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Watch Chernobyl Inside The Meltdown () free Season 1 Episode 2 online in HD on Dailymotion (2026).
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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.
02:15Two other elements of our 인터�ge.
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.
08:07ATW bouast.
08:17SILVA CITRO
08:17To be sure to approve the military power and ü creepy,
08:21we need to approve the troops.
08:23It's possible that this is areme of the country in the city we have not got into the city.
08:24At the time being, we have no one is to see.
08:27In this city, we are getting close to the city of the city of Pripyat.
08:28The city of the city of the city of the city of the city is,
08:29that the city of the city is to join the city of the city of the city.
08:34I remember my mom entered the room, and she said,
08:39guys, wake up, we will be evacuated.
08:59I remember the radio announcement very clearly
09:03because it was someone who we knew.
09:06So 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 had to collect.
09:24It was my mom's job.
09:27And we went outside.
09:32We checked out the police chiefs and members of the police chiefs,
09:35and all the people knew exactly what they were arguing.
09:36And the other thing is how they were concerned with the community.
09:40I would suggest they would hardly ever return to the police,
09:43so they could take their jacket.
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
12:51КОНЕЦ
12:53КОНЕЦ
12:54КОНЕЦ
12:54КОНЕЦ
12:56КОНЕЦ
12:58It was my hometown. I had friends, neighbors.
13:13We would go out to forest, to river. It was a nice community.
13:23What I remember is the flight, when they were flying to the station,
13:29when they were completely evacuated.
13:33There was a blanket on the balcony.
13:36There were children's shoes, cars.
13:39There was nothing like that.
13:43As if the time stopped.
13:55People had pretty much dropped the life as they knew it,
13:58and the city of Pripyat was largely evacuated.
14:02But as long as that fire was still burning,
14:04all that energy was putting radioactive material into the air on a continuous basis.
14:09That radioactive material was going into the atmosphere
14:13where it can be transported around the world.
14:26I recall it was a Monday morning.
14:29I go to the office at the normal time, probably 9, 10 in the morning.
14:34And the wire machines are lighting up with news that the Swedes have essentially outed a nuclear accident inside the
14:44Soviet Union,
14:44and 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.
15:00The phone rang. I pick up the phone, and they say,
15:05Minister, there's been a nuclear accident. Do you need to 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.
15:22Nuclear had all those connotations.
15:24We were trying to get information from secret sources, not much there.
15:30We couldn't find out from the Soviets what was going on.
15:34And so Monday night, April 28th, everybody was watching their nightly 9pm newscast called Vremya,
15:42waiting to see what the Soviet response was going to be.
16:04I remember timing this after Vremya came on the air.
16:08They announced this nuclear accident, not as the lead story, but 25 minutes into the show.
16:15Almost kind of, oh, by the way, we've had a nuclear accident. We're dealing with it.
16:19That should be enough for 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.
16:40We were still in the Cold War.
16:44They were adversaries.
16:46We were constantly aware that if something went wrong, we could be the recipient of a nuclear attack.
16:54On the other hand, Gorbachev had arrived.
16:57There was talk of openness, glasnost.
17:00There was a growing relationship between Gorbachev and Mrs. Thatcher, which we wanted to build on.
17:07I respect him.
17:08He's very able.
17:10And 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.
17:21And then we met a Brit wall.
17:25The fact that the Soviets would be so tone deaf as to not tell the world what was actually going
17:34on,
17:35that, to this day, is perhaps the most astonishing act of secrecy in this era of glasnost
17:43that they possibly could have executed on that Monday night.
17:49They were panicking.
17:50They 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,
18:00was to try to cover 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.
18:35It 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.
22:02The electrical engineering systems.
22:03Everyone was very stressed and collected all over the Ukraine and collected the fire out.
22:08Everything was constantly on the ground.
22:09The reactor reactor was locked up.
22:13The reactor was always taken.
22:13And imagine that there was one, there was six boats right now, one is flying around, on the left of
22:18the ship.
22:18The aircraft was flying around, the third is flying around, third is getting used, the fourth is flying around, the
22:22fourth.
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
22:56here at 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
24:19put radioactivity up several thousand feet,
24:23and 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 from 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,
25:04there was a wind shift.
25:07It went from blowing due north
25:09almost 180 degrees.
25:12So that carried the radioactivity
25:15down toward Kiev.
25:21I would not have wanted to be south
25:23of the reactor site
25:24down around Kiev.
25:32One of the things that we
25:33and our CIA task force tried to follow
25:35was what was going on in Soviet life.
25:38Even though there was a nuclear accident
25:39going on a 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 Kiev.
25:52And at a time when
25:54they should have been sheltering in place,
25:56in fact, they had a parade.
25:59The Soviet Union every year
26:01had a May Day parade.
26:03Hoorah!
26:06It was a big showcase
26:09of their military might, so 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
26:24across the Soviet Union
26:25and the war is on the east side of Kiev.
26:26Hoorah!
26:27Hoorah!
26:30Hoorah!
26:44Hoorah!
26:46And the war is in size of Russia!
26:47It was already set off the arena of Kiev.
26:49And there are the Democracies
26:52in the days of Kiev.
26:53He was set up to the戰 of Kiev.
26:53who are lights for the interests of Kiev.
27:02By nightfall on April 30th, radiation levels in the center of Kyiv had begun to spike hundreds of times higher
27:09than normal.
27:24Gorbachev, on the phone. He said it to the military party, someone called and asked, well, how can we? Well,
27:35we have an accident. We can't take the road to demonstration.
27:43We're not even a week out from the accident.
27:46The Soviets had still yet to give a detailed explanation that even approached the truth of what they knew about
27:54the magnitude of the problem.
27:56The local population in Kyiv were being told that you are not in any danger.
28:09The 1st of July passed.
28:11The Sovietsman said, I'm waiting on the phone, but he doesn't take a bullet.
28:17We understood that it's bad things. We need to do a demonstration.
28:29The atmosphere was sad for everyone.
28:34They stood there and laughed at me.
28:38But they couldn't come and take a seat.
28:40They were waiting for me to get a seat.
28:48Me and asked, I was supposed to go to the parade, because they were listening to the parade.
28:54They were listening to the parade, and said, they died.
28:56They have to show them that they died.
28:57And they had to show them that they did not die.
29:00I was standing there in the event.
29:05The members of the members of Kyiv and the Soviets, everyone already understood,
29:09We told them that they should not be allowed to take children.
29:12They should be allowed to take children, so no one will be against them.
29:17So we got them from the special internets and internets.
29:23We put a column, the kids went fast, and they left home.
29:30There's a lot of people who are not allowed to take children.
29:35My personal opinion is that we should not be allowed to take children.
29:44Mayday's coverage included a colorful parade in Kiev.
29:48To the Soviets, today was not just normal, it was festive,
29:51as if the nuclear accident was behind them.
29:54I saw the coverage that night, I viewed it with astonishment.
29:59There's citizens dancing in the streets.
30:02This is the message. We'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.
30:16The public, of course, was angry.
30:19The public, of course, was angry.
30:19The public, of course, was angry.
30:19How is this?
30:20The parade, such a radiation.
30:23I can still understand why it was necessary.
30:38Initially, the operation to smother the reactor using helicopters to dump material 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 that both radiation readings and temperature readings began to rise.
31:00The scientists on the scene feared that a new chain reaction could start inside what remained of the reactor building.
31:10They feared that there could be a further explosion.
31:17The immunolyrds.
31:18Charнибудь.
31:20What did you think?
31:21Where did you come back?
31:27You and commander buddies Покас fans!
31:35The war from the 2000s
31:36Well done beautifully!
31:40The war from the dawn, the east to the east.
31:43The other eastern întreg posted the eastern after the crater and the summer of the außer Ven iron .
31:46This is a photo that I took in Moscow Hospital No. 6.
31:53It's one of the firefighters who is in a protected environment to prevent a life-threatening
32:00infection.
32:04At the time of the Chernobyl accident, I was a professor of medicine at the University
32:11of California in Los Angeles.
32:15We had a lot of experience treating people with high doses of radiation in our attempts
32:21to eradicate cancer.
32:24I wanted to make an offer of help.
32:28I wasn't quite sure how it would be received, but the Russian ambassador to Washington, he
32:36called me and he said, Mr. Gorbachev would like you to come to Moscow.
32:42I packed my bags and got on a flight.
32:48Me 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 of the engineers and firefighters who had been
33:07flown to Moscow.
33:11Pripyat Hospital was not equipped to cope with the types and seriousness of injuries that they
33:20encountered in the first patients.
33:22The most serious ninja patients were airlifted to Moscow.
33:28More than 200 operators from the plant, firefighters and other victims of the accident were flown
33:34to be treated in Hospital No. 6, which was a specialised hospital that had been built and equipped
33:41specifically to treat people from the nuclear industry.
34:32They wanted to keep the whole thing under wraps.
34:35The Soviet reflex towards secrecy in events like this was overwhelming.
34:48The normal monitor was observed, the other patient.
34:50The medical monitor is doing nothing.
34:52If we were looking at the hospital, theretion, the normalcy, the recovery.
34:55I was standing on the park, I was counting on the sheets, I counted on the sheet, on the board.
35:00Well, time came on.
35:03I looked at the mirror, my hair looks like.
35:23The damage from radiation exposure is not immediately apparent.
35:31About a week or 10 days after exposure, these 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. They die.
36:15And here, near the door, there is a KGB.
36:18Always.
36:22There is a doctor, an oculist.
36:27I looked at the side, and I brought you a newspaper.
36:32You read it.
36:35And it shows the photographs of six firefighters who died.
36:44Among the worst affected of the firefighters were those who went to the roofs of the reactor building in the
36:50immediate aftermath of the explosion,
36:52and therefore received the greatest exposure to ionizing radiation.
36:57I see these six of our firefighters.
37:02Inethenko, Kibinok, Pravi.
37:07They were together.
37:08They were together.
37:09They went to the hotel and went to the hotel.
37:10I didn't expect this.
37:12I didn't expect this.
37:13This will come to us in life.
37:15And I won't believe them.
37:40Of the over 200 first responders sent for treatment in hospital number six, six would eventually die
37:46in the weeks and months following the accident.
37:48Firefighters and the response crews, incredibly heroic.
38:18For us, there were 12 of those teams that brought us to Moscow.
38:23We left 6 alive people.
38:27The rest of us is eternal memory.
38:43After about 10 days of flying continuous missions to try to deal with the fire in the reactor core, it
38:49finally went out.
38:52Several days after the temperature of the core had started to mysteriously rise,
38:56it began to drop again.
38:59None of the scientists could understand why.
39:04For two weeks, there have been more questions than answers about the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster.
39:09But now part of the mystery is being cleared up by an inspection team from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
39:16The Russian ambassador to the IAEA, he phoned me,
39:20and he said that we had an invitation to come to Russia to be fully informed about the accident.
39:28We had the question, would we want to go to Chernobyl?
39:33And I said, of course, we want to.
39:37We circled the destroyed plant.
39:40We peeked out of the windows of the helicopter, of course, down.
39:44And that was a sorry and tragic sight.
39:49We could see the vast destruction that occurred.
39:56These first Westerners to visit the stricken scene, report that the fire in the disabled number four reactor has finally
40:03been extinguished.
40:04We have seen that the little smoke is still coming up from here.
40:08It is all out.
40:11Hans Blix was smart.
40:12He knew he risked exposure over that reactor, but came out with the confirmation that, yeah, at least this initial
40:20fire was out.
40:22I think it was quite important because there was the first impartial people to witness what had happened.
40:31And the world was hungry for that information.
40:36The first independent verification that the worst is over came at a Moscow press conference under free questioning by Western
40:43reporters.
40:46In that room, it was pretty tense.
40:50It was electric.
40:51Here was the first neutral scientist to see what was probably the worst nuclear disaster in history.
41:02We have had very frank and very open discussions with ministers and with experts.
41:10The deputation said they were well satisfied with the information they'd been given.
41:14On the basis of it, the American head of the authority's nuclear safety division said the reactor had shut down
41:20automatically and looked like staying that way.
41:22The chain reaction stopped immediately after the accident and never started again.
41:30Fuel temperatures being measured now, we 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 core was still melting.
42:13One of the big ongoing threats after the core fire had been extinguished was the possibility that this very hot
42:20fuel,
42:21made of melted uranium dioxide at a temperature over 2,000 degrees centigrade, could melt its way through the bottom
42:27of the reactor vessel into the concrete foundation and eventually get out of the bottom of the reactor building.
42:36Behind the scenes, the Soviets were deathly afraid that the core might burn through and hit the water table.
42:46It would potentially poison the drinking water supplies, not only of Kyiv, but of a huge part of the population
42:55of Ukraine.
42:57They are scrambling.
42:59How 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
43:35and go underneath this burning reactor core in order to prevent catastrophic damage to the earth.
43:44They were asking these miners to sacrifice themselves.
43:49Their sales pitch was, the Soviet Union needs this done.
43:54Can you step up?
43:57And what the miners asked was, where are the shovels?
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