there used to be an "event" where the river would "flower" (red algae overgrowth). I wonder if it's caused by the slugde from the gold mine you mentioned.
We have an alumina mining tailings dam in Ireland with a similar type of risk although it is not quite at this level. It’s called Aughinish Alumina and the RUclipsr Kev Collins did a good video on it.
@Redsauce101 well it is a mountain of sulfuric acid. Is there any better solution than lime? Or would you have to dump some shitty hydroxides into it, which would also be horrible...
@peppybocan If there's a mountain's worth of acidic substance, then it's going to take an equivalent mountain of base to neutralise it. Even then, you still have two mountains worth of toxic sludge to deal with.
We're at a point where we can play a WOEIT guessing game before each video. Will it be: "What on earth is this? 🤔" "What on earth is this? 😂", or "What on earth is this? 💀"
Thanks for making this video. Wow, mining is so bad. And poorly done mining is terrible. Why can't they stop the flow but instead put in a solid lye to neutralize the acid? I'd love to see an interview with a chemist or engineer to go through the hypotheticals of cleaning this up.
Copper-Gold sulphide deposit eh? A lot of these also significant arsenic (As) present, not just trace amounts.. Enough to still be in the concentrate and when it is heated in the smelters turns into arsine gas (AsH3). And not just the primary smelter to make anode copper, but when that goes into secondary smelting to make cathode copper they can still produce arsine. Oh, and did you hear that arsenic is more toxic to humans than originally thought? The tox data used was based on testing on rats which have a higher tolerance to it than humans... I'm happier working in Public Transport, those first years of my career in environmental consulting to mining and smelting was eye opening.
Its not on the same scale, but here in Redding California we have a nasty old mine that is a superfund cleanup site. If I'm not mistaken some of the drainage is some of the most acidic water on earth
I’ve almost become inured to the dread manifest from learning of all the problems in the world I can’t do anything about. However, learning of problems no one can solve keeps the dread alive and kicking
By the way, during the cyanide disaster on the tisza, the lake tisza reservoir mostly evaded the pollution by getting closed in time. When the wave passed it, they relased water back into the river itself to "wash" it down faster. Also if anyone is interested in similar disasters, i recommend looking into the red mud disaster in hungary. I remember seeing it reported on tv as a child, it was horrific stuff.
16:16 Great shot and camera movement! It took me quite a while to realize - in shock - that his is NOT a gray-filtered shot, but the true color of the place. Very powerful picture.
If the pH stabilizers in the sludge are needed to stop the whole thing from eating the dam, what will happen when they stop pumping the sludge in? I mean, that dam didn't look like it was going to be able to hold another 50 m of height.
Romanian people are probably left holding the bag of toxic waste after the mine closes. Maybe they can get some EU funding to mitigate this disaster, but that's not a problem for the currently benefiting corrupt officials
In South Africa there is an issue with Acid Mine Drainage from the water filling and running through the old gold mines, the issue is the acidity of the water dissolving the minerals out of the rock in the empty mines. There was a company that offered to neutralise the metal rich acid draining from the mine shafts and recovering the dissolved metals leaving clean fresh water. The South African government wanted to charge the company for the disposal of the fresh water which made it uneconomical and the proposal collapsed. Now they are sitting with acidic metal containing water leaching into the ground.
Exactly as i proposed: Sell it to some capitalist company! If there is ANY way to extrakt resources and thus profit from it, capitalism will. Unironically. I think for exaple: Ok there are gigatons of already presolved metals in it ? GREAT! Free money. Also it's one huge reservoir of free sulfuric acid ? GREAT ! Etc. Even if they dont completely clean up, they would already remove several layers of problems.
Does the dam grow? I mean, at some point this thing will be full and either overflowing or breaking the dam just from the mass the liquid in the tailings has. Also, wouldn't it be possible to just stop pumping the tailings in their and continue with the base? This whole thing is just a disaster waiting to happen. At least try to prevent it from reaching any major river in case of a catastrophe.
I've been wondering the same thing. Would the base perhaps not be able to mix properly into such a large volume, if it isn't already pre-dissolved in other acid at a smaller scale? I'm not sure, but this feels like the kind of problem that should have a research department exclusively dedicated to it until it's solved.
@CLethe the thing is, I dont know how the force of the tailings spreads. Its a bit complicated. But yes, the force exerted on the dam could be larger than just the liquid.
Excellent video. If you're interested in another mining related ecological disaster. The Mount Lyell copper mine in Queenstown, Tasmania Australia. The mine operators pumped all their tailings directly into the Queen's River for over 80 years. They built tailings dams in the 90's to contain the waste. To this day the river is dead down to the DNA level.
The silly part is...keeping this going as is means that the bomb is growing each year. And you know what will happen the second the mine stops being productive - the company will declare bankruptcy and someone will have to keep the pH regulators flowing or watch it go pop
@emp_zealothYou don't even know what you're saying, you are so stupid that even when confronted by the results of Marxist Leninist policy you still blame capitalists. Marxist Leninism is fantastic when you ignore everything bad and just look at the positives. You'd make a great person to hunt down counter revolutionarys
i feel like the biggest question remains unanswered: the sludge level seems to almost reach the top of the dam, if it rises by a meter per year, looks like the dam doesnt even need to fail, its going to overflow soon anyways
Reminds me of Mariana dam in Brazil, also a mining waste dam. It collapsed a few years ago, we are still dealing with the after effects It's always amazing to witness the birth of a dragon.
This is orders of magnitude worse, not only the compounds stored on Mariana were relatively low in toxicity, this is vastly larger and absolutely deadly.
@vvm-mg Never said it was worse, only that it reminded me. Of my comment, what may be more useful to you is to check how fast it travelled to the sea, a real example (case study) of how it could happen and damages, and how the lack of contingency plans made it only worse.
I watched the Faultline video on this a while back and while the editing and presentation of that was phenomenal, your video was explained in a wonderfully clear way and really helped me understand how the whole mining part works so much better (and the WOEIT humour keeps being fantastic without losing sight of the real horror of this disaster)
I actually thought I was watching that video again until the intro kicked in, but my brain also told me 'that's not the right voice for Faultline' so it completely threw me.
12:44 King Michael I of Romania and Queen Elizabeth II were third cousins, both being great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria. They shared a close familial bond, with King Michael attending her wedding in 1947. Additionally, King Michael was a second cousin of Elizabeth's husband, Prince Philip.
uk here can i add to the family line the health of king charles iii is down to the above statement inter breeding keeping the blood royal was the down thing charles was the product of this as explained above history is written in the family tree look where phillip come from same saga keep blood royal so the result ciii is now failing so is royal blood
@panzerbanz7296Stop writing idiotic things! Analyzing your profile picture, you weren't even in the project phase at that time so you can't talk about communism or socialism! Learn the difference between them! I was born and grew up under Ceausescu and I know what I'm talking about! His goal was a "Multilaterally Developed Scientific Socialist Society", not Communism! Read his books and the and the reports of the congresses of the Romanian Communist Party!
Having grown up in southwest New Mexico right down the river from Phelps Dodge open pit copper mine as soon as I heard you say copper mine I knew it was goin to be bad. That shit is the worst stuff ever, nothing can live in it, falling into or coming in contact with the sludge is a death sentence. Everything from bees and butterflies to deer and cattle are killed in a slow and agonizing grey sludge bath. The first year I moved to my dad’s ranch a thunderstorm dropped record amounts of rain that forced the tailings pond up river to spill over and send mountains of grey death racing down the valley. I remember National Guard troops and engineers working for months cleaning up and covering up an environmental disaster of biblical proportions and that was in the US with all of the rules and regulations of the EPA to deal with. I can only imagine how bad it would be if something similar happened to this operation.
I think you need to compose a second channel jingle for these sorts of episodes. The content is great and definitely worth sharing, but your jovial, upbeat jingle is pretty jarring!
For those wondering about how close the tailings are to the top of the dam, and think that they will reach the top of the dam soon, it is helpful to clarify. This type of dam is not built to final height at the beginning like a water dam. Instead, the height of the dam keeps getting increased as more material is added. So the tailings won't reach the top of the dam - the company will increase the height of the dam.
@adamofblastworks1517 Nothing goes on forever, but if delaying the cleanup is cheaper than actually doing the cleanup it could take a looong time to get fixed.
The only way to fix this sludgy acid bath is to use sodium hydroxide or lime. That would neutralize the sulfuric acid, yielding mostly harmless sulfates, and raise the pH to more tolerable levels. Once that is accomplished, one might add sodium phosphate to precipitate out the copper, aluminium, and iron in the aqueous solution. Even then, you still have a metric fkton of precipitate to dredge out, alongside other undissolved stuff. Fixing this would be almost unacceptable in terms of cost, but the cost of this damn failing is even worse...
Amazingly real, not neatly packaged, and courageous of you. You went on site and presented the straight facts, even risking your health to show many aspects of the story, physical and historical. Thank you for caring about this beautiful planet.
The money for the solution is in the problem. Those tailings are probably full or rare earth minerals. Those don't tend to be processed because it's so environmentally disastrous. Since the disaster is already there, a processing facility could be made that results in remediation. A broke Romania gets to keep producing copper while making even more money out the tailings. Instead of spending billions of dollars to clean it up, they could be making billions getting it cleaned while creating local economic activity and jobs.
somehow you gave credence to my own comment without me knowing much about the sludge at all "i don't think it is useless, eventually we might be able o use the sludge and create a whole new ecological disaster"
@istoppedcaring6209 Halfway. My suggestion is that the tailings from the runoff contain critical minerals and that the processing to get those would fund the clean up and keep the jobs.
Sell it to some capitalist company! If there is ANY way to extrakt resources and thus profit from it, capitalism will. Unironically. I think for exaple: Ok there are gigatons of already presolved metals in it ? GREAT! Free money. Also it's one huge reservoir of free sulfuric acid ? GREAT ! Etc. Even if they dont completely clean up, they would already remove several layers of problems.
i mean, this story is going a bit deeper than just an environmental disaster... Geamăna is (based on its hungarian name, which is Szászavinc - "szász" literally means "Saxon") was a german majority inhabited village, and during Ceaușescu "Systemisation" program (durign which this mine was opened) ethnic minority regions (most notably hungarian areas, but germans, ukranians etc. were not safe either) were basically designated for forced relocation, and (as Geamana itself standing as a perfect example) systematic destruction. Ceausescu literally used he's industrialization plans to actually try to commit a forced cultural assimilation/cultural genocide (read: think about what Chian does in Xinjiang as an example, so less death camps and more forced reeducation, banned use of minority language, forced relocations into areas where theres absolutely nobody from the minority culture, cultural porsecution etc.) and erase every minority's past existence from the region, which back in the 80's actually resulted A LOT of international backlash (and only he's death prevented most of he's plans comming to pass). This ecology disaster didnt happened by accident or neglect on Ceausescu's part, Geamana as a village was a historical note which had no place in he's version of Romania, so it was burried under toxic sludge... MANY villages and towns would have faced a similar fate in Transylvania if he had just 1 more decade to carry he's rampage out (and im not saying any of it against the romanians, im blaming a madman very specifically, the romanians did exactly what they had to do with him when they had the opportunity)...
Yes, we did! We've set up the requisite environmental regulations and rejected economic systems that fail at boiling water, not drying up a sea, or not burrowing a village under tons of toxic sludge. The future is looking bright as long as we continue on that track.
@attilaedem101 Geamana is not based on that Hungarian name. Romanian words that have Hungarian origin are phonetic translations. Meaning we translate phonetically or reproduce phonetically a Hungarian word. Szaszavinc does not phonetically translate into Geamana. Furthermore, Geamana has meaning in Romanian. It means 'female twin'. Secondly, the Apuseni Mountains have not historically had a sizable Hungarian or Saxon population. This area has been historically populated by Romanians. Hungarians used to live and still partly live on the slopes of these mountains, not in the mountain ranges or its valleys. As much as Ceausescu did a lot of harm, the idea that he used the forced industrialization process as a means to ethnically cleanse the ethnic minorities is a claim that doesn't hold any scrutiny. If he truly planned this out, which he did not, he would've focused industrialization in areas where Romanians are in the minority, like for example Szekelyland. But we both know that Szekelyland is the least industrialized part of Transylvania, with the exception of the Mures county due to its natural gas industry. Geamana was a majority Romanian village in 1977 when this project started. You can see that in the architecture of the houses and churches. Those are Romanian traditional houses. So the idea that Geamana had no place in his vision of Romania because it was a non-Romanian village is nonsense. Ceausescu simply wanted to save money, and rather than build a waste area within the mining compound, preferred to dump the waste in the valley where Geamana is located. It was a decision made to save money.
You underestimate human greed. If it's too expensive then they'll rather have the whole Europe die before they spend a cent/penny/other small form of currency
@indominusrex1652 is not just greed, it's shortsighted greed. Doing absolutely nothing they produce the evidence of their negligence that later can be used against them when disaster actually happens and when they will be forced to pay the compensations and pay for environmental solutions to not only their citizens but also to other nations that will suffer from it. But ofc it's a problem for future generations.
I appreciate your optimism@SzaraWydra, but can you give me an example of an industrial ecological disaster where the people responsible suffered commensurate consequences, even in a less corrupt country?
@ridefree4076find examples yourself. I am looking to you like a Wikipedia. You come with hypothesis and ask other people to prove it. What's wrong with you.
Honestly @SzaraWydra , it was a kinda hypothetical question. Call me a cynic, but I'm not going to go and research something that I'm almost certain doesn't exist. Maybe some people paid a fine for a small spill now and again, but that would generally have been their company, and the decision makers just carried on. But I'm a cynic and not an expert, so maybe some high-ranking exec was bankrupted and jailed for a major spill somewhere?
They can't keep adding waste to the valley forever. Eventually, if it keeps rising, it will overflow the dam and poison the rivers just the same. And stopping when the dam reaches capacity presents the same pH problem as stopping now would. Resigning to living with this as an unsolvable problem will not work in the long term. Ignoring the problem will not prevent it from dissolving/overflowing the dam eventually, and the more time passes the harder it will be to do anything about. Could they add enough lime, or some other affordable neutralizer/regulator, to raise the pH into non-dam dissolving territory for good? It might not be enough to make it safe, but at least enough to be able to stop adding more waste without spiking the pH to catastrophic levels.
This video drives the point home: when the people speak, they can save the environment. When corporate greed and political corruption run unchecked, they destroy it. The so-called elites claim the public isn’t capable of self-governance. Yet here we see the opposite: the collective voice of citizens stopped a gold mine, while the voice of authority buried a village under toxic sludge. History is replete with examples where the public was silenced-and the results have been catastrophic. This is why I stand for democracy not just in governments, but in workplaces too. Codetermination and genuine public participation aren’t optional; they’re essential. The people’s voice must have real authority, or we keep repeating these disasters.
The solution would be: Sell it to some capitalist company! If there is ANY way to extrakt resources and thus profit from it, capitalism will. Unironically. I think for exaple: Ok there are gigatons of already presolved metals in it ? GREAT! Free money. Also it's one huge reservoir of free sulfuric acid ? GREAT ! Etc. Even if they dont completely clean up, they would already remove several layers of problems.
I will go for a year to romania in the near future and I have been quite excited. But this is just so fucking horrible and avoidable. If it will cost billions of euros and decades of time to fix this toxic sludge, we have to begin now! Romania should be forced to make this top priority!
One thing to add could be when is the dam going to overflow even if it holds? Maybe pumping only dissolved lime is the only thing to do if not stopping
@Susanna-b2e1d I didn't say it wasn't dangerous but he keeps talking about how everything under the water has turned to mush when theres vegetation in it.
@Fr33man "i dont believe saltwater can fully eat away iron, yeah shipwrecks turn rusty, no way it's fully consuming them before our very eyes" You dense mouthbreathers with barely a high school diploma will kill us all.
@Fr33manits probably not a fast proces at all. However this waste has been here for decades and is still being pumped out so in that time it probably did disolve the lower parts of the village and what not
One thing that would help. Nuclear energy can provide 10 times cheaper energy. That can be used to heat things dry things and freeze things. And move things around. I don't know exactly what to do, but a small nuclear power plant could either dry out or freeze a lot of this pool A million times faster than sunlight or winter. You don't know the cost of anything until you know the cost of the energy that went into it. If we make energy cheaper we can do a lot of things that look impossible now. And don't say what about the waste. That's a myth. Nuclear waste is 100 billion times less of a problem than this lake.
Очередной ролик от дядюшки Сороса
What a stupid thing to say
@EuropeanOnionno, it's the only thing to say.
@airsley1239 without any explanation your comment is also pretty stupid
so true Cyrillic is such a interesting looking Script
@EuropeanOnion
Onion as in the Reliable news source ?
there's a practical engineering video called "all dams are temporary". fucking horrifying.
It's all fearmongering for clicks
@throwaway6380 its also factual, if dams get really old or get damaged then they are essentially useless after it cracks
@awellculturedmanofanime1246 EVERYTHING man made is temporary, Sherlock
@throwaway6380 You're clearly not an engineer
@awellculturedmanofanime1246not just that, dams collect all the sediment from upriver so they slowly get shallower and shallower. You can remove the sediment but it's very costly and not economically viable.
The old picture of the village with the church being on top of a hill overlooking the village makes the intro with the top of the church tower sticking out of the sludge extra dark
I thought he said "19m", then my brain processed the photo of the church on the hill and my brain went "oh shit 90m!"
and there is a graveyard under all that waste
@cobe13max lol, I've heard 19 too and thought that church alone is 19 meters. So then I assumed it's some other church. 90 meters is beyond insane.
@Brandon34098the whole thing is a graveyard 😂😂😂
I wonder how they keep up with it raising 1m/year? Are they „just“ raising the dam? I mean at some point you can’t raise the dam any higher. Be it because physics or just because you run out of area that could be raised.
This is less of a "What On Earth Is This?" and more of a "What The Actual Fuck Is That?" 😅
Gabe should start a second channel for that.
@apveening The arc of DAM, in vein with the italian one
couldn't agree anymore.
this is absolutly horrendous
Man with female voice: Daddy chill.
Guy: WHAT IN THE FUCK EVEN IS THAT???
this is the results of socialism
Me: "Who would be stupid enough to flood an entire valley with sulfuric acid?"
WOEITT: "I'm here in Romania."
Me: "Ah, Ceaușescu. Makes sense."
The bastard should've gotten worse.
Literally any capitalist since they don't give a shit about people or the environment as long as they profit 😂
Yoooo literally same as soon as he mentioned Romania
"Who? Yea... makes sense."
Yeah, I had the same thought
Trump is Ceaușescu 2.0. Beside that, you find such places in South America, China, Russia and in the USA!
I initially thought that the title was surprisingly clickbaity for WOEIT but no, that really is a village dissolved in acid. Thanks, I hate it.
The arc of DAM, in vein with the italian one
When I first saw the cross in the middle of the lake, I thought, "Why would they build that there?" Then I learned the truth, and I thought, "Oh, f-word!"😵💫
It is still terrible, but I think they exaggerate everything. The fluid is only on the surface, the lower parts probably already became rock solid. You even see cracks in the sludge.
That acidity is also exaggerated or else this church should have been sank down in the lake if its walls were dissolved. Same as that metal cross from the cemetery still standing. That measured ph is on the surface.
And why would it become more acid if the flow in the lake stops? His explanation is not sufficient: no ph-regulator he says but there will also be not new acid. If enough matter is dissolved in sulphuric acid, it becomes water with sediments.
@duudsuufd I get the instinct to question dramatic framing - RUclips loves exaggeration. But the chemistry here isn’t hype.
A few clarifications:
Tailings don’t become harmless “rock solid” at depth. Sulfide tailings continue reacting with oxygen and water. That’s how acid mine drainage forms. It doesn’t stop just because the bottom compacts.
The church spire and metal cross still standing doesn’t disprove acidity. They’re mostly above the slurry and not continuously submerged. Corrosion depends on immersion and exposure, not just pH numbers.
Acid doesn’t need to be “added” to keep forming. Sulfuric acid is generated internally when sulfide minerals (like pyrite) oxidize. That reaction can continue for decades.
Sulfuric acid doesn’t just “turn into water with sediment” once enough material dissolves. Instead, you get acidic, metal-rich solution that can remain reactive long-term. That’s standard acid mine drainage behavior worldwide.
On the pH regulator point: lime used in flotation can provide buffering. If fresh material containing residual lime stops entering the basin, acid generation can continue while buffering decreases - meaning pH can drop further. That’s not dramatic speculation; it’s geochemistry.
It’s fine to question tone. But the underlying chemistry and the risks of sulfide tailings aren’t controversial in mining science.
Probably not dissolved (sulfuric acid isn't nearly as corrosive as stated in the video, especially at those concentrations ... let alone to flesh: ie it's much more corrosive to iron or steel than flesh, and even that would only dissolve slowly ... it would sting like lemon juice on open cuts or mucus membranes, though). It's significantly weaker than stomach acid, both in pH and due to the lack of enzymes (the stuff that actually denatures proteins and lipids is the enzymes, the acid is a catalyst).
Anyway, that village is more likely preserved below the water (sludge) line, like a toxic time capsule, except for iron or steel ... and any zinc roofing (lead roofing material as well as wood/thatch material would largely remain intact with a protective lead sulfate coating, and the wood and plant material would be preserved due to the acid + toxic metal content preventing decay). Most of the masonry would also be pretty resistant to the acid. (stone and brick would be highly resistant, and the mortar, cement, or concrete present would be fairly resistant as well, as the calcium content would still tend to form calcium sulfate, which is almost insoluble in water, and even less soluble in dilute sulfuric acid and in sulfate salt solutions due to common ion effect).
It'd be a biological dead zone due to the ph being too low for most microorganisms, plants, animals, or fungi to survive, though, hence the preservative effect on all the wood and plant material there.
The village would be much less dissolved and much more petrified.
Is that where they dump the bodies of everyone who asks about the mine?
Yesn't
It wouldn't surprise me if they dump people via helicopter in there its perfect for that really.
Good point, a serial killers dream disposal area.
I thought the same, nobody will ever discover what is thrown in there.
I was thinking "at least it's a localised disaster" until you told me a _single dam_ stands between the valley of sulferic acid and the entire Danube ecosystem. That dam feels way to close to capacity for comfort!
I'm really concerned about what happens after it's full. Unless someone keeps dumping lime into it after the mine will inevitably need to be shut down, it will just corrode through, killing literally everything
Never mind it being full. If it gets hit by the right storm and right flood at the right spot that earth damn could very give way. Come to think of it what happens if the ph acidity levels keep rising and one day dissolves the very earthen dam walls or any ground or bed rock underneath it? It could very well be that the bottom of the acid lake valley is dissolving as we speak.
It's puzzling to me that the EU has not long since put in place additional dam/s for redundancy.
Seems like a good target for terrorism.
Seal the hole they mined the ore out of and pump the sludge back into it.
This video should absolutely go viral.
Give a single reason why.
So the exit strategy is "this will be everyones problem"?
Thanks I hate it.
A sword eternally hovering above head only threatens one man. A large but weak wall on the edge of collapsing however concerns everyone and forces their servitude.
and then you wonder why theres so many Romanians in the uk...
@teslashark
As did the once 'glittering' constructed Chernobyl City 🙄
yes, much like air pollution worldwide everyday.
Wait so is there really truly no way to fix this? Can't you bury the toxic solids? And then dilute the acid with a base and then bury it so deep under ground the water table is above it? It makes sense to me at least and we are capable of digging that deep
The fact that another video, posted a few months ago, is able to show quite a bit more of the church is haunting
I know right! The level is rising so much faster than I realised. It took me about 20 minutes to even find the tip of the spire with the drone, it's so small now.
It's very possible the church is dissolving into the sludge and sinking rather than the level increasing that fast. Like the video talks about, a lake of battery acid will eat up most things humans use for construction. A lot of the common building materials like limestone, sandstone, cement, and concrete are all pretty bad at lasting in acidic environments. For accuracy you'd want to measure against the dam actually, but that kind of documentation is really boring. The dam is most likely slowly dissolving, but since it's a concrete gravity dam it's just a solid hill of concrete that's going to be very hard to dissolve, especially if the PH is at least somewhat regulated.
@ajjdgj6tmgedvnmtmek My thoughts exactly. If it was really rising that quick the dam should have overflown by now.
@ajjdgj6tmgedvnmtmek there is no chance of anything dissolving in there. Even for limestone it would take ages to get spongy and then "dissolve".
The pond is still in full use -- that is the rising level of sludge. They pump around 1.5cbm per second in there ... by pipeline as sludge tankers.
@ajjdgj6tmgedvnmtmek I worry that, because the pH regulator is in the inflow, the pH at the other end of the impound is much less affected by it. The liberation of sulphuric acid is a continuing process as the sulphides react with the water and air (and acid). Assuming that the dam is on that opposite end from the inflow, the tailings at that end will be 'older' and have liberated more acid while having a lower concentration of lime.
The inflow was mentioned as 14,000 tonnes per day (am I remembering that right?). Wikipedia tells me that the impound was 130 hectares 11 years ago and 90 meters deep. After some math with many zeroes, I find that if the inflow were as dense as water it would raise the level 10.8mm per day. After year that's just under 4 meters. Which is a lot. I'm guessing that inflow is denser than water because it contains a high concentration of solids and dissolved minerals, but for taking the lowest density and getting a result with a higher volume gives us at least a upper limit quantity. Also the surface area is probably a good fraction larger than it was in 2015.
Wikipedia also mentions there's a horror game based on the lost village. It's from Chainwolf Studio.
IF this dam fails? You mean WHEN this dam fails. WHEN. But sure, go ahead and pump more in there!
Not the issue of the poeple in power I guess, especially not when they're old. Basically like all things. I don't care because I'm old, when somethings happening I'm dead already or rich enough to move away
The substance will spill over the dam and the government will inevitably have to take that substance out of there at any way possible, meaning...the disastre is going to happen sooner or later..
saying as if its our fault 😭
Maybe it's time to spend the bazillion of euros required to clean up that mess, because every alternative is worse
@FighterofGDthey are not even old, they're just dumb and incompetent. And they stay in power because their relatives put them in power, and the law cant take them down.
Sounds just like the place were a comic book villian would be created.
Pause
And were a superhero is needed to do something
Yeah, that Villain would be Ceausescu
So, playing around on Google Earth. I found there's a pond on the south edge of the mine called Lacul Toxicomiei. It's listed as a swimming lake... I think Google is trying to kill me.
Not the first time.
Funny thing is, 'Lacul Toxicomiei' roughly means 'Toxic Lake' in Romanian.
@Eragor-h5n Is it named before or after the mine?
Judging by its name, I’d let my worse enemy try it first
@teslasharkit's a pond that wasn't there before the mine, not really a lake either.
I think somebody named that place on Google, I can't find it on normal maps.
Seing that spill just randomly be in the forrest made my jaw drop. That's some pollution so old fashioned that you'd expect whoever is resposible wears an extremely long extremily elaborate beard.
It's so old fasioned they oughta be ran by some dust in the wind.
Eh? Old-fashioned? This is modern pollution due to clean shaven, suit-wearing capitalists.
If you go to Romania outside București and Cluj, you'll see that it's largely still living in the 1940s, or even even earlier. And I don't say this as an insult, I love Romania and its people, but over a century of mismanagement and oppression by every government has caused extreme damage to the nation, both its nature and society.
Governed by Ayatollah Romeyni
Well that is Romania in a nutshell. The things I've seen in that country are beyond what I could ever imagine.
Is it just me or does the dam look dangerously close to overflowing?
Keep in mind the sulfuric compounds are already seeping through the concrete...
My thought exactly. Seems like 2 meters or so until it reaches the edge. And 1m/year of sludge rise it seems very soon it will overflow
well, the "upside" i guess, is that every cm the levels rise, the surface increases, so unless they increase the rate of inflow, there should be a natural "slowing down" of the rising of the surface levels. Which would make the heightening of the dam more efficient with every meter you raise it.
they keep building up the dam as they go. its just made with sand/rock waste from the mining process
@teslashark its an earthen dam.
there are seep wells on the downstream side where they collect any seepage and pump it back in
after 60 years on this earth i am still amazed at home we treat the planet we live on. it makes me cry at times.
I am convinced that humans are the cancer of the earth.
Come to Brazil and take a look at the places that were swept away by chemical sludges from one of those mining reservoir dams that collapsed recently (Mariana, 2015, and Brumadinho, 2019). The absurdity of what happened here may be comparable to what happened in Romania.
Hasn't happened, yet✌️
@justbecauseitwas Will happen
It's still so hard to believe it happened twice. You'd expect a disaster like that to leave enough of a mark that people would never allow it to happen again, but it did, only 4 years later and less than 100km away.
Não lá vai ser bem pior porque é maior... é uma pena que nem servimos de exemplo pra pelo menos que isso nunca mais acontecer...
Yeah idk as Europeans we expect better.
You know it's bad when the Berkeley Pit, one of the most notorious Superfund sites, is being used as an example of comparatively "responsible" tailings management. 😬
My 1st thought exactly
Well, at least the dam is probably in good order, and wasn't built as cheaply as possible decades ago, and isn't already nearly at capacity judging by some of those shots.
...Right?
It is probably an aged neglected piece of crap. Besides the acidic sludge is still being poured in. What's stopping it from dissolving the ground and bedrock underneath it? Sure they can dilute it for now but one day the scales will inevitably tip.
@raymondhuxley2742 And the media and everyone in charge over there will be like: "Oh no, how could this happen?". Then there will be a long discourse of how they could have prevented it, how to learn from past mistakes. Until the next disaster waiting to happen strikes eventually. Surely the next generation will handle it somehow, I guess.
Insert Anakin/Padme meme...
@HansWurst-lg1wsyou just summed up exactly how govt at all levels works. They know the problem but it's just not in anyone budget. Even if they had twice our taxes and twice the budget. Problems like this are never in the budget. Someone else's problem in charge down the road. We really need to redo how we let people govern us. Or is it too late?
I sorry to tell you this ... Romanian Govt ain't planning out this much into the future.
I am Romanian and have settled in the UK over 17 years ago. I left Romania because living in my own country felt like a losing battle. It pains me to watch this video because it is so accurate of my experience of living there.
Yeah, fixing this mess is pretty much impossible, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be mitigated if anyone ever cared to prevent an ecological mess.
Here for the Romanian Government a 10 step actionable plan:
1. Reinforce the dam with external structural supports and secondary containment walls.
2. Install continuous pH, pressure, and seepage monitoring sensors across the dam.
3. Construct emergency overflow channels to redirect excess sludge safely.
4. Add controlled lime dosing stations upstream to stabilise acidity spikes.
5. Build downstream sediment traps to capture heavy metals during minor leaks.
6. Create evacuation and response plans for all downstream communities.
7. Install early warning sirens and automated alert systems along the river.
8. Secure EU emergency funding for dam reinforcement and monitoring upgrades.
9. Legally require independent engineering audits every six months.
10. Begin designing a long term secondary tailings site to reduce future load.
'Like a normal responsible mine would' lmao, it doesn't exist. "A mine is a hole in the ground, owned by a liar" - Mark Twain
You wouldn't be holding that phone in your hand if it wasn't for a mine somewhere; actually, several mines.
@LTD99649 that doesn't change the fact that the mine is irresponsible tho
@LTD99649And? We wouldn't know so much about human anatomy or how certain diseases work if the Holocaust had never happened, but I doubt you'd put up a fuss over people vilifying THAT.
@defenestradoraright but you’re saying that ALL mines are owned by liars, whilst hypocritically using a device that is created by such supposedly deplorable process/industry
What did mark twain know about mining? He said a lot of things about stuff he did not know about.
So Romania should create one big f-in battery from that lake.
That was what I was thinking but it probably wouldn't work because of all the metals already in it lol
And I would add a sprinkling of bureaucrats, politicians and public servants into the mix.
It sounds like the perfect way to get rid of thousands of them.
The plus side, we get "green" energy, as they would say.
i was thinking, you could probably shut off the stream of polution perfectly, while keeping on releasing the stabiliser ..
but .. of course then no mining operation would pay for adding it ..
so .. at least require a way higher addition of stabiliser .. so that there would be plenty NOT to dissolve the dam when haltering operations?
just look at Ukraine, suddenly the tjernobil site was near war teratory ..
this is a terrosims risk! that dam needs survieullance that nobody would try to let it leak delliberatly !
@JeroenJA All of it is nonsense, that's why he did not explain it. The acidity would drop on its own with time, as long as they stop the mining operation. No stabilizer is needed for what is already in the lake, only for the acidic sludge running into it.
PH of the "lake" would gradually move towards 7, if everything is left alone. (because of rain and mixing with surrounding material) Would take decades but it is not an eternal problem.
The problem is that the mine is operational.
@JeroenJA I did some research (actually I have asked AI), and AI suggested "Microbial fuel cell"
0:50 the contrast between the stunningly filmed intro with an amazing soundtrack that perfectly sets the scene, and the stupidly cheery WOEIT intro lmfao
Just keepin you on your toes
It's like a Death in Paradise episode. Someone's been brutally murdered! Cue upbeat chipper music :P
total jump scare
For a visual aid of what a collapse might look like I recommend anyone to look up the Mariana and Brumadinho tailigs dams collapses in Brazil in 2015 and 2019, respectively. It wasn't nearly as toxic because they were both iron tailngs dams and not copper, but it was still massively deadly and an environmental disaster.
And yes both mines are still open and Vale, the company that fully owns one mine and jointly owns the other is still doing perfectly fine as one of the world's largest mining companies and number global producer of iron specifically. Oh, and they also have other dams with structural issues and at risk of collapse around the region.
Villagers far back in time:
- We'll build the church and cemetery high up so even if they would fill our valley with acidic sludge, it'd be fine
The industrial society:
- Hold my sour ale
😂
This valley is a valley. Creeks and rain send water in it and the poisonous mixture will rise and rise some day the dam will give way.
Industrial society: Challenge accepted!
You are completely wrong. Beer was much better in the old days
That dam is absolutely going to fail at some point. It's inevitable.
It's already leaking and overflowing both! It needs to be neutralized
Of course it will. Without either being ridiculously over-engineered or continuously and professionally maintained, all dams will fail.
As sad it would be I would literally just collapse the mountains next to it do properly dam(n) that place
It's not like it's holding back a 60 foot high wall of highly corrosive acid which will eat away at the dam until it disintegrates,...
@SuurSurroundThat could backfire.
13:04 counterpoint. The spire is still able to stand. That implies to me there's at least something underneath it holding it up
I too was slightly annoyed by the contradiction. Not enough to dismiss the video entirely, though.
The sludge..
It’s pretty freaking thick, no?
To be fair, when suspended inside a liquid, a building can hold up with a LOT less structural integrity then in open air. By open air standards, we might describe these bricks as 'completely destroyed', with a human being able to crush them with bare hands, but within a liquid they only need to be able to hold their form under the weight of what little sticks out over the water. There are no currents or wind, so the only pressure on the structure is from above.
My guess is the sediment packed in around everything. It doesn't appear to be fluid like water in the video.
"..the valley it sits in has become a *horrific chemical scar that will outlast everyone watching this video."* Seems like this is becoming a common theme in "civilization".
genuine question, wouldnt it be possible to continue a flow of lime (as a pH- regulator) into the lake, while stopping the mine? this way, the pH in the lake is at least kept stable but no new sludge would be added.
Of course, but that would cost money sooo
That costs money with no money earned in return. Durrrr
On a serious note, wtf happens when that dam starts overflowing?
John F. Shareholder will be sad if the mine stops though :(
You'd have to be prepared to pump massive quantities of lime every year, create ways to circulate it, and continue doing it for like 100 years. You can re-evaluate your dosing after the 100 year mark. (Not sure on the time scale; I might be under-estimating it!)
@terrynixon2758 I think what happened in Kolontár and Devecser in 2010 might be a good case study…
16:28 legit thought that was black and white video for a minute
For a lake of toxic sludge, it’s got some very good ratings on Google Maps. Perhaps Google reviews aren’t exactly reliable……
What?!? It's a really nice lake of toxic sludge!
Survivorship bias 😂
Very toxic. Much wow. 12/10.
Why not pump pH stabilizers without sludge? Seems you don't broach this for some reason.
Seeing the Berkeley Pit get a green check mark for safety is hilarious. And hilariously sad. The bar really is in the basement for safety when it comes to tailings
Montana has a water treatment system Romania don't. They already polluted all these rivers in 2000 with the Baia mare gold mine cyanide spill. To be honest I hope this breach and pollute Romania. Maybe they'll wake up.
@JohnJ-p7o
The thing is it will not only polite Romania, but also countries who have no responsibility for this.
@JohnJ-p7odude clearly states how huge swaths of europe would be affected through the danube
10s of millions of people would be put in danger and amything in the danube would die
the black sea would probably barely survive
but sure
let's hope it happens so that people, plants and animals that had no say in this have to suffer and die
That's what I was thinking lol. So much work has to be put in just to make sure the residents of bute don't literally drink poison
@canifer5546 And anyone within the region too. It's pretty rough. Could obviously be worse though given the video, so at least it's not that level of terrible
Captain Planet suddenly feels like a realistic show.
Always has been :/
"ah shit i forgot to say the intro line again so I'll just hide it with a massively epic intro"
Plot twist: I did actually remember to say it this time! I have the footage but I just thought this was a much better intro so I scrapped it
@WhatOnEarthIsThisThing worthy
2:50 Causescu, the OG Stable Genius 😂
Yes, his characterization of Ceausescu (which is probably correct) sounded strangely familiar... 😬
Imagine if there was some kind of use for this sludge. Like to make some other product. Then some big corporation would swoop in and clear this up in a year.
I bet there is something we could make out of this but making your own sludge on site is probably cheaper than transporting this one. Our best bet is probably some kind of construction use. I mean, there's lime in it right? What if some kind of special cement could be made.
Afaik, adding sulfuric acid to water generates heat. Perhaps there's a way to turn this into energy?
@ramonNoodles21it does but remember that water vapor that we know as steam is not real steam,
True to name, real steam is not visible, it's a transparent gas, only in such a form it can be used to move turbines that then generate power. I doubt we can heat up water to such high temperatures with just acid-water reaction.
@ramonNoodles21 Adding water to pure H2SO4 generates heat, but this already has water added to it. Adding more water won't generate more heat.
@HalIOfFamer lime is *added* but if the pH is 2, all that lime is neutralised.
I find the argument why the inflow can't be shut off not very convincing; They could just keep pumping in the PH regulator without additional sludge?
Practically that should be trivial to do, the only reason it ain't done is because it would cost money.
i was also thinking this!
The current arbitrary pumping system is also less effecient at mixing in the pH regulator than an intentional process. Also, knowing almost nothing about acids, it seems to me that you could just keep raising the pH of the acid until it was no longer acid. Acid can't dissolve things forever.
There is also no way the ph regulator reaches the sludge packed against the dam, since it’s basically solid ground. So the whole dam dissolving argument is unconvincing too
@iivin4233he explained that the sludge keeps generating acid continously, so even if you neutralize it, more gets produced
So keep neutralizing it. At some point even the sludge will be exhausted.
Neutralizing/filtering water and then pumping it out of the reservoir would be costly but also reduce pressure on the dam. I don't know the area well enough to know if additional dams could be built downstream to create those neutralizing/filtering places.
Note that by filtering I mean removing pollutants, which might actually mean precipitating them out of the water, which might happen naturally when they neutralize the acids, which could then hopefully be collected, dried and stored more safely before processing.
I know this is hugely expensive, but still. I don't live anywhere near there but I've seen documentaries about this place more than once.
So, uuh.... Close the mine, but keep pumping a new mixture that controls the PH and helps the heavy minerals sink to the bottom, then you add a closed loop system that sucks the water up, treats it, and pumps it back out, and you keep this running for the next 100 years. Probably won't solve the problem, but it'll containt it and make it more manageable for the future? I dunno, I'm just horrified and trying to think of anything at all that could be done.
This is probably the only mitigation plan though you can't suck mud back up, there's very little water
yes, thats what mine closure plans look like. they usually have to dewater the tailing dam, and treat water for decades
I think "pumping" is not what actually happens; it's more like "let's dump some waste into the nature". The issue with this - from what I understand - is that the acid isn't neutralized completely. Sulfuric Acid has a PH under 1, the lake is said to be at 2 or roughly below that. You could probably also dump sodium hydroxide into this, but the amount of material this needs is just beyond good and evil and it's not exactly harmless either in the concentrations required.
@BeX32210 if you just add sodium hydroxide it would be wildly exothermic and would boil wherever you pump it in from. It would also produce a lot of steam that would splatter sludge everywhere. If the metallic sulphur compounds are Sulfides it would also produce Hydrogen sulphide gas that would spill over the dam and you really don’t want that. If you add it slowly enough that could all be mitigated, but lime is both cheaper, safer to handle and would create a less salty end result (since the end result calcium sulphate is way less water soluble than sodium sulphate) so if there is any runoff after the treatment it would be (slightly) less harmful.
Yah probably costs billions
0:38 - romanian here - how in the WORLD were you able to pronounce "Geamăna" so well?! wow
if he took the time to google 'geamana pronunciation', it sounds fairly 'easy' to pronounce. the spelling alone would be a big issue
@Matty002 from experience, ppl outside of romania have some trouble with the diphtongs like here the "ea" and like in București the "ti" cheers!
Fiindca a repetat de multe ori, cum probabil asa a facut si pentru Ceausescu. De exemplu iti dai seama ca nu repetase de multe ori cum se pronunta Apuseni cand a s-a cacat in ea de pronuntie si a zis-o cum a crezut-o.
Totusi un video foarte bun.
AI
It's easy for English people to say once you hear it :) no hard sounds for us
"Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realise we cannot eat money." - Cree Indian Proverb
We’re not Indians tho thanks
"Elevator smells different to midget"- Confucius
That is depressing and horrifying to see at the same time. Thank you for raising awareness about this. Though if you do plan to visit more toxic waste sites and stand next to inputs streams coating you with dust from it, can I suggest respirators and other clothing next time? It would be great if your channel stuck around for a long time.
Haha fair. I genuinely didn't realise it was being spat out so violently! I initially filmed a section while staying in the car but it looked awful so I got out
@WhatOnEarthIsThisThing You have a drone camera. It's okay to look before you walk .. and if it doesn't look good, to give your voiceover from a safe location while the drone risks its existence to give us the cool footage.
Emphasizes "Everything below the surface is dissolved into the same sludge" (Shows footage of all the structures, the steeple, and trees, that clearly aren't floating/fallen over). As a sulfuric acid reporter, and knowing anything about it's use in industry, you should know its very strong but still needs a ton of agitation to react with other liquids and powders. Those objects are infinitely more solid than anything we dissolve in industry, and there is no stirring happening, quite the opposite considering all the stuff settling out and the water evaporating off the top.
Yeah, that disappointed me. It's bad enough how it is in reality, no need to exagerate. If anything, that downplays the real danger since people will look at the lake and see less damage than they expect
This needs clarification. It makes me question what else isn't right. Also, if it is so much worse than Cyonide, why would he be right next to it? At least clarify that it doesn't get airborne.
@CyberPhil2000He said its worse but didnt really state why. Yeah if you jump in you die but that sounds about the same as cyanide. He didnt say a thing about the water table despite this stuff being "so corrosive it will dissolve the dam if we stop"
Its saving its agitation til the REAL disaster, like a good boy!
I thought he meant it metaphorically
9:00 The Berkeley Pit is definitely not an example of a normal or responsible mining operation. The pit is filled with highly acidic water caused by acid rock drainage (ARD).
Presumably the church isn't dissolved, otherwise the spire would fall?
It's also apparently a very thick liquid so it may be floating on top 🤔 ?
@tuetschekYou can see the surface liquid flowing so presumably if the spire was floating it would move and presumably it doesn't
Does granit get dissolved?
Because if not, that could explain why an old stone church is still standing...
@etienne8110granite dissolves and the church will dissolve the rest of the way soon after it becomes fully submerged but it's probably only partially dissolving so far due to the constant supply of lime being pumped in.
or any of the other things sticking up out of the water, like the trees....
20:45 yes but sadly the shitty Canadian company and our corrupt government still try to apply pressure on the locals to leave, they didn't give up, they just got more sneaky.
Do it in your own country, Canada.
As a Romanian living 100km from this, thank you for the clear, scientific explanation.
ever dream of making the damm burst?
@mgntstr no, but my tap water filter might not be enough to filter these :-)
I knew its romania 🇷🇴 instantly when i saw the landscape!
(I am from romania)
Also the problem makes Romania the most likely candidate outside Russia and North Korea
Suc pulla
@guidor.4161no
@akkamiau U say shame on you cuz my nationality??
România is the least polluted country in Europe. You're welcome.
"How bad could it be?" - "Yes."
Ah, exactly the sorta uplifting story I need to start my weekend properly.
Toxic run off is something we deal with from the abandoned mines in Appalachia
No its not. I live in the NC mountains. Where specifically is this toxic runoff you claim you know of, and why havnt you reported it?
‘I haven’t seen it so it can’t be true’ 🤓
@AcademicAlienWhere is this runoff? Why hasnt he reported it?
@dherman0001 well seeing that in the past there have been many instances of mining in Appalachia, is it too hard to believe that contaminated water, eg, 'toxic runoff', may be a problem?
@dherman0001
Rock Creek, West Virginia: A major site of concern is the Massey Energy (now Alpha Natural Resources/Contura Energy) impoundment behind Marsh Fork Elementary School, containing roughly 2.8 billion gallons of coal slurry.
Martin County, Kentucky: Site of the 2000 Martin County Coal Corp slurry spill, which released over 300 million gallons of toxic sludge into the Big Sandy River watershed, considered one of the worst environmental disasters in the Eastern US.
Kanawha County, West Virginia: A 2014 spill at a processing facility released over 100,000 gallons of coal slurry into Fields Creek.
Mud River, West Virginia: The Hobet 21 site has been associated with high selenium contamination, with pollution affecting fish populations up to 20-30 miles downstream.
Rawl, Lick Creek, and Merrimac, West Virginia: Communities affected by slurry injected into abandoned underground mines, which contaminated local water supplies.
Wise County, Virginia: Acid mine drainage is specifically noted to flow from MTR mines into Looney Creek.
Environmental and Health Impact
Contaminated Water: Slurry ponds and injection into old mines release heavy metals (arsenic, lead, manganese) into drinking water, exceeding EPA standards.
Health Hazards: Communities report "slurry syndrome," including diarrhea, rashes, kidney stones, and birth defects linked to contaminated water.
Aquatic Destruction: Leakage and spills from these sites have killed fish and contaminated hundreds of miles of streams in Kentucky and West Virginia.
Toxic Components: The slurry is a byproduct of washing coal with water and chemicals, resulting in a sludge containing coal dust, clay, and toxic metals such as chromium and nickel.
Catastrophic Failures: Dams holding these huge quantities of waste have broken, causing massive environmental disasters, such as the 2000 Martin County, KY spill of 306 million gallons, which was 30 times larger than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
All of these sites are still toxic, all dams are temporary, no idea if your position is out of ignorance or incompetence, but it makes you look like a shill.
21:56, I quite like the contrast of your blue car against the grey and black of the dead environment.
Hi, exestential dread Tom Scott. I realy missed yet another monument to coruption and incompetence.
18:40 cool, just great.
Splendid.
Early 2000s a Romanian gold mine accumulated a massive amount of highly toxic swamp like this sludge, and after a heavy snowing winter, during spring melting the swamp lake wall collapsed wiping out a huge part of the Tisza river ecosystem.... That was probably 1/100 or 1/1000 the size of swamp compare to this stuff.....
Humans destroying the planet and nobody cares as long as it is somewhere else... So frustrating!
I live relative close to a town in Serbia through which Tisa flows through, and every year, there used to be an "event" where the river would "flower" (red algae overgrowth). I wonder if it's caused by the slugde from the gold mine you mentioned.
The Baia Mare cyanide spill, We haven't learnt anything, or rather we did but people are powerless to stop them.
We have an alumina mining tailings dam in Ireland with a similar type of risk although it is not quite at this level. It’s called Aughinish Alumina and the RUclipsr Kev Collins did a good video on it.
2:34 That's a pretty high bar.
And honestly I think he meets it. He was a remarkable man, and not in a good way.
Instead of pumping sludge, could they start pumping pure lime to gradually bring the ph back to neutral?
It would probably take 30 years and half a mountain of lime.
@Redsauce101 well it is a mountain of sulfuric acid. Is there any better solution than lime? Or would you have to dump some shitty hydroxides into it, which would also be horrible...
The thing is youd still be pumping lime and water into the valley, so the level would still rise, increasing the stress on the dam
@peppybocan If there's a mountain's worth of acidic substance, then it's going to take an equivalent mountain of base to neutralise it. Even then, you still have two mountains worth of toxic sludge to deal with.
@Pengulin3 there would have to be some reprocessing plant no? get the sludge off into some smaller bath tub and then reprocess it?
We're at a point where we can play a WOEIT guessing game before each video. Will it be:
"What on earth is this? 🤔"
"What on earth is this? 😂", or
"What on earth is this? 💀"
Thanks for making this video. Wow, mining is so bad. And poorly done mining is terrible.
Why can't they stop the flow but instead put in a solid lye to neutralize the acid?
I'd love to see an interview with a chemist or engineer to go through the hypotheticals of cleaning this up.
Copper-Gold sulphide deposit eh? A lot of these also significant arsenic (As) present, not just trace amounts.. Enough to still be in the concentrate and when it is heated in the smelters turns into arsine gas (AsH3). And not just the primary smelter to make anode copper, but when that goes into secondary smelting to make cathode copper they can still produce arsine.
Oh, and did you hear that arsenic is more toxic to humans than originally thought? The tox data used was based on testing on rats which have a higher tolerance to it than humans... I'm happier working in Public Transport, those first years of my career in environmental consulting to mining and smelting was eye opening.
Its not on the same scale, but here in Redding California we have a nasty old mine that is a superfund cleanup site. If I'm not mistaken some of the drainage is some of the most acidic water on earth
1:23 ..."Beureaucratic Neglicence."
*_INCREDIBLY LOUD HORROR STING_*
That shocked me awake 😮.
I’ve almost become inured to the dread manifest from learning of all the problems in the world I can’t do anything about. However, learning of problems no one can solve keeps the dread alive and kicking
1:49 Challenge accepted.
By the way, during the cyanide disaster on the tisza, the lake tisza reservoir mostly evaded the pollution by getting closed in time. When the wave passed it, they relased water back into the river itself to "wash" it down faster.
Also if anyone is interested in similar disasters, i recommend looking into the red mud disaster in hungary. I remember seeing it reported on tv as a child, it was horrific stuff.
'Nonce protecting parasite' was not an expected quote on my Gabe bingo card for this video 😂 🤣
3:55 Romania being Romania
16:16 Great shot and camera movement! It took me quite a while to realize - in shock - that his is NOT a gray-filtered shot, but the true color of the place. Very powerful picture.
If the pH stabilizers in the sludge are needed to stop the whole thing from eating the dam, what will happen when they stop pumping the sludge in? I mean, that dam didn't look like it was going to be able to hold another 50 m of height.
There is a lot of sulfur minerals in there already slowly converting to acid over time.
You probably can add more alcalic compounds
@JeffBilkins The soil and existing concrete dam are being eaten through slowly
Romanian people are probably left holding the bag of toxic waste after the mine closes. Maybe they can get some EU funding to mitigate this disaster, but that's not a problem for the currently benefiting corrupt officials
@aleksisalonen2265 It can consume as much material and funding as fucking Chernobyl, it's just as deadly
In South Africa there is an issue with Acid Mine Drainage from the water filling and running through the old gold mines, the issue is the acidity of the water dissolving the minerals out of the rock in the empty mines. There was a company that offered to neutralise the metal rich acid draining from the mine shafts and recovering the dissolved metals leaving clean fresh water. The South African government wanted to charge the company for the disposal of the fresh water which made it uneconomical and the proposal collapsed. Now they are sitting with acidic metal containing water leaching into the ground.
ruclips.net/video/r0suXrBqex0/video.htmlsi=sf8TP9fqCiPNSVjU
must not have offered enough bribes to the people in power
And people will still keep voting for the ANC again and again and again.
Exactly as i proposed:
Sell it to some capitalist company!
If there is ANY way to extrakt resources and thus profit from it, capitalism will. Unironically.
I think for exaple: Ok there are gigatons of already presolved metals in it ? GREAT! Free money. Also it's one huge reservoir of free sulfuric acid ? GREAT !
Etc.
Even if they dont completely clean up, they would already remove several layers of problems.
What a clean explanation of ore differences. And the xprocess that follows by type of ore. Thank you.
Does the dam grow? I mean, at some point this thing will be full and either overflowing or breaking the dam just from the mass the liquid in the tailings has. Also, wouldn't it be possible to just stop pumping the tailings in their and continue with the base?
This whole thing is just a disaster waiting to happen. At least try to prevent it from reaching any major river in case of a catastrophe.
I've been wondering the same thing. Would the base perhaps not be able to mix properly into such a large volume, if it isn't already pre-dissolved in other acid at a smaller scale? I'm not sure, but this feels like the kind of problem that should have a research department exclusively dedicated to it until it's solved.
It worse than you think, because the rocks dissolved in the taillings weigh more than the liquid part.
@CLethe the thing is, I dont know how the force of the tailings spreads. Its a bit complicated. But yes, the force exerted on the dam could be larger than just the liquid.
I’d say the disaster has happened; but the next chapter…….
@CLethe: But I guess it’s a suspension or a slurry rather than a solution?
Excellent video. If you're interested in another mining related ecological disaster.
The Mount Lyell copper mine in Queenstown, Tasmania Australia. The mine operators pumped all their tailings directly into the Queen's River for over 80 years. They built tailings dams in the 90's to contain the waste. To this day the river is dead down to the DNA level.
Freemasonry has been a tragedy for the whole world.
The silly part is...keeping this going as is means that the bomb is growing each year. And you know what will happen the second the mine stops being productive - the company will declare bankruptcy and someone will have to keep the pH regulators flowing or watch it go pop
This is not a company, its a government agency. Nothing to do with Capitalism.
@dherman0001 Brother, it's all capitalism. Its not owned by the workers, is it?
@emp_zealothYouve never heard of stocks apparantly.
@dherman0001 what are you even saying at this point?
@emp_zealothYou don't even know what you're saying, you are so stupid that even when confronted by the results of Marxist Leninist policy you still blame capitalists. Marxist Leninism is fantastic when you ignore everything bad and just look at the positives.
You'd make a great person to hunt down counter revolutionarys
i feel like the biggest question remains unanswered: the sludge level seems to almost reach the top of the dam, if it rises by a meter per year, looks like the dam doesnt even need to fail, its going to overflow soon anyways
Reminds me of Mariana dam in Brazil, also a mining waste dam. It collapsed a few years ago, we are still dealing with the after effects
It's always amazing to witness the birth of a dragon.
This is orders of magnitude worse, not only the compounds stored on Mariana were relatively low in toxicity, this is vastly larger and absolutely deadly.
@vvm-mg Never said it was worse, only that it reminded me.
Of my comment, what may be more useful to you is to check how fast it travelled to the sea, a real example (case study) of how it could happen and damages, and how the lack of contingency plans made it only worse.
I watched the Faultline video on this a while back and while the editing and presentation of that was phenomenal, your video was explained in a wonderfully clear way and really helped me understand how the whole mining part works so much better (and the WOEIT humour keeps being fantastic without losing sight of the real horror of this disaster)
Well thank you! I really liked Faultlines' video but his scope was a little broader so I thought it'd still be good to make my own video.
I actually thought I was watching that video again until the intro kicked in, but my brain also told me 'that's not the right voice for Faultline' so it completely threw me.
12:44 King Michael I of Romania and Queen Elizabeth II were third cousins, both being great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria. They shared a close familial bond, with King Michael attending her wedding in 1947. Additionally, King Michael was a second cousin of Elizabeth's husband, Prince Philip.
Yeah, but considering Romania was communist at that point i don't think that played any role anymore.
@panzerbanz7296Romania was not Communist under Ceausescu but a Socialist Republic
uk here can i add to the family line
the health of king charles iii is down to the above statement
inter breeding
keeping the blood royal was the down thing
charles was the product of this as explained above
history is written in the family tree
look where phillip come from same saga
keep blood royal
so the result
ciii is now failing so is royal blood
@DragasPalaiologos It's end goal was communism. Everybody with basic knowledge about communism knows what i meant.
@panzerbanz7296Stop writing idiotic things!
Analyzing your profile picture, you weren't even in the project phase at that time so you can't talk about communism or socialism! Learn the difference between them!
I was born and grew up under Ceausescu and I know what I'm talking about!
His goal was a "Multilaterally Developed Scientific Socialist Society", not Communism!
Read his books and the and the reports of the congresses of the Romanian Communist Party!
Having grown up in southwest New Mexico right down the river from Phelps Dodge open pit copper mine as soon as I heard you say copper mine I knew it was goin to be bad. That shit is the worst stuff ever, nothing can live in it, falling into or coming in contact with the sludge is a death sentence. Everything from bees and butterflies to deer and cattle are killed in a slow and agonizing grey sludge bath. The first year I moved to my dad’s ranch a thunderstorm dropped record amounts of rain that forced the tailings pond up river to spill over and send mountains of grey death racing down the valley. I remember National Guard troops and engineers working for months cleaning up and covering up an environmental disaster of biblical proportions and that was in the US with all of the rules and regulations of the EPA to deal with. I can only imagine how bad it would be if something similar happened to this operation.
I think you need to compose a second channel jingle for these sorts of episodes. The content is great and definitely worth sharing, but your jovial, upbeat jingle is pretty jarring!
100%
For those wondering about how close the tailings are to the top of the dam, and think that they will reach the top of the dam soon, it is helpful to clarify. This type of dam is not built to final height at the beginning like a water dam. Instead, the height of the dam keeps getting increased as more material is added. So the tailings won't reach the top of the dam - the company will increase the height of the dam.
That still can't go on forever.
@adamofblastworks1517 Nothing goes on forever, but if delaying the cleanup is cheaper than actually doing the cleanup it could take a looong time to get fixed.
The only way to fix this sludgy acid bath is to use sodium hydroxide or lime. That would neutralize the sulfuric acid, yielding mostly harmless sulfates, and raise the pH to more tolerable levels. Once that is accomplished, one might add sodium phosphate to precipitate out the copper, aluminium, and iron in the aqueous solution. Even then, you still have a metric fkton of precipitate to dredge out, alongside other undissolved stuff.
Fixing this would be almost unacceptable in terms of cost, but the cost of this damn failing is even worse...
The volume needed to be added would overflow the dam
@TitaniusAnglesmith That is another factor. This situation is unsolvable, unfortunately. Nothing can stop this.
@Anton_Øgærþsonright, some people will die, but thats a price im willing to pay
Amazingly real, not neatly packaged, and courageous of you. You went on site and presented the straight facts, even risking your health to show many aspects of the story, physical and historical. Thank you for caring about this beautiful planet.
The money for the solution is in the problem. Those tailings are probably full or rare earth minerals.
Those don't tend to be processed because it's so environmentally disastrous. Since the disaster is already there, a processing facility could be made that results in remediation. A broke Romania gets to keep producing copper while making even more money out the tailings.
Instead of spending billions of dollars to clean it up, they could be making billions getting it cleaned while creating local economic activity and jobs.
somehow you gave credence to my own comment without me knowing much about the sludge at all "i don't think it is useless, eventually we might be able o use the sludge and create a whole new ecological disaster"
@istoppedcaring6209 Halfway. My suggestion is that the tailings from the runoff contain critical minerals and that the processing to get those would fund the clean up and keep the jobs.
Sell it to some capitalist company!
If there is ANY way to extrakt resources and thus profit from it, capitalism will. Unironically.
I think for exaple: Ok there are gigatons of already presolved metals in it ? GREAT! Free money. Also it's one huge reservoir of free sulfuric acid ? GREAT !
Etc.
Even if they dont completely clean up, they would already remove several layers of problems.
good find, this needs way more exposure
Luckily we as humans have learned from this and have now taken steps to take better care of our environment. Right?
i mean, this story is going a bit deeper than just an environmental disaster... Geamăna is (based on its hungarian name, which is Szászavinc - "szász" literally means "Saxon") was a german majority inhabited village, and during Ceaușescu "Systemisation" program (durign which this mine was opened) ethnic minority regions (most notably hungarian areas, but germans, ukranians etc. were not safe either) were basically designated for forced relocation, and (as Geamana itself standing as a perfect example) systematic destruction. Ceausescu literally used he's industrialization plans to actually try to commit a forced cultural assimilation/cultural genocide (read: think about what Chian does in Xinjiang as an example, so less death camps and more forced reeducation, banned use of minority language, forced relocations into areas where theres absolutely nobody from the minority culture, cultural porsecution etc.) and erase every minority's past existence from the region, which back in the 80's actually resulted A LOT of international backlash (and only he's death prevented most of he's plans comming to pass). This ecology disaster didnt happened by accident or neglect on Ceausescu's part, Geamana as a village was a historical note which had no place in he's version of Romania, so it was burried under toxic sludge... MANY villages and towns would have faced a similar fate in Transylvania if he had just 1 more decade to carry he's rampage out (and im not saying any of it against the romanians, im blaming a madman very specifically, the romanians did exactly what they had to do with him when they had the opportunity)...
Yes, we did! We've set up the requisite environmental regulations and rejected economic systems that fail at boiling water, not drying up a sea, or not burrowing a village under tons of toxic sludge. The future is looking bright as long as we continue on that track.
EU keep spouting cow farts are bad .. and i have not even heard about this before so ...... NO ... greedy as fucks all of them
@Gamer9o from the sounds of it, if everything you have not heard about before didn't exist, we would be bashing stones right now.
@attilaedem101 Geamana is not based on that Hungarian name. Romanian words that have Hungarian origin are phonetic translations. Meaning we translate phonetically or reproduce phonetically a Hungarian word. Szaszavinc does not phonetically translate into Geamana. Furthermore, Geamana has meaning in Romanian. It means 'female twin'. Secondly, the Apuseni Mountains have not historically had a sizable Hungarian or Saxon population. This area has been historically populated by Romanians. Hungarians used to live and still partly live on the slopes of these mountains, not in the mountain ranges or its valleys.
As much as Ceausescu did a lot of harm, the idea that he used the forced industrialization process as a means to ethnically cleanse the ethnic minorities is a claim that doesn't hold any scrutiny. If he truly planned this out, which he did not, he would've focused industrialization in areas where Romanians are in the minority, like for example Szekelyland. But we both know that Szekelyland is the least industrialized part of Transylvania, with the exception of the Mures county due to its natural gas industry.
Geamana was a majority Romanian village in 1977 when this project started. You can see that in the architecture of the houses and churches. Those are Romanian traditional houses. So the idea that Geamana had no place in his vision of Romania because it was a non-Romanian village is nonsense. Ceausescu simply wanted to save money, and rather than build a waste area within the mining compound, preferred to dump the waste in the valley where Geamana is located. It was a decision made to save money.
@12:33 you gained a subscriber 🎉
21:11 if the mining stopped couldn't they just
Keep putting lime in to regulate pH ?
You underestimate human greed. If it's too expensive then they'll rather have the whole Europe die before they spend a cent/penny/other small form of currency
@indominusrex1652 is not just greed, it's shortsighted greed.
Doing absolutely nothing they produce the evidence of their negligence that later can be used against them when disaster actually happens and when they will be forced to pay the compensations and pay for environmental solutions to not only their citizens but also to other nations that will suffer from it.
But ofc it's a problem for future generations.
I appreciate your optimism@SzaraWydra, but can you give me an example of an industrial ecological disaster where the people responsible suffered commensurate consequences, even in a less corrupt country?
@ridefree4076find examples yourself. I am looking to you like a Wikipedia. You come with hypothesis and ask other people to prove it. What's wrong with you.
Honestly @SzaraWydra , it was a kinda hypothetical question. Call me a cynic, but I'm not going to go and research something that I'm almost certain doesn't exist. Maybe some people paid a fine for a small spill now and again, but that would generally have been their company, and the decision makers just carried on. But I'm a cynic and not an expert, so maybe some high-ranking exec was bankrupted and jailed for a major spill somewhere?
6:50 It’s not actually radioactive I just like the symbol.
Hell yeah
I was thinking "what the hell are they doing to the copper ore" for a solid moment there😭
This is just a giant toxic timebomb.
They can't keep adding waste to the valley forever. Eventually, if it keeps rising, it will overflow the dam and poison the rivers just the same. And stopping when the dam reaches capacity presents the same pH problem as stopping now would. Resigning to living with this as an unsolvable problem will not work in the long term. Ignoring the problem will not prevent it from dissolving/overflowing the dam eventually, and the more time passes the harder it will be to do anything about.
Could they add enough lime, or some other affordable neutralizer/regulator, to raise the pH into non-dam dissolving territory for good? It might not be enough to make it safe, but at least enough to be able to stop adding more waste without spiking the pH to catastrophic levels.
This video drives the point home: when the people speak, they can save the environment. When corporate greed and political corruption run unchecked, they destroy it. The so-called elites claim the public isn’t capable of self-governance. Yet here we see the opposite: the collective voice of citizens stopped a gold mine, while the voice of authority buried a village under toxic sludge.
History is replete with examples where the public was silenced-and the results have been catastrophic. This is why I stand for democracy not just in governments, but in workplaces too. Codetermination and genuine public participation aren’t optional; they’re essential. The people’s voice must have real authority, or we keep repeating these disasters.
I'm learning, that this is the only way.
The solution would be:
Sell it to some capitalist company!
If there is ANY way to extrakt resources and thus profit from it, capitalism will. Unironically.
I think for exaple: Ok there are gigatons of already presolved metals in it ? GREAT! Free money. Also it's one huge reservoir of free sulfuric acid ? GREAT !
Etc.
Even if they dont completely clean up, they would already remove several layers of problems.
I will go for a year to romania in the near future and I have been quite excited. But this is just so fucking horrible and avoidable. If it will cost billions of euros and decades of time to fix this toxic sludge, we have to begin now! Romania should be forced to make this top priority!
One thing to add could be when is the dam going to overflow even if it holds? Maybe pumping only dissolved lime is the only thing to do if not stopping
So i find it hard to believe anything is dissolved in there when you can still see the roofs of buildings and even plants sticking out of it.
Go ahead and take a sip of that water!
@Susanna-b2e1d I didn't say it wasn't dangerous but he keeps talking about how everything under the water has turned to mush when theres vegetation in it.
@Fr33man "i dont believe saltwater can fully eat away iron, yeah shipwrecks turn rusty, no way it's fully consuming them before our very eyes"
You dense mouthbreathers with barely a high school diploma will kill us all.
@Fr33manits probably not a fast proces at all. However this waste has been here for decades and is still being pumped out so in that time it probably did disolve the lower parts of the village and what not
That intro is awesome
Awesomely dark
The obvious solution is build a bigger taller backup dam out of neutralizing minerals and eventually dehydration and encapsulation if possible
One thing that would help. Nuclear energy can provide 10 times cheaper energy. That can be used to heat things dry things and freeze things. And move things around. I don't know exactly what to do, but a small nuclear power plant could either dry out or freeze a lot of this pool A million times faster than sunlight or winter.
You don't know the cost of anything until you know the cost of the energy that went into it. If we make energy cheaper we can do a lot of things that look impossible now.
And don't say what about the waste. That's a myth. Nuclear waste is 100 billion times less of a problem than this lake.
Oh wow, existential horrors on the other side of the world that are beyond my comprehension