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00:08It was very quickly apparent that this was a powerful earthquake, and was growing in power.
00:23It was a terrifying moment seeing all the devastating power
00:38of tsunami.
00:40The news on the radio was talking about the Fukushima reactor.
00:44They said there's been an explosion at the nuclear plant, turn the car around and drive
00:49south.
00:56It was sort of a Chernobyl moment.
01:11If this were to be a really significant release of radio activity, would you have to evacuate
01:17Tokyo?
01:39On the 11th of March 2011, the largest tsunami to hit Japan for more than a thousand years
01:46devastated the east coast, leaving thousands dead or missing.
01:55But few knew that another emergency was brewing at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
02:06Professor Kuzuto Suzuki investigated the crisis.
02:11Fukushima Daiichi had six reactors, and four of them were located in coastal lines.
02:19After the earthquake, three operating reactors immediately shut down.
02:23So once the reactor was shut down, it was considered safe.
02:33But the tsunami breached the reactor buildings, leaving the power plant without power.
02:40Professor Tom Scott helped with the disaster clear-up.
02:44Part of the damage that was caused by the tsunami, pumping systems were disabled.
02:52The problem with light water reactors is that even though you may shut down and stop causing
02:58fission, the fuel will generate lots of residual heat.
03:02And it's essential that once you've turned off a reactor, that you continue to take away this residual heat.
03:10And if you fail to do so, the reactor core will get hotter and hotter and hotter.
03:19So the plant needed electricity, and for an extended period it couldn't get it.
03:27It couldn't keep those key parts cool.
03:29And that's when the crisis was turning into a potential disaster.
03:38The power company and its workers scrambled to avert a nuclear meltdown.
03:45It was very difficult to bring in off-site emergency response capability
03:51because of the debris and destruction caused by the tsunami,
03:55because roads were physically broken.
03:57So very much it was a situation that the power plant and the people on the power plant
04:02were volunteering to go into the plants to turn off key valves
04:05or to try and open key valves in some instances,
04:08to try and make sure that they could keep cooling those reactor cores.
04:11Those were very, very brave people.
04:13It was a moment when there were difficulties because of the lack of light and everything.
04:21So there was no way that the Fukushima Daiichi will restart the cooling system
04:28and therefore the fuels are starting to melt down.
04:38We had a situation where the fuel elements started to get very, very hot,
04:42started to generate steam, and we got a sort of runaway steam corrosion.
04:47What that meant is that lots of hydrogen was quickly produced
04:51and it started to fill the insides of the building.
04:55The release of hydrogen from the reactors made a very combustious mixture
05:00in the reactor halls of the wider building around them.
05:04Temperature started to rise and the clock began to tick.
05:11The government declared a nuclear emergency.
05:16But in the chaos after the tsunami, many were unaware of the crisis at the plant,
05:22including some who fled inland for Tsushima district with Mizue Kano to her centuries-old farmhouse.
05:31There were many people who went to Tsushima and traveled to the island.
05:35There were friends who were friends,
05:38and some of them who were the same apartment.
05:43There were 25 people that were connected to them.
05:46There were 25 people that were connected to them.
05:48There were also people who were in the area.
05:48There were people who were in the area.
05:49It was always something that they needed to help.
05:49I think it was a day that I would like to share with you.
05:57Meanwhile, across Japan, thousands were still waiting for news of loved ones caught up in the tsunami.
06:05Like Kazuma Obara, now a photojournalist.
06:10In 2011, I was in Kyoto, and I worked as a salesperson in a financial company.
06:18My best friend's hometown is Minami Sanurik town.
06:23It's really course in Miyagi Prefecture.
06:27It's like second hometown for me.
06:32I asked him, how was your parents?
06:35And then he just answered, the phone was dead.
06:41So he couldn't know if they are okay or not.
06:45I totally felt I'm powerless, but I wanted to do something.
06:52You know, I was in Osaka, so I could buy almost everything, like fuel, food, water.
07:00So I bought the surprise for the disaster area, and I picked up my best friends in Tokyo, and slowly
07:10and slowly I moved to the north.
07:16Financial Times bureau chief Muir Dickey was already reporting from the area.
07:22Looking around, it's almost impossible to believe that this was a bustling seaside town, until that wall of water smashed
07:29through, turning the wooden houses into matchsticks.
07:33I don't think anything prepared me for the kind of scenes that I saw when we finally made it to
07:44the actual coast, and this absolute devastation of towns and cities along it.
07:55When I see you now, I can't see the same amount of sun-��, so I know I can see
08:02the rising of the sand on the top of the sea.
08:06The sun has stopped there, and I can't see the source from the sea.
08:07There had a lot of noise in the sky.
08:07There was a big noise in the direction, by far away.
08:10But I didn't even know the weather in the sky.
08:12But in the moment, I hadn't fully realized what was happening.
08:19a little spark will create the hydrogen explosion
08:29the hydrogen explosion basically blew out the building
08:34and this creates the visual impact that it was sort of a Chernobyl moment
08:45I got a message from my editors in Hong Kong saying there's been an explosion at
08:51the plant that was the first time I realized that this was more than just
08:55worry about a nuclear plant that it was something very very serious
09:04plant worker Yukio Shirahige had fled home after the tsunami and saw the
09:10explosion on TV.
09:11So, 1号機が爆発したのを見た時にはですねもうこれは大変なことになったっていうふうに思いました当時1号機は原子炉建屋が屋根ごと吹っ飛んでましたからね炉心油も起きてたわけですし
09:43蒸気とかが湯気とかそういう煙が出てましたのでね炉心油も起きてたわけですし蒸気とかが湯気とかそういう煙が出てましたのでね
09:49Because within that explosion the heat that's released
09:52you release radioactive material up into the atmosphere
09:57But at the same time there was very little information about the spread of radioactivity
10:02And part of the reason for that is this site had 24 static monitors for measuring radiation
10:09But the tsunami took out 23 of those 24
10:14At her farmhouse Mizue Kano didn't yet know the source of the explosion
10:19でもその時ね 空気が金属の味がしてたんです安いスプーンを口に舐めたような
10:44空気がゆらっとして光るで、こう、金属、こう、フライパンがから焼けしたような味がする
10:52なんかこれ違うよねってそして皮膚が本当にチクチクして痛かったです
10:56Mizue began to fear the worstこの爆発音を聞いた後だったのでこれはひょっとしたらって思いましただからいとこととにかくこんだけ人がいるんだから野菜とか取り入れとこう
11:21私それから犬を飼っていましたから絶対外へ出さないに家に閉じ込めていました
11:31I don't know.
11:52the picture that the first reactor building was blown away that was the time
11:58that people recognized the seriousness of the problem my view was that oh this is
12:07not the worst case yet news of the explosion at Fukushima Daiichi spread
12:18around the world but there was little information about the radiation risks
12:23for those on the ground everybody knew there was a very serious crisis at the
12:31plant and the population was watching anxiously the updates from the
12:39government but I think it was clear at times that the government itself was
12:45struggling to understand the situation about what was happening and the plant
12:51assurances that such a thing could never happen in the first place had been shown
12:56not to be warranted so there was a great deal of confusion a lot a great deal of
13:02doubt and a great deal of concern
13:09the government ordered an evacuation for 20 kilometers around the plant but in
13:15Tsushima district Mizuei Kano was 10 kilometers beyond the zone when she had
13:21unexpected visitors
13:26There was a car in the house, with a high-speed car, and there was a gas mask on the
13:40back of the house.
13:41There was a lot of防護服, and there was a lot of防護服.
13:59Mizue had no idea who the people were, but she was scared, as were her neighbors.
14:15I had no idea where I was, but I couldn't find it anymore.
14:22So I made a place for a dog, and I ran away.
14:29While thousands packed up and left, some feared the radiation could be blown south to Tokyo,
14:36triggering deadly stampedes as 30 million people tried to flee.
14:42If this were to be a really, really significant release of radioactivity,
14:46were those people genuinely in lots of danger?
14:49Would you have to evacuate Tokyo?
14:53People were scared. The Prime Minister was scared.
14:58We discovered later that the Prime Minister himself had started to think about the need to evacuate Tokyo,
15:08which in itself would have caused huge loss of life.
15:14The Prime Minister was thinking in those terms that this could turn into an extraordinary disaster.
15:26Fear of radiation continued to spread.
15:29And 100 kilometres north of the plant, the news reached communities hardest hit by the tsunami.
15:39People in the area, including in the disaster zone, were desperate to know what was happening at the plant,
15:47and also desperate to know what it meant.
15:52Richard Halberstadt was sheltering at Ishinomaki University.
15:58I ended up spending two nights just sleeping at the university with many of the other staff.
16:06Our main way of getting news from outside was using battery-driven radios.
16:12And so, of course, the news on the radio was talking about the Fukushima reactor.
16:20We knew when it was broadcast that there had been an explosion and so on, which was concerning for us.
16:27But ironically, not as concerning as maybe for other people,
16:32because we were so busy trying to look after ourselves from the earthquake and tsunami damage.
16:42Just north of Ishinomaki in Minamisan Riku, Kazuma Obara arrived to help search for his friend's relatives
16:50and reveal the devastation to the world.
16:55Since I was 16 years old, I wanted to be a photographer.
17:00I wanted to shoot. I wanted to document.
17:07There were 30 housing before the tsunami.
17:12When we arrived at the town, only two housing were still there.
17:17And my friend's house wasn't there.
17:25From the basement, everything was moved to somewhere.
17:30So, when my best friends saw that situation, he wasn't stopped crying.
17:49His grandfather was missing.
17:54And what he could do for him was just visiting the place where someone saw the grandfather at the last
18:08moment before the tsunami came.
18:10And he was just crying.
18:17And told something to his grandfather.
18:24I couldn't do anything for him.
18:26And I was just shooting.
18:28I was just shooting.
18:38The kind of level of trauma, the wave of trauma and distress that came in with the tsunami is hard
18:47to describe.
18:48But as a journalist, what you have to do is try to describe it.
18:51What you have to do is try to understand what happened and communicate it to the outside world.
18:57Soldiers, doctors, firemen, other relief groups are all working hard to try and bring some kind of semblance of normality
19:04back to people's lives.
19:06But just walking around this town is to sense the scale of the challenge.
19:15A friend came to find me partly to check that I was alive.
19:22And also, he gave me information which included the fact that one of our best friends had lost his life.
19:32Everything was so surreal and so completely removed from everyday life that I really didn't have a chance to kind
19:41of think about how I felt about anything.
19:44One of our other really good friends, who is a hotel owner, had converted the hotel into an evacuation shelter.
19:52And so my friend suggested that we go and meet him.
19:56So that's what I did.
20:00We had no electricity, no water, no gas.
20:05And it was cold because March is very, very cold in this area.
20:12So in all the clothes that we had 24 hours a day, huddling around little kerosene stoves and like shivering
20:21in bed clothes at night.
20:29Meanwhile, Ryoko Endo was stranded at Ishinomaki City Hall, believing her three children were sheltering across town at their school
20:38gymnasium.
20:40They all were in a difficult situation.
20:43So we were helping each other.
20:44We were helping each other.
20:47We were trying to continue our life to go and do the right to go and do the right to
20:52go.
20:53So we were working on a lot, so we wanted to keep our food and to preserve our food.
21:02We wanted to keep our food and keep our food and keep our food.
21:05I was able to keep my mind in a lot of trouble.
21:13If my kids are in the gym, I would have to go to school.
21:20I didn't think that much.
21:21and I didn't think that I was very
21:22seriously心配.
21:32100 km south at Fukushima Daiichi,
21:36after the explosion at Unit 1,
21:39workers were also trying to cool
21:41nuclear fuel in units 2, 3 and 4.
21:47You have a series of reactors
21:49that are in trouble,
21:50but one of them blows up then your your teams that are trying to work on the other reactor
21:57buildings are are withdrawn because of the danger and that made it very very challenging to try and
22:03prevent similar hydrogen explosions and those other reactors the key thing was to deliver
22:12cooling water to the parts of the plant that were getting too hot and they tried
22:18various ways of doing that the initial priority was just restoring electricity supply they found
22:27in fact at one point the plug and socket didn't fit for an emergency supply around 11am on the 14th
22:36of
22:36march a second explosion blew the roof off reactor building three on the 15th there were two further
22:45explosions effectively it was the same mechanism each time build up of hydrogen followed by an
22:52explosion starting with unit one and then with other units as well the fourth reactor which was
23:00not in operation was also blown away because the hydrogen was uh was leaked into the the building
23:09of the fourth reactor uh because the third and fourth are connected
23:17three reactor buildings were now open to the elements risking further radiation leaks into the atmosphere
23:24from the reactors or the spent fuel not only is there a requirement to keep the reactor core
23:32cooled but there's also a requirement to keep the spent fuel ponds filled up with water and to keep the
23:39fuel
23:39pool in that as well the spent fuel pools were on the high floors of the reactor so when the
23:50steam explosion
23:52happened then the spent fuel pool was also exposed to the air if there was no cooling system there'll be
24:01a
24:02meltdown of the spent fuel could cause fires among the uranium spent fuel with the potential for very large releases
24:10of radiation
24:19the explosions that tore open fukushima daichi's reactor buildings unexpectedly helped with the effort to
24:27cool overheating fuel but at a huge cost so what happened in in the end was uh they were able
24:37to bring in
24:38military fire fighting vehicles that could deliver large amounts of water into the cooling pond and they
24:44were also able to flood the lower reactor areas with water
24:51that averted the possibility for a much bigger disaster but it also created this problem of lots and
24:59lots of radioactive uh contaminated water the reactors had lost their integrity so you can imagine it is
25:10each reactor core being like a broken teacup you can keep pouring water into the top of the teacup but
25:17the
25:17crack at the bottom will keep allowing water to flow out so what that meant is is as they continued
25:23to
25:23put water through the reactor cores they produced more and more radioactively contaminated water that
25:29was physically draining to ground or they were having to pump out
25:34the threat of explosions had passed but workers at the plant still risked radiation exposure
25:42meanwhile evacuees like mizu eikano were facing a trauma of their own the stigma of contamination
26:10it's a really painful moment their jobs their you know houses their birthplaces
26:19these are all gone so there are a lot of scars in the society by this incident
26:27many living beyond the 20 kilometer exclusion zone sheltered in their homes
26:33one thing that i found quite harrowing actually was for the people that have been displaced
26:40they've been displaced they've been moved away but the people that lived just outside the exclusion zone
26:45demonstrably sometimes they received more radioactive fallout than people inside the fallout zone
26:50and yet they hadn't been relocated despite the risks plant workers who had been evacuated days earlier
26:58were recalled to try and prevent further spread of radiation including yukio shirahige who supported
27:06the mission to cover the mission to cover reactor building one
27:08I had a long time to do that.
27:17I worked in the company's management system.
27:26The 1号機 is a building of 1号機,
28:02Kazuma O'bara arrived in the exclusion zone.
28:09When I was a high school student, I already started having the interest to the nuclear industry, so I wanted
28:19to do something with Fukushima.
28:23No media could go into the nuclear power plant and ask the workers what was the condition.
28:31A contact helped Kazuma gain entry to the plant.
28:35So I was afraid, but I decided to visit only one day.
28:41So I thought, maybe it's okay.
28:44Most of the workers lived surrounding the area of nuclear power plant before the accident, but they had to evacuate
28:53from the zone.
28:54So many of the workers I met lived in temporary housing, and they went to nuclear power plant from temporary
29:03housing.
29:04That is so hard.
29:06Why did they stay ill?
29:15Did they have a country town?
29:18Because they were scared.
29:20Why did they stay ill?
29:24Why did they stay ill?
29:25Well, goodbye.
29:56It was so hard to see the worker is
30:00facing hard working condition.
30:05People thought they are kinds of hero to stop spreading the nuclear elements from the reactor.
30:16But at the same time, we didn't care anyone in the zone, especially in the front line.
30:24That was so strange, I felt.
30:29Because if they are hero, we want and we need to protect them.
30:47100 kilometres north of the nuclear crisis, aid was slowly arriving for survivors in areas cut off by the tsunami.
30:57We were getting deliveries of food from the self-defense forces and from the city and so on.
31:05So it's basically nothing but kind of like the sort of sweet bread snack rolls that you can buy in
31:11convenience stores
31:12and also the onigiri rice balls, which they had gathered from all over the country.
31:20They were past their sell-by date because it took a long time for them to make their way to
31:25us.
31:25But we were just grateful to have anything.
31:27And as long as it wasn't really rotten, then we could eat it to survive.
31:31And it wasn't much. We all lost a lot of weight then, but we were very grateful to just have
31:36that.
31:41For two days, flooding had prevented Ryoko Endo from trying to locate her children.
31:47But when the waters subsided, she went to find them.
32:20.
32:20.
32:20I was going to go to school and I was going to go to school and I was going to
32:24go to school and then I was looking for children.
32:30I was going to go and ask myself, but I didn't know.
32:37I was going to talk to my family and I asked myself,
32:48We asked them to be able to go to the children's kids.
32:53Many of them are in the neighborhood of the school.
32:57We asked them to go to the doctor's school and ask them to go to the hospital.
33:13We asked them to go to school.
33:14The children of the house were in front of the house and said,
33:17they said, they didn't take a word for their children.
33:23So they knew the children of the house.
33:38I think it was a bad dream.
33:41I'm not sure how to live in my dream.
33:45I couldn't live in my dream.
33:50I couldn't believe it.
33:53I couldn't believe it.
33:54I didn't have anything to do with my food.
33:58I couldn't believe it.
34:00I couldn't believe it.
34:19The devastation unleashed on the 11th of March 2011 shocked the world, but tsunamis are
34:29a well-known risk in Japan. So why did this one trigger a nuclear disaster?
34:37One of the phrases that was used a great deal in the days after the tsunami hit is sotegai,
34:49which means beyond expectations. And in many, many ways, the tsunami was beyond expectations.
34:58That's the core explanation to some people or the excuse to other people for why the tsunami caused this crisis.
35:17One by one, Japan's nuclear plants were shut down until the cause could be established.
35:23Kazuto Suzuki consulted on an independent investigation.
35:30I was invited by the chief editor of one of the largest daily papers in Japan.
35:38And we set up the first investigation of the accident itself, but also we investigated the responses of the prime
35:49minister's office and the government.
35:53Three other investigations were launched. All agreed that a critical point of failure was the plant's level of protection against
36:03a large tsunami.
36:05The plant was originally designed to handle about a 5-metre tsunami, but the actual tsunami goes up to the
36:1515-metre high.
36:18And once the waves breached the plant, there was another weakness.
36:22When the tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi, the water flowed into the basement of the Fukushima Daiichi 3-8 reactors.
36:34And those reactors had emergency generators in the basement.
36:40The tsunami swamped the diesel generators, which were the main source of backup electrical power.
36:48Because water couldn't be cycled through the reactor to take away the heat, we had a situation where the reactor
36:54core, even though they were shut down, they started to get hotter and hotter.
36:59What that led to is the build-up of hydrogen. And what that means is you only need to have
37:03a spark for that hydrogen to explode. And that's exactly what happened.
37:11The first reactor of Fukushima Daiichi was made by an American company.
37:17The higher risks for the American power plants were the tornado.
37:23So, you know, they naturally designed the generators to place in the basement where it is much more safer.
37:34But in Japan, you know, we don't have much tornado, but we have tsunami.
37:40So, putting the generators on the ground was not really the good idea.
37:51The scale of the disaster that followed shattered public confidence in nuclear power.
37:56There was shock in Japan, I think, that the system wasn't able to deal more effectively, faster, with the crisis
38:08at the plant.
38:09I think people had been reassured by the electricity utilities that their plants wouldn't get into this kind of problem
38:20as a result of an earthquake or a tsunami.
38:23When it did, I think people assumed that there would be an effective emergency plan and an effective backup to
38:33that emergency plan.
38:34And they were stunned to find that there wasn't really.
38:41The Fukushima cleanup is expected to last for decades, including dealing with vast quantities of contaminated water.
38:51So, there are lots of tanks everywhere in the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
38:58They are using every inches, every corner of the open spaces to store those tanks.
39:08But it comes to the, you know, to the limit.
39:12They quite quickly established a sort of filtration plant, which would take out the majority of all of the radioactive
39:21material that dissolved into the water.
39:23In terms of its radiological danger, it really doesn't present much hazard.
39:28So, the decision in the end was to start discharging into the sea through a pipeline that would go out
39:36off the coast.
39:37And to let the Pacific Ocean and dilution solve the problem.
39:44Meantime, a vast area around the plant has been scraped clean of surface radiation.
39:50But residents remain in fear of contamination.
39:54The thing that struck me most was that there was this lack of understanding of where the radioactivity had gone.
40:01So, one of the things that I did with my team at the University of Bristol is we got funding
40:06to develop a flying robot that could map radiation.
40:09And within weeks, we were flying in different parts of the exclusion zone in partnership with the Japan Atomic Energy
40:16Authority to understand the distribution of the fallout material.
40:23The forest litter and the bark and the moss on the bark are very good for holding the radioactive fallout
40:29particles.
40:29And so, by flying over the forest and we go several hundred meters into the forest or over the forest,
40:35we can measure the radioactivity without actually having to go in there.
40:40We would stay in a hotel near to, but not inside the exclusion zone.
40:46And on several occasions at the end of our stay, we would go to try and pay our hotel bill.
40:51And the manager of the hotel would say, your bill, everything's been paid already.
40:57And every time it was, you know, a local businessman wanted to express his gratitude for you coming to help
41:04our country.
41:05And, you know, this is a small measure of gratitude that we pay all of your costs.
41:14More than a decade later, the so-called difficult-to-return zone is shrinking.
41:20Mizuei Kano is considering moving back, but the decision stirs up traumatic memories.
41:26I lived in the water in 5 years.
41:30I lived in a residential house with an oil station.
41:31We were able to make a coal in the local area.
41:35We were able to make a coal in the local area.
41:38We were able to steal the lives of the money.
41:40We were able to ruin that life.
41:43We were able to lose our lives and we were able to make another building.
41:48I thought I was going to go back to the hospital.
41:50I thought, I was going to go back to the hospital.
41:53I thought, I'm not a person.
41:55I thought, I'm not a person.
41:57I thought, I'm not a person.
41:57I thought, I don't want to give up my wife or my husband.
42:04It was so strange feeling when I came back to home from Fukushima region.
42:13Especially when I came back from the zone to my house,
42:17you know, in the zone, everything is there.
42:22You know, housing, supermarket, and convenience store,
42:27but no one there.
42:31The Japanese government, I think, recorded something like 2,300 lives
42:34attributed to Fukushima.
42:36None of them to radiation,
42:39but a lot of them to induced mental ill health and suicide.
42:43And part of that is caused by, you know,
42:47this notion of, am I contaminated?
42:49Am I not?
42:50Am I going to die from cancer because of radiation exposure?
42:54All of the worries that are manifest because of the lack of understanding
42:58about radiological risk genuinely had a human toll.
43:04When I think there is a part of my life,
43:08I think I can live a lot.
43:14I don't think so much in that situation.
43:22and how we live in the world.
43:32The tsunami that triggered the nuclear disaster claimed almost 20,000 lives,
43:39with more than 2,500 still missing.
43:51A few years later, former lecturer Richard Halberstadt became a guide at a ruined school,
43:58which serves as a memorial for the disaster.
44:01I felt like I wanted a change even before the disaster,
44:06but I didn't really have the courage to leave the job.
44:10And ironically, that terrible disaster gave me the courage to actually leave
44:17without knowing what I was going to do next,
44:19because it made me feel if I can live through this disaster,
44:23I can just leave work and something will happen.
44:27While working there, Richard met Ryoko Endo, who lost her three children to the tsunami.
44:33When I was in the tsunami, I wondered what happened to the tsunami.
44:40I was thinking about what happened to the tsunami,
44:41but I felt like it was just one of the history.
44:48I was also happy to have the struggles of my body.
44:51I was happy to have the climate that came out of my life.
44:52If I had the planet that came out of my life with my life,
44:55I would be happy to be here.
45:01everything's changed in so many ways because on a more sort of philosophical level when you look
45:09at all the people who lost their lives then I'm much more appreciative of just life it made me
45:17think about my mortality speaking to so many people who had had their lives overturned and
45:26had had loved ones wake up in the morning and then be taken away by the sea
45:40so many people in the disaster zone dealt with this unspeakable tragedy with dignity and and grace
45:54that I found that inspiring as well so it was a and we have privileged to be able to report
46:02on it
46:21support information for the themes raised tonight can be found online at channel4.com
46:26slash support new tomorrow night at 10 exploitation in excess of local communities
46:31and endangered species an extended look into the case of seesaw the lion and the dentist
46:36you
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