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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.
04:11I mean, they're getting dosed.
04:13The police say, you know, they're trying to go back to the war.
04:13It's one of those things.
04:13So, the authorities, if you are asking them to get an accident, they are trying to do something wrong.
04:14of the EU, in this room.
04:19It was a very clear, you can't get to the war.
04:27But now, the soldiers, we were ABSOL.
04:33I mean, they're getting dosed.
04:39Everything is coated with the anti-human, и all the police.
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
05:37the answer
05:50and she said the manager that you go to the network with us
05:54we will coaster the railways to be able to get your reactor reactor
06:04It was made like a steel rod, so that it could be possible to go there.
06:09And there was water there, there were still щels in the reactor.
06:14Well, the water is active, as well.
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 I got it.
06:32I got it, I got it.
06:34I got it, 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.
13:26It was a means of the investigation.
13:27The police were called as a witness.
13:28I don't know if I was a witness of the protection or if I was a witness of the defense.
13:34I didn't know.
13:38I asked a question about the technicality, I don't remember.
13:44And all, they did.
13:46I went to a car and went to a car.
14:10After leaving Chernobyl, Steinberg eventually became part of an independent commission that
14:17reopened the investigation into what had happened at Chernobyl.
14:51Data about the performance of the reactor during the accident was being recorded, but in the
14:59immediate aftermath, all the documentation and data from the plan was seized and returned
15:05to Moscow and classified.
15:23And so for us were important for two or three documents, and we needed
15:30data from oscillograms, which would show exactly when the reactor began to get out of control
15:37and when the operators tried to set it or shut it in our language.
15:43The management of the chief engineer, who created the reactor, did not give good, right?
15:54The KGB classified the real reasons for the causes of the Chernobyl accident.
16:01Any dissent from the official line that the operators were responsible was essentially
16:07forbidden.
16:17So, through the Supreme Court, the jurors said that all the affairs are in the court,
16:26which was filed in the court, which was filed in the court.
16:29The Supreme Court.
16:30After all, I called the chairman of the Supreme Court.
16:36The president of the Supreme Court had given theiatre of the court for a couple of years.
16:42there we worked and found the documents that we needed, but we,
16:47step by step, worked for about a half a year.
16:55The results were in Vassalagraga.
17:00It was something that wasn't worth anything.
17:02They turned out to show them in 6 seconds.
17:10And this allowed them to say that the person is wrong, and that he has violated the regime.
17:20So, they were falsified?
17:22Yes.
17:42The findings of Steinberg and the rest of the investigators finally brought to light the true causes of the disaster.
18:11The new information tended to shift the focus of responsibility from operator actions to fundamental design flaws in the reactor
18:20itself.
18:24The Chernobyl Power Station used RBMK-type reactors that 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, which have a diameter of maybe 3 or 4 meters.
18:59The RBMK reactors had nearly 1,700 fuel channels that contain the uranium fuel that produces heat that's used to
19:09boil water to make steam, to make electricity.
19:13This core is so large, it's almost like having two reactors in one, one at the top and one at
19:18the 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 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, was to shut the reactor
20:54down 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 had discovered that there was a disturbing anomaly
21:30about 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, it could induce a runaway reaction leading to a meltdown and an explosion
21:49of the core.
22:12They'd begun to make progress on modifying the emergency shutdown system.
22:18And although the Chernobyl 4 unit was on the list as due for those modifications, they decided that they would
22:27just 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 4.
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 to
24:30release the control rods to shut the reactor down.
24:35They press the AZ-5 button at 1.23am.
24:39The T DHROR there
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24:40for a couple seconds.
24:48Geoffrey saw kadın with a small police carоны over the door.
24:51The tragic risk of the brave caripe of a half is just outside.
25:00He was so通ated with sickness.
25:01He touches on 31 o'clock and in a Hm bitcoin off at one time.
25:07At the stars 3 o'clock in a time.
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,
25:45which 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,
26:07the slightest additional power fluctuation could initiate a 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.
27:19The Soviet version of events was that the accident began to occur,
27:22and then in a panic, the operators pressed the AZ-5 button in order to try and shut down the
27:28reactor.
27:30It was completely different.
27:32It was a real-assisted way.
27:35It was a real-assisted way.
27:38It was a real-assisted way.
27:39It was a real-assisted way.
27:50It was in a way that everything was good.
27:52It was a stable, even if the other people were MOVED on the motorway to turn the motor.
28:07the truth is fine, but those who are responsible for this,
28:12they did not receive any punishment, any kind of punishment.
28:19If there were others who were not guilty,
28:24they would give an answer to those who constructed the reactor.
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, 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
29:08and 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.
29:26When the perfect storm of the circumstances, the actions, and the design problems came together,
29:33it was almost inevitable.
29:39The nature of the Soviet system was such that denial, secrecy, and cover-up
29:45was endemic to the way of their operation.
29:50The truth is Chernobyl is more of a metaphor for the failure of the Soviet system
29:56than it is a reactor safety story.
30:02The increasing reporting about what had really happened and information about the failures
30:10of the design of the reactor finally revealed to citizens of the USSR that the Soviet Union did
30:19not in fact lead the world in high technology. The dramatic failures of the Chernobyl accident
30:26undermined one of the last sources of Soviet pride.
31:06The Soviet Union saw itself as a great empire, and then one day, that all came back to the
31:07Good 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, and then one day, that all came crashing down.
31:28With eleven signatures and a round of applause, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist.
31:39There was chaos. People lost their jobs, they didn't have any food.
31:44It was deeply humiliating for many Russians, for millions of Russians.
31:48We have ever met with such a dangerous force, which is the nuclear energy that came out of control.
31:58Gorbachev said he thought the Chernobyl accident was the ultimate cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
32:06Because huge numbers of people, especially in Ukraine, began to realize the Communist Party
32:15protected itself. It didn't protect us.
32:42The Soviets' 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. It's crumbling. We've already had to collapse from one part of
33:05the turbine hall with a very heavy snow load. We see some very, very major structural damage there.
33:13If it had collapsed, it could have stirred up some of the radioactive debris and caused
33:17additional 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, a very large structure called the New Safe Confinement.
33:40Construction began on the New Safe Confinement
33:43in 2010, a massive international effort. Something 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 airplane. It is the largest movable land-based structure ever built.
34:18The New Safe Confinement was actually built to be mobile and 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. And basically, if you put a lot of them,
34:36you make your own sliding way for the skid shoes to slide on.
34:49The construction 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 step for safety. And Ukraine and Europe will be much safer now.
35:12Ukraine, unlike the Soviet Union, very 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. Ukrainians who resist. Oh, I tell you what,
35:34I just heard a big bang right here behind me. I thought we shouldn't have done a live shot here.
35:40It was quite shocking that Russia had decided to send its forces into Kiev, into Ukraine.
35:48And 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. Military advisor 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 and cause that massive catastrophe
36:15to repeat itself all over again. The Russian soldiers ploughed across the exclusion zone.
36:25They dug trenches in the forest, which is an extraordinary thing to do.
36:31The 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
36:44Ukraine post the 1986 calamity at Chernobyl. The Soviet Kremlin had an utter disregard for the
36:52liquidators for the firefighters of Chernobyl. In the same way, the Russian Kremlin had
36:58an 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
37:40that covers the fourth unit of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, sparking a fire that was later contained.
37:50Are you kidding? Lobbing a missile into Chernobyl?
38:08The strike on the new safe confinement structure underlines the nuclear threat throughout the
38:16the whole Ukraine conflict. That it could cause another Chernobyl, another nuclear disaster. And that would be catastrophic.
38:31A
39:00When we left Chernobyl,
39:02I was a child, but I was put in a situation
39:05that not even some adults can 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 the invasion in 2022,
39:23we left Ukraine and moved to Luxembourg,
39:27and now we are here.
39:33I hoped for better for my kids,
39:36but it didn't happen.
39:40I always teach my children to be adaptable
39:44and be resilient.
39:48And the Ukrainians are proof to be resilient.
39:55What can the history of Chernobyl
39:57can teach us about the history of the war?
40:05What can the history of Chernobyl
40:06Every one of these terrible actions
40:08brought people a lesson
40:11of the consequences of the wrong actions.
40:17And that is a huge shame, huge shame,
40:22and huge harm for every nation.
40:36I think this was a huge impact on all of us.
40:40Our lives were divided by the pandemic.
40:49We believed our government, our science,
40:53that everything will be good.
40:57And we didn't feel any danger.
41:10It's in the minds of people. The scars are physical as well.
41:16These radioactive toxins caused a huge spike in thyroid cancer.
41:21And you can go to Ukraine today,
41:23and you can see people who were around in 1986
41:26when the catastrophe happened.
41:31They've got little scars on their necks
41:32where they've had operation on their thyroid glands
41:34to take out parts of the thyroid
41:36because they'd become cancerous.
41:40I remember quite often I would hear that that person died,
41:44friend 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
42:19that can provide checks and balances
42:24to the pride that comes with having huge, complex technologies.
42:32If I were to give a lesson for my grandchildren,
42:36tell the truth,
42:38no matter how bad the situation is,
42:40it can only be made worse by lying and being untruthful.
42:48I think that the Chernobyl story is arguably more relevant than ever.
42:54Given that the causes of the accident lie in a government and a society
43:01that had completely lost touch with what the truth really was.
43:32One of the things that I think we all learned,
43:35is when the regime is serving itself rather than the people,
43:41that's when power evaporates.
43:44That's the moral binder.
43:47The truth.
43:48The truth.
43:49The truth.
43:50The truth.
43:52The truth.
44:03The truth.
44:04The truth.
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