- 3 hours ago
Watch Chernobyl Inside The Meltdown () free Season 1 Episode 4 online in HD on Dailymotion (2026).
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
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.
04:11were told...
04:13...they were like, by the wind, he gave it to the ground,
04:14...they were like, that's, that's what we did.
04:19It's hard to get back, that's what we did.
04:27We gave papers to the scientists who were sitting the one in the ground.
04:30They were like, they need to collect everything, they were fegal.
04:34We did not general, I mean, they're getting dosed.
04:36In other words, I mean, they're getting dosed.
04:36I mean, they're getting dosed.
04:39Everything is coated with oil, that I can't really enjoy mass processing and that's what we could do.
04:41varying degrees of contamination i mean you don't want to stay in there
04:51i'm in principle camera when i started to hear the
04:58matrix pzs i said this is dangerous
05:02as my sheriff said the Soviet radiation is the best in the world
05:06and the power of the power of the power of the power of the power of the power of the
05:10power of the
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
05:37oh
05:50and I asked the start what I said that you will invest on a block
05:53with our
05:54we will montrior you
05:57rest a video camera she'd has a update the reactor
06:04It was made like a stone stone, so that it could be possible to go down.
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, there was water, but I went forward.
06:27And then, when I was working on the machine, I saw it, and it went down.
06:32I had no idea.
06:38It was, maybe, for a week or two, until the skin didn't go down,
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 sent the camera to the reactor.
07:22It was not going to 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?
08:20To 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.
08:34Other, more sophisticated robots failed.
08:42They would have aerosol and air current detection methods.
08:50And 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.
10:07Right? It 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,
10:57almost 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
11:13that 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,
11:33ignoring 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 Union.
12:09A chapter ended today in history's worst nuclear accident in Chernobyl in the Soviet Union.
12:15Six Russian nuclear power plant officials, who flouted safety regulations,
12:19were 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,
12:40including a concurrent 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,
13:08so it's not known 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,
13:19but that's the only thing that's been said publicly in their defense.
13:25They called me as a witness.
13:28I don't understand if I was a witness of protection
13:31or if I was a witness of conviction.
13:34I don't know.
13:37I was arrested.
13:40I was not sure...
13:43I was leaving.
13:46I was done like a terrible question.
13:48I was to escape the game.
13:49I kept going.
13:51I was already...
13:53I tried to escape from the police department.
13:53I was in a car accident, I had to take a picture.
13:53I was in a car accident, I was in a car accident,
13:53and I was in a car accident,
13:54I believed that an avarious piece of incident,
13:55I didn't expect an accident,
13:56it was just because of the police accident and the officers were,
13:57And the police department refused.
14:00They were not being refused to…
14:01But it was evident,
14:03and the police department refused.
14:04Something is hidden.
14:11After leaving Chernobyl, Steinberg eventually
14:14became part of an independent commission
14:16that reopened the investigation into what
14:19had happened at Chernobyl.
14:51Data about the performance of the reactor
14:53during the accident was being recorded.
14:58But in the immediate aftermath, all the documentation
15:01and data from the plan was seized and returned to Moscow
15:05and classified.
15:54The KGB classified the real reasons for the causes
15:58of the Chernobyl accident.
16:00Any dissent from the official line that the operators
16:04were responsible was essentially forbidden.
16:29The vedicator was called the court of the court,
16:30the court.
16:31And then I decided to go and find out
16:34the court of the court,
16:35the president of the court,
16:36and the court gave the chance to open the court.
16:42There were no other documents that needed for us.
16:46And we, step by step,
16:49work lasted for about a half a year.
16:55to say that they were in the assail agrarian
17:00that's something that's not a bad thing they pushed these
17:05indicators in 6 seconds and it allowed them to say that the person is
17:13I'm sorry, that he violated the regime.
17:20That is, they falsified it?
17:22Yes.
17:42The findings of Steinberg and the rest of the investigators
17:45finally brought to light the true causes of the disaster.
17:54They did it.
17:56They went to the data and now they are in their own place.
18:01They showed that the reactor was under control only after that.
18:05The operators tried to install it.
18:11The new information tended to shift the focus of responsibility
18:16from operator actions to 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, that is, large physically.
18:44A core that was 14 meters in diameter is 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
19:03that contain the uranium fuel that produces heat.
19:08That's used to boil water to make steam, to make electricity.
19:13This core is so large, it'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.
19:25So it forced the operators to keep careful watch over this.
19:47The 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 to 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, also 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 into the core at the
21:03same 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 to 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 when the off-site power had been lost.
23:07The midnight shift came in, and 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 that would make the test possible.
23:35They had withdrawn an equivalent of 203 of the 211 control rods from 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, just waiting for someone to pull
24:08the trigger.
24:21In the test protocol, the completion of the test was marked by the operators pressing the AZ-5 button
24:29to release the control rods to shut the reactor down.
24:35They press the AZ-5 button at 1.23am.
24:39...
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, the slightest additional power fluctuation could initiate
26:11a runaway chain reaction.
26:17The AZ-5 button that was pushed by the operators inserted all the control rods at once.
26:24The problem was the graphite caused the power to increase at the bottom of the reactor.
26:31The power 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.
27:35...
27:57...
28:06правда хорошо но те кто ответственно за это они не понесли никакого то есть никакой никакого
28:15наказания
28:19сидели другие которые были невиновны
28:25январь
28:26почему он взорвался
28:32the operators in uniform in the night of the accident not know the potential consequences of triggering the
28:38emergency shutdown system the soviets believed that their system was so superior that no mistake could
28:48ever be made that their technology was beyond reproach
28:54the reactor had been designed by people at the pinnacle of the soviet scientific state
29:03so if it came to a choice between making these people culpable for this catastrophe
29:09and laying the blame at the feet of 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 the actions
29:30and the design problems came together it was almost inevitable
29:39the nature of the soviet system was such that denial secrecy and cover-up was endemic to the way of
29:47their operation
29:51the truth is chernobyl is more of a metaphor for the failure of the soviet system than it is a
29:58reactor safety story
30:02the increasing reporting about what had really happened and information about the failures of the design of the reactor
30:13finally revealed to citizens of the ussr that the soviet union did not in fact lead the world in high
30:21technology
30:22the dramatic failures of the chernobyl accident undermined one of the last sources of soviet pride
30:30the
30:31the big pain of our nation is chernobyl but not the main thing because
30:42Because if we don't have our real country,
30:46we will be and will be.
30:49If we don't have our country...
31:06Good evening.
31:07Eleven Soviet republics agreed to form a new Commonwealth
31:10of independent states today and consigned the Soviet Union to history.
31:21The Soviet Union saw itself as a great empire.
31:24And in one day, that all came crashing down.
31:28With 11 signatures and a round of applause,
31:32the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.
31:39There was chaos.
31:41People 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,
31:53which is the nuclear energy that was released from control.
31:57Gorbachev said he thought the Chernobyl accident
32:01was the ultimate cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
32:06Because huge numbers of people, especially in Ukraine,
32:12began 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.
32:55It was not as structurally strong as it could have been.
32:59It's way beyond its design life.
33:02It's crumbling.
33:03We've already had a collapse from one part of the turbine hall
33:05with 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,
33:31a 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.
34:01The 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, you make your own sliding way for the skid shoes to
34:39slide on.
34:50Construction on the New Safe Confinement was a long and arduous process.
34:55And it ended six years later in 2016.
35:03It's a big state 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!
35:33I tell you what, I just heard a big bang right here behind me.
35:37I thought we shouldn't have done the 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.
36:03There'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 plowed 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.
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.
37:44Sparking a fire that was later contained.
37:50Are you kidding? Lobbing a missile into Chernobyl?
37:56What 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, and that would be catastrophic.
38:55perfect.
39:00When we left Chernobyl, I was a child, but I was put in a situation that not even some
39:07adults can live through.
39:10It feels that the situation repeats itself, that we again are forced to leave our home.
39:18When the Russians started the invasion in 2022, we left Ukraine and moved to Luxembourg,
39:27and 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 Ukrainians are proved to be resilient.
39:55What can you learn about the history of Chernobyl?
39:59What can you learn about the history of Chernobyl?
40:05Every one of these terrible actions brought to people a lesson of
40:11the consequences of the wrong actions.
40:17And that is a huge shame, a huge shame and a huge harm for every nation.
40:36I think that this accident has affected psychologically on everyone.
40:41Our lives were divided into the accident and after the accident.
40:50We believed our government, our science, that everything will be good.
40:57And we, let's say, we didn't understand any dangers.
41:05I think the legacy of Chernobyl, 40 years on, isn't just in the minds of people.
41:11The 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
41:26catastrophe happened.
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 neighbour or colleague.
41:48Just young people.
41:49It was radiation.
41:52It was radiation.
41:52But 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.
42:12What would I say?
42:15To maintain open societies that can provide checks and balances to the pride that comes
42:26with having huge, complex technologies?
42:32If I were to give a lesson for my grandchildren, tell the truth, no matter how bad the situation
42:39is, it can only be made worse by lying and being untruthful.
42:48I think that the Chernobyl story is arguably more relevant than ever.
42:53given that the causes of the accident lie in a government and a society that had completely
43:02lost touch with what the truth really was.
43:32One 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.
43:43That's the moral binder.
43:47The truth.
43:57That's the moral binder.
44:01Yes.ilatedem
44:02all the history. One of
44:03theもしąd titanium lines, One of
44:04the questions. That's
44:04the moral связes. It is
44:04one sent in fact that the goal of life, meaning he always wanted to ask that democracy
44:04without the doctrine, can only think about authority toMayor. Yes,
44:04he's competitively facing him. ...the
Comments