- 2 hours ago
Watch Chernobyl Inside The Meltdown () free Season 1 Episode 2 online in HD on Dailymotion (2026).
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:14I am here today as the chairman of an interagency task group that is working to review and respond
00:24to the situation that's occurred in the Soviet Union. We know that a major accident occurred
00:32at the Chernobyl nuclear facility. We know that that major accident resulted in an explosion.
00:41Everybody wanted to know what's going on and they weren't getting any information out of the Soviet
00:52Union. What we did is presented the facts as we knew it.
01:01The task force had been able to working through the CIA get satellite imaging of what was going on
01:07in the area around the plant. We know that a fire occurred at that facility.
01:15We do have continuing the radioactive emissions.
01:21One of the things that happened was a significant emission of radioactive material. What became
01:28known as the radioactive cloud. This cloud, if you will, was moving in the atmosphere
01:36and it was circling the world and it was coming to the United States. Once it happened,
01:43there's nothing you can do about it. That radiation is going to have worldwide impact.
02:00The radiation is going to have worldwide impact.
02:23After the accident, the primary concern was the ongoing fire in the reactor core.
02:29It was still continuing even after the fire in the building had been extinguished and
02:34continuing to spew dangerous radioactive materials into the immediate vicinity and beyond.
02:41The amount of radiation that went into the atmosphere when that core exploded was unprecedented
02:47and to many scientists horrifying.
02:50This was a global disaster with global implications.
02:54And so they had to do something to try to deal with that.
03:35The reactor core is made of two important things from the standpoint of the fire.
03:41One is graphite, which is carbon, think of it as charcoal in a certain sense.
03:45The other is the uranium fuel, which is extremely hot.
03:49It generates heat because of the decay heat of the radioactivity.
03:52Any firefighter will tell you that all you need for a fire is fuel and heat.
03:57And those were being supplied continuously.
04:02So the idea was to take helicopters and drop in sand to try to put the fire out.
04:08They were asking these helicopter pilots to fly right into potentially lethal blasts of radiation,
04:16the likes of which no human has faced, probably since Hiroshima.
04:22They just grabbed river sand and stuffed it into parachutes.
04:28These weren't fancy contraptions.
04:29This was all rigged on the fly.
04:59These are all rigged on the fly.
05:03These are all rigged on the fly.
05:06With the fire still burning, plumes of smoke laden with radioactive material are rising,
05:12and the helicopters inevitably have to go close, if not through that.
05:18Radiation readings around the planet itself had reached 2,000 range in an hour,
05:23which is enough to give anyone standing nearby four times a lethal dose.
05:29Exposure to high fields of ionizing radiation can cause collapse of the immune system,
05:34exhaustion of white blood cells, and ultimately death.
05:42Radiation was very large.
05:44The use of the protection was only a marble connection.
05:49After every explosion, this marble connection became red,
05:55which was a very difficult situation.
06:09There was no question about it.
06:11But it was the most important thing to solve, because that is what's driving the ongoing release of radioactive material
06:18into the environment.
06:20The symptoms of fatigue and pain were felt at the end of the day.
06:27We were young boys and we had a different health,
06:32so this question, let's say, was not at the time to think about what are the consequences.
06:47By the beginning of Sunday, the 27th, people in the city of Pripyat knew that something was seriously wrong.
06:54Radioactive contamination was leaking out of the reactor continually.
06:59But still no official announcement of an evacuation had come.
07:16A government commission was under the leadership of Boris Sherbina,
07:20who was the deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and the fuel and energy chief of the USSR.
07:35Shebina waited to give the order for evacuation.
07:38This was driven by the need for secrecy, because they didn't want word of what had happened to leak out.
07:46Around 8 o'clock that morning, Boris Shebina took a helicopter flight to view the reactor from the air.
07:52And when he returned, he then finally ordered an evacuation of the city.
07:57It was clear that this was not just another regrettable failure of Soviet technology,
08:03but a colossal disaster on a global scale.
08:18Opinion is official for a bit öfocusing to remain the distance.
08:34Now it takes a moment to
08:37and she said, guys, wake up, we will be evacuated.
08:59I remember the radio announcement very clearly
09:03because it was someone who we knew.
09:07So it was familiar voice, calming, without panic, saying,
09:11collect your belongings for three days, documents and money,
09:16and get down, the buses are going to wait for you.
09:22We collected what we have to collect.
09:24It was my mom's job.
09:27And we went outside.
09:32The government members and members of the government were aware that they knew exactly what happened.
09:37They were able to contact with the public.
09:40If it was not, they would never be brought here.
09:44They would go back to the refrigerator.
09:56You can't overstate how secret everything was in the Soviet Union.
10:03Secrecy was baked in to the Soviet soul at that point.
10:14At the arrival of the buses, you should go to the bus and go to the bus and go to
10:19the bus.
10:26You have a plan, so you go to the bus, you will meet and send you to the bus.
10:59The situation by that time had become extraordinarily dangerous.
11:02Everybody in Pripyat was exposed to colossal amounts of radiation with consequences nobody could really predict.
11:13Напротив моста было футбольное поле.
11:17И вот на это футбольное поле садился вертолет.
11:21Вот эта вся пыль радиоактивная поднималась и на голые ноги падала на мои ноги.
11:28Они у меня так чесались.
11:32Представляете, сколько пыль радиоактив летела в это время с этого места.
12:04КОНЕЦ
12:05КОНЕЦ
12:06Мы не знали, что это было для последнего времени.
12:12КОНЕЦ
12:13КОНЕЦ
12:13КОНЕЦ
12:13КОНЕЦ
12:13КОНЕЦ
12:37КОНЕЦ
12:43КОНЕЦ
13:03КОНЕЦ
13:07It was my hometown. I had friends, neighbors. We would go out to forest, to river. It was a nice
13:19community.
13:23What I remember is the flight, when they flew to the station, when they were completely evacuated.
13:33There was a blanket on the balcony. There were children's shoes, cars.
13:39There was nothing like that. It was like the time stopped.
13:55People had pretty much dropped the life as they knew it, and the city of Pripyat was largely evacuated.
14:02But as long as that fire was still burning, all that energy was putting radioactive material into the air on
14:08a continuous basis.
14:09That radioactive material was going into the atmosphere where it can be transported around the world.
14:26I recall it was a Monday morning. I go to the office at the normal time, probably 9, 10 in
14:33the morning, and the wire machines are lighting up with news that the Swedes have essentially outed a nuclear accident
14:43inside the Soviet Union and the Soviets hadn't said a word about it.
14:47We immediately began to ask our Soviet contacts, and that was met with radio silence.
14:54We have been disappointed about the lack of information that we've had from the Soviet authorities.
15:01The phone rang. I pick up the phone, and they say, Minister, there's been a nuclear accident. Do you need
15:07to come in?
15:09And I sort of did a double take. What do you mean by nuclear accident?
15:13The initial reaction was, you know, Armageddon.
15:15One couldn't quite understand the difference between a nuclear power accident and a nuclear attack. Nuclear had all those connotations.
15:25We were trying to get information from secret sources. Not much there. We couldn't find out from the Soviets what
15:32was going on.
15:34And so Monday night, April 28th, everybody was watching their nightly 9 p.m. newscast called Vremya, waiting to see
15:43what the Soviet response was going to be.
16:04I remember timing this after Vremya came on the air. They announced this nuclear accident, not as the lead story,
16:12but 25 minutes into the show.
16:14Almost kind of, oh, by the way, we've had a nuclear accident. We're dealing with it. That should be enough
16:20for you in the world right now.
16:24Next, it was astonishing.
16:29There is a new optimism about Mr. Gorbachev. Dialogue, it's felt, will be easier.
16:36We were beginning to see the opening up of the Soviet Union. We were still in the Cold War.
16:44They were adversaries. We were constantly aware that if something went wrong, we could be the recipient of a nuclear
16:50attack.
16:54On the other hand, Gorbachev had arrived. There was talk of openness, glasnost.
17:00There was a growing relationship between Gorbachev and Mrs. Thatcher, which we wanted to build on.
17:06I respect him. He's very able. And on that basis, yes, we can do business.
17:17We kept saying, well, if you're committed to openness, then tell us what you know. And then we met a
17:22Brit wall.
17:25The fact that the Soviets would be so tone deaf as to not tell the world what was actually going
17:34on, that to this day is perhaps the most astonishing act of secrecy in this era of glasnost that they
17:44possibly could have executed on that Monday night.
17:49They were panicking. They didn't actually really know how to deal with it.
17:54The Soviet response to any kind of problem, particularly an embarrassing problem like a huge disaster, was to try to
18:01cover it up until they could figure out something to do.
18:03It was the reflexive action of Soviet bureaucrats, and that certainly was the case at Chernobyl.
18:13The radiation leak was something that the world had never seen before.
18:19Every nuclear scientist that we could reach speculated we had to consider the possibility that this was a nuclear core
18:27meltdown.
18:28Fuel in the core heats to the point where it melts and flows to the bottom of the reactor core
18:34and may eventually melt its way through to the floor beyond.
18:38That's what's called a reactor meltdown.
18:41This is a dangerous situation because the radioactive material that was in the core has now leaked out of its
18:47confinement.
18:54People in the area immediately downwind of the accident are now getting potentially dangerous levels of radioactivity.
19:00It is, they say, fallout, no different than from a nuclear bomb, with particles that may stay dangerous for up
19:06to thousands of years.
19:08Now, are we talking about an explosion or a leak, do you think?
19:12That's very hard to tell.
19:14Soviet official policy has always been that nuclear plants are totally safe and therefore don't need emergency containment around them.
19:22How wrong they were.
19:24Tens of millions of people in Europe were afraid of drinking the water, eating the food, and fearful for the
19:31impact on their children and their livestock.
19:33In Brussels, the Communities Executive Commission has recommended a Europe-wide ban on produce like milk and fresh vegetables from
19:41the Soviet bloc countries closest to the nuclear accident.
19:45News of higher levels of radiation has caused considerable alarm in Britain, reflected not only in calls to the Ministry
19:51of Agriculture but also here to the BBC.
19:53People want more information about the dangers from radiation.
19:56There were lurid headlines about what might happen, there were worried people, and you never really knew in those first
20:06few days whether the danger was contained.
20:09The public is concerned, the public is upset, they knew a radioactive fallout could be help-threatening.
20:17It is an outrage that the Soviet Union will not discuss something that's affecting all the half of the world's
20:25population.
20:26Joining us in Washington is Lee Thomas, head of the Special Task Force monitoring the Chernobyl meltdown.
20:33How do you respond to the Soviet officials who say that the West has been exaggerating the extent of the
20:38damage?
20:39You have the worst nuclear accident in history has taken place.
20:44I don't think I would characterize anything I've seen as an overreaction.
20:49Clearly, we still need the kind of information that we've been requesting.
20:54We never did get information from the Soviet Union.
20:57It was like the government's function was to make sure that they painted a picture that they wanted to paint,
21:04unlike what was going on in the field.
21:11I remember the CIA representative on the task force.
21:16As I recall, he was a relatively young guy and was able to provide good information as far as the
21:22task force was concerned.
21:25Mr. Thomas' task force was very interested in hearing every day as to how much progress they made on getting
21:30the fire out.
21:31The Soviets were saying that the situation is under control, but our satellite imagery showed that the fire was still
21:38ongoing.
21:39And there were helicopters flying around the area to try to put the fire out.
21:48In addition to sand, they were dropping in loads of boron, lead, and dolomite, which is a material that releases
21:57carbon dioxide when it's heated.
22:02One of the two, all the vehicles were exhausted all over Ukraine.
22:08And so, remember, one of them, there was six vehicles and the one flying air, another the third едет, then
22:19the third luged, then the fourth, then the fourth, then the second.
22:28We were most concerned about the fire in the core
22:31because that's where the largest remaining amount
22:33of radioactive material was.
22:37Where is that radioactive material going?
22:40It's going up into the atmosphere.
22:42Where is it going to come down?
22:54Radiation monitoring is an ongoing program here
22:57at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories,
22:58so it's understandable that a great deal of attention
23:01was focused here following word of the Soviet accident.
23:05We have been collecting the weather pattern data
23:07for that part of the world over the past four to five days.
23:13I'm Marv Dickerson, and in 1986,
23:17I worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
23:19when the accident occurred at Chernobyl.
23:22It's the most sophisticated facility
23:24of its type in the world.
23:26A room full of computers receives readouts
23:28from radiation monitoring stations in Europe, Japan,
23:31and here in the U.S.
23:34People said reactor sites won't have accidents,
23:37and if they do, the release will be local.
23:41We didn't believe that.
23:43We thought there could possibly be accidents
23:45that would be larger than that.
23:49The most frightening aspect of this concept
23:53of a radioactive cloud emerging from somewhere
23:55behind the Iron Curtain
23:57and then gradually enveloping your country
23:59is the invisible nature of radioactivity
24:03and its potential effects on you and everyone you know.
24:09The radioactive cloud at Chernobyl
24:13was formed by two different things.
24:16First, the initial explosions put radioactivity
24:20up several thousand feet,
24:22and after that was fire.
24:25Fire has smoke.
24:26If it's burning radioactive material,
24:28it'll put up radionucleides into the atmosphere.
24:32That will stay maybe a few thousand feet
24:34from the surface.
24:36The wind at different vertical levels
24:39can move in different directions.
24:42The upper-level cloud went across northern China
24:47out over Japan,
24:49and then a small amount was measured
24:52over the state of Washington.
24:54And the lower part of the cloud
24:56that was created by the fire,
24:57that part of the cloud went over Europe.
25:02Then on April the 30th, there was a wind shift.
25:07It went from blowing due north almost 180 degrees,
25:12so that carried the radioactivity down toward Kyiv.
25:21I would not have wanted to be south of the reactor site
25:24down around Kyiv.
25:32One of the things that we and our CIA task force
25:34tried to follow was what was going on in Soviet life.
25:38Even though there was a nuclear accident going on
25:40a few miles north at Chernobyl,
25:43because of the Soviet leadership's desire
25:45to portray the situation as normal
25:47and everything under control,
25:48they tried to go on with life as normal in Kyiv.
25:52And at a time when they should have been sheltering in place,
25:56in fact, they had a parade.
25:59The Soviet Union every year had a May Day parade.
26:03Hurrah!
26:06It was a big showcase of their military might,
26:11so to speak.
26:13I can remember the tanks and the missiles
26:15and the army marched by.
26:18I used that!
26:19You know, that was always on television.
26:22The big May Day parade across the Soviet Union
26:29this war would be promoted to Seite in Kyl imminent fight.
26:49That was the main działagrhip of the Soviet Union
26:55to riot during the Kiev in Ukraine.
26:55Upcoming in Kylinderadyen 길
26:55It's very dangerous in Kyiv right now.
27:02By nightfall on April 30th,
27:04radiation levels in the center of Kyiv
27:06had begun to spike hundreds of times higher than normal.
27:11On the road was Xerbitzky from Gorbachev,
27:15all the time, all the time.
27:20You're all panicking there.
27:23You're panicking, Gorbachev.
27:25It's on the phone.
27:28He said it to the military party.
27:31Someone called me and asked,
27:34well, how can we?
27:35Well, we just happened to have an accident.
27:38We can't take the road to the demonstration.
27:43We're not even a week out from the accident.
27:46The Soviets had still yet to give a detailed explanation
27:51that even approached the truth
27:53of what they knew about the magnitude.
27:55of the problem.
27:56The local population in Kyiv
27:58were being told that you are not in any danger.
28:09The first fall of July,
28:11the first fall of July 30th,
28:11the Japanese people said,
28:13I wait to be on the phone,
28:15but he has no one in the middle of July 30th.
28:17We understood that it was our bad things, so we need to do a demonstration.
28:29The atmosphere was sad for everyone.
28:34They stood there and were afraid of them.
28:38But they couldn't come and take the bed.
28:48They asked me to stay at the parade.
28:52Because they said, you have died.
28:55You have to show them that you have died.
29:00I was standing there on the table.
29:05The workers in the place, everyone already understood,
29:09that it should not be allowed to take children.
29:12So, we need to put children, so no one will be against them.
29:17So, we got them from the internautes, from the internautes.
29:23We put a column.
29:25The kids went fast.
29:28And we went home.
29:30The police were not allowed to take children.
29:36My personal opinion was and left.
29:39We didn't need to take children.
29:44Mayday's coverage included a colorful parade in Kiev.
29:48For the Soviets today was not just normal,
29:50it was festive, as if the nuclear accident was behind them.
29:54I saw the coverage that night.
29:56I viewed it with astonishment.
29:59They're citizens dancing in the streets.
30:02This is the message.
30:04We're all festive.
30:05There's nothing to see here.
30:09When they lived, you know, what, 80 miles from the plant,
30:12and the government wasn't saying a word.
30:14They were not saying a word.
30:43all from the air, appeared to be working.
30:46Radiation levels above the reactor seemed to be declining.
30:50But on May the 1st, they noticed to their horror
30:54that both radiation readings and temperature readings
30:56began to rise.
31:00The scientists on the scene feared that a new chain reaction
31:04could start inside what remained of the reactor building.
31:10They feared that there could be a further explosion.
31:46This is a photo that I took in Moscow, hospital number six.
31:52It's one of the firefighters who is in a protected environment
31:57to prevent a life-threatening infection.
32:04At the time of the Chernobyl accident,
32:07I was a professor of medicine
32:09at the University of California in Los Angeles.
32:15We had a lot of experience treating people
32:18with high doses of radiation
32:20in our attempts to eradicate cancer.
32:24I wanted to make an offer of help.
32:27I wasn't quite sure how it would be received,
32:31but the Russian ambassador to Washington,
32:35he called me and he said,
32:38Mr. Gorbachev would like you to come to Moscow.
32:42I packed my bags and got on a flight.
32:47Me and the two pilots were the only people flying into Moscow.
32:53Everyone was flying out of Moscow.
33:00The very next day, we started our triage
33:03of the engineers and firefighters
33:06who had been flown to Moscow.
33:11Pripyat Hospital was not equipped to cope
33:14with the types and seriousness of injuries
33:19that they encountered in the first patients.
33:22The most serious injured patients were airlifted to Moscow.
33:28More than 200 operators from the plant,
33:31firefighters and other victims of the accident
33:34were flown to be treated in hospital number six,
33:37which was a specialized hospital
33:39that had been built and equipped
33:41specifically to treat people from the nuclear industry.
33:58The third test
33:59will hang out on the ninth floor,
34:02the workers go to the KGB,
34:05the room closed,
34:06the phone closed under the lights.
34:08I told him,
34:09how to write about the relatives?
34:12The auntie's come here,
34:32They wanted to keep the whole thing under wraps.
34:35The Soviet reflex toward secrecy in events like this was overwhelming.
34:43The Soviet Union was in the hospital.
34:50We had a surgery, atherosclerosis, atherosclerosis, the doctors.
34:55I was in the parking lot, I was on the shelf, I was on the shelf, I was on the
34:58shelf, I was on the shelf.
35:00The time goes, I look at the mirror, I'm in the face, my hair is on the floor.
35:07I wanted to fix the muscles, because I have muscles from 9th class.
35:24The damage from radiation exposure is not immediately apparent.
35:31About a week or 10 days after exposure,
35:35these firefighters, their hair starts falling out.
35:42There's destruction of bone marrow function and damage to the skin, to the gastrointestinal tract.
35:53At the very extreme, we have damage to the cardiovascular system and to the central nervous system.
36:02People who get very high doses of radiation, we can't help them.
36:10They die.
36:15And here, near the door, there is a KGB.
36:18Always.
36:19The next day, they find the doctor, a doctor, a doctor,
36:27he looked at his side, he showed you a magazine, read it.
36:35And they show in photographs of six firemen who died.
36:43Among the worst affected of the firefighters were those who went to the roofs of the reactor
36:49building in the immediate aftermath of the explosion and therefore received the greatest
36:54exposure to ionizing radiation.
37:10I didn't expect that it will come to us in life and I will not be able to see them.
37:19She said, give me a moment, she turned me back and gave me a message.
37:24She said, don't tell me this, don't tell me anything.
37:30She took the газету and said to me, you know, you're not going to die.
37:40Of the over 200 first responders sent for treatment in Hospital No. 6, 28 would eventually
37:45die in the weeks and months following the accident.
37:49Firefighters and the response crews, incredibly heroic.
38:18For us to be 12 people from all the teams, who brought us to Moscow,
38:24we left 6 people alive.
38:27The rest is always a memory.
38:43after about 10 days of flying continuous missions to try to deal with the fire in the reactor core
38:48it finally went out several days after the temperature of the core it started to mysteriously
38:56rise it began to drop again none of the scientists could understand why
39:04for two weeks there have been more questions than answers about the chernobyl nuclear reactor
39:08disaster but now part of the mystery is being cleared up by an inspection team from the
39:13international atomic energy agency the russian ambassador to the iaa he phoned me and he said
39:21that we had an invitation to come to russia to be fully informed about the accident we had the
39:29question would we want to go to chernobyl and i said of course we wanted we circled the destroyed
39:39plant we peeked out of the windows of the helicopter of course down and that was a sorry and tragic
39:48site we could see the vast destruction that occurred these first westerners to visit the stricken scene
39:59report that the fire and the disabled number four reactor has finally been extinguished we have seen
40:05that the little smoke is still coming up from here it is all out hans blix was smart he knew
40:13he would he
40:13be risked exposure over that reactor but came out with the confirmation that yeah this at least this
40:20initial fire was out i think it was quite important because there was the first impartial people to
40:29witness what had happened and the world was hungry for that information the first independent
40:38verification that the worst is over came at a moscow press conference under free questioning by western
40:43reporters in that room it was pretty tense it was electric here was the first neutral scientist to see
40:55what was probably the worst nuclear disaster in history we have had very frank and very open discussions
41:07with ministers and with experts the deputation said they were well satisfied with the information
41:13they'd been given on the basis of it the american head of the authority's nuclear safety division
41:18said the reactor had shut down automatically and looked like staying that way the chain reaction
41:25stopped immediately after the accident and never started again fuel temperatures being measured now
41:34we are told are significantly below the melting point and are decreasing
41:41the un team prefaced its remarks by saying most details were provided by the soviets
41:47and what we can give you is only what we have grasped in a few days
41:51the soviets were telling the world and hans blix of the iaea that all is well
42:02at the same time soviet officials were extremely worried without admitting this in public that that
42:09core was still melting one of the big ongoing threats after the core fire had been extinguished
42:17was the possibility that this very hot fuel made of melted uranium dioxide at a temperature over 2000 degrees
42:25centigrade could melt its way through the bottom of the reactor vessel into the concrete foundation
42:30and eventually get out of the bottom of the reactor building behind the scenes the soviets were
42:39deathly afraid that the core might burn through and hit the water table
42:46it would potentially poison the drinking water supplies not only of kiev but of a huge part of the population
42:55of ukraine
42:57they are scrambling how are we going to stop that nuclear core from melting farther into the earth
43:11one of the initiatives was to build a massive heat exchanger and cool the earth directly beneath the reactor building
43:25they recruited an army of coal miners and workers to cast aside any fears that they may have of radiation
43:34sickness and go underneath this burning reactor core in order to prevent catastrophic damage to the earth
43:44they were asking these miners to sacrifice themselves their sales pitch was the soviet union needs
43:53this done can you step up and what the miners asked was where are the shovels
44:04are the www.elpon poziettiumor.go professionals
Comments