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Watch Chernobyl Inside The Meltdown () free Episode 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.
01:53The power of an air force is going to be in the atmosphere.
01:54The power of an air force is going to be in the atmosphere, the air force is going to be
02:17in the atmosphere.
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. It generates heat because of the decay heat of the
03:51radioactivity.
03:52Any firefighter will tell you that all you need for a fire is fuel and heat, and those were being
03:58supplied 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.
04:27These weren't fancy contraptions. This was all rigged on the fly.
04:37The goal of the reactor was the reactor. The mistake here is expensive.
04:47When you throw it out and it went to the target, and the leader of the flight is loud to
04:54speak to the radio,
04:55and if the good guys worked for 10 bullets, it becomes a little bit easier.
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 ronch in an hour,
05:22which 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 readings around the planet was very large.
05:44Radiation was very large.
05:45The means of protection was only a marble connection.
05:49After every flight, this marble connection became so red,
05:56and in the middle of the body felt a metallic taste.
05:59We understood that there was some action through breathing paths.
06:07It was a very difficult situation, no question about it.
06:10But it was the most important thing to solve,
06:13because that is what's driving the ongoing release of radioactive material into 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 Åžirbina,
07:20who was the deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and the fuel and energy chief of the USSR.
07:28He was a militant, a very violent, a very targeted man.
07:35SHIRBINA WAITED TO GIVE THE ORDER FOR EVACUATION.
07:38This was driven by the need for secrecy,
07:41because they didn't want word of what had happened to leak out.
07:46Around 8 o'clock that morning,
07:48Boris Åžirbina 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.
08:13—
08:13—
08:13—
08:34I remember my mom entered the room and she said guys wake up we will be
08:45evacuated
08:59I remember the radio announcement very clearly because it was someone who we knew so it was
09:08familiar voice calming without panic saying collect your belongings for three days documents and money
09:15and get down the buses are going wait for you
09:22we collected what we have to collect it was my mom's job and we went outside
09:55you can't overstate
09:58how secret everything was in the soviet union secrecy was baked in to the soviet soul at that point
10:15you have to go to the airport and go to the airport and go to the airport and go to
10:24the airport
10:26President, Maria, you have a plan, so you go on the road, you will meet and send you to the
10:33autobus.
10:36And in two hours, I went on the first autobus.
10:41It was important to be able to come to 1500 autobuses.
10:58The situation by that time had become extraordinarily dangerous.
11:03Everybody in Pripyat was exposed to colossal amounts of radiation with consequences nobody could really predict.
11:17And on this football field there was a airplane.
11:22The radioactive smoke was lifted, and my legs fell down on my legs.
11:28They were so broken.
11:31You can imagine how radioactive smoke flew from this place.
11:45We stayed outside for over two hours waiting for the buses to arrive.
11:52There was worry in the air, but it did not touch me.
11:58I felt like parents will solve it all for us.
12:03We played with our neighbors.
12:06We didn't know that it was for the last time.
12:12The buses were sent to all over Soviet Union.
12:16I never had a chance to say goodbye to my friends, and I never met one of my best friends
12:23again.
12:28We evacuated about 45,000 people.
12:33Without panic, without noise.
12:36We evacuated the whole city.
12:39I remember one woman who looked at the window.
12:44She looked at me and looked at me.
12:46She looked at me and looked at me and looked at me.
12:52She looked at me.
12:54And there was something in the face.
12:54You know, something inside me.
13:00It was like, something inside me.
13:01She cried at me.
13:03What?
13:03Where am I?
13:07It was my hometown.
13:10I had friends, neighbors.
13:13We would go out to forest, to river.
13:16It 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 this feeling.
13:43It was like 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.
15:01The 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.
15:11What do you mean by nuclear accident?
15:13The initial reaction was, you know, Armageddon.
15:16One couldn't quite understand the difference between a nuclear power accident and a nuclear attack.
15:22Nuclear had all those connotations.
15:25We 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 9 p.m. 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,
16:12but 25 minutes into the show, almost kind of,
16:16oh, by the way, we've had a nuclear accident.
16:18We'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.
16:33Dialogue, it's felt, will be easier.
16:36We were beginning to see the opening up of the Soviet Union.
16:39We were still in the Cold War.
16:44They were adversaries.
16:45We were constantly aware that if something went wrong,
16:48we 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,
17:05which 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,
17:20then tell us what you know.
17:21And then we met a brick wall.
17:25The fact that the Soviets would be so tone deaf
17:29as to not tell the world what was actually going on,
17:35that, to this day,
17:36is perhaps the most astonishing act of secrecy
17:41in 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,
17:56particularly an embarrassing problem like a huge disaster,
18:00was to try to cover it up
18:01until they could figure out something to do.
18:03It was the reflexive action of Soviet bureaucrats,
18:06and 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
18:23speculated we had to consider the possibility
18:25that this was a nuclear core meltdown.
18:28Fuel in the core heats to the point where it melts
18:32and flows to the bottom of the reactor core.
18:35It may eventually melt its way through the floor beyond.
18:39That's what's called a reactor meltdown.
18:41This is a dangerous situation
18:42because the radioactive material that was in the core
18:45has now leaked out of its confinement.
18:54People in the area immediately downwind of the accident
18:56are now getting potentially dangerous levels of radioactivity.
19:00It is, they say, fallout, no different than from a nuclear bomb,
19:04with particles that may stay dangerous for up to 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
19:18and therefore don't need emergency containment around them.
19:22How wrong they were.
19:23Tens of millions of people in Europe were afraid of drinking the water,
19:28eating the food and fearful for the impact on their children and their livestock.
19:34In Brussels, the community's executive commission has recommended a Europe-wide ban on produce like milk and fresh vegetables
19:41from the Soviet bloc countries closest to the nuclear accident.
19:44The news of higher levels of radiation has caused considerable alarm in Britain,
19:49reflected not only in calls to the Ministry of Agriculture but also here to the BBC.
19:53People want more information about the dangers from radiation.
19:57There were lurid headlines about what might happen.
20:00There were worried people.
20:03And you never really knew in those first few days whether the danger was contained.
20:08The public is concerned. The public is upset.
20:12They knew a radioactive fallout could be health-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.
20:32How 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.
22:02Everyone was very worried and collected the fire everywhere in Ukraine.
22:08This reactor is a reactor.
22:13And here, imagine, there was one, there was six aircraft immediately.
22:17One aircraft is flying, the second aircraft is running, the third is running, the third is running, the fourth is
22:21running, the fourth is running.
22:28We were most concerned about the fire in the core because that's where the largest remaining amount of radioactive material
22:34was.
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 at the Lawrence Livermore laboratories.
22:58So it's understandable that a great deal of attention was focused here following word of the Soviet accident.
23:05We have been collecting the weather pattern data for that part of the world over the past four to five
23:10days.
23:13I'm Marv Dickerson, and in 1986, I worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory when the accident occurred at Chernobyl.
23:22It's the most sophisticated facility of its type in the world.
23:26A room full of computers receives readouts from radiation monitoring stations in Europe, Japan, and here in the U.S.
23:34People said reactor sites won't have accidents, and if they do, the release will be local.
23:41We didn't believe that.
23:43We thought there could possibly be accidents that would be larger than that.
23:49The most frightening aspect of this concept of a radioactive cloud emerging from somewhere behind the Iron Curtain
23:57and then gradually enveloping your country is the invisible nature of radioactivity and its potential effects on you and everyone
24:07you know.
24:10The radioactive cloud at Chernobyl was formed by two different things.
24:16First, the initial explosions put radioactivity up several thousand feet, and after that was fire.
24:25Fire has smoke. If it's burning radioactive material, it'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 can move in different directions.
24:42The upper-level cloud went across northern China, out over Japan, and then a small amount was measured over the
24:52state of Washington.
24:54And the lower part of the cloud that was created by the fire, that part of the cloud went over
25:00Europe.
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 Kiev.
25:21I would not have wanted to be south of the reactor site, down around Kiev.
25:32One of the things that we and our CIA task force tried to follow was what was going on in
25:36Soviet life.
25:38Even though there was a nuclear accident going on a few miles north at Chernobyl,
25:43because of the Soviet leadership's desire to portray the situation as normal and everything under control,
25:48they tried to go on with life as normal in Kiev.
25:52And at a time when they should have been sheltering in place, in fact, they had a parade.
25:59The Soviet Union every year had a May Day parade.
26:03Hoorah!
26:06It was a big showcase of their military might, so to speak.
26:13I can remember the tanks and the missiles and 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.
26:26Hoorah!
26:27Hoorah!
26:28Hoorah!
26:29H
26:45It was alreadyゆet It was determined to be ...
26:48The demonstration was already set,
26:49The commercial inside of Kiev,
26:55and it was already called Pheynos.
27:02By nightfall on April 30th, radiation levels in the center of Kyiv had begun to spike hundreds of times higher
27:09than normal.
27:28He said it to the military party, someone asked, well, how can we? Well, there was only an accident. We
27:38can't take the road to the demonstration.
27:43We're not even a week out from the accident. The Soviets had still yet to give a detailed explanation that
27:52even approached the truth of what they knew about the 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 happened.
28:12Sheerbitsky said, I'm waiting on the phone, but he doesn't hit the wound.
28:17We understood that it's bad things.
28:23We need to do a demonstration.
28:29The atmosphere was all sad.
28:34They stood there and cried out.
28:38But they couldn't come and take a seat.
28:48They said, on the floor, they were only in the streets, but it would like to know the people who
28:54told them to give their repentance.
28:55It has never been home.
28:56They told them to tell them that they had not died.
29:00They asked me where they were going.
29:05The party workers are on the streets. Everyone already understood that they should not be allowed to be allowed to
29:12be allowed to be allowed.
29:12They should be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed.
29:17This is what we got from the special internats, from the internet.
29:23We put the column, the children went fast, and we left home.
29:35My personal opinion was that we should not be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to be allowed to
29:41be allowed.
29:44Mayday's coverage included a colorful parade in Kiev.
29:48To the Soviets today was not just normal, it was festive, as 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. There's nothing to see here.
30:09When they lived, you know, what, 80 miles from the plant, and the government wasn't saying a word.
30:16The public, of course, was angry.
30:19The public, of course, was angry.
30:19How is this? A parade, such a radiation.
30:23I can still not 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.
31:17So we can't wait for the reactor building.
31:20So our ship.
31:22It will be to us all.
31:46This is a photo that I took in Moscow,
31:50hospital number six.
31:52It's one of the firefighters
31:54who 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.
32:41I packed my bags and got on a flight.
32:47Me and the two pilots
32:49were the only people flying into Moscow.
32:53Everyone was flying out of Moscow.
33:00The very next day, we started our triage
33:02of the engineers and firefighters
33:06who had been flown to Moscow.
33:11Pripyat Hospital was not equipped
33:13to cope with the types and seriousness
33:18of injuries that they encountered
33:20in the first patients.
33:22The most serious injured patients
33:24were 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 6,
33:37which was a specialised hospital
33:39that had been built and equipped specifically
33:42to treat people from the nuclear industry.
33:58They sat down to the 9th floor.
34:03The KGPers tecloth is closed.
34:07They've been locked down.
34:07They've been locked down to the 9th floor.
34:07They're closed under the door.
34:08I said,
34:09how can I write to the person's husband?
34:12My sister comes down,
34:13and ela goes,
34:13theomm seeer viseå®®,
34:14well,
34:14she says,
34:32They wanted to keep the whole thing under wraps.
34:36The Soviet reflex towards secrecy in events like this
34:39was overwhelming.
34:48There was another surgery.
34:50There was a gastro, a neurologist, a doctor.
34:55I was in the parking lot.
34:57I was in the chair, I was in the chair, I was in the chair,
34:58I was in the chair, I was in the chair.
35:00Well, the time goes.
35:03I look in the mirror, my hair is falling.
35:07Well, I wanted my hair to fix my hair,
35:08because I was wearing hair from 9th grade.
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.
36:09They die.
36:14They die.
36:15Please grow up here.
36:16I'llża during the hospital door from the hospital.
36:21Never watch people.
36:27I blondes pointemen.
36:43Among 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, and therefore received the greatest exposure to ionizing radiation.
36:59Our firefighters, Ignatenko, Kibinok, Ravik, they were together together, they had to go to the hotel.
37:10I didn't expect anything to do, that it will come to us in life, and I will no longer see
37:16them.
37:19I said, give me your memory.
37:21She turned to me and gave me this.
37:24I said, give me your memory.
37:30She took the hotel and said, give me your memory.
37:39Of the over 200 first responders sent for treatment in hospital number six, 28 would eventually die in the weeks
37:46and months following the accident.
37:49Firefighters and the response crews, incredibly heroic.
37:54It's time for the evening, tomorrow morning, I have as approved.
37:59I'm going to pay for it.
38:17We had 12 people from all the teams,
38:21who were in Moscow.
38:23We had 6 people who were living.
38:43After about 10 days of flying continuous missions to try to deal with the fire in the reactor
38:48core, it finally went out.
38:52Several days after the temperature of the core had started to mysteriously rise, it
38:57began 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
39:08disaster.
39:09But now part of the mystery is being cleared up by an inspection team from the International
39:14Atomic Energy Agency.
39:16The Russian ambassador to the IA, he phoned me, and he said that we had an invitation
39:23to come to Russia to be fully informed about the accident.
39:28We had the question, would we want to go to Chernobyl, and I said, of course, we want it.
39:37We circled the destroyed plant.
39:40We peeked out of the windows of the helicopter, of course, down, and that was a sorry and
39:47tragic 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
40:01four reactor has finally been extinguished.
40:04We have seen that a little smoke is still coming up from here and down as well.
40:11Hans Blix was smart.
40:12He knew he risked exposure over that reactor, but came out with the confirmation that, yeah,
40:19at least this initial fire was out.
40:22I think it was quite important because there was the first impartial people to witness what
40:30had 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
40:41under free questioning by Western reporters.
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
41:00history.
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
41:19reactor had shut down automatically and looked like staying that way.
41:22The chain reaction stopped immediately after the accident and never started again.
41:31Fuel temperatures being measured now, we are told, are significantly below the melting point
41:39and 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,
42:08that that core was still melting.
42:13One of the big ongoing threats after the core fire had been extinguished was the possibility
42:18that this very hot fuel, made of melted uranium dioxide at a temperature over 2,000 degrees centigrade,
42:25could 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.
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. 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
43:16and 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, can you step up?
43:57And what the miners asked was, where are the shovels?
44:02so we were able to boost the sea.
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