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Chernobyl Days That Shocked the World S01E02
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00:00Captioning provided by a major production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
00:12I was almost to 12 years old by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
00:19Did you hear? The plant is exploding. There is no reactor unit number four.
00:44The temperatures in the reactor core were hot enough that the fuel would melt, like a lava, but a highly
00:50radioactive lava.
00:55The sarcophagus was built over the destroyed reactor, but was essentially propped up like a house of cards, and it
01:03was recognized that this was one day going to collapse.
01:06We've seen those brave workers putting the construction together. We have seen the arch in a nearly ready state.
01:30The fear that there will be another Chernobyl, it's enough just to say that word, and that means we're going
01:37to get affected.
01:53The Chernobyl disaster on the 26th of April 1986 was the worst nuclear accident in history.
02:02The explosion left wreckage on the ground that will remain radioactive for 20,000 years, and blasted a cloud of
02:12contaminated dust into the sky.
02:15There was really not that much appreciation in the first, not even just days and weeks, but even the first
02:23years of the extent of fallout that had occurred at quite some distance, hundreds of kilometres away from the nuclear
02:33plant.
02:36Chernobyl remains the worst nuclear accident in history, but at the time the Soviet state deliberately concealed the danger.
02:45Chernobyl remains the worst nuclear accident in history.
02:46Somewhere, a clear decision was made to not tell the people.
02:55Ala Kravchuk grew up near the plant, and was studying music in Kyiv when the crisis hit.
03:02When the accident has happened, nobody was informed.
03:07We did not know about it until a few days later.
03:12We prepared the end of year exam, and I am a singer.
03:17So I was extremely sensitive to this dryness in the stroke, but of course that was nothing to do with
03:25the physical condition.
03:27It was something which was not visible, but everybody felt it.
03:33Ala discovered what was happening, not from an official source, but from evacuees fleeing her former hometown of Pripyat.
03:41I learned then from my school friends in Pripyat that they were greeted by somebody in a hurry saying,
03:48what are you doing, have you not heard? There was an accident and the buses are about to arrive, we
03:55have to leave.
03:57This town of 50,000, built for Chernobyl's workers, was now dangerously radioactive.
04:05You have got levels that are absolutely definitely exceeding the level you would allow people to be present in,
04:14because of the agreed significance of the cancer risk.
04:19Yet, critical workers like control room operator Alexey Brias agreed to stay,
04:25to prevent a new crisis in Chernobyl's other three reactors.
04:30After 26 January, I worked for two days on the third block.
04:40I and the other people were dealing with the third reactor.
04:43The reactor was stopped immediately after the explosion.
04:46But it was needed to be long-term, reduce the temperature gradually.
04:52In the evening, after the change, I returned to Pripyat.
04:56There was no people.
04:58due to the engine being left voting operators, prisoners, and operational.
05:04There was also the plan to evacuate operators after that.
05:15Within days, only clean-up crews known as liquidators remained in a 30-kilometer exclusion zone.
05:22As they worked, radioactive debris continued to billow from the wreckage of Reactor Unit 4.
05:30Chemist Valery Suleimov evacuated soon after the explosion.
05:35Maybe end of May, the Soviet government decided to put some steel structures above
05:44to get the kind of dome over the destroyer.
05:49It was a shelter called a sarcophagus.
05:55Ala's father, Volodymyr, who'd helped to build Chernobyl, worked on the designs for the sarcophagus,
06:00or object shelter, as it was officially known.
06:04Dad was allocated specifically for this job to create the up-to-date picture.
06:11What is Reactor looking like now? What was the parameters? What was the current situation?
06:19It was extremely difficult to get original drawings, because most of them were at the station,
06:26and they were contaminated or non-existent.
06:32We are looking now at the drawings my dad was working, and the measurements had to be certified very meticulously,
06:42and then see the changes that were done after the explosion.
06:48We are looking at the exploded reactor. This is what had to be covered, because the lid was blown up
06:58and has landed in a very odd position.
07:03Dad had a very clear understanding that you have to be there. You have to see the damage yourself.
07:14The first stage was to get large concrete slabs up against the building.
07:22You basically built a concrete shell with a roof over the top of it that would act as a reasonable
07:29containment of dust and vapours.
07:34More than 90,000 people took part in this building activity.
07:41They were not planned staff. It was builders from all over the Soviet Union.
07:53So it means approximately 200 days from the decision to completion of this facility. It's very, very fast. It's incredibly
08:08fast.
08:09Meanwhile, Chernobyl's three other reactors were ordered back online to deal with power shortages.
08:16So plant workers returned to the exclusion zone, including nuclear chemists Valeri and his wife Helena.
08:27Our management told us, you can go to Chernobyl. It was nothing to do this to destroy the reactor.
08:37We did our regular work as before the accident for unit one, two and three.
08:51And we started to work in this system. Two weeks you work at the plant and two weeks away.
09:03We had respirators. We changed clothes. We used to go to the stations in the respirators, in the protective clothes.
09:18We knew where we are, what we need to do and in what conditions we are.
09:27For that time, reactor four was confined by this object shelter. And we did nothing for reactor four. Nothing.
09:39But for workers who were on the front line after unit four exploded, like Alexei, there was no longer a
09:46place at Chernobyl.
10:13At first, the official death toll was just two.
10:16Killed by the explosion. But shortly after, Dr. Alexander Bugar had treated others with extreme radiation burns.
10:26Then there wasn't a severe disease. Then the severe disease was prevented by the Communist Party.
10:34Well, the issue is that I knew, I knew, but I called myself with my doctors,
10:40who were left in the medical and sanitary part.
10:43And the information was that almost the majority of firemen and the majority of the personnel died.
10:54Although now far from Chernobyl, Dr. Bugar had been in close contact with many of the victims.
11:22The death toll was later revised to 30. But some experts believe thousands die from radiation exposure.
11:29With thousands more getting ill.
11:32With thousands more getting ill.
11:32All of the chronic diseases were chronic diseases.
11:34All of them from radiophobia, because we were all very afraid and experienced.
11:37And even in this emotional stress, the chronic diseases were developed.
11:45And the pain was the most important.
11:47But the pain, and the pain, and the pain, and the pain.
11:51The pain was the pain.
11:51My mother remembered that I was not losing awareness.
11:54And then she brought me to an investigation and they led me to a cure.
11:59If I took my child's medical card, it is more, I don't know, than a war and a war.
12:08Widespread health problems were just one aspect of a vast Soviet cover-up.
12:16In the weeks after Chernobyl, the secret services moved to conceal the evidence behind the disaster.
12:23The KGB came in and all the scientists were told,
12:26this must not be released, you must not discuss this,
12:30what records have you kept, and they were all removed from.
12:35After the crash, I and other engineers who worked in the KGB,
12:43we were forced to sign the KGB to sign a document.
12:49We were forced to talk about the original language,
12:55the real reasons of the crash on the KGB.
13:00Three months later, Soviet investigators briefed
13:04the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, and clearly pointed the finger.
13:10The Soviet Union had a message on the whole world,
13:16which was the cause of the crash, and that the cause of the crash,
13:23and the complaints, and the complaints of the personnel.
13:27It was the same.
13:32The real reason was that the official propaganda had been hurt by the operators.
13:42Alongside operator errors, the report also hinted at problems with the reactor's design.
13:48this was indeed a very specific Soviet type of reactor the light water graphite
13:57moderated reactor or our BMK type in all reactors neutrons split atoms in fuel
14:06rods releasing heat which boils water producing steam to spin a generator in
14:13most designs the water helps maintain a steady flow of neutrons keeping the
14:19reaction going.
14:38All reactors use control rods to absorb neutrons which slows the
14:43reaction down if you take control rods out the power will rise if you put them
14:49in it should decrease it's like driving a car a little bit of fine tuning adjust a
14:54bit to the left a bit on the accelerator a bit on the brake same with the reactor
15:01unusually the RBMK also used graphite to help manage neutron flow in blocks
15:08surrounding the fuel rods and on the end of each control rod.
15:15This mix of both water and the graphite was really quite unique and had been studied in
15:21the west and very definitely was known by 1986 to have quite potentially dangerous
15:29operating conditions there were situations of the positioning of the control rods where
15:36you couldn't get them in fast enough you wouldn't be able to slow the reaction.
15:41Concerningly these situations included when the emergency stop or scram button was hit.
16:09But reactor designs were a state secret so most staff at Chernobyl were not told about this
16:16serious flaw.
16:17Of course the Soviet Union got round that by saying here's the rule book don't operate
16:23in those regimes because the psychology was the rule would not be disobeyed.
16:31On the 25th of April ahead of planned maintenance unexpected events tore up the rule book.
16:37It had been decided that the Chernobyl reactor in late April would conduct an experiment related
16:46to how you bring a reactor back after there had been perhaps a power cut externally.
16:54So they started on the 26th to reduce the power from 3200 megawatts down to half.
17:04At that time they got a telephone call from the electricity board in Kiev who had noted that
17:12a normal or non-nuclear power station had broken down.
17:17So they said could you please stop.
17:22This pause was not part of the plan.
17:25There were no rules to follow.
17:27Even so, once the power shortage passed the test resumed.
17:32So the internal configuration of the reactor is being changed and adjusted to help try to make
17:39the experiment work but it is producing what resulted in this unstable condition.
17:46The reactivity started to happen which made the reactor just increasing and increasing in power.
17:58Realising the reactor was out of control, operator Leonid Toptonov hit the scram button, exposing that catastrophic design flaw.
18:07When that scram button was hit the control rods were going to drop so that these rods should soak up
18:13all the neutrons.
18:14The only problem was the first bit to enter the reactor had graphite.
18:18And that graphite that came in further increased the neutron population in the core.
18:25So you were then into a thermal runaway, producing a lot of steam, massive amount of steam.
18:30There is a massive expansion and that produces a huge force, enough to lift and blow the lid off the
18:38reactor.
18:43All these materials that were inside the fuel rods, all that radioactivity is now up in the sky.
19:07The reactor operator to their death said they didn't understand what had happened, they thought they'd done everything according to
19:19procedures.
19:22As new information came to light, the IAEA issued a revised report, suggesting Soviet authorities had deliberately downplayed problems with
19:33the reactor design.
19:34There was human error associated with what happened at Chernobyl, but there was also a design fault.
19:40The explosion happened as a result.
19:43The explosion happened as a result.
19:46The explosion happened as a result.
19:48The explosion happened as a result.
19:52The explosion happened as a result.
19:56Of course, the people who were in the control room at the time thought that whatever they
20:01were doing, there was a single solution if it was going really wrong, which was the scram button.
20:18I've stood in that control room wearing PPE and mask etc.
20:23I've stood with my hand over where that scram button was.
20:28And that kind of, for me, put it all into perspective.
20:32Genuinely, at that point in time, they didn't know that pressing that button was going to cause this incident.
20:38We all understood that the reasons are not in mistakes of operators.
20:43We understood that the reasons that the European Union said effectively are not true.
20:52And true are the reasons that we have to stop.
20:54It's not true.
20:55It's not true.
20:56While the Soviets withheld information and deflected blame for Chernobyl, winds had blown radioactive dust across Europe.
21:04And as news of the cover-up also began to spread, faith in nuclear power plunged.
21:11Chernobyl is a big sort of PR disaster with regards to nuclear technology.
21:19It just had so many impacts.
21:21Some countries stopped their nuclear energy.
21:24The fear that there will be another Chernobyl.
21:28It's enough just to say that word.
21:30And that means we're going to get affected.
21:32We might get radioactivity.
21:35We might get cancer because of this.
21:39Closer to home.
21:41The crisis deepened mistrust of the entire Soviet system.
21:46We didn't even realize that something could happen.
21:50That it could be somehow dangerous.
21:52And that the radiation is at that moment, I did not know.
21:56The Chernobyl accident caused a lot of concerns and doubt.
22:01Particularly in Ukraine and in Belarus over the manner in which their republics were controlled from Moscow.
22:09And the call for independence rose all the greater when they realized how the Chernobyl accident had been managed.
22:19The Chernobyl incident was almost like the sort of straw that broke the camel's back when it comes to the
22:24fall of the Soviet Union.
22:35Once the Soviet Union disintegrated, hoping to learn the true scale of the disaster, former republics opened their doors to
22:43foreign scientists.
22:44At that time, it was very important for international observers to come in.
22:50Because by then, the people were tired of being lied to, tired of not getting all the information.
22:58In 1991, I got the chance to go to Chernobyl on a research project where we wanted to measure in
23:07the environment and also study the effects of shielding in the buildings in Pripyat, for example.
23:16I made my first entry into the zone and did some sample collection and you saw mostly deserted houses.
23:31Workers weren't living there, because if you lived there, you'd get radioactivity 24 hours a day.
23:36But if you went in just for a few hours in a day, you'd get low enough levels that were
23:41tolerable for the work, just all part of a job that has a certain level of risk.
23:48That was an experience which was mixed feelings, I think, because we went into apartments and you could see dolls
23:57and things from kids who were suddenly taken away.
24:02It was a funny feeling to see the empty town.
24:07In 1992, Oleksandr Sirota, training as a journalist, returned to Pripyat for the first time since the disaster.
24:16I went to travel to the city, to the cities that were remembered and important.
24:22And, in fact, there was such a very important transformation.
24:27I understood only then that we will not return.
24:33And, at some point, we began to search for the lost archives.
24:37It just became interesting.
24:38It was also in the amateur cinema studio, Pripyat Film, which worked at the local Palace of Culture.
24:44This archive, in general, was considered lost.
24:47Oleksandr searched for a decade before finding an archivist from Pripyat Film with a treasure trove of footage from their
24:54hometown.
24:54He protected him not very much in the same conditions.
24:58He was somewhere in the basement.
25:00He was, in the basement, in the basement.
25:03He was, in the basement.
25:04And, at some point, again, in the personal circumstances, he was able to search for those who buy this archive.
25:12He was, in the basement.
25:15He was, in the basement.
25:24He was, in the basement.
25:27He was, in the basement.
25:28He was, in the basement.
25:29He was, in the basement.
25:30He was, in the basement.
25:30This footage reveals a colorful vision of life in Pripyat, before radiation forced residents to flee.
25:44In 1993, I participated in an expedition to the Chernobyl.
25:50This town is the town of Pripyat, as you see, is a very sad town, because there are no inhabitants
25:57here.
25:58We measured radioactivity in the air in the 30-kilometer zone around the Chernobyl directory, to see how dangerous it
26:07was.
26:08I had a higher dose rate on the flight from Stockholm to Kyiv than I had when working in the
26:1630-kilometer zone.
26:19But, when I visited the sarcophagus, then the dose rate went up, way up, ten times.
26:28The concrete and steel shelter, built to cover Reactor 4's radioactive wreckage, was starting to fail.
26:39Chernobyl's sarcophagus, meant to last 30 years, was crumbling after just ten.
26:49The sarcophagus was essentially propped up together, so it was like a house of cards.
26:54It had holes in it, and over time, it slowly got worse and worse.
27:00And it was recognized that this was slowly, slowly declining, and one day going to collapse.
27:06A collapse would throw up a new cloud of radioactive debris, which could spread across Europe once again.
27:15Because of the physical degradation of the object shelter, it was decided to cover the envelope to prevent uncontrolled release
27:25contamination to the atmosphere.
27:28The international community recognized that Ukraine was in an intensely vulnerable position in the mid-to-late 90s and was
27:36trying to deal with the consequences of the accident.
27:39And there was an act of solidarity with Ukraine to support them to say that we want to stand with
27:43you to provide some sort of long-term solution.
27:45That solution was a vast arch called the new safe confinement, costing $1.7 billion.
27:54Simon Evans helped manage the project for the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development.
28:00The arch had two core functions. One was to confine the remnants of the destroyed unit 4.
28:07But the second one was to provide all the equipment and facilities for long-term decommissioning of the remnants of
28:15the reactor.
28:21I met Simon Evans in the very beginning of the NSE project. He was the supervisor for the bank. I
28:29was on the contractor side.
28:31My role was to coordinate designers and we did together the design documents.
28:40Radiation protection and safety for workers was our key priority throughout the construction.
28:46There was one area where we were hitting levels that meant workers could work there for around 4 minutes a
28:52day.
28:53So the arch was built 400 meters away to protect workers from the impact of radiation as you got closer
28:59to the old sarcophagus.
29:06It was quite exciting times. It was a romantic time, I would say.
29:14Because you see one of the largest facilities in the world growing up every day, every year.
29:21Well, I'm proud of that Valery there began to work. And he worked there from the first day until the
29:29last day.
29:31And it's good that the Western countries were gathered and began to develop this safe confinement.
29:40And then to build this arch, because to figure out the 4th block, to figure out everything that is under
29:47it,
29:49it would not be able to be in Ukraine.
29:56I had been back to Pripyat in 2015, and the new confinement was nearly ready.
30:07And that was an extraordinary, exciting time.
30:11We wanted to see it in real life, and we were safely taken into the Chernobyl zone.
30:19We've seen those brave, scaffolding workers putting the construction together.
30:25For the first time in decades, Chernobyl was crawling with life.
30:33New life had also taken over the abandoned town of Pripyat.
30:40I could not help asking if it's possible to drive and see my house.
30:47The answer was, the area where our house was is a jungle now, so it was not approachable.
30:55But I was promised to be taken as close as possible.
31:03I saw the ruins of the central concert hall, where I used to go to various concert events.
31:13And the beautiful mosaic was there, but all the windows were crushed.
31:19Exclusion zones are like zombie films, but without the zombies.
31:23In that Mother Nature very, very quickly takes over.
31:28Something breaks inside you when you see this happen, and you walk along the streets where everything was blossoming in
31:38roses,
31:39and wonderful open spaces, and the trees are growing, breaking the asphalt.
31:45Nature was claiming back its territory.
31:49It's a sort of stark reminder of how fragile human society is.
31:57It was like a ghost town. It wasn't that beautiful place that once I knew.
32:12Six years after construction began on the new safe confinement, the arch was complete.
32:19But to cover the radioactive wreckage, it had to be slid into place. A two-week job.
32:26We were constantly told by the engineers, don't you dare put us under pressure to do this fast.
32:32We're going to do this correctly. And that's what we allowed them to do.
32:37It was amazing, to be perfectly honest, because you had this world's biggest movable structure inching in synchrony.
32:44It was really something quite spectacular.
32:49And they did it.
32:51This enormous structure came to the final place.
32:56And was fixed there.
32:58It was so exciting.
33:04It was intensely complicated, but it happened.
33:09When it slid over the old reactor, many people described it as healing a wound that enabled Ukraine to look
33:14to the future with the confidence that they had the infrastructure required to deal with the lethal inheritance of Chernobyl.
33:23The arch was designed to last 100 years, which is long enough to slowly and very carefully dismantle the contaminated
33:31ruins inside.
33:34You can think about the decommissioning challenge of Chernobyl as being like trying to eat a mammoth.
33:39The only way you can eat a mammoth is a small chunk at a time.
33:45The idea was to essentially use hanging robotic systems to reach down and start to physically take the top off
33:52the sarcophagus and then reach into the core and grab by grab, remove the residual graphite and fuel materials.
34:02If you don't have the confinement, any aerosols that you make will escape into the air.
34:06They'll be carried by the wind and you have no control over where that material goes.
34:12A year later, Tom Scott brought more state-of-the-art technology to the cleanup effort.
34:19This is Spot. This is our four-legged robot friend.
34:23We were the first people in the world to take a Spot robot and deploy it on a nuclear site.
34:28It just happened to be Chernobyl, which is also the most notorious.
34:34So the purpose really of what we're doing is to use robots to go into places that are dangerous enough
34:40that you don't want to send a human being.
34:44We went into the space around the sarcophagus so that we could control Spot and read out what he was
34:50recording.
34:52It was an amazing experience. I was always struck every time that we went in.
34:57It's a bit like a cathedral. It's so big and it's so quiet.
35:04This is a really historical place. People have died there.
35:08But it's just the size of it and the silence is really striking.
35:13There is one object buried here, which only a robot like Spot can safely inspect.
35:20The temperatures in the reactor core were hot enough that the fuel would melt.
35:24In this material, it flows essentially a bit like a lava, but a highly radioactive lava.
35:30It's what we call corium because it's molten core material.
35:34And it flowed down into the basement and quite famously it formed a structure called the elephant's foot,
35:39which is an incredibly radioactive structure.
35:41And the intensity is such that if you were going to spend several minutes next to it,
35:47then radiation sickness would be quite likely.
35:51What we were working towards was getting a better understanding of the degradation of the material
35:57and potentially even retrieving that material as part of decommissioning
36:01to allow us to start to contain the risk a lot better.
36:08The reactor is just one source of intense radiation that must eventually be cleaned up.
36:15Tom and his team also studied several others across the exclusion zone.
36:21After the liquidators finished with all of their efforts,
36:24all of the vehicles, the helicopters, they were all congregated together in this graveyard
36:30and they still sit there today.
36:34There are some tankers which still have radioactive inventory inside the tanks.
36:39Those are some of the most radioactive things on the site, in fact.
36:42So there's a really big decommissioning job there to be done,
36:46which will take many decades.
36:50With the arch secure and international experts collaborating on the clean-up,
36:56Chernobyl became a symbol of hope instead of fear.
37:08I woke up because a friend of mine, who is Russian,
37:12has called to say, I'm really sorry.
37:16And I, at that moment, I didn't understand what she means.
37:22She said, I'm sure it will be over and everything will be fine.
37:27Please forgive.
37:29I said, what do you mean?
37:31And that was the morning when Russian troopers have attacked Ukraine.
37:39In February 2022, the Russian army entered Ukraine and swiftly headed for Chernobyl.
37:46A call from my town from Canada.
37:51Hey, hey dad, are you sleeping?
37:53It was around 6 am.
37:57Yes, I still sleeping.
38:00War is started.
38:05My insider at Chernobyl plant showed me the picture of the camera
38:11from the main entrance to the administrative building of the plant.
38:15And I saw the Russian tanks on the square before the administrative building.
38:23Chernobyl was the first site occupied as a result of the invasion
38:28because they came down through Belarus and it enabled them to have a direct line to Kyiv.
38:35The majority of the nuclear infrastructure was left undamaged.
38:39However, there was a tremendous amount of damage to non-nuclear infrastructure.
38:44Roads, for example, bridges.
38:47Site access fundamentally compromised.
38:50A lot of looting and damage of, for example, computers, fire equipment,
38:54all this sort of stuff which put the site in a tremendously fragile state.
38:59The Russians also besieged the town of Slavutich, where most Chernobyl workers were living,
39:06as were Valery and Helena Sulimov.
39:08When they were captured by the KS, there were a line that was on Slavutich.
39:15We were five days without electricity, without water, without heating.
39:22It was cold, cold, cold and scary.
39:28It was cold, cold, cold, cold.
39:30And on March 25, the Russian troops came to the WTR.
39:38Several tanks, several tanks, they passed.
39:42They passed.
39:44On social networks, our friends started to tell each other,
39:51that we were going to get to the street, to a protest meeting.
39:55We crowded in one place.
39:59Then we rolled out the big, big flag of Ukraine.
40:04And we went to the Russian soldiers.
40:13We heard some gunshot machine guns.
40:20And then they pulled out the grenades.
40:26From there, the officers came.
40:28They stood.
40:29We moved to them and shouted,
40:32come back, come back, come back, come back.
40:35Come back, come back, come back, come back, come back, come back, come back.
40:57The retreating Russians ransacked Chernobyl.
40:59The retreating Russians ransacked Chernobyl.
41:35They left the arch and its deadly contents unharmed.
41:39However, as the war dragged on,
41:42tactics changed.
41:57On the 14th of February, in the early hours of the morning,
42:00a Russian drone hit the north side of the confinement.
42:07This drone attack, 14th of February this year, I was completely destroyed.
42:17I was absolutely horrified.
42:19The drone hit the facility and it caused a fire on the membrane in the cladding,
42:26which spread all across the north side of the arch
42:29and also spread over to the south side and damaged the ceiling membrane of the arch.
42:40The main volume of the arch underneath the arch is kept under pressure
42:45so that you have the air, the tendency for the air never to go outside
42:50to minimise the release of radioactive contamination from the old facilities.
42:57So when you burst a hole in the side and you start a fire,
43:00what happens is the fire gets sucked through the structure.
43:03And so there's very, very significant fire damage on the inside.
43:11One of the problems was that it wasn't just the area where the drone hit.
43:16In order to put out the fires, the fire brigade had to cut some 300 holes
43:20in the steel structure of the arch.
43:23And that could have led to some radioactive material escaping out into the air.
43:29The two core design functions of the arch have been fundamentally compromised
43:33and the 100-year design life of the arch has been basically destroyed.
43:40I felt everything.
43:43I was angry, I was shocked.
43:45I didn't know what to do,
43:48what I can do and what the consequences might be.
43:55There were thousands of people working to create it.
43:59And it needed some drone to destroy the work of thousands of people for so many years.
44:09I do not believe we can get the full design functionality,
44:15but we will try to be as close as possible.
44:21All that the Russians are now doing is an act of nonsense,
44:27an act of barbarism, an act of violence,
44:30an act of humanity.
44:31The arch is just a small part of what they have already destroyed in Ukraine.
44:39So to speak about it, to talk about it, to say some words,
44:45it is almost impossible.
44:51The drone strike and the war have left an uncertain future both for Chernobyl
44:57and the people who have lived with its legacy for four decades.
45:03In the year of Chernobyl catastrophe, when we were much younger than today,
45:12it was a kind of adventure.
45:16Really.
45:18We did not feel the fear.
45:21We are.
45:24I am proud that I was attached to it.
45:28It is really great.
45:29That we helped us to deal with what we were there.
45:35Let's see what we did.
45:39It's a great honor to do this.
45:51It's important.
45:57It's the peace of the Chernobyl.
45:59It has been a lot for us,
45:59for most people who have been a lot.
46:00for most people who have been there.
46:00It has been a really good time.
46:01And it's hard to come to our lives in the last couple of years.
46:03It has been a great time and a great time.
46:03Because it has been a long time for us,
46:04It's a very short time to come back to our living life.
46:05the five days in the superiors and the first two years,
46:15Forgotten Heroes and Critical Choices
46:17The world's biggest clean-up after the world's worst accident
46:20Chernobyl, 48 hours to escape, is streaming now
46:249 o'clock tomorrow and both international relations and a credibility in ruins
46:29The concluding part of Suez, 24 hours that broke the British Empire
46:34Celeb Gogglebox is here next
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