Original subtitles

MYSTERIES OF THE ABANDONED CHERNOBYL'S DEADLY SECRETS DOCUMENTAL, 2017 BY PAUL EPSTEIN

PHILIP GROSSMAN: Chernobyl, Ukraine.

This abandoned wasteland is one of the most dangerous places on earth

with nuclear radiation at every turn.

(RAPID BLEEPING)

It's the site of the nuclear accident that became one of the worst

engineering disasters in modern history.

But what caused this deadly nuclear explosion in the former Soviet Union?

Some say it was simply human error.

So, it's this button right here that caused the explosion?

Others suggest a Soviet plot.

The KGB forced us to sign documents.

Or even American interference.

The CIA developed a faulty malware into the Soviet Union.

I'm Philip Grossman.

And I'm obsessed with Chernobyl.

There's only one way into this forbidden area.

The sign says, "No trespassing."

And with any luck, I'll get out alive.

All right. So, I've got all my gear packed.

Made sure the batteries are all charged up.

I'm an American civil engineer and cinematographer.

I've been to Chernobyl ten times

to document the disaster and its aftermath.

All right, we're good to go.

I'm heading two hours north

of the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev toward the highly restricted zone

that surrounds the Chernobyl power plant.

Through my hard fought access into this dangerous nuclear fallout zone,

I've produced never before seen footage of places few dare to go.

But this time I'm here to find out what actually caused

the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl.

Three decades after the disaster, security into the zone is no joke.

There's no entry without a permit.

And it's sometimes a challenge even if you have one.

So, my anxiety level is probably, you know, near an all-time high.

Sort of anxious to get there and start to see

if I can put together the pieces of this puzzle

and truly understand what may really be

the root cause of the accident at Chernobyl,

the world's worst engineering accident.

Based on previous trips here,

as I get closer to my destination I know to stop in Ukraine's version

of a convenience store to pick up any last-minute provisions.

(PHILIP SPEAKING RUSSIAN)

I buy the real necessities.

And get back on the road toward the main checkpoint.

Approaching Chernobyl always gives me

this eerie feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Even though the disaster was over 30 years ago,

there's still a heaviness in the air that you can actually feel.

So, this is Dytyatky. This is the checkpoint into the zone.

It is the last point of civilisation before entering the exclusion zone.

The exclusion zone was initially a 19-mile radius set around ground zero,

the nuclear reactor that exploded at Chernobyl in 1986.

The zone remains off-limits unless you're an employee,

or have a permit, and an officially sanctioned guide.

And where I'm going is even more tightly controlled.

Now roughly the size of Rhode Island, the zone contains much more

than the Chernobyl nuclear complex.

The scarred landscape is dotted with derelict villages,

as well as the entire abandoned city of Pripyat,

which sits frozen in time.

This is Lenin Avenue.

So, this is also referred to as "The road of death"

because it leads into the city of Pripyat, the dead city.

There are apartment blocks on the left and right, shops…

There's a large promenade sidewalk that went down the city centre.

And now for the most part, it's completely overgrown.

Once a vibrant modern city of 50,000 people,

Pripyat's proximity to the nuclear power plant

attracted the country's best and brightest scientists and engineers.

It was paradise by Soviet standards.

But on April 26, 1986,

it all came crashing down when Reactor Number Four exploded

releasing 400 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere

than the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima.

Pripyat and the surrounding area were evacuated within days of the blast

and the exclusion zone was established.

Today it sits a rusted shell of its former glory.

A city reclaimed by nature.

Heading southeast of town, my destination comes into view.

The infamous Chernobyl power plant.

And my mission to find out what really happened

starts at Nuclear Reactor Number Four, the source of the explosion.

Even with Reactor Number Four sealed off

by a newly-constructed $2 billion

36,000 ton steel containment structure,

life-threatening radiation lingers everywhere across the facility.

And I'm about to enter this place

where few outsiders would ever dare or be permitted to go.

So, what they're doing here

is actually measuring the entire radiation in my body.

Once they have a baseline, we can go into the plant.

The biological effects of radiation

are measured in units called microsieverts.

We are all exposed to small amounts of background radiation daily, which is mostly harmless.

An aeroplane flight from New York to Los Angeles is 40 microsieverts.

A chest X-ray is 100 microsieverts.

The radiation dose to Pripyat evacuees

averaged 17,000 microsieverts,

which would normally translate to a roughly 6% increased risk for cancer.

But since Pripyat residents actually ingested the radioactive material,

the resulting cell damage could mean a 10-15% increased risk of cancer.

To be allowed inside the reactor building,

I have to leave my clothes in a separate room

and change into a suit that not only protects me,

but also prevents radioactive particles from leaving with me

once I re-enter the outside world.

And I've secretly brought along some extra protection.

Not that I don't trust their systems here,

but this is the location of the world's worst nuclear accident.

I did bring my own Myriad Technologies dosimeter

so I can double-check their numbers.

All geared up, I make my way toward the centre of the complex.

This area is not for the claustrophobic.

So, this is what's called the golden corridor.

It actually connects all four of the reactors.

Since the disaster, very few people

have been inside the control room for Reactor Four.

The Soviets long maintained that the accident was due to human error.

And I'm hoping that seeing this now defunct control room first-hand

will reveal some clues about what happened here

more than 30 years ago.

In 1986, keeping the Chernobyl nuclear power plant operational

is a national priority.

So, when engineers prepare to test the emergency backup systems

just after midnight on April 26,

Reactor Number Four remains online at partial capacity.

What happens next would go down

as the worst nuclear disaster in history.

(DOSIMETER CLICKING)

As I enter the proverbial scene of the crime,

the gravity of where I am hits me right in the gut.

Oh, my God!

This is actually the control room of Reactor Number Four,

the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Under a thick layer of dust I can still make out the control panel,

the gauges, and the emergency button the operator pressed

to disable the reactor over 30 years ago.

Reactor power suddenly drops…

..but, then, unexpectedly spikes out of control.

(ALARM BLARING)

Steam pressure builds.

The operators scramble to stop the chain reaction.

But at 1:23am, Nuclear Reactor Number Four explodes.

(DOSIMETER CLICKING)

It's surreal.

It's still pretty radioactive.

I know I don't want to stay in here too long.

I don't find anything here to contradict the Soviet explanation

that the disaster was caused by human error.

But my search has just begun.

So, I make my way to the nearly identical control room

for Reactor Number Three.

There I meet a former Chernobyl control room operator

named Alexei Breus who was preparing for his shift at Reactor Four

when the accident occurred.

So, can you sort of give me a play by play

of what would have happened that evening?

(SPEAKS RUSSIAN)

(TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH) To understand what happened

requires a basic knowledge of how nuclear reactors work.

Inside the structure,

uranium fuel rods produce massive amounts of heat

that convert water to steam.

The steam drives turbines to generate electricity.

Control rods inserted between the fuel rods

accelerate and slow the reaction as needed.

To prevent overheating, cooling water is pumped around the core.

But during the test on April 26th,

a senior engineer mysteriously ordered

most of the control rods to be removed.

The operators lost control of the flow of coolant

causing temperatures to soar and melt the core.

Despite warning signs that something was terribly wrong,

the senior engineer insisted

that the operators continue running the test.

So, far the human error claim holds up

until Alexei reveals another significant factor at play.

(TRANSLATION) In an attempt to shut down the reactor,

one of the operators pressed the AZ-5 button,

just like this one here, to drop the control rods,

but the rods inside this particular reactor model

are tipped with graphite.

Alexei tells me that when this reactor operates at lower capacity it's less stable.

So, instead of slowing down the reactivity to safe levels,

the graphite triggered an uncontrollable surge of power.

(TRANSLATION IN ENGLISH) Because of that defect in the design

steam pressure built up and there was a huge blast.

So, it's this button right here that caused the explosion.

Though the first official investigation by Soviet authorities

placed the blame on operator error,

to me as an engineer this indicates that the accident was more likely

the result of a serious design flaw.

After undergoing a decontamination process, we step outside.

Here. Sit.

And I press Alexei further on the Soviets' human error story.

So, what happened after the accident?

(SPEAKING RUSSIAN)

(TRANSLATION) After the explosion,

the KGB forced us to sign documents

saying that it was the incompetence of the reactor operators

that caused the accident.

But why would the KGB coerce employees to accept blame

for mishandling the reactor?

Could they have been hiding something else at Chernobyl?

(TRANSLATION) After the accident

I reported that these reactors have dangerous design flaws,

including the graphite tipped rods that caused the power surge.

But it turns out that the report with this exact information

was already circulated prior to the disaster.

If the disaster was the result of a design flaw,

it could have been prevented.

But what might the Soviets have been hiding that could prompt them to keep a faulty reactor online?

To find out,

my investigation will take me to a rarely explored location -

one of the most desolate places in this abandoned landscape…

..the Pripyat Hospital.

I'm engineer and Chernobyl expert, Philip Grossman.

My mission is to determine what really caused the horrific disaster

at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986.

I've just learned from a former Chernobyl employee

that the reactor had design flaws

that were known well before the accident.

The Soviet government was infamous for its cover-ups

to Western powers and its own citizens.

But what could have motivated them to cover up a design flaw?

Based on my research and previous trips to the zone,

I know the perfect place to look for signs of Soviet secrecy

where the devastation of the Chernobyl disaster

first became fully clear.

The Pripyat hospital.

At the end of the road, I'm forced to ditch my wheels

and continue to make my way there

through the overgrown streets on foot.

It's a haunting walk through a dead world.

Empty streets, empty houses, empty shops.

On my way to the hospital, there's an old ship graveyard,

a stark reminder of the devastation that happened here

and the extraordinary human efforts in the face of danger

to clean up the mess.

It looks unsafe to touch all the sharp, rusty, radioactive metal,

so I brought along these leather gloves.

These barges were used to carry

materials for concrete up the Pripyat River to the city of Pripyat

where they unloaded it and used it in helicopters

to fly over and drop into the reactor

and try and put out the graphite fires.

And the helicopter pilots, unbeknownst to them,

were flying straight through that radioactive cloud

that's emanating from this giant hole in the ground that was Reactor Number Four.

The reason that these things are typically radioactive

is because as they moved up and down into the zone where the reactor had exploded,

they picked up a lot of Caesium-137.

And now it appears they're cutting these things up and recycling them.

I don't know where that steel's going.

The scrap metal pieces that appear to be missing from these boats

is just another example of how Chernobyl's effects

might still linger with us today.

Who knows where the recycled radioactive scrap might have ended up?

So, there's… there's water, obviously.

The ship's on its side, and… This is a bit more stagnant.

So, it's as much a worry about radiation as it is about bacteria,

and, you know, maybe zombies.

Incredibly evocative spots like this decaying shipyard

exist all over the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

Some stay the same. And some are constantly changing.

It makes each time I visit here a completely new experience.

Located just two miles from Reactor Number Four,

the Pripyat Hospital is where fire-fighters and power plant employees

were taken in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.

I want to see if there was anything left behind that might prove

that the Soviet authorities tried to cover up the cause of the disaster.

Those abandoned walls could hide all kinds of secrets.

As I approach the hospital,

I'm faced with the fact I really don't like hospitals.

Never have. And this one is extra unsettling,

falling apart, and possibly radioactive.

(CHUCKLES) A lot of openings. Need an appointment.

I cautiously proceed through the decrepit wards

constantly checking my Geiger counter for radiation spikes.

So the readings here are about 28 microsieverts.

Which is a little higher than background radiation.

Numbers keep going up. It's getting hotter.

Why would that be in this building?

And that's when I see the fabric that's registering the spikes.

Whoa. (CLICKING)

(BEEPING) 429 microsieverts.

That's very radioactive. Why is that here?

These dangerously contaminated pieces of fabric

must have once belonged to the radiation sickness patients

brought here after the explosion.

The Geiger counter readings continue to rise

and I follow the trail spikes into an adjacent room

hoping to find more traces of the victims.

Whoa! (METER CLICKING)

Why is all this sand here?

You wouldn't back all this sand

if you weren't trying to cover something up.

Clues about the Soviet response to Chernobyl

may be beneath that sand, a literal cover-up.

To find out what's being covered, though,

I need to find another way under the room.

I go around the corner following the edge of the building,

letting the radiation levels guide me to an opening in the foundation.

So, the readings here… ten times normal background radiation or higher.

Keeps getting hotter as I get closer and closer to this window.

The levels are too high just to go in there without any gear on.

I'll go back and get my respirator and gloves.

Radiation is really dangerous.

If you breathe it in, the ionising radiation

has direct access to your cells,

it'll destroy your cells and the DNA in your cells.

The respirator is capable of filtering

minute particles from the air.

So, while I still have to worry about radiation exposure,

at least I can keep it out of my lungs.

I'm eager to get into that basement and see what's hiding down there

that's setting off my radiation detector.

(METER CLICKING)

(CLICKING INCREASES)

(BEEPING)

The boots are even hotter than the clothing I found upstairs,

and I know I'm on to something.

Could whatever's in this basement reveal the secrets behind a Soviet cover-up?

I'm in Chernobyl's highly restricted exclusion zone

at the abandoned and crumbling Pripyat Hospital.

I'm hoping to find some lingering evidence of a Soviet cover-up

that might reveal more than

just the nuclear reactor's known design flaw.

Among these radioactive ruins I found highly contaminated boots,

and now clothes with the same intense levels.

(METER CLICKING)

(CLICKING INTENSIFIES)

The first responders who ran in to fight the Chernobyl fire,

likely had no idea the dangers they were facing.

And many died from radiation poisoning

within the first few weeks.

After the disaster, the Soviets chose not to alert international authorities.

The radioactive cloud travelled as far as Northern Europe.

And it wasn't until a power plant nearly 800 miles away in Sweden

detected dangerously elevated levels of radiation

that the USSR finally owned up to what happened.

The final death toll due to Chernobyl is incalculable.

The firefighters who must have worn these uniforms were only the first.

The question is why?

It appears that the Soviets wanted to conceal

not only that they knew about the faulty nuclear reactor,

but also the extent of the human toll and of the radiation fallout.

Though I don't find any further clues

as to what caused the nuclear meltdown,

the uniforms, still highly radioactive,

represent strong evidence

that everything about the Soviet response to the Chernobyl explosion

was an elaborate smokescreen.

The levels were insane down there.

Cover up the entrances, stash the evidence in the basement, no one will know.

The next morning I prepare for spending another day

in this dystopian wasteland to get to the bottom

of what caused the disaster,

and why the Soviets may have wanted to cover it up.

What I saw at the Pripyat Hospital indicates there might well be more

to the Chernobyl story than human error or a design flaw.

If local authorities were desperate

to conceal the true extent of the accident, what other secrets

might be hidden in close proximity to the ill-fated nuclear power plant?

To find out I prepared to investigate another area of the fallout zone

that the Soviets clearly tried to hide.

In old maps of the region,

about six miles from the reactor is an area labelled as a youth camp.

So, the sign says, "No Trespassing."

Sorry, we're trespassing.

But, back in the '70s it was discovered

that this spot was something else entirely.

Whoa! That thing's huge!

Those towers are at least 500 feet tall.

And by the looks of it, at least 500 feet wide as well.

I mean, those things go on forever.

This is no youth camp.

These are the towers of a Soviet era radar station called the Duga.

This thing is massive.

And going to the Duga means I'll be at the centre

of a 40-year-old mystery known as the Russian Woodpecker.

In the mid-1970s, a strange radar signal

jammed radio frequencies all over the globe

disrupting broadcasts and commercial aviation communication.

(TAPPING OVER RADIO)

It sounded like a repetitive tapping noise

earning it the nickname the Woodpecker.

Amateur radio operators and NATO

triangulated the signal to a location in the Soviet republic of Ukraine

close to Chernobyl.

There's a lot of conspiracy theories, you know.

Could it control the weather? Was it a mind control device?

But it was ultimately discovered that the Duga

was an over-the-horizon long-range radar system.

It used radio frequencies,

those same clicks heard across the world

to detect incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs.

The kind they assumed the US was aiming at them.

There's no guards. There's no lock on the gate.

So, maybe, I'm allowed to go in.

This is a pretty awesome structure.

Tubular steel. 15 to 20 towers.

The whole structure of cages, ladders and wires is intricately woven

to maximise the radar's range and power.

But why label it a youth camp on civilian maps?

A complex of buildings sits at the foot of the massive structure.

And I'm eager to see what's inside,

and see how this defence radar might be linked to the nearby power plant.

Whoa! Holy crap!

Obviously, looks like some kind of control room.

Obviously, this is the US.

That looks like Atlanta.

My hometown's on a map…

..in a secret Russian military base in the Ukraine.

That's crazy! This is definitely a military institution.

Almost looks fake.

I mean, there's fake Plexiglas buttons.

There aren't real buttons on here.

With a diagram of the US and US cities marked on it,

this has to be some type of training room.

But a training room for what?

My Russian's not real good.

But I think that says, "Don't talk. Don't give away secrets."

Secret's out.

Under 30 years of chipped paint is a chilling reminder of the stakes

the Soviet soldiers were playing for.

Whoa.

So, that's a mushroom cloud.

Definitely a military base dealing with nuclear bombs.

Does this mean that Duga was more than just a defensive facility

for detecting a potential US threat?

Could the Duga also have been secretly engaged in offensive

strategies against the West?

And if so, is its location six miles

from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant just a coincidence?

I cut around to another part of the complex

to see what else this military installation might be hiding.

It's like 1986 all over again.

Look at this.

Old cathode ray TV, capacitors, maybe the flux kind.

Wow.

Oh, my God. Look at this place.

I come face to face with the control panel

for the massive antenna outside.

The nerve centre for the Duga radar.

The tuk, tuk, tuk… the Woodpecker.

This is what generated it.

These are the units that are actually

generating the 50-60 megawatts of electrical power

that is being used to detect incoming missiles.

From what I understand, they would have been bouncing waves

off of the ionosphere.

And as the intercontinental ballistic missile was launched

its exhaust plume would have disrupted that radio wave.

What that means is it literally can detect things over the horizon,

over the bend of the earth, which would make sense

in the training room that we saw earlier.

It showed the earth. It showed sort of the extent

of where that radar could reach.

This is an amazing location.

There are just trays and trays.

This is how you computed in the early '80s. I mean…

There's just a lot of calculations that need to be done

to make that determination, "Is this a missile being launched?"

This is the best of Soviet technology, circa 1980.

2000 amps, 125,000 kilovolts.

And there are…

one, two, three, four, five,

six, seven, eight, nine… ten units on each side.

That's a lot of power coming into this place.

It looks like the Duga could put out roughly the same amount of power

used by 25,000 homes.

They needed power, which would make sense for them to build a nuclear power plant.

Connecting the dots I believe it's possible

that what the Soviets were trying to cover-up

before, during and after the Chernobyl accident

was more than a radar facility, but a military base

that could be instrumental in strikes against the West.

For the Soviets, the relationship between

the Chernobyl power plant and the Duga was tightly intertwined.

You take out Chernobyl, you take out this facility.

Perhaps, this is why the Soviets kept Chernobyl running

despite the warnings.

But could it also be a reason that their arch nemesis America

would want the nuclear reactor shut down?

That could have put Chernobyl on the CIA's hit list.

Before coming back to Chernobyl,

I met with two former US intelligence agents.

They told me about a KGB Cold War air mission called Line X

that was assigned to steal technological secrets from the West.

The Soviet Union had this enormous programme

to collect all of our intelligence - hardware, software.

The CIA got wind of this.

So, the US mounted their own response.

The CIA developed this programme

to feed faulty hardware, software, malware into the Soviet Union.

The Soviets were building, wanted to build a pipeline

to bring gas from Siberia all the way to Germany.

And, so, we adjusted the software where we put in a Trojan horse.

And so the Trojan horse basically said, you'll do all this stuff, run the pipes,

except on some day, we're going to run a pressure test

and run the pipe at twice the rate of pressure.

We did that and blew up the pipelines.

So, is it possible that all this information that was getting

into the Soviet hands, this misinformation,

could have made it to the Chernobyl plant?

It would not be unreasonable to assume that

some of that junky technology made it to Chernobyl.

It feels plausible that the US

would want to put Chernobyl and the Duga out of commission.

But would America risk a nuclear meltdown

and countless lives to do it?

Or, could the Chernobyl explosion be an example

of early cyber warfare gone wrong?

I'm hoping to find the answers inside an actual nuclear reactor.

So, I secure permission to return to Chernobyl

and for Alexei to show me one.

Since Reactor Number Four is sealed off,

he leads me into the nearby reactor, Number Three.

I've read about this, I've seen photographs.

Never in my life did I think I'd ever actually be standing

on top of a reactor in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant,

the exact same reactor type that exploded.

The Number Three and Number Four are identical RBMK reactors.

An RMBK is a Soviet designed and built Cold War era model

that produces nuclear power,

but can also be modified for other purposes.

So, what we're seeing here is the top of the fuel assemblies.

So, all the grey boxes are fuel assemblies,

all the coloured boxes are actually control rods.

As an engineer, I can't help but notice

one significant problem with this reactor.

It doesn't have a containment building -

usually a steel and concrete dome structure

that encloses the reactor

to prevent the escape of radioactive gases.

So, typical American or Western reactors

have a secondary containment facility.

How come this reactor doesn't?

(SPEAKS RUSSIAN)

This is not only a nuclear power producing reactor,

it is a military type of reactor that can be reconfigured

to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Weapons-grade plutonium?

Wow!

The area around Chernobyl's nuclear power plant

sits a forsaken ghost town frozen in time.

I'm engineer Philip Grossman.

Through my contacts developed over nearly a dozen trips to the zone

I've secured special permission to see inside the highly restricted

nuclear reactor Number Three for the first time.

And former Chernobyl employee, Alexei Breus, has just told me that

this facility could do something far beyond

supplying power to the masses.

(TRANSLATION) It is a military type of reactor

that can be reconfigured to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

To do so requires easy access,

which means it was built without the containment dome

that Western reactors have.

The theory of US involvement may seem far-fetched at first.

But during the Cold War if the CIA was aware

of the Chernobyl power plant's military weapons producing capabilities,

that would make covertly sabotaging it a potentially attractive prospect.

To harness the power of weapons-grade plutonium

would require the military hardware to carry it.

Which leads me to wonder.

Were there facilities in the area that produced such hardware?

To find out I meet with a woman named Margarita Kulbabchuck.

(PHILIP SPEAKING RUSSIAN)

Margarita lived in Pripyat.

And for six years before the Chernobyl accident

she worked at the nearby Jupiter factory

that allegedly manufactured consumer goods.

What kind of consumer goods remain there?

(SPEAKING RUSSIAN)

(TRANSLATION) Officially, the factory produce metal

and plastic household items like cassette players and alarm clocks.

But there was another separate area

where workers were making some sort of small components.

Did you have any idea what the end components were used for?

(TRANSLATION) No, we didn't know what they were for.

The factory had security restrictions.

Some of the departments were off-limits.

And I didn't have access there.

Could that mean the mysterious Jupiter factory

was a cover-up for Soviet military operations?

If the factory was abandoned right after the reactor blew,

there might have been some relevant materials left behind.

So, I'm eager to get over there to see what I can find.

(CLICKING) The levels here are getting a little bit hotter.

So, just to be safe I'm going to put my mask on

and give myself some protection.

(CLICKING) As I get closer to the factory,

my Geiger counter continues to climb.

And that's when I see the Cold War relics

that are likely causing the spike.

It's a graveyard of abandoned and rusted over

passenger, construction and military vehicles.

This derelict train has been sitting here for more than three decades.

The Soviets tried to hide

the severity of what happened at Chernobyl.

Large vehicles and equipment were used as part of the clean-up effort

in the immediate aftermath.

Now I know where some of those machines ended up.

(RAPID CLICKING)

After an hour long hike,

I arrive at Margarita's former workplace, the Jupiter factory.

And it's not at all what I expected.

What kind of factory that makes alarm clocks

has a 12-foot-high concrete fence with a giant steel gate?

Wow!

It's hard to believe this abandoned place was once a manufacturing floor

bustling with people and the sounds of industry.

This place is pretty huge.

And, now, it's just eerily deserted.

Whoa!

They're big kilns, they're not industrial size.

Making consumer goods, you'd expect something bigger.

It's dated 1982.

It's like a newspaper for people in the energy industry.

Why would somebody be reading a paper about nuclear energy

in a location that made consumer goods?

(THUNDER CRASHES)

The sound of the rain makes this already creepy place

feel even more so.

This came out of nowhere. (THUNDER RUMBLING)

(CREAKING)

Whoa!

OK. What are these?

Looks like a vault for storing radioactive material.

But there's nothing inside of them.

(CLANKING) It's a welded steel room.

The floors are covered with some kind of thick plastic.

This is really not adding up at all.

Whoa!

I have no idea what's in that water.

So, I'm putting on a Pivot suit. Water resistant.

It'll keep anything off me so I don't bring it out, whatever maybe down there.

Got my waders, cos I've no idea how deep that place is going to get.

And from the looks of this place,

who knows how long it's been since anyone's been down there?

Similar to minute radioactive particles in the air,

contaminated water can be one of the most dangerous

delivery systems of radiation.

The trail of test tubes leads me to a room

with shelves upon shelves of glass containers.

Could this be the restricted area that factory employees like Margarita

were forbidden from entering?

The question is, what was it used for?

These remnants suggest that this facility

may have been involved in nuclear production in some way,

potentially for weaponry.

If that's the case, I can see why it would be

a potential target of interest to the CIA.

I round a metal fence barrier finally hitting a dead end,

and that's when my monitor goes crazy.

(RAPID CLICKING)

(CLICKING CONTINUES)

Unlike the sand at the hospital,

the sand I found here wouldn't have been used to cover something up.

Its high radioactivity suggests it could have been used

in testing chambers to determine how the components manufactured here

react in a strong field of ionising radiation.

(SIGHS) That gets the heart pumping.

You know, room full of chemicals, labs upon labs.

And last but not least,

these two chests filled with radioactive sand of some sort.

This place didn't make alarm clocks.

Did it make parts for nuclear weapons?

We have a nuclear power plant that was designed to produce plutonium.

Maybe this was part of that complex as well.

There's compelling evidence

that points at Chernobyl's dual purpose in the war machine,

as a power source to neighbouring secret military sites,

and as a potential plutonium production facility

for the manufacturing of military weapons.

It may be an outlandish theory,

but is it plausible that this entire area

was an attractive strike target for America

to attack the Soviet Union where it would hurt the most?

As the clouds part, I head up to the roof

for a bird's eye view of the desolate and enigmatic Chernobyl complex

to ponder all the information I've collected.

So we know the CIA had a reason and they had a means.

On the other hand, we know that the Soviet government

knew about the flaws of the reactor and did nothing about it.

I've explored the extent of Chernobyl's devastation,

and now overlooking miles and miles of this abandoned city,

it stands a symbol of aspirations gone wrong

and utopian dreams turned upside down.

In surveying this human tragedy, personally, I don't believe the US

would knowingly trigger such an event and risk nuclear war

fully understanding the great potential for casualties,

not only on their Cold War enemy's side

but also in other parts of Europe.

As an engineer, I'm trained to look solely at the evidence.

In this case, I believe that it points the finger

at the reactor's design flaws

combined with the misguided and secretive Soviet system

that covered up one of the largest engineering disasters in history.

subtitles Deluxe