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Watch Chernobyl Inside The Meltdown () free Season 1 Episode 4 online in HD on Dailymotion (2026).
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00:13I was the first Western scientist invited to do scientific research with the Complex Expedition.
00:22A small group of scientists who worked on forensic analysis of the remains of the destroyed reactor, Unit 4.
00:34The Soviet Union was collapsing.
00:38They took me to the plant kind of undercover.
00:42They dressed me up in workers' clothing and just under the radar.
00:52I thought it was just, hey, let's take this American along kind of thing.
00:55But no, it was get up, work until you drop.
01:00Pretty much every day.
01:03People sometimes laugh at scientists, but that's because they don't understand the sheer beauty of seeking the truth.
01:11And that's what these people wanted.
01:38This is where officials say a crime was committed.
01:44It's here that engineers conducted the experiment that led to the explosion.
01:52The destroyed reactor is still hot, buried deep within what the Soviets call a sarcophagus,
01:58a gigantic concrete tomb where the radioactive material will be buried for centuries to come.
02:22The structure of the sarcophagus was really a combination of improvisation and brute force.
02:31When it was complete, the Soviet engineers said that the sarcophagus was another triumph of Soviet engineering.
02:40But inside the ruins of the reactor building, around 190 tons of uranium fuel remained unaccounted for.
02:51The scientists were worried about what's called a critical mass coming together and restarting a nuclear reaction.
02:59They noticed on their neutron detectors a spike of neutrons that led them to believe that a critical mass had
03:08indeed formed and that a nuclear reaction had happened.
03:14They were puzzled.
03:15They were puzzled.
03:17So, we got to know where this fuel is.
03:23Scientists from the Kirchatov Institute, the Soviet Union's chief research and development agency for nuclear energy,
03:31launched what became known as the Chernobyl Complex Expedition to locate the fuel.
03:44It was this eclectic, almost ragtag group of scientists.
03:53They were soft-spoken people, just trying to get to the bottom of things.
04:02They were soft-spoken people, just trying to get to the bottom of things.
04:11They gave us a few things.
04:12Like we said, we'll give them a picture of a camera, and take them take them take them take them
04:18take their hands.
04:27Then, we gave the scientists, who started to use it.
04:30We were testing it, looked at them, looked at them.
04:36I mean, they're getting dosed.
04:39everything is coated with varying degrees of contamination i mean you don't want to stay in there
05:27some of the fuel had been thrown out of the reactor core by the explosion
05:31but it was assumed that the rest remained inside reactor number four
05:37and the other one
05:49me and the manager said that you will come to the block with us
05:55we will monterelle for the video cameras to start the reactor
06:04It was made like a stone stone, so that they could be able to do it.
06:09And there was water there, there were stills in the reactor.
06:14Well, it was active, so it was.
06:19And there was a bachill.
06:20There was water, but I went forward.
06:27And then, when I was working on the machine, I saw it, and it fell off.
06:32I was gone.
06:38It was, maybe, for a week or two, until the skin was gone.
06:43There was some sort of...
06:52Nobody had been inside the reactor vessel.
06:55Anybody who went in there would have been exposed to very high fields of radiation.
07:18We took the camera from the reactor vessel.
07:22It didn't go. It was somewhere.
07:32I went to the reactor vessel.
07:38I changed the camera.
07:50They found an interesting thing.
07:56That's when they noticed what core.
08:00There was no core.
08:03There was nothing left inside the reactor.
08:10And so the immediate question was, where the hell did the fuel go?
08:21To help them locate the fuel, they would strap cameras to toy tanks.
08:29Because they were the ones that could withstand the radiation in there.
08:33Other, more sophisticated robots failed.
08:42They would have aerosol and air current detection methods.
08:49And that's when the bigger picture started to emerge.
08:54What happened was the core itself, the fuel and the graphite, basically were percolating through the floor of the reactor
09:03cavity.
09:05The fuel melted through and fell down onto the floor of the sub-reactor region.
09:13There were holes that led to what are called steam distribution headers.
09:18It flowed out the steam distribution headers and then two more floors down pipes into the water that was there.
09:34Roughly 75% of the fuel ended up in the lower regions of the reactor building.
09:43They thought that they could have a critical mass coming together to restart reactions.
09:51So you have these great energies released, which would cause damage.
09:57Thank God that never happened.
10:01We later found out, once the fuel broke through and spread out, it basically shut itself down, right?
10:07It just froze in place.
10:08And you can see that to this day.
10:18If you're going to be working in the kind of environment that the complex expedition was,
10:26you really have to be dedicated.
10:29Dedicated to getting to the truth.
10:32The Soviet Union was not about truth.
10:51A year after the accident, it had become clear that the Soviet authorities intended to lay the blame for what
10:56had happened almost entirely at the feet of the operators.
11:06In a makeshift courtroom in a building in the center of Chernobyl, six men went on trial today charged with
11:12safety violations that caused history's worst nuclear accident.
11:16The defendants face up to 12 years in jail if they are convicted.
11:23The courtroom was packed with workers from the power plant and families of the victims.
11:29The defendants are accused of allowing unauthorized experiments at the plant, ignoring basic operating procedures and overriding safety systems.
11:39The judge made it clear that he wasn't going to listen to anything that contradicted the official version of events.
11:45It was effectively one of the final show trials of the Soviet East.
12:09A chapter ended today in history's worst nuclear accident in Chernobyl in the Soviet Union.
12:14Six Russian nuclear power plant officials who flouted safety regulations were held criminally responsible for the deaths of 36 people.
12:23They had to have a scapegoat and that became the operators.
12:27The verdict was all six guilty of varying degrees of criminal negligence.
12:34Victor Brukhanov, the former plant director, ten years in a labor camp for gross violations of safety rules, including a
12:40concurrent five-year sentence for abuse of power.
13:02The trial has been closed to foreign journalists and no detailed reports have appeared in Soviet media, so it's not
13:09known whether or how the accused defended themselves.
13:13On the opening day, one of the defendants suggested some of the blame lay with the reactor design, but that's
13:19the only thing that's been said publicly in their defense.
13:22...
13:27...
13:27...
13:27...
13:27...
13:27...
13:27...
13:27...
13:28I don't understand if I was a witness of security or if I was a witness of the case.
13:33I don't know.
13:37I asked a question about the technique, I don't remember.
13:44And they were done.
13:46I went to the car and went to the car.
14:10After leaving Chernobyl, Steinberg eventually became part of an independent commission that reopened the investigation into what happened.
14:19It happened at Chernobyl.
14:26My friends died.
14:29It doesn't matter if it's been so long.
14:31We have to take care of it.
14:38The truth was clear.
14:39To set the truth.
14:42To set the truth.
14:44This was the truth.
14:45The truth was that we all understood.
14:51Data about the performance of the reactor during the accident was being recorded.
14:58That in the immediate aftermath, all the documentation and data from the plan was seized and returned to Moscow and
15:06classified.
15:23And so, for us, two or three documents were important.
15:29We needed to be done with oscillograms.
15:33Which would show us when the reactor started to be released from control.
15:37And when the operators tried to set it up or to shut it down in our language.
15:43The management of the main director of the science director, who created the reactor, did not give good.
15:54The KGB classified the real reasons for the causes of the Chernobyl accident.
16:00Any dissent from the official line that the operators were responsible was essentially forbidden.
16:17So, through the judicial court.
16:20The court of the voting officers said that the legal charges led to the court of the court, which was
16:26conducted in the court.
16:29The court of theCard, who filed the court.
16:37эту комнату вскрыть там работали нашли те документы которые нам нужны
16:47шаг за шагом работа шла примерно полтора года доказательства были вассалаграги
16:59ня-да что шутил незаурядных они сдвинули
17:04this time, for 6 seconds.
17:10This allowed them to say,
17:12that the personnel is wrong,
17:14and that he has violated the regime.
17:20So, they were falsified?
17:22Yes.
17:42The findings of Steinberg and the rest of the investigators
17:45finally brought to light the true causes of the disaster.
18:11The new information tended to shift the focus of responsibility
18:16from operator actions
18:18to fundamental design flaws in the reactor itself.
18:24The Chernobyl Power Station used RBMK-type reactors
18:28that was uniquely Soviet technology.
18:31There was nothing like that produced in the West.
18:38RBMK-type reactors are very large reactors,
18:41that is, large physically.
18:44A core that was 14 meters in diameter
18:46is 7 meters high.
18:50This is extremely large compared to reactors in the West,
18:54which have a diameter of maybe 3 or 4 meters.
18:59The RBMK reactors had nearly 1,700 fuel channels
19:04that contain the uranium fuel that produces heat
19:08that's used to boiled water to make steam,
19:10to make electricity.
19:13This core is so large,
19:15it's almost like having two reactors in one,
19:17one at the top and one at the bottom.
19:20One side of the reactor couldn't speak to the other side of the reactor.
19:26So it forced the operators to keep careful watch over this.
19:37The only way that the operators can control the reactor is with control rods.
19:44The only way that the operators can control the reactor is with control rods.
19:58Insertion of the control rods tends to decrease the reactor power.
20:04Removal of control rods causes the reactor power to increase.
20:16The control rods are used by the operators
20:19to fine tune the level of the chain reaction taking place.
20:25So it's really like having brakes and accelerator on a car.
20:39The control rods are also used to shut down the RBMK reactor.
20:46The emergency shutdown function on the RBMK,
20:49also called the AZ-5 by Soviet terminology,
20:52was to shut the reactor down quickly in an emergency.
20:57The AZ-5 system was designed to insert almost all of the remaining control rods
21:01into the core at the same time.
21:05And it was intended simply to bring the reactor into a safely shut down state.
21:20During tests in 1983, nuclear engineers at another RBMK plant in Ignolina
21:27had discovered that there was a disturbing anomaly about the way the AZ-5 system worked.
21:35with a very low number of control rods inserted into the core of the reactor.
21:40When the emergency shutdown system was activated,
21:44it could induce a runaway reaction leading to a meltdown and an explosion of the core.
22:12They'd begun to make progress on modifying the emergency shutdown system.
22:18And although the Chernobyl IV unit was on the list as due for those modifications,
22:26they decided that they would just save it until the next scheduled maintenance shutdown
22:30to make the fixes.
22:33Information about this fault did not make its way down to the level of the individual operators.
22:56The operators were attempting an experiment to power the reactor
23:02when the off-site power had been lost.
23:07The midnight shift came in,
23:11and they were told that they would conduct the experiment.
23:14They were not expecting to do this.
23:17They had not been familiarized with the test protocol.
23:26The operators had great difficulty in bringing the reactor up to a power level
23:29that would make the test possible.
23:35I had withdrawn an equivalent of 203 of the 211 control rods
23:43from the core of reactor number four,
23:46making the reactor as unstable as it was possible to be,
23:52and very sensitive to any further changes in control.
24:02By the time the test actually began, the reactor was like a loaded gun,
24:07just waiting for someone to pull the trigger.
24:09just waiting for anyone to currently do.
24:21In the test protocol, the completion of the test was marked by the operators
24:27pressing the AZ-5 button, to release the control rods to shut the reactor down.
24:35They pressed the AZ-5 button at 1.23am.
25:24It was a design flaw of the control rods that ultimately caused the explosion.
25:32The control rods are made of boron, which is a material that reduces the reaction rate in the reactor.
25:39Unlike most reactors, underneath those rods was sections of graphite, which tend to increase the reaction rate.
25:48If the rods were completely withdrawn, then this graphite was pulled into the core.
25:57Under normal circumstances, this graphite would never cause a problem.
26:03But in this case, the core was already in such an unstable state that the slightest additional power fluctuation could
26:11initiate a runaway chain reaction.
26:17The AZ-5 button that was pushed by the operators inserted all the control rods at once.
26:25The problem was, the graphite caused the power to increase at the bottom of the reactor.
26:31Power is shutting down at the top, but you had a power surge at the bottom.
26:37The overall effect was disastrous.
26:59It literally caused the reactor to explode, hence the building being destroyed.
27:11It was as if when you stamped on the brakes of a speeding car, it accelerated instead of slowing down.
27:18The Soviet version of events was that the accident began to occur, and then in a panic, the operators pressed
27:25the AZ-5 button in order to try and shut down the reactor.
27:30It was a completely different.
27:31It was a solid, a falsification.
27:32It was a completely different.
27:35On the other hand, everything was fine, the stability of the car,
27:39so we didn't press the door.
27:51We didn't have to go to the car.
27:52We didn't have to go to the car.
27:53We didn't have to go to the car.
27:57The car was brought to the car.
28:02It was a good thing.
28:10But those who are responsible for this,
28:12they didn't have any criminal punishment.
28:19The others who were not guilty were.
28:32The operators in Unit 4 in the night of the accident did not know
28:36the potential consequences of triggering the emergency shutdown system.
28:42The Soviets believed that their system was so superior
28:46that no mistake could ever be made,
28:49that their technology was beyond reproach.
28:54The reactor had been designed by people at the pinnacle
28:58of the Soviet scientific state.
29:03So if it came to a choice between making these people culpable
29:07for this catastrophe and laying the blame at the feet
29:11of some lowly reactor operators in Ukraine,
29:15then they were going to be the ones who took the fall.
29:23The design flaws set them up for failure.
29:27When the perfect storm of the circumstances,
29:29the actions and the design problems came together,
29:33it was almost inevitable.
29:39The nature of the Soviet system was such that denial, secrecy,
29:44and cover-up was endemic to the way of their operation.
29:51The truth is Chernobyl is more of a metaphor for the failure
29:55of the Soviet system than it is a reactor safety story.
30:02The increasing reporting about what had really happened
30:06and information about the failures of the design of the reactor
30:13finally revealed to citizens of the USSR
30:18that the Soviet Union did not, in fact, lead the world in high technology.
30:23The dramatic failures of the Chernobyl accident
30:26undermined one of the last sources of Soviet pride.
30:37The big pain of our nation is Chernobyl, but not the most important thing.
30:42Because until we do not have our real state,
30:46Chernobyl was, is and will be.
30:49Until we do not have our own state...
31:06Good evening. Eleven Soviet republics agreed to form a new Commonwealth of Independent States today
31:12and consigned the Soviet Union to history.
31:21The Soviet Union saw itself as a great empire.
31:24And then one day, that all came crashing down.
31:28With eleven signatures and a round of applause,
31:31the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.
31:39There was chaos. People lost their jobs, didn't have any food.
31:44It was deeply humiliating for many Russians.
31:47For millions of Russians.
31:48We have really encountered such a dangerous force
31:53what is the nuclear energy that is out of control.
31:58Gorbachev said he thought the Chernobyl accident
32:01was the ultimate cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
32:07Because huge numbers of people, especially in Ukraine,
32:11began to realize the Communist Party protected itself.
32:16It didn't protect us.
32:42The Soviet Union's initial attempt to try to cover over the destroyed reactor building
32:47was a hastily engineered structure that they built in the summer of 1986.
32:53It was leaky. It was not as structurally strong as it could have been.
32:59It's way beyond its design life.
33:02It's crumbling. We've already had a collapse from one part of the turbine hall with a very heavy snow load.
33:07We see some very, very major structural damage there.
33:13If it had collapsed, it could have stirred up some of the radioactive debris
33:16and caused additional release of some of the radioactive material that was within it.
33:23Because of these concerns, Ukraine and Western donors got together
33:27and created a structure to cover over the entire building,
33:30a very large structure called the New Safe Confinement.
33:40Construction began on the New Safe Confinement in 2010.
33:48A massive international effort,
33:50something like 40 countries and organizations
33:53played a role in funding and designing that structure.
33:59It was hugely expensive as well, the best part of $2 billion.
34:04This is actually one of the most ambitious projects in the history of engineering.
34:08It is twice the length of a 747 aeroplane.
34:11It is the largest moveable land-based structure ever built.
34:18The New Safe Confinement was actually built to be mobile
34:22and was built off to the side of the reactor
34:24and moved on rails over the original building.
34:30Over these nocks, we put the Teflon pad.
34:34And basically, if you put a lot of them,
34:37you make your own sliding way for the skid shoes to slide on.
34:50Construction on the New Safe Confinement
34:51was a long and arduous process.
34:55And it ended six years later in 2016.
35:03It's a big step for safety.
35:06And Ukraine and Europe will be much safer now.
35:12Ukraine, unlike the Soviet Union,
35:14very much wants to be part of the international community
35:17and not an insular state.
35:26I was standing on a roof doing a live shot on CNN.
35:30Ukrainians who resist...
35:32Oh! I tell you what, I just heard a big bang right here behind me.
35:37I thought we shouldn't have done a live shot here.
35:39It was quite shocking that Russia had decided to send its forces into Kiev, into Ukraine.
35:47And the first explosions of that conflict were being heard.
35:51Russian forces are said to have taken control of the Chernobyl power plant in northern Ukraine,
35:57the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster.
35:59Military adviser says staff members are held hostage.
36:02There's a potentially dangerous military confrontation around that nuclear reactor.
36:08That could kick up all sorts of horrific radioactive material
36:13and cause that massive catastrophe to repeat itself all over again.
36:18The Russian soldiers ploughed across the exclusion zone.
36:25They dug trenches in the forest, which is an extraordinary thing to do.
36:30The amount of contamination absorbed by those soldiers is pretty shocking.
36:37They will undoubtedly suffer health consequences of exactly the same kind that was suffered in Ukraine
36:44post the 1986 calamity at Chernobyl.
36:48The Soviet Kremlin had an utter disregard for the liquidators, for the firefighters of Chernobyl.
36:55In the same way the Russian Kremlin had an apparent disregard for the welfare of the soldiers.
37:05Shortly afterwards the Ukrainians took back the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
37:13The Russians found they had to fight for every square inch of the territory they were going to capture.
37:32You're looking at footage that shows a Russian drone with a high explosive warhead striking the shelter that covers the
37:41fourth unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
37:45Sparking a fire that was later contained.
37:50Are you kidding?
37:51Lobbing a missile into Chernobyl?
37:57What possessed you to do that?
38:08The strike on the new safe confinement structure underlines the nuclear threat throughout the whole Ukraine conflict.
38:18That it could cause another Chernobyl.
38:21Another nuclear disaster.
38:24Another nuclear disaster.
38:25And that would be catastrophic.
38:28That would be catastrophic.
39:00When we left Chernobyl, I was a child but I was put in a situation that not even some adults
39:07can live through.
39:10It feels that the situation repeats itself.
39:13That we again are forced to leave our home.
39:18When the Russians started invasion in 2022, we left Ukraine and moved to Luxembourg and now they are here.
39:33I hoped better for my kids but it didn't happen.
39:40I always teach my children to be adaptable and be resilient.
39:48And the Ukrainians are proved to be resilient.
39:51I would like to remove it from that moment.
39:55How can a story with Chernobyl in the next 2 minutes?
40:03A story with Chernobyl?
40:09What can we learn from that story with Chernobyl?
40:12What can we learn from the war?
40:17A story with Chernobyl?
40:21and a huge threat to every nation.
40:36I think this accident has affected psychologically everyone.
40:41Our lives were divided into the accident and after the accident.
41:06I think the legacy of Chernobyl, 40 years on, isn't just in the minds of people.
41:11The scars are physical as well.
41:12The scars are physical as well.
41:16These radioactive toxins caused a huge spike in thyroid cancer.
41:21And you can go to Ukraine today and you can see people who were around in 1986 when the catastrophe
41:27happened.
41:31They've got little scars on their necks where they've had operation on their thyroid glands
41:34to take out parts of the thyroid because they've become cancerous.
41:39I remember quite often I would hear that that person died, friend or neighbor or colleague.
41:48Just young people.
41:50It was radiation, but doctors would not mention that.
41:55So it was a silent war.
42:03What to take from the story of Chernobyl?
42:08Oh, that's a hard one.
42:11What would I say?
42:14To maintain open societies that can provide checks and balances to the pride that comes with having huge, complex technologies.
42:32If I were to give a lesson for my grandchildren, tell the truth, no matter how bad the situation is,
42:40it can only be made worse by lying and being untruthful.
42:47I think that the Chernobyl story is arguably more relevant than ever given that the causes of the accident lie
42:57in a government and a society that had completely lost touch with what the truth really was.
43:30Dr.
43:31Dr.
43:33One of the things that I think we all learned is when the regime is serving itself rather
43:40than the people, that's when power evaporates.
43:45That's the moral binder, the truth.
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