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00:00Kiev, on the morning of April 26th, 1986.
00:12Military pilot Sergei Volodin is commander of the Soviet Army's 225th helicopter reconnaissance squadron.
00:21Volodin is to fly civilian guards on a secret mission from Kiev to Pripyat,
00:27the town near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
00:57The steam rises, white smoke, inside it all is illuminated by a high-temperature flame.
01:27The flame is swept out of its anchorage, leaving more than 200 tons of uranium fuel exposed
01:35and over 1,800 tons of white-hot graphite.
01:48Sergei Volodin has a dosimeter, a radiation measuring device, on board the helicopter.
01:58When I saw the flame, I gave the order to turn on the equipment.
02:07And we went straight to the fire reactor.
02:12Well, if people are working, then it's okay.
02:15And at that moment, the bar technician reports to me, the commander went off the scale.
02:27Good evening, comrades.
02:351986. The Chernobyl disaster.
02:41The end of all illusions about nuclear power.
02:45How does the accident at the power plant happen?
02:49Why is Moscow silent?
02:52And what is being covered up to this day?
02:55The search for the truth.
03:00Chernobyl. Utopia in flames.
03:13Helicopter pilot Sergei Volodin flies through a mist-like cloud of steam.
03:19It stems from the damaged nuclear reactor.
03:23The pointer on the radiation meter hits the end of the scale at 500 roentgen per hour.
03:29This major burst in, a representative of the civil defense.
03:34And he just started yelling, what did you do? You killed us all. You are a murderer.
03:40We are all dead. You killed us.
03:43There are more than 500 x-rays there. I also had a scale.
03:46What did you do to us?
03:58He steers his chopper out of the foggy radioactive cloud toward the city to drop off the civilian guards.
04:10At the nuclear power plant on the morning of April 26th,
04:14nuclear engineer Alexei Breos begins his work day,
04:18together with about 3,000 men and women on the early shift.
04:22They have no clue as to the extent of the disaster.
04:25At 8 a.m., Breos' shift receives instructions to cool the nuclear reactor of Unit 4 with cooling water,
04:33as if the reactor still existed.
04:55Dosimetris, the power plant's radiation experts, begin measuring the levels of radioactivity.
05:25They told me that there was a crack near the reactor.
05:30The steel collapsed a little.
05:33There was a crack in the emulsion.
05:36The level of radiation was 800 microroentgens per second,
05:40which is a thousand times higher than the normal level.
05:46Radiation is everywhere in the nuclear power plant.
05:50In 1986, it was still measured in Roentgen.
05:55Today, it is measured in sievert per time unit.
05:59For both, the duration element is vital.
06:03The longer one is exposed to radiation, the worse the consequences.
06:08At a puddle, Breos measures an exposure less than one sievert per hour,
06:13but even that increases the risk of cancer over the duration of a shift.
06:18Anyone who spends an hour in the turbine hall absorbs one to five sieverts.
06:23One sievert corresponds to 10,000 chest X-ray examinations.
06:29Skin damage and hair loss could be the result.
06:32The immune system also suffers.
06:35The pilot's measurement above the reactor of over 500 Roentgen
06:39corresponds to 5 to 10 sieverts per hour, a highly lethal dose.
06:44At above 8 sieverts, a person has almost no chance of survival.
06:49In the exploded reactor, the measured level is an inconceivable 150 sieverts per hour.
06:56And yet, no one on the early shift leaves their post.
07:19On the morning of April 26th, Valery Yevtushenko is alerted.
07:25He is a criminalist at the police station in the nuclear city of Pripyat.
07:30On his way through the city, everything is peaceful.
07:34An ordinary Saturday morning.
07:37But he is not alone.
07:40He is accompanied by a group of people.
07:43On the way through the city, everything is peaceful.
07:46An ordinary Saturday morning.
07:49But upon his arrival, Yevtushenko receives a secret assignment.
08:13The police have set up checkpoints in the city.
08:17Yevtushenko is tasked with measuring the radiation there
08:21and reporting the values to the military and the crisis team.
08:44At 10 a.m., a good 8 hours after the explosion in Block 4,
08:50Chief Architect Maria Protsenko is called to a meeting of the administration and the party
08:57in the so-called White House, the central administrative headquarters of the city of Pripyat.
09:13When the explosion started, they were told not to panic.
09:18They were told to sit and not to speak.
09:26The director of the third school, where my daughter studied, said,
09:30we have a children's cross today, what should we do?
09:34Will there be a cross or not?
09:37They said, according to the plan, as it is.
09:44April 26, 1986
09:47The big mistake was not to tell people to stay in their apartments
09:51and to cancel school, parties, all kinds of things.
09:55Because you could have done that.
09:58This is a simple measure.
10:01You just tell people to close the windows and doors and stay inside.
10:07This footage, shot on April 26, 1986,
10:10stems from the film club of the city of Pripyat.
10:15It later circulates around the globe.
10:22The white flashes in the film material are not mistakes.
10:26They are visible traces of radioactive radiation.
10:30One of the members of the film club is a policeman, Valery Yevtushenko.
10:35People went to the market at that time.
10:39And here you look, pigeons are walking.
10:43A transporter is going.
10:46This is just before the police.
10:51A watering machine drove by.
10:57It was terrible to watch.
11:00People were not told that it was better not to stay at home.
11:12What was there to shout?
11:14It was terrible.
11:27The radioactive radiation itself does not smoke.
11:34It does not burn.
11:41It does not smell.
11:44It does not explode.
11:50Everyone knows Yeroshima and Nagasaki.
11:53Everyone imagines it to be like that.
11:56But it is so quiet.
12:10Moscow, the morning of April 26, 1986.
12:15The Ministry of Energy receives a secret message about an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
12:22There was damage to the buildings and the reactor was being cooled.
12:27Special measures, including evacuation of the population, were not necessary.
12:34A nuclear accident is the last thing the country needs.
12:39For the past year, the vast Soviet Empire has been ruled by a man who wants to change everything.
12:45Mikhail Gorbachev.
12:48Gorbachev is surprisingly open and modern for a Soviet leader.
12:52He wants to renew socialism.
12:55To advance the economy after years of stagnation.
12:59It was not until February 1986 that the Communist Party met for the first time with the reformer Gorbachev at its head.
13:08It was the first time the weakness of the Soviet economy was openly discussed.
13:14The export of gas and oil in exchange for foreign currency from the West became increasingly important.
13:21The only alternative for domestic energy production was nuclear power.
13:26And guess what was the decision that was made at that Congress?
13:31They decided to double the number of reactors that they would build in the next five years.
13:37So there were high hopes that now nuclear power would save the Soviet economic experiment and the Soviet political experiment.
13:46The government sends a special delegation to Chernobyl.
13:50Its task is to determine exactly what is going on at the power plant.
13:58On the morning of April 26th, more and more units of the Soviet Army's chemical warfare forces are visible in the streets of Pripyat.
14:09But inside the city, there is no one.
14:13But inside the city, there is still an information blackout.
14:21The population still does not know how grave the danger actually is.
14:31Around noon, roughly ten hours after the disaster,
14:35city architect Maria Protsenko meets with the military in the administrative headquarters.
15:06A downright lie.
15:09Between the port and the hospital in Pripyat,
15:12the chemical squads measure radioactive loads for humans of 50 millisieverts per hour.
15:18It is the location most contaminated.
15:23At the other end of the city, it is still 10 millisieverts per hour.
15:28In most cases, the radiation is so strong,
15:31it is still 10 millisieverts per hour.
15:35In most countries, the maximum permissible level for the population today is 1 millisievert for an entire year.
15:45In Pripyat, on April 26th, 1986, it took only a few minutes to absorb 2 millisieverts.
15:54The Irony of the Situation
15:57The irony of the situation, sad irony of the situation,
16:01that according to the regulations that existed at that time in the Soviet Union,
16:06and they were designed for the conditions of the nuclear war,
16:09of course not for the conditions of the nuclear accident,
16:12the level of radiation was not high enough to justify the evacuation.
16:18On the afternoon of April 26th, city architect Maria Protsenko
16:23suspects that something is not right.
16:26The mood is tense.
16:29No one is saying anything.
16:32She is concerned about the children in the city,
16:35especially her then 15-year-old daughter Natasha.
16:47I want to close all the windows now,
16:50take off my school uniform,
16:53wash my school uniform,
16:56there can be no talk about it at all.
16:59Why do I need it? I will wash my uniform.
17:02Mom, what did you come up with?
17:05In the White House, behind closed doors of the administration headquarters,
17:08deliberations are ongoing.
17:11Maria Protsenko is not unaware of the commotion.
17:14The head of the health department gives her a box of pills.
17:34Radioactive particles have been escaping from the open reactor for hours,
17:39including iodine-131.
17:42The human body cannot distinguish iodine-131 from the body's own iodine.
17:49If the radioactive iodine is used in the thyroid gland for the production of hormones,
17:54the consequence is thyroid cancer.
17:58To prevent this in a nuclear emergency,
18:01people are supplied with iodine tablets.
18:04The thyroid gland is thus saturated with normal, harmless iodine.
18:08Then there is simply no more room for the dangerous, radioactive iodine-131.
18:17Fifteen hours after the disaster,
18:20the main members of the government delegation arrive from Moscow.
18:24Among them, Valery Legasov.
18:38He was a highly competent scientist.
18:41He was the one who actually took over the job,
18:45to go on site and get a picture.
18:50And then later,
18:53he also
18:56complained about the way in which the accident was handled.
19:08And the integral.
19:10Zero, zero, zero.
19:12And when we were flying over the reactor?
19:15It was different.
19:17There was a maximum of 0.7 roentgens per hour.
19:21When we flew over, we accumulated 0.3 roentgens, 0.5 roentgens.
19:26Are you going to change your children?
19:29I will.
19:31I will do it right now.
19:33Legasov is placating in front of the workers.
19:38But when he sees the destruction at the power plant,
19:42the situation becomes clear to him.
19:45The reactor no longer exists.
19:48The nuclear chain reaction is out of control.
19:52Together with specialists,
19:55Legasov risks his life attempting to measure the amount of radiation.
19:58But even Legasov has no idea what exactly is going on inside the reactor.
20:28Then the plant is totally destroyed.
20:31And this was not foreseen in this world of imagination of all these nuclear specialists.
20:37Legasov conducts research at the Kurchatov Institute,
20:42making him part of the Shredmash,
20:44the Soviet Union's highly secretive nuclear industrial complex.
20:49The recently damaged RBMK was designed and constructed by the Shredmash.
20:58Legasov assumes that there are still 2,500 tons of graphite blocks in the reactor.
21:05About one ton of graphite burns per hour, generating a great deal of heat.
21:11Legasov calculates at least 1,000 degrees Celsius inside the center of the disintegrating reactor.
21:19Legasov too can only guess what will happen to the tons of nuclear fuel in the destroyed reactor's core.
21:25He warns that the reactor could explode again the following night.
21:31Moscow needs to agree to the evacuation of the nuclear power plant and Pripyat.
21:37But Moscow remains silent.
21:39The loss of face would be too great.
21:42Nevertheless, the head of the government of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic,
21:46Oleksandr Lyashko, begins to evacuate the city on his own.
21:50A few months earlier, he had conducted a huge exercise in Kiev
21:55and organized more than 1,000 buses in a very short time.
21:59He didn't have the approval even of his boss in Ukraine,
22:04the first secretary of the Central Committee, Volodymyr Shcherbetsky.
22:07Shcherbetsky said, OK, do that, but it's a huge expense.
22:11What if Moscow will say no?
22:14What are we going to do? Who will pay for that?
22:17And the response of Lyashko was that, OK,
22:21we will write off that money for another World War III exercise.
22:28Meanwhile, the man from Shredmash, Valery Legasov,
22:33sends off his situation assessment to Moscow.
22:36He points out that no one can influence the reactor anymore.
22:41He calls for an evacuation of Pripyat.
22:43His warnings lead to a change of heart in Moscow.
22:47If it explodes, then, of course, not just Pripyat,
22:53but probably Kiev would suffer and a good part of Europe as well.
22:57And what we know from memoirs of Legasov,
23:01that he in particular and other scientists were pushing for the evacuation.
23:06On the evening of April 26,
23:09city architect Maria Protsenko is called to the next meeting at the White House.
23:15The head of the city administration reveals to the members,
23:19Pripyat will be evacuated.
23:2245,000 people have to leave the city.
23:26It's 8 p.m.
23:30Over the next 24 hours,
23:33over the next few hours, Maria Protsenko and her colleagues
23:38draw up a detailed plan for the evacuation of the city.
23:46The next day, Sunday afternoon,
23:49the evacuation is to be carried out within two hours.
24:03Well, apparently, thanks to the city planner,
24:07who knew exactly where to pick up people, how to route the buses,
24:12and the Soviet Union was, you know, a centralized system,
24:16so once they decided they wanted to do something,
24:19they could move heaven and earth to make it happen, and they did.
24:33In order to ensure the complete safety of the people,
24:38and especially of the children,
24:41it is necessary to carry out a timely evacuation of the city
24:48at the request of the local authorities.
24:56Natasha Protsenko is 15 years old at the time.
25:01On Sunday morning, she is on the phone with her mother.
25:05Natasha is to prepare for the evacuation.
25:09Maria Protsenko herself will stay behind in the contaminated city
25:14and continue working with the crisis team.
25:31Many residents still assume that the crisis will be over
25:35in three to four days.
25:38Natasha, however, suspects that things will turn out differently.
25:43In the following hours, she is evacuated from the city
25:47together with 45,000 residents.
25:51Evacuation of the city that was supposed to be
25:54the future of Soviet nuclear energy.
26:05We got on the bus,
26:08and my father was sitting behind us,
26:12and I was sitting next to Tatyana Yuryevna.
26:16Tatyana Yuryevna is the only person
26:19who was able to help us.
26:23Tatyana Yuryevna is Natasha's piano teacher.
26:27She had given birth to her child on the night of April 25.
26:32She was holding the baby in her arms,
26:36in a small bowl.
26:40The baby was two days old,
26:44and she was looking at him and crying.
26:50At that moment, I was scared.
26:54I realized that the seriousness of the situation
26:58and the uncertainty had reached my consciousness.
27:07After the accident, an invisible cloud
27:11spreads from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant over Europe,
27:15rising from the ruptured reactor core
27:17to a height of 1,500 meters in the sky.
27:22A cloud of gaseous, radioactive xenon, iodine,
27:27cesium, and small fragments of irradiated graphite
27:31that generate extreme heat and warms the air around it
27:35drifts away with the wind like tiny hot air balloons.
27:40After 24 hours, the cloud has already reached Scandinavia.
27:46When it rains in Sweden on the night of April 27,
27:50officials at the Forsmark 1 nuclear power plant
27:54detect a very high level of radioactive particles.
27:58The Swedes suspect that the origin of this lies in the Soviet Union.
28:06They ask Moscow, but receive no answer.
28:11A power struggle over the information policy on Chernobyl
28:15continues in the Soviet leadership.
28:21Gorbachev was pushing against the tradition
28:25where nothing would be said at all about the accident.
28:29He was the one who was pushing for the idea
28:34that actually there has to be an announcement.
28:37Something has to be said about that.
28:40And there was opposition coming from the old-timers in Politburo.
28:46One day after the Swedes' request, and three days after the disaster,
28:52the Soviet news agency TASS releases a short message.
29:01An accident has occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
29:05One of the nuclear reactors is damaged.
29:08Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident.
29:13Assistance is provided to the injured,
29:16and a government commission has been established.
29:19Gorbachev was the man of his times.
29:23The norm was to say nothing.
29:26So he said something which sounds like a joke today.
29:32But it wasn't a joke back in 1986.
29:35The accident comes at an inopportune time,
29:38just before the May 1 celebrations.
29:42May 1!
29:45The day of international solidarity!
29:49Hurray!
29:57Five days after the catastrophe, the Soviet Union celebrates May Day,
30:03one of the most important holidays of the Communist world power.
30:07The celebration proceeds as if nothing had happened.
30:11The people know nothing of the evacuation of an entire city,
30:16nothing of the extent of the catastrophe.
30:19In Pripyat, on May 1,
30:21chief architect Maria Protsenko is working with the crisis team.
30:41When I arrived, I saw an empty city.
30:45It was scary.
30:48People were shouting songs,
30:51saying that the country is huge,
30:54and how beautiful our land is.
31:05In the Russian Soviet Republic,
31:07a thousand kilometers from Pripyat,
31:10a man who helped build the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
31:13is demonstrating this particular May Day.
31:16Nikolai Steinberg, a nuclear engineer.
31:19Here, too, no one knows what exactly happened at Chernobyl.
31:23At the May Day demonstration,
31:26Steinberg and his colleagues discussed the radiation levels
31:29of evacuees from Chernobyl.
31:32They had sought shelter in Balakovo.
31:52When they arrived, their hair was covered in smoke.
31:55They brought food and bread.
31:58They measured the food and bread.
32:01Their hair was covered in smoke.
32:03In fact, the radiation protection experts
32:06discover particles of nuclear fission on the people from Chernobyl.
32:10But one finding puzzles them.
32:15I went up to the head of the radiation safety service.
32:19He said, everything is clear.
32:22I went up to his body and said, everything is clear.
32:26These are all products of uranium fission.
32:29And the silver, 109, what is it?
32:34Steinberg recalls the construction of the RBMK.
32:41The isotope silver-109 exists exclusively
32:44in the innermost part of the reactor.
32:49It's an element of the neutron flux sensors.
32:53Steinberg realizes that if this silver was found
32:56on people's clothing, there must have been a catastrophe.
33:23In California, American doctor Peter Gale
33:26learns about the Chernobyl accident.
33:29In the western media, rumors abound.
33:32There is talk of 2,000 dead, countless radiation victims.
33:36At the time, Gale was one of the world's best doctors
33:40for bone marrow transplants that could help radiation victims.
33:44I wanted to offer help to the Soviets.
33:49The American is allowed into the country.
33:52Gorbachev personally agrees to his offer of help.
33:56At the beginning of May 1986,
33:59Gale is granted access to a secret hospital,
34:02Radiation Clinic No. 6 in Moscow.
34:06This is where the Soviet Union's radiation victims
34:09have been treated for decades.
34:12Now, the firefighters and power plant workers
34:15from the Chernobyl disaster are bedded here.
34:19Upon his arrival, Gale immediately begins his examinations.
34:28So from a radiation point of view,
34:31most of them would look pretty well,
34:35and they would be really like the average person.
34:39They would be unaware of what's coming.
34:44Many patients seem to be recovering.
34:47Including the man who operated the reactor
34:50on the night of the accident, 26-year-old Leonid Toptunov.
34:56Toptunov sends another telegram to his parents
34:59from his hospital bed.
35:07Mom, I'm in the hospital in Moscow. I'm fine.
35:16Toptunov and his colleagues are in the so-called
35:19walking ghost phase,
35:22a deceptive period of 5 to 10 days.
35:25They do not know that their bodies are already deteriorating.
35:29The ionizing radiation emitted by radioactive particles
35:34rages through the body like violent lightning strikes,
35:38damaging cells and fracturing DNA strands.
35:43The bone marrow is most severely affected.
35:46Here, the stem cells are destroyed,
35:49and with them the supplier of new cells.
35:52The patient is doomed to perish.
35:58What's our bone marrow?
36:00Our bone marrow is a factory inside the bones
36:04in an adult, in these pelvic bones,
36:08that produces our blood cells,
36:11these red blood cells and white blood cells and platelets.
36:14And it's a huge factory.
36:16It produces billions of cells every day.
36:19So if you stop production,
36:22then you run out of them very quickly,
36:25and then you're in trouble.
36:27After a few days, Leonid Toptunov's condition
36:31deteriorates rapidly.
36:33His skin is peeling off.
36:35His only chance of salvation is a bone marrow transplant.
36:44Well, we need to do this kind of thing in the first two weeks.
36:48If we don't do it in the first two weeks,
36:51there's no point in doing it.
36:54Because it takes another week or ten days
36:58for the transplanted bone marrow to recover.
37:04But in the meantime, they are deteriorating.
37:08So it's a fight against the clock.
37:14In addition to Toptunov,
37:1619 other radiation victims are receiving bone marrow transplants.
37:22Following the operation,
37:24the patients are placed in germ-free plastic tents
37:27supplied with filtered air,
37:29so-called survival islands, for their protection.
37:38In the end,
37:39only two of those treated will leave Clinic No. 6 alive.
37:47Meanwhile, investigators from the Soviet Secret Service KGB
37:52are showing up more frequently.
37:55The severely injured nuclear engineers
37:58are interrogated at length.
38:00The search for those responsible for the Chernobyl accident begins.
38:10A KGB file lists the names of those to be interrogated.
38:16Boris Toyachuk, nuclear engineer.
38:20Leonid Toptunov, the young reactor operator.
38:24And Anatoly Dyatlov, deputy chief engineer.
38:29Considering the state of health of the witnesses,
38:32we ask you to question them without delay.
38:35On the night of the accident,
38:37nuclear engineer Boris Toyachuk was in Block 4
38:41and exposed to lower doses of radiation than his colleagues.
38:46He is not seriously injured.
38:48He is also visited in the hospital by a KGB officer.
39:04The KGB interrogates Boris Toyachuk repeatedly.
39:14The KGB interrogates Boris Toyachuk repeatedly.
39:35What did he say? What did he press? What did you do?
39:43While the KGB conducts its interrogations,
39:46one patient after another dies.
39:50On May 14, 26-year-old reactor operator Leonid Toptunov
39:55succumbs to severe radiation poisoning.
39:59In the following weeks, 29 people die in the Moscow Clinic
40:04as a result of the Chernobyl reactor disaster.
40:07When I found out that Toptunov had died,
40:11I just felt a great sorrow.
40:14I had no other thoughts.
40:22On the day of Toptunov's death, May 14, 1986,
40:27Mikhail Gorbachev, the head of the KGB,
40:31On the day of Toptunov's death, May 14, 1986,
40:36Mikhail Gorbachev speaks publicly about the accident
40:40for the first time on Soviet television.
41:00The KGB will make a final judgment on the causes of the accident.
41:04The subject of close examination of the Government Commission
41:08are all aspects of the problem,
41:12design, design, technical, operational.
41:19Of course, based on the results of the reasons for the accident,
41:23all necessary conclusions will be made,
41:26measures taken, excluding the repetition of the above.
41:31There is a lot at stake for the Soviet Union,
41:36its credibility and its economic future.
41:40The RBMK is the backbone of Soviet nuclear energy.
41:44Among the Moscow leadership,
41:47the debate begins about who should be held responsible
41:50for the catastrophe of the century.
41:53The technology, that is to say, the RBMK,
41:57or the personnel of the nuclear power plant.
42:00After six weeks, Boris Toyachuk is released from the Moscow hospital,
42:05but is repeatedly interrogated by the KGB.
42:09Yes, then a representative of the capital authorities appeared again,
42:15who interrogated me for several days.
42:20Well, for several hours, 3-4 hours.
42:26Well, there was one impression.
42:30There was a persistent feeling that our personnel were being shot.
42:35That was the feeling.
42:37There is a saying that always came up
42:40when something went wrong in the nuclear power plant.
42:43Then it was always said, who is to blame?
42:46So it was always about being able to name the guilty.
42:50This was known from other cases,
42:53but after the extent of the accident,
42:56it was relatively quickly clear to them
42:58that they would be severely punished according to Soviet criminal law.
43:02This was probably very much in front of their eyes.
43:05I immediately thought that it could end with a landing.
43:10In places not so far away.
43:15A remote place.
43:18That's how Soviet citizens refer to the penal camps in Siberia.
43:23But one man is certain that the reactor is the problem.
43:28A man who knows the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
43:32and the weaknesses of the RBMK like few others.
43:36Nuclear engineer Nikolai Steinbeck.
43:41On May 1, it was clear that a huge reaction was being conducted.
43:46The only thing that could be the source of this mad introduction
43:51of a positive reaction was the steam effect.
43:55We knew that.
43:58I went to the head of the Energy Union.
44:02There were a lot of people there.
44:05Military, doctors.
44:08And someone turned around and saw me.
44:11Oh, the head of the Chernobyl plant.
44:13They still remember me.
44:16But there was a crowd around.
44:19I went to the chief engineer.
44:22I said, I want to go.
44:29Nikolai Steinberg is on his way to Chernobyl.
44:35He wants to find out what really happened at the nuclear power plant.
44:40The Chernobyl nuclear power plant
45:10The Chernobyl nuclear power plant