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Watch Chernobyl Inside The Meltdown () free Episode Season 1 Episode 1 online in HD on Dailymotion (2026).
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00:11I was working at the nuclear power station at Forsmark in Sweden.
00:21If you want to go into the controlled area, you had to put yourself in a monitor that checked if
00:27you had any radioactive contamination on you.
00:33This was just a normal procedure, but this morning the alarm went off.
00:40No one could get through because the alarm went off all the time.
00:45I didn't think it was really real.
00:50So I asked one of the guys who stood in the queue to borrow a shoe and started an analysis
00:57of it.
00:59The rate by which the peaks rise tells you about the radioactivity, and this time it
01:04was just .
01:08It was terrifying.
01:11The alarm went off to evacuate the station.
01:16At first, the Swedes thought that they had had a nuclear accident.
01:21Later, Swedish scientists determined the origin was somewhere in the Soviet Union.
01:26order to open theи investors to fold the
01:27north- space.
01:29The Kurdistan landed on top 3-1 police officer.
01:36On the right, central bureau, block number 4.
01:43Details are emerging this morning of the serious accident at a Soviet nuclear plant in蔷
01:54it's being called the worst nuclear accident in history a giant reactor has suffered what
01:59experts tonight believe to have been a core meltdown radiation of course is the big fear
02:05tonight it is the silent killer and apparently it continues to pour forth from Chernobyl
02:11it can cause immediate sickness and death there is a dramatic hike in a deadly form
02:17of thyroid cancer among children exposed to that radioactive fallout the longer you live eating
02:23and drinking in contaminated regions the more radiation builds up in your body
02:33president reagan was out of the country but then vice president george bush asked me how bad the
02:40reactor accident was and i said sir in my opinion as a nuclear engineer this is the worst possible
02:44accident i can imagine
02:54there were incredible acts of bravery and heroism sacrifice and extreme patriotism
03:09so many young people died how do we actually understand what has happened if the soviets
03:17won't tell us this was a global disaster hundreds of millions of people wanted to know am i in danger
03:25is the food safe to eat and the soviets were quiet
03:33this was an unchecked nuclear core meltdown
03:56over the course of the last 40 years i've never had an opportunity to speak about this
03:59in public before as a cia officer we're not generally dealing with the media
04:07in 1986 i had been a nuclear analyst for the central intelligence agency
04:11i was 27 years old i've been working for the cia for four years
04:18i remember coming back from lunch on the monday april 28th and the soviets finally did acknowledge
04:25that there was a problem they put out a statement saying there had been an accident at the chernobyl
04:34nuclear power plant and that was a bit ominous because chernobyl was a lot further away than
04:39the ones we initially suspected
04:43both the swedish and danish embassies sent envoys to the soviet foreign ministry today
04:47asking the soviets to be more forthcoming wyatt andrews cbs news moscow
04:53the entire diplomatic community and reporting community was bombarding the the soviet authorities
05:00for answers
05:07we set out immediately to start tasking the resources that we had to learn more about it
05:13of course we tasked the overhead reconnaissance satellites which was not nearly as ubiquitous as they are today
05:20so we had to go out and provide a justification to get the satellite picture
05:25we kind of sold the idea as well that we might see emergency response crews and that sort of thing
05:31the next morning our senior nuclear power analyst got an excited call from the photo interpreters
05:36and said the reactor's blown up just like you said and our reaction was no we lied about that
05:41we were we couldn't have done that that doesn't happen to reactors
05:50the images showed that the building was completely destroyed
05:54as a nuclear engineer i was astounded that the thing would have exploded in that manner
05:58and you would have this vast destruction
06:02that kind of nuclear core explosion had never happened before
06:06that emission of radiation had never happened before
06:10that was horrifying
06:25soviet propaganda had spent years insisting that the ussr's nuclear technology led the world
06:34construction began on the chernobyl power plant in 1970
06:38by 1986 there were four reactors online
06:45one of the unique things was their extremely large physical size
06:48much larger than similar reactors in the west
06:53each of the reactors produced a thousand megawatts of electricity
06:57which was enough to provide power to around a million modern homes
07:04the plant was located to the northwest of kiev
07:09around 800 miles from foschmark in sweden
07:14where radiation from the accident was first detected in the west
07:19you have an enormous plume of radioactive material is coming across europe
07:24so we knew that because of the great distances and the amount being received at those distances
07:28this must be a very large release
07:33it's hard to quantify the effect that these radioactive isotopes might have on your body and on your health
07:42even at lower levels it can cause long-term effects like cancer that may show up years later
07:52i remember seeing from the bus when i came back from foschmark to upsala i saw some children playing
08:00i wanted to stop the bus and go out and ask them don't play here
08:06but it was not possible to stop that kind of bus
08:13no one knew what that level of radiation spewing into the air would do to the atmosphere
08:19and how far the contamination would spread and how dangerous that might be
08:28at foschmark we spoke a lot everybody in the control room
08:33the main thought was what was it like to be in chernobyl
08:44in a power plant that had suffered such a fate
09:12in the night
09:15I worked with the senior engineer of the turbine engine 4th block.
09:21I was 28 years old.
09:37Why did you wait for almost 40 years?
09:41I left another life and didn't want to talk about the past.
10:12We went to work for about half an hour before the start of the operation.
10:18My place was on the right.
10:20There were two turbines.
10:21We went to work for about 120 barrels.
10:27We first started to make an experiment.
10:33Reactor number four was scheduled to be shut down
10:37for routine maintenance,
10:38and the operators were taking the opportunity to conduct a long-delayed safety test.
10:47Ironically, the experiment was intended to allow them to have better reactor safety
10:53in the event of a loss of power.
10:56They had begun this experiment a day before the accident occurred.
11:04Unfortunately, the experiment was interrupted by the grid controller
11:07who needed more electricity, so that the shutdown was prolonged.
11:15The delay meant that the test had to be conducted by the midnight shift.
11:38Alongside Igor Kirchenbaum, the two members of the shift, directly responsible for enacting the test,
11:44were Alexander Akimov, the head of the shift,
11:48and Leonid Toktunov, controlling the reactor directly.
11:54The reactor was infamously unstable during the process of shutdown.
12:03Toktunov was not very experienced.
12:05He would be overseeing the shutdown of a nuclear reactor for the first time in his career.
12:30They were tired, and they were trying to get it done, because opportunities to do this kind of thing
12:35didn't occur very often.
12:38The most senior man in the room was Anatoly Dyatlov, who was deputy chief engineer for operations for the entire
12:44plant.
12:46There had been several disagreements about the test protocol, and the test had been delayed so long that part of
12:55the crew were threatening to leave.
12:59Dyatlov, who was never a good tempered individual, had been awake for almost 24 hours.
13:07The last thing that Dyatlov said to Akimov before the test began was,
13:13what are you waiting for?
13:23By the time it did look like I found the �
13:27but he had been waiting for the bombardment,
13:30it was a harder requires of no question or not because
13:30of it was an safety issue.
13:39The test staff was not to wrap up,
13:44to die.
14:20In 1986, it was 29 years old.
14:27It turned out that we were already in the evening,
14:29we started to patrol around the atom station.
14:36We had a water heater at the time.
14:39In 2017, we saw two barconers,
14:44which were put in the seats.
14:48We had to take these two barconers from the water.
14:56It was about 400 meters from the reactor.
15:02We took these two people.
15:04We took them out.
15:06We heard a whistle on the back.
15:09It turned around.
15:11Almost all turned around.
15:14Well, literally, the second whistle on the back.
15:22The wind was blowing,
15:23the smoke, the smoke,
15:25the smoke,
15:28the smoke,
15:30the smoke,
15:31the smoke,
15:32the alarm,
15:32the avarice.
15:38I saw the light,
15:40the sky,
15:40the sky.
15:40It turned around and turned around.
15:42It was like a smoke.
15:46It was very strong.
15:51At that moment, the radiation warning lamps on the wall of the control room turned from green to red.
16:02We walked 200 meters and stood against the 4th energy block.
16:09I said, my God, who left out of the building?
16:13It took half of it.
16:15It took half of it, cut it off.
16:22So, it's 3-5.
16:27Hello?
16:28Yes.
16:293-4 block?
16:30Yes, 4-4 block.
16:32Do you see a sign against the arrow?
16:34Yes.
16:35How do you see the arrow?
16:37Yes, the arrow is closed.
16:39We started to make various messages.
16:44They brought the dead man.
16:48It was Šashanok.
16:52Vladimir Šashanok, who was monitoring the turbines, was engulfed in radioactive steam.
17:16There was no doubt, complete confusion in the control room.
17:20All they knew that something was wrong,
17:22but they didn't know what it was.
17:26They certainly didn't believe that the reactor could have been destroyed.
17:32The Chernobyl power plant was laid out around a long central corridor.
17:38The four reactors in a line.
17:42Each of the reactors had its own separate control room,
17:45and each of the control rooms was separated from the reactor hall
17:49by many thick concrete walls.
17:54Reactor four had been obliterated,
17:57taking with it all of the sensors and equipment
17:59that was supposed to communicate to them
18:01what was happening inside the reactor core.
18:05So they were completely in the dark.
18:11What are you talking about?
18:13An explosion on the ground.
18:1634, between 34 and 34.
18:19Are there people?
18:20Yes.
18:21Yes, sir.
18:23They're the forces.
18:24They're the forces.
18:24They're the forces.
18:25They're the forces.
18:25They're the forces.
18:31They're the forces.
18:37They're the forces.
18:42They're the forces.
18:45And they're the forces.
18:50CHRISTIAN Anime
18:50On the floor of the sewer,
18:50for these firefighters,
18:52this was something like they'd never seen before,
18:56this strange glow coming from the reactor core meltdown,
19:21Those firefighters put their lives on the line, very much like the firefighters at the
19:26World Trade Center in 9-11.
19:27I mean, they knew what they were getting into, and they went and did it anyway.
19:58I mean, they knew what they were doing.
20:09They knew what they were doing.
20:12They knew what they were doing.
21:17They knew how they were doing.
21:25We knew how they were doing.
21:38This is the station. This is the station.
21:41This is all four blocks.
21:44We sent 30-40 squadrons.
21:47We took all the zone.
21:51We see such pieces of smoke.
21:54I went to the roof of the building.
21:58I see the roof all in holes.
22:01It's closed and it's like this.
22:05They were there armed with water and foam,
22:08which is what you would bring to an industrial fire.
22:12There was smoke.
22:14The fire, the eyes of the fire,
22:17broken and broken.
22:19The boys are in the tubes.
22:21There's nothing to talk about and look at who and what.
22:26It was scary, can you tell us?
22:27Oh, it's scary.
22:28It's scary.
22:28It's scary.
22:29You look at the way,
22:31but here in the head is another one.
22:34They call it where are the sleeves.
22:37It's not scary.
22:38Give it some sleeves.
22:39Give it some water.
22:40What's the thing?
22:42It's scary.
22:43It's already was a fight.
22:50There's a danger...
22:52There's a danger of...
22:53There's a danger of...
22:54There's a danger of radioactivity.
22:59The fields of radiation on the roofs of the reactor buildings were so intense that almost
23:05immediately some members of the fire crews came down with symptoms of acute radiation
23:09syndrome and were taken from the scene already vomiting.
23:27People in the control room still didn't really fully understand exactly what had happened even hours after the explosion had
23:36taken place.
24:08The reactor was not receiving any cooling water that would cause a reactor meltdown.
24:15So they became fixated at that point on getting water into the reactor but the gate bells on the cooling
24:24system had to be turned manually.
24:29Akimov and Toptunov left the control room and went out to try to open valves and establish new ways of
24:36cooling the reactor.
24:40And they spent a long time there in enormous fields of gamma radiation.
24:45What they didn't realize was that opening the valves was a complete waste of time.
24:52Unfortunately, the reactor was already destroyed and there was nothing they could have done that would have helped.
25:00Akimov and Toptunov both received lethal doses of radiation.
25:06They died a few weeks later.
25:11They gave their lives in the effort to try to do what they could.
25:19They died a few weeks later.
25:36In the morning of April 26th the fire in the roof of the reactor building had been extinguished.
25:44the firefighters saved reactor building three and the rest of the complex and i have nothing but
25:50admiration for these firefighters many of whom died in the days and weeks to come
26:07i call it 7 годин в ранку был уже гидбей ну вот и все спустились из даху и потом расслабл
26:21он и потом
26:24понесло вы меня ажайна нога вот так вот потом как-то так меня плохо стало я упал что-то потом
26:35потом я уже очнулся уже в больнице припяти
26:43among the firefighters who went to the roof of unit 3 several received lethal doses of radiation
26:53и каждый друг за другом живи чи не живи живи чи не живи то там лежит то там лежит
27:00эти пожарники были первые то они вообще как говорили как мясо печеное было такое
27:08а
27:24The reactor top shield was two or three meters thick, and it weighed more than 2,000 tons.
27:30That whole thing got blown into the air like 100 meters.
27:362,000 tons.
27:37So, you know, the amount of energy released was quite impressive.
27:46186 firemen managed to extinguish everything that they found burning on the roofs of the reactor building and in the
27:54grounds.
27:56But something still remained on fire.
28:02The fire in the reactor core was not out, and that was a much, much hotter fire and much more
28:09difficult to deal with.
28:11All this radioactive material is coming up in the plumes of smoke where it can be transported around the site
28:18and ultimately to other countries and other places around the world.
28:23You're talking about an unprecedented release of radiation straight up into the air.
28:30Every minute, every hour, it was still raining down huge amounts of radioactive particles.
28:41The closest town was Pripyat, three kilometers from the Chernobyl power plant itself.
28:48There were no official announcements that morning notifying anybody that an accident had taken place.
28:55People went about their business in Pripyat, just as they always would on a fine spring morning.
29:03No one was telling them that they were in mortal danger.
29:11Our apartment was two kilometers from the power plant, so it was very close.
29:20In 1986, I was eight years old.
29:29Pripyat was built to serve the power plant.
29:34It was a happy city, I would say.
29:38Many children, many flowers.
29:43They planted lots of roses.
29:47I was photographed in front of them for the town brochure.
29:57There was that, as a result, the new architect, I worked as a master architect for the city of Pripyat.
30:08As a scientist and the chairman of my algunas renovationи, I was like...
30:09After the accident, I worked as a master architect of the city of Приpyat.
30:18In general, the residents of the city were young people.
30:23Our average age was 27 years old.
30:28And from here, what is young people?
30:32It means love, it means many children.
30:50We woke up as normal, and as usual, we went to school.
30:57Soviet schools were open on Saturday mornings,
30:59so everybody who was present was exposed to radioactive contamination.
31:07Before the accident, we never talked about safety measures.
31:12The power plant was perceived as the safest thing.
31:17No one would ever consider that something dangerous may happen.
31:29At school, there was no panic or anything.
31:33The teachers gave us iodine pills.
31:37They said that we have to take it.
31:40There was not a proper explanation for what and why.
31:47We went to the toilet, and we actually threw it away.
31:50Because why would we need to take pills? It's not fun.
31:55We were released earlier, but with strict rules to go home.
32:01It's spring, the weather is nice, and we were happy.
32:05Like, wow, no school anymore.
32:22At around 9 o'clock on Saturday morning, officials from the local government were summoned to a meeting,
32:29which it was explained that everybody should go about their business as normal,
32:34and above all, no one should panic.
33:01The radiation readings were being taken by Soviet troops, who spread out around the city.
33:09They said, at the end of the day, they're like, what is going to do?
33:13They said, it's the same way they do it.
33:15They said, it's not bad.
33:19Film footage shot in Pripyat on the 26th and 27th of April bears bright white flashes
33:26that appear to be the result of radiation striking the film.
33:54The Soviet authorities wanted to keep everything that happened at Chernobyl as secret as possible.
34:01They placed police roadblocks around the city of Pripyat and quite quickly the KGB cut off the telephone lines so
34:09that nobody could even phone out.
34:13The Soviet response to any kind of problem was to try to cover it up until they could figure out
34:18something to do.
34:23As the scale of the disaster became increasingly apparent, responsibility for dealing with the accident was escalated to Moscow.
34:36The Central Committee in Moscow was meeting non-stop. They commissioned a government commission.
35:06Sklarov was a senior government minister who answered directly to the head of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
35:12It was part of the first wave of senior government officials sent to the plant to find out exactly what
35:18had happened and clean up the consequences.
35:23I was on all meetings of the committee, without exclaims.
35:28In Pripyat'i I met my head of the minister.
35:34And we went to the 4th block.
35:38I stood up and couldn't believe in my head.
35:43I had a feeling that someone pulled me out of the heart and pulled me out.
35:56If you take yourself to 2 o'clock, it's unbelievable what the Soviet High Command knew.
36:02They knew the nuclear core was emitting phenomenal amounts of radiation into the atmosphere.
36:09They knew the town of Pripyat was being bombarded with that radiation and did not tell the people of the
36:17region anything.
36:25The police said to the police is no panic.
36:31So the city was planned and started to participate on the trip and the women's stay.
36:45Before she was a activist, she died in the village in the prairie.
36:49and she was still on the street.
36:51She was affected by her.
36:57The same evening proposed to her to meet her.
37:04So, on the second day, we had planned a book.
37:11And it was the last evening in Pripyat.
37:30On the afternoon of the 26th, the members of the Government Commission arrived completely unprepared for what they found there.
38:02There was this communication between what was going on in Moscow and what was going on in the scene.
38:08There was not a lot of honesty and there was a lot of friction in the system,
38:11and so I think that hampered the response initially.
38:14We saw this in terms of the delay in evacuating the towns.
38:21The members of the Government Commission were arguing about whether or not they should evacuate the population in Pripyat.
38:27This is principally driven by the need for secrecy,
38:30because they didn't want word of what had happened to leak out,
38:33along with members of the population leaving the area.
38:39There were no signs of something that happened,
38:43there were no signs of something that happened.
38:44There was nothing.
38:45There was absolutely normal life.
38:48There was absolutely normal life.
39:06There was no rolling out on the Caro
39:10field in the USA
39:11to be married,
39:13and it was impetuous in the South.
39:29There was no justice to the enzymes.
39:32We were involved in the abstract or divine way of preparing people.
39:39The radiation situation in Pripyat grew gradually worse as the day wore on, so by the evening
39:46there were extremely high radiation readings being taken.
39:52Word was beginning to reach people in the town that something had happened, but the
39:59scale of the accident was not apparent really to anyone.
40:29I had to go to the bathroom so they could come back to the evening.
40:35By the end of Saturday, the Pripyat council themselves began making preparations in case an evacuation became necessary.
40:47We counted, divided by the number, and it turned out that we had to come to Pripyat
40:53to arrive at 1500 autobuses.
40:58Imagine what a huge work was done.
41:03They sent out for every bus they could find on very little notice.
41:09You have to see that in hindsight as impressive.
41:23By the end of Saturday evening, the head of the government commission still refused to sanction an evacuation
41:29or inform the population about what was happening.
41:32Even as hundreds of buses were summoned, the majority of the population remained at home,
41:38waiting for news of what would happen next.
41:52I remember there was an unusual view on the power plant.
41:57And I said, Mom, is it on fire?
42:00She was a little bit rough saying, like, shut up.
42:06And I understood, like, oh, something really is going on.
42:10But it just went to bed like it was a normal Sautodengai.
42:21The Soviets expected to be able to contain the story, even though they had a core nuclear meltdown.
42:29The Soviets were dealing with a nuclear disaster of unprecedented proportions.
42:34It had to be dealt with.
42:36Thousands of workers were brought in and informed, you're going to be heroes of the Soviet Union, get to work.
42:44Radioactive material was melting through and could make its way to the groundwater.
42:49That would have ruined farming and agriculture for decades.
42:56We saw all kinds of desperate measures.
42:59Coal miners were brought in to dig a tunnel under the reactor.
43:03They were asking the helicopter pilots to drive right into blasts of radiation
43:09and try to contain the effects of this explosion.
43:16With the fire in the core still burning,
43:18plumes of smoke laden with radioactive material are going into the atmosphere.
43:24This was a threat to the entire planet.
43:26This was a threat to the entire planet.
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