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00:0940 years after Chernobyl, it's that spectre of contamination from a nuclear catastrophe,
00:18like we all saw in 1986, that the Kremlin taps into.
00:32Do you remember Chernobyl? Well, that nuclear power plant has been struck by a Russian drone,
00:40according to President Zelensky of Ukraine.
00:43Are you kidding? Lobbing a missile into Chernobyl? What possessed you to do that?
00:54Russia wants to issue that not-so-subtle threat, that there could be a nuclear consequence
01:01to this conflict. And I think that's terrifying.
01:24This is where officials say a crime was committed. It's here that engineers conducted the experiment
01:33that led to the explosion. The destroyed reactor is still hot, buried deep within what the Soviets
01:43call a sarcophagus, a gigantic concrete tomb where the radioactive material will be buried
01:49for centuries to come.
01:59The structure of the sarcophagus was really a combination of improvisation and brute force.
02:08When it was complete, the Soviet engineers said that the sarcophagus was another triumph
02:13of Soviet engineering. But inside the ruins of the reactor building, around 190 tons of uranium fuel
02:23remained unaccounted for.
02:28The scientists were worried about what's called a critical mass coming together and restarting
02:34a nuclear reaction. They noticed on their neutron detectors a spike of neutrons that led them
02:43to believe that a critical mass had indeed formed and that a nuclear reaction had happened.
02:51They were puzzled. They were worried. So we got to know where this fuel is.
03:00Scientists from the Kirchatov Institute, the Soviet Union's chief research and development agency
03:06for nuclear energy launched what became known as the Chernobyl Complex Expedition to locate the fuel.
03:19I was the first Western scientist invited to do scientific research with the Complex Expedition.
03:30It was this eclectic, almost ragtag group of scientists.
03:38They were soft-spoken people just trying to get to the bottom of things.
03:54Well, my goal was to take the camera to take a shot.
03:58They gave us a little bit more over and turn to shoot.
04:00That's it, that's it.
04:05Sirena, sir.
04:06Well, thanks, he did.
04:21I mean they're getting dosed. Everything is coated with varying degrees of contamination. I mean you don't want to stay
04:32in there.
04:36I, in principle, by the camera, when I started to shoot, I had the matrix PZS, and I said, this
04:45is dangerous.
04:47As I said, the Soviet radiation is the best in the world, with the hair and hair to the potential.
04:56Well, I'm already dead.
05:09I'm throwing them.
05:12Some of the fuel had been thrown out of the reactor core by the explosion, but it was assumed
05:18that the rest remained inside reactor number four.
05:35I said, the officer said, tomorrow you'll be on the block with us. We'll be able to make a video
05:43camera for a video camera, to launch the reactor reactor.
05:49Well, it was made of metal, so that we could be able to make a video camera.
05:55And there was water there, there were stills in the reactor reactor.
05:59Well, it was active in the reactor reactor.
06:04There was a vacuum-caror in the reactor reactor there, so I went up to the reactor reactor reactor.
06:12So, I was just…
06:12The bike rack, when I was to go to the reactor reactor reactor, I saw the rage.
06:23The bike rack went off when I saw the reactor reactor.
06:28The bike rack rolled out.
06:29I had a bit of stability in the reactor reactor reactor.
06:37Nobody had been inside the reactor vessel.
06:41Anybody who went in there would have been exposed to very high fields
06:44of radiation.
07:00It was somewhere.
07:04I went and got in the reactor.
07:10I changed the camera.
07:22They found interesting things.
07:28That's when they noticed what core.
07:32There was no core.
07:35There was nothing left inside the reactor.
07:42And so the immediate question was, where the hell did the fuel go?
07:48What happened was the core itself, the fuel and the graphite,
07:53basically were percolating through the floor of the reactor cavity.
07:59The fuel melted through and fell down onto the floor of the sub-reactor region.
08:07There were holes that led to what are called steam distribution headers.
08:12It flowed out the steam distribution headers,
08:16and then two more floors down pipes into the water that was there.
08:28Roughly 75% of the fuel ended up in the lower regions of the reactor building.
08:36They thought that they could have a critical mass coming together to restart reactions.
08:44So you have these great energies released, which would cause damage.
08:50Thank God that never happened.
08:54We later found out, once the fuel broke through and spread out,
08:59it basically shut itself down, right?
09:01It just froze in place.
09:02And you can see that to this day.
09:11If you're going to be working in the kind of environment that the complex expedition was,
09:20you really have to be dedicated, dedicated to getting to the truth.
09:26The Soviet Union was not about truth.
09:45A year after the accident, it had become clear that the Soviet authorities intended to lay the blame
09:50for what had happened almost entirely at the feet of the operators.
10:00In a makeshift courtroom in a building in the centre of Chernobyl,
10:03six men went on trial today, charged with safety violations
10:06that caused history's worst nuclear accident.
10:11The defendants face up to 12 years in jail if they are convicted.
10:22The courtroom was packed with workers from the power plant
10:26and families of the victims.
10:28The defendants are accused of allowing unauthorised experiments at the plant,
10:33ignoring basic operating procedures and overriding safety systems.
10:38The judge made it clear that he wasn't going to listen to anything
10:42that contradicted the official version of events.
10:44It was effectively one of the final show trials of the Soviet Union.
11:11A chapter ended today in history's worst nuclear accident in Chernobyl in the Soviet Union.
11:16Six Russian nuclear power plant officials who flouted safety regulations
11:21were held criminally responsible for the deaths of 36 people.
11:25They had to have a scapegoat and that became the operators.
11:28The verdict was all six guilty of varying degrees of criminal negligence.
11:36Victor Brukhanov, the former plant director, ten years in a labor camp for gross violations of safety rules,
11:42including a concurrent five-year sentence for abuse of power.
12:05The trial has been closed to foreign journalists and no detailed reports have appeared in Soviet media,
12:11so it's not known whether or how the accused defended themselves.
12:16On the opening day, one of the defendants suggested some of the blame lay with the reactor design,
12:21but that's the only thing that's been said publicly in their defense.
12:28Меня вызвали как свидетели.
12:31Я так и не понял, был я свидетелем защиты или я был свидетелем со стороны обвинения?
12:36Не знаю.
12:39И какой-то вопрос по технике задали, я уже не помню.
12:46И все, они прервали.
12:48Сам я вышел, сел на машину и уехал, брат.
12:53Да, у меня было ощущение, что авария произошла не только из-за ошибок персонала,
13:00и операторы допустили ошибки.
13:02Но было очевидно, что власть что-то скрывает.
13:13After leaving Chernobyl, Steinberg eventually became part of an independent commission
13:19that reopened the investigation into what had happened at Chernobyl.
13:26Потому что погибли мои друзья.
13:31Не важно, что прошло столько времени.
13:34Мы обязаны провести отрасль.
13:40Суть была понятна, установить истину.
13:44Восстановить правду.
13:46Вот это была суть, это все понимали.
13:50Готов.
13:53ДАТА
13:54ДАТА
13:54ДАТА
13:54ДАТА
13:55ДАТА
14:17ДАТА
14:22And so for us, there were two or three documents, principally.
14:28And we needed data, which would show, when the reactor began to get out of control,
14:35and when the operator tried to stop it, or to stop it, or to stop it on our own.
14:41The management of the chief executive director, who created the reactor,
14:47did not give good, right?
14:52The KGB classified the real reasons for the causes of the Chernobyl accident.
14:59Any dissent from the official line that the operators were responsible
15:04was essentially forbidden.
15:18The court said, and the court said, all the cases,
15:22they are in the court, which was filed in the court, which was filed in the court.
15:28in the court.
15:29So I got to call him,
15:31I got to meet him,
15:33he was president of the court,
15:34and he gave me the chance to open this room.
15:40We found out the documents that we needed.
15:44And we, step by step,
15:48worked for about 1,5 years.
15:54We found out the documents that were in the cellar.
15:58It was something that wasn't in the cellar.
16:01They pushed these documents in 6 seconds.
16:09This allowed them to say,
16:10that the person is wrong,
16:12that they violated the regime.
16:18That is, they falsified it.
16:21Yes.
16:38The findings of Steinberg and the rest of the investigators
16:41finally brought to light the true causes of the disease.
16:44of the disaster.
16:50We did it.
16:51We went to the data.
16:54And we were going to see the data.
16:57We were doing it.
16:58They showed that the reactor was taken to control
16:59only after that.
17:01The operators tried to fix it.
17:07The new information tended to shift the focus
17:10of responsibility from operator actions to fundamental design flaws in the reactor itself
17:20the Chernobyl power station used rbmk type reactors that was uniquely soviet technology
17:26there was nothing like that produced in the west
17:34rbmk type reactors are very large reactors that is large physically
17:39a core that was 14 meters in diameter and seven meters high
17:45this is extremely large compared to reactors in the west which have a diameter of maybe three or
17:51four meters the rbmk reactors had nearly 1700 fuel channels that contain the uranium fuel that produces
18:02heat that's used to boil water to make steam to make electricity this core is so large it's almost
18:11like having two reactors in one one at the top and one at the bottom one side of the reactor
18:18couldn't
18:18speak to the other side of the reactor so it forced the operators to keep careful watch over this
18:43the only way that the operators can control the reactor is with control rods
18:54insertion of the control rods tends to decrease the reactor power
19:00removal of control rods causes the reactor power to increase
19:12the control rods are used by the operators to fine-tune the level of the chain reaction taking place
19:21so it's really like having brakes and accelerator on a car
19:35the control rods are also used to shut down the rbmk reactor
19:42the emergency shutdown function on the rbmk also called the az5 about soviet terminology was to shut the
19:49reactor down quickly in an emergency the az5 system was designed to insert almost all of the remaining
19:56control rods into the core at the same time and it was intended simply to bring the reactor into a
20:04safely
20:05shut down state
20:16during tests in 1983 nuclear engineers at another rbmk plant in ignolina had discovered that there was a
20:25disturbing anomaly about the way the az5 system worked with a very low number of control rods
20:33inserted into the core of the reactor when the emergency shutdown system was activated it could induce a runaway
20:42reaction leading to a meltdown and an explosion of the core
20:46that they actually began to make progress on modifying the emergency shutdown system
21:13and although the chernobyl four unit was on the list as due for those modifications
21:21they decided that they would just save it until the next scheduled maintenance shut down
21:26to make the fixes information about this fault did not make its way down to the level of the
21:48individual operators the operators were attempting a experiment to power the reactor when the offsite
21:59power had been lost the midnight shift came in and they were told that they would conduct the
22:09experiment they were not expecting to do this they had not been familiarized with the test protocol
22:22the operators had great difficulty in bringing reactor up to a power level that would make the
22:26test possible I had withdrawn an equivalent of 203 of the 211 control rods from the core of reactor
22:40number four making the reactor as unstable as it was possible to be and very sensitive to any further
22:50changes in control by the time the test actually began the reactor was like a loaded gun just waiting
23:03for someone to pull the trigger in the test protocol the completion of the test was marked by the operators
23:24pressing pressing the AZ-5 button to release the control rods to shut the reactor down they press the AZ
23:33-5 button at 1.23 a.m.
23:48For a couple of seconds of the train of the test where the area is unstable in the air
23:55So in the air, there was a few seconds of theness of the inside of the air
23:57Some seconds of the air, there was a quietness of the air
23:57And then there was a little gывают, crack, wind, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke
24:04which is pulling the air from the surface on the ceiling, , e.m.
24:21It was a design flaw of the control rods that ultimately caused the explosion.
24:29The control rods are made of boron, which is a material that reduces the reaction rate in the reactor.
24:37Unlike most reactors, underneath those rods was sections of graphite, which tend to increase the reaction rate.
24:45If the rods were completely withdrawn, then this graphite was pulled into the core.
24:54Under normal circumstances, this graphite would never cause a problem.
25:00But in this case, the core was already in such an unstable state,
25:04the slightest additional power fluctuation could initiate a runaway chain reaction.
25:14The AZ-5 button that was pushed by the operators inserted all the control rods at once.
25:20Power is shutting down at the top.
25:22The problem was the graphite caused the power to increase at the bottom of the reactor.
25:29You had a power surge at the bottom.
25:33The overall effect was disastrous.
25:56It literally caused the reactor to explode, hence the building may be destroyed.
26:08It was as if when you stamped on the brakes of a speeding car,
26:12it accelerated instead of slowing down.
26:16The Soviet version of events was that the accident began to occur,
26:19and then in a panic, the operators pressed the AZ-5 button
26:23in order to try and shut down the reactor.
26:27It was a result of a falsification, a total of a falsification, a total of a falsification.
26:32On the other hand, everything was normal, a stable, a parameter,
26:36until they were not pressed on the car.
26:41It was already no one of them, until they were pressed on the car.
26:54It was already no one of them, until they were pressed on the car.
27:03правда хорошо
27:06но те кто ответственно за это они не понесли никакого то есть никакой никакого наказания
27:16сидели другие которых были невиновны
27:21вы издадут ответ на это те кто контролировал что так почему он за рвался
27:29the operators in unit 4 on the night of the accident did not know the potential consequences of triggering
27:35the emergency shutdown system the soviets believed that their system was so superior that no mistake
27:44could ever be made that their technology was beyond reproach the reactor had been designed
27:53by people at the pinnacle of the soviet scientific state so if it came to a choice between making
28:03these people culpable for this catastrophe and laying the blame at the feet of some lowly reactor
28:10operators in ukraine then they were going to be the ones who took the fall
28:19the design flaws set them up for failure when the perfect storm of the circumstances the actions
28:27and the design problems came together it was almost inevitable
28:36the nature of the soviet system was such that denial secrecy and cover-up was endemic to the way of
28:44their operation the truth is Chernobyl is more of a metaphor for the failure of the soviet system
28:53than it is a reactor safety story the increasing reporting about what had really happened and information
29:06about the failures of the design of the reactor finally revealed to citizens of the USSR that the soviet
29:16union did not in fact lead the world in high technology the dramatic failures of the Chernobyl accident
29:23characters to someone who wanted another to create the film especially and undermined one of the last sources
29:25of of Soviet prime
30:03Good evening.
30:04Eleven Soviet republics agreed to form a new commonwealth of independent states today
30:09and consigned the Soviet Union to history.
30:18The Soviet Union saw itself as a great empire.
30:21And then one day, that all came crashing down.
30:30There was chaos.
30:32People lost their jobs.
30:33They didn't have any food.
30:35It was deeply humiliating for many Russians, for millions of Russians.
30:39We have really encountered such a dangerous force, which is the nuclear energy that was released from control.
30:48And that's why the Soviet Union was a very good idea.
30:49Gorbachev said he thought the Chernobyl accident was the ultimate cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
30:58Because huge numbers of people, especially in Ukraine, began to realize the Communist Party protected itself.
31:07It didn't protect us.
31:11the breakup of the soviet union created the independent ukrainian government as well
31:20for putin the collapse of the soviet union in his words was the greatest geopolitical
31:26catastrophe of the 20th century
31:54the soviets initial attempt to try to cover over the destroyed reactor building
31:59it was leaky it was not as structurally strong as it could have been
32:06it's way beyond its design life it's crumbling we've already had to collapse from one part of
32:12the turbine hall with a very heavy snow load because of these concerns ukraine and western
32:21donors got together and created a structure to cover over the entire building a very large
32:26structure called the new safe confine construction began on the new safe confinement in 2010
32:43a massive international effort something like 40 countries and organizations
32:48played a role in funding and designing that structure
33:03the construction was a long and arduous process
33:08and it ended six years later in 2016
33:20ukraine unlike the soviet union very much wants to be part of the international community
33:25and not an insular state the current russia under vladimir putin is much more soviet-like
33:36it is an imperialist expansionist regime
33:54i was standing on a roof doing a live shot on cnn ukrainians who who resist oh i tell you
34:01what i just heard a big bang
34:03right here behind me i thought we shouldn't have done the live shot here it was quite shocking
34:08that russia had decided to send its forces into kiev into ukraine and the first explosions of that
34:17conflict were being heard there was a profound sense that we were at an historic inflection point that
34:24things had changed from that moment on
34:35russian forces are said to have taken control of the chernobyl power plant in northern ukraine the
34:40site of the world's worst nuclear disaster military advisor says staff members are held hostage there's a
34:47potentially dangerous military confrontation around that nuclear reactor that could kick up all sorts of
34:54horrific radioactive material and cause that massive catastrophe to repeat itself all over again
35:01the russian soldiers plowed across the exclusion zone
35:09they dug trenches in the forest which is an extraordinary thing to do
35:14the amount of contamination absorbed by those soldiers is pretty shocking
35:21they will undoubtedly suffer health consequences of exactly the same kind that was suffered in ukraine
35:28post the 1986 calamity at chernobyl shortly afterwards the ukrainians took back the chernobyl exclusion zone
35:41the russians found they had to fight for every square inch of the territory they were going to capture
36:01the russian drone with a high explosive warhead striking the shelter that covers the fourth unit
36:09of the chernobyl nuclear power plant sparking a fire that was later contained
36:17are you kidding lobbying a a missile into chernobyl what what possessed you to do that
36:39the strike on the new safe confinement structure underlines the nuclear threat throughout the whole ukraine
36:47conflict that it could cause another chernobyl another nuclear disaster
36:55and that would be catastrophic
37:21when we left chernobyl
37:23i was a child but i was put in a situation that not even some adults can live through
37:31it feels that the situation repeats itself that we again are forced to leave our home
37:40when the russian started invasion in 2022 we left ukraine and moved to luxembourg and now we are here
37:54i hope better for my kids but it didn't happen
38:02i always teach my children be adaptable and be resilient
38:09and the ukrainians are proved to be resilient
38:12other man
38:12in that moment
38:14there seems like a lot of years to have lived in the past
38:23a lot of years from time to time
38:28but there is a lot of years to have lived in the past
38:29there is an important moment
38:29so we were able to take a lot of years from a sudden
38:31i think that the event played as a part of the event
38:33i believe that the event turned on psychologically on
38:34all our lives turned on to a life
38:38in the future we did have been divided
38:38and after aВал
39:06I think the legacy of
39:08Chernobyl 40 years on
39:11isn't just in the minds of people
39:12the scars are physical as well
39:17these radioactive
39:19toxins cause a huge
39:21spike in thyroid cancer
39:22and you can go to Ukraine today
39:24and you can see people who were around
39:27in 1986 when the catastrophe happened
39:32they've got little scars
39:33on their necks where they've had operation
39:34on their thyroid glands to take out
39:37parts of the thyroid because they'd become cancerous
39:41I remember quite often
39:43I would hear that that person died
39:45friend or neighbor
39:47or colleague
39:48just young people
39:51it was radiation
39:53but doctors would not
39:55mention that
39:56so it was silent war
40:04what to take
40:05from the story of Chernobyl
40:10that's a hard
40:13what would I say
40:16to maintain
40:18open
40:19societies
40:21that can provide
40:23checks and balances
40:25to the pride
40:27that comes with
40:28having huge
40:30complex
40:31technologies
40:33if I were to
40:34give a lesson
40:36for my grandchildren
40:36tell the truth
40:38no matter how bad
40:40the situation is
40:41it can only be made worse
40:43by lying
40:44and being
40:44untruthful
40:49I think that the Chernobyl story
40:51is arguably more relevant
40:53than ever
40:55given that
40:56the causes
40:57of the accident
40:58lie in
40:59a government
41:01and a society
41:02that had completely
41:03lost touch
41:04with
41:05what the truth
41:06really was
41:25one of the things
41:27that I think
41:27we all learned
41:29is
41:29when the regime
41:30is serving itself
41:32rather than the people
41:34that's when power
41:36evaporates
41:38that's the moral binder
41:40the truth
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