All language subtitles for Chernobyl Days that Shocked the World S01E02 1080p ALL4 WEB-DL AAC2 0 H 264-RAWR[EZTVx.to]_track3_[eng]

"Did you hear?

"The plant, it is explosion.

"There is no reactor unit number
four."

The temperatures in the reactor core

were hot enough
that the fuel would melt,

like a lava,
but a highly radioactive lava.

The sarcophagus was built over
the destroyed reactor,

but was essentially propped
up like a house of cards,

and it was recognised that this
was one day going to collapse.

We've seen those brave

workers putting
the construction together.

We have seen the arch
in nearly-ready state.

The fear that there will be
another Chernobyl.

It's enough just to say that word,

and that means,
"We're going to get affected."

The Chernobyl disaster
on the 26th of April, 1986

was the worst
nuclear accident in history.

The explosion left wreckage on
the ground

that will remain radioactive
for 20,000 years...

...and blasted a cloud
of contaminated dust into the sky.

There was really not
that much appreciation

in the first, not even just days
and weeks, but even the first years

of the extent of fallout

that had occurred
at quite some distance,

hundreds of kilometres away from
the nuclear plant.

Chernobyl remains the worst
nuclear accident in history,

but at the time, the Soviet state
deliberately concealed the danger.

Somewhere, a clear decision was made

to not tell the people.

Alla Kravchuk grew up near the plant,

and was studying music
in Kyiv when the crisis hit.

When the accident had happened,
nobody was informed.

We did not know about it
until a few days later.

We prepared the end-of-year exam,

and I am a singer,

so I was extremely sensitive
to this...

SHE CLEARS THROAT
...dryness in the throat.

But of course, that was nothing to
do with the physical condition.

It was something which was not
visible, but everybody felt it.

Alla discovered what was happening,
not from an official source,

but from evacuees fleeing
her former hometown of Pripyat.

I learnt then from
my school friends in Pripyat

that they were greeted by somebody
in a hurry saying,

"What are you doing?
Have you not heard?

"There was an accident
and the buses are about to arrive.

"We have to leave."

This town of 50,000 built
for Chernobyl's workers

was now dangerously radioactive.

You have got levels that are
absolutely,

definitely exceeding the level you
would allow people to be present in

because of the agreed
significance of the cancer risk.

Yet critical workers,
like control room operator

Oleksii Breus, agreed to stay

to prevent a new crisis
in Chernobyl's other three reactors.

Within days, only clean-up crews,
known as liquidators,

remained in a 30km exclusion zone.

As they worked, radioactive debris
continued to billow

from the wreckage of
reactor unit four.

Chemist Valeriy Sulimov
evacuated soon after the explosion.

Maybe end of May,
the Soviet government decided

to put some steel structures...

...above, to get the kind of dome
over the destroyed area.

It was a shelter called
a sarcophagus.

Alla's father Volodymyr,
who'd helped to build Chernobyl,

worked on the designs
for the sarcophagus,

or Object Shelter,
as it was officially known.

Dad was allocated specifically
for this job

to create the up-to-date picture.

What is the reactor looking like
now?

What was the parameters?
What was the current situation?

It was extremely difficult
to get original drawings,

because most of them were at
the station

and they were contaminated
or non-existent.

We are looking now at the
drawings my dad was working,

and the measurements had to
be certified very meticulously.

And then see the changes that
were done after the explosion.

We're looking at the exploded
reactor.

This is what had to be covered,
because the lid was blown up

and has landed in a very odd
position.

Dad had a very clear understanding
that you have to be there.

You have to see the damage yourself.

The first stage was to get
large concrete slabs

up against the building.

You basically build a concrete
shell with a roof over the top of it

that would act as a reasonable
containment of dust and vapours.

More than 90,000 people took
part in this building activity.

They were not plant staff.

It was builders from all over
the Soviet Union.

So it means approximately 200 days

from their decision to completion
of this facility

is very, very fast.

It's incredibly fast.

Meanwhile,
Chernobyl's three other reactors

were ordered back online
to deal with power shortages...

...so plant workers returned to
the exclusion zone,

including nuclear chemists
Valeriy and his wife Halyna.

Our management told us,
"You can go to Chernobyl."

It was nothing to do with
the destroyed reactor.

We did our regular work,
as before the accident,

for units one, two and three.

And we started to work
in this system -

two weeks you work at the plant

and two weeks away.

By that time, reactor four was
confined by this Object Shelter,

and we did nothing for reactor four.
Nothing.

But for workers who were on the
frontline after unit four exploded,

like Oleksii,

there was no longer a place
at Chernobyl.

At first, the official death toll
was just two,

killed by the explosion...

...but shortly after,
Dr Oleksandr Bugar

had treated others with extreme
radiation burns.

Although now far from Chernobyl,

Dr Bugar had been in close
contact with many of the victims.

The death toll was later
revised to 30,

but some experts believe thousands
died from radiation exposure,

with thousands more getting ill.

Widespread health problems

were just one aspect
of a vast Soviet cover-up.

In the weeks after Chernobyl,

the secret services moved to conceal
the evidence behind the disaster.

The KGB came in,
and all the scientists were told,

"This must not be released.

"You must not discuss this.

"What records have you kept?"
And they were all removed from them.

Three months later, Soviet
investigators

briefed the
International Atomic Energy Agency,

or IAEA,

and clearly pointed the finger.

Alongside operator errors,

the report also hinted at problems
with the reactor's design.

This was indeed a very
specific Soviet type of reactor -

the light water graphite
moderated reactor,

or RBMK type.

In all reactors,
neutrons split atoms in fuel rods,

releasing heat which boils water,

producing steam to spin a generator.

In most designs, the water helps
maintain a steady flow of neutrons,

keeping the reaction going.

All reactors use control rods
to absorb neutrons,

which slows the reaction down.

If you take control rods out,
the power will rise.

If you put them in,
it should decrease.

It's like driving a car -
a little bit of fine tuning.

Adjust a bit to the left,

a bit on the accelerator,
a bit on the brake.

Same with a reactor.

Unusually, the RBMK also used
graphite to help manage neutron flow

in blocks surrounding the fuel rods

and on the end of each control rod.

This mix of both water
and the graphite

was really quite unique,
and had been studied in the West,

and very definitely
was known by 1986

to have quite potentially
dangerous operating conditions.

There were situations of
the positioning of the control rods

where you couldn't get them
in fast enough,

you wouldn't be able to slow
the reaction.

Concerningly,
these situations included

when the emergency stop,
or Scram, button was hit.

But reactor designs were
a state secret,

so most staff at Chernobyl were
not told about this serious flaw.

Of course, the Soviet Union
got round that by saying,

"Here's the rule book.
Don't operate in those regimes,"

because the psychology was
the rule would not be disobeyed.

On the 25th of April,
ahead of planned maintenance,

unexpected events tore
up the rule book.

It had been decided that the
Chernobyl reactor in late April

would conduct an experiment

related to how you
bring a reactor back

after there had been perhaps
a power cut externally.

So they started, on the 26th,
to reduce the power

from 3,200 megawatts down to half.

At that time,
they got a telephone call from

the electricity board in Kyiv,

who had noted that a normal,
or a non-nuclear power station

had broken down,

so they said,
"Could you please stop?"

This pause was not part of the plan.

There were no rules to follow.

Even so,
once the power shortage passed,

the test resumed.

So the internal configuration of
the reactor is being changed

and adjusted to help try to make
the experiment work,

but it is producing what resulted
in this unstable condition.

The reactivity started to happen,

which made the reactor just
increasing and increasing in power.

Realising the reactor
was out of control,

operator Leonid Toptunov
hit the Scram button,

exposing that catastrophic
design flaw.

When that Scram button was hit,
the control rods were going to drop,

so that these rods should soak
up all the neutrons.

The only problem was the first bit
to enter the reactor had graphite,

and that graphite that came in

further increased
the neutron population in the core.

So you were then into a thermal
runaway, producing a lot of steam -

massive amount of steam.

There is a massive expansion,
and that produces a huge force,

enough to lift
and blow the lid off the reactor.

All these materials that were inside
the fuel rods...

...all that radioactivity,
is now up in the sky.

Toptunov died two weeks later -

one of the few official deaths
from radiation sickness.

The reactor operator,
to their death,

said they didn't understand
what had happened.

They thought they'd done everything
according to procedures.

As new information came to light,

the IAEA issued a revised report,

suggesting Soviet authorities
had deliberately downplayed problems

with the reactor design.

There was human error associated
with what happened at Chernobyl,

but there was also a design fault.

Of course, the people who were
in the control room at the time

thought that
whatever they were doing,

there was a single solution
if it was going really wrong,

which was the Scram button.

I've stood in that control room
wearing PPE and mask, etc.

I've stood with my hand over
where that Scram button was...

...and that kind of, for me,
put it all into perspective.

Genuinely, at that point in time,

they didn't know that pressing
that button

was going to cause this incident.

While the Soviets withheld
information

and deflected blame for Chernobyl,

winds had blown radioactive
dust across Europe.

And as news of the cover-up
also began to spread,

faith in nuclear power plunged.

Chernobyl is a big sort of
PR disaster

with regards to nuclear technology.

It just had so many impacts.

Some countries stopped
their nuclear energy.

The fear that there will be another
Chernobyl.

It's enough just to say that word,

and that means,
"We're going to get affected.

"We might get radioactivity.

"We might get cancer
because of this."

Closer to home,

the crisis deepened mistrust of
the entire Soviet system.

The Chernobyl accident caused a lot
of concerns and doubt,

particularly in Ukraine
and in Belarus,

over the manner
in which their republics

were controlled from Moscow,

and the call for independence
rose all the greater

when they realised how the Chernobyl
accident had been managed.

The Chernobyl incident was almost
like

the sort of straw
that broke the camel's back

when it comes to the fall of
the Soviet Union.

Once the Soviet Union disintegrated,

hoping to learn the true scale of
the disaster,

former republics opened their doors
to foreign scientists.

At that time, it was very important

for international observers to
come in

because by then, the people
were tired of being lied to,

tired of not getting
all the information.

In 1991, I got the chance to go
to Chernobyl on a research project

where we wanted to measure in
the environment and also study

the effects of shielding in the
buildings in Pripyat, for example.

I made my first entry into the zone
and did some sample collection.

And you saw mostly deserted houses.

Workers weren't living there,
because if you lived there,

you'd get radioactivity
24 hours a day.

But if you went in just
for a few hours in a day,

you get low enough levels
that were tolerable for the work -

just all part of a job
that has a certain level of risk.

That was an experience which
was mixed feelings, I think,

because we went into apartments

and you could see dolls
and things from kids

who were suddenly taken away.

It was a funny feeling
to see the empty town.

In 1992, Oleksandr Syrota,
training as a journalist,

returned to Pripyat for
the first time since the disaster.

Oleksandr searched for a decade

before finding an archivist from
Pripyat Film

with a treasure trove of footage
from their hometown.

This footage reveals a colourful
vision of life in Pripyat

before radiation forced residents
to flee.

In 1993, I participated
in an expedition to the Chernobyl.

This town is the town of Pripyat,
as you see.

It's a very sad town because there
are no inhabitants here.

We measured radioactivity in the air

in the 30km zone around the
Chernobyl directly

to see how dangerous it was.

I had a higher dose rate

on the flight from Stockholm to Kyiv

than I had when working
in the 30km zone.

But when I visited the sarcophagus,

then the dose rate went up. Way up.

Ten times.

The concrete and steel shelter built

to cover reactor four's
radioactive wreckage

was starting to fail.

Chernobyl's sarcophagus,
meant to last 30 years,

was crumbling after just ten.

The sarcophagus
was essentially propped up together,

so it was like a house of cards.

It had holes in it,

and over time,
it slowly got worse and worse.

And it was recognised that this was
slowly, slowly declining

and one day going to collapse.

A collapse would throw up a new
cloud of radioactive debris

which could spread
across Europe once again.

Because of the physical degradation
of the Object Shelter,

it was decided to cover,
to envelope,

to prevent uncontrolled release of
contamination to the atmosphere.

The international community
recognised that Ukraine

was in an intensely vulnerable
position in the mid to late '90s

and was trying to deal with
the consequences of the accident,

and it was an act of solidarity
with Ukraine to support them,

to say that,
"We want to stand with you

"to provide some sort of
long-term solution."

That solution was a vast arch called
the New Safe Confinement,

costing $1.7 billion.

Simon Evans helped manage the project

for the European Bank
Of Reconstruction And Development.

The arch had two core functions,

and one was to confine the remnants
of the destroyed unit four,

but the second one was to provide
all the equipment and facilities

for long-term decommissioning of
the remnants of the reactor.

I met Simon Evans in the very
beginning of the NSC project.

He was the supervisor from the bank.

I was on the contractor side.

My role was to coordinate designers,

and we did, together,
the design documents.

Radiation protection
and safety for workers

was our key priority throughout
the construction.

There was one area
where we were hitting levels

that meant workers could work there
for around four minutes a day.

So the arch was built 400m away

to protect workers from
the impacts of radiation

as you got closer to the old
sarcophagus.

It was a quite exciting times.

Oh, it was a romantic time,
I would say,

because you see one of the
largest facilities in the world

growing up every day, every year.

I had been back to Pripyat in 2015

and the new confinement
was nearly ready...

...and that was an extraordinary,
exciting time.

We wanted to see it in real life,

and we were safely taken into
the Chernobyl zone.

We've seen those brave
scaffolding workers

putting the construction together.

For the first time in decades,
Chernobyl was crawling with life.

New life had also taken over
the abandoned town of Pripyat.

I could not help asking

if it's possible to drive
and see my house.

The answer was, the area where
our house was is a jungle now,

so it was not approachable,

but I was promised to be taken as
close as possible.

I saw the ruins of the central
concert hall

where I used to go to various
concerts, events,

and the beautiful mosaic was there,
but all the windows were crushed.

The exclusion zones are like zombie
films but without zombies

in that Mother Nature very,
very quickly takes over.

Something breaks inside you
when you see this happen,

and you walk along the streets

where everything was blossoming in
roses and wonderful open spaces.

And the trees are growing,
breaking the asphalt.

Nature was claiming
back its territory.

It's a sort of stark reminder of
how fragile human society is.

It was like a ghost town.

It was not that beautiful place
that once I knew.

Six years after construction began
on the New Safe Confinement,

the arch was complete.

But to cover the radioactive
wreckage,

it had to be slid into place -

a two-week job.

We were constantly told by
the engineers,

"Don't you dare put us
under pressure to do this fast.

"We're going to do this correctly."

And that's what we allowed
them to do.

It was amazing,
to be perfectly honest,

because you had this world's biggest

movable structure inching
in synchrony.

It was really something
quite spectacular.

And they did it.

This enormous structure came to
the final place...

...and was fixed there.

It was so exciting.

It was intensely complicated,
but it happened.

When it slid over the old reactor,

many people described it
as healing a wound

that enabled Ukraine to look
to the future

with the confidence that they had
the infrastructure required

to deal with the lethal
inheritance of Chernobyl.

The arch was designed to last
100 years,

which is long enough to slowly
and very carefully

dismantle
the contaminated ruins inside.

You can think about the
decommissioning challenge

of Chernobyl as being
like trying to eat a mammoth,

and the only way you can eat a
mammoth is a small chunk at a time.

The idea was to essentially use
hanging robotic systems

to reach down
and start to physically

take the top off the sarcophagus,

and then reach into the core and,

grab by grab,
remove the residual graphite

and fuel materials.

If you don't have the confinement,
any aerosols that you make

will escape into the air.

They'll be carried by the wind

and you'd have no control over
where that material goes.

A year later, Tom Scott brought more
state-of-the-art technology

to the clean-up effort.

This is Spot.

This is our four-legged
robot friend.

We were the first people
in the world

to take a Spot robot
and deploy it on a nuclear site.

It just happened to be Chernobyl,
which is also the most notorious.

So, the purpose really of
what we're doing

is to use robots to go into places
that are dangerous enough

that you don't want to send a human
being.

We went into the space around
the sarcophagus

so that we could control Spot
and read out what he was recording.

It was an amazing experience.

I was always struck every time
that we went in.

It's a bit like a cathedral.

It's so big and it's so quiet.

This is a really historical place,

people have died there,

but it's just the size of it
and the silence is really striking.

There is one object buried here

which only a robot like
Spot can safely inspect.

The temperatures in the reactor
core were hot enough

that the fuel would melt.

And this material, it flows,
essentially a bit like a lava,

but a highly radioactive lava.

It's what we call corium, because
it's molten core material.

And it flowed
down into the basement,

and quite famously,

it formed a structure called
the Elephant's Foot,

which is an incredibly
radioactive structure.

And the intensity is such

that if you were going to spend
several minutes next to it,

then radiation sickness
would be quite likely.

What we were working towards

was getting a better understanding
of the degradation of the material,

and potentially even retrieving
that material

as part of decommissioning,

to allow us to start to contain
the risk a lot better.

The reactor is just one source
of intense radiation

that must eventually be cleaned up.

Tom and his team also studied several
others across the exclusion zone.

After the liquidators finished with
all of their efforts,

all of the vehicles,
the helicopters,

they were all congregated together
in this graveyard,

and they still sit there today.

There are some tankers
which still have

radioactive inventory
inside the tanks.

Those are some of the
most radioactive things

on the site, in fact.

So there's a really big
decommissioning job

there to be done,
which will take many decades.

With the arch secure

and international experts
collaborating on the clean-up,

Chernobyl became
a symbol of hope instead of fear.

I woke up because a friend of mine
who is Russian

has called to say,
"I'm really sorry."

And I... At that moment,
I didn't understand what she means.

She said, "I'm sure it will be over
and everything will be fine.

"Please forgive."

I said, "What do you mean?"

And that was the morning when

Russian troopers
have attacked Ukraine.

In February 2022,

the Russian army entered Ukraine
and swiftly headed for Chernobyl.

"Hey, Dad, are you sleeping?"

It was around 6am.

"Yes, I'm still sleeping."

"War has started."

My insider at the Chernobyl plant

showed me the picture of their
camera

from the main entrance

to the administrative building
of the plant,

and I saw the Russian tanks on
the square

before the administrative building.

Chernobyl was the first site

occupied as a result of the
invasion,

because they came
down through Belarus,

and it enabled them to have a direct
line to Kyiv.

The majority of the nuclear
infrastructure was left undamaged.

However, there was a tremendous
amount of damage

to non-nuclear infrastructure -

roads, for example. Bridges.

Site access fundamentally
compromised.

A lot of looting and damage of,

for example, computers, fire
equipment, all this sort of stuff,

which put the site
in a tremendously fragile state.

The Russians also besieged the town
of Slavutych,

where most Chernobyl workers
were living,

as were Valeriy and Halyna Sulimov.

INDISTINCT YELLING

We crowded in one place,

then we rolled out a
big, big flag of Ukraine

and we went to the Russian soldiers.

GUNSHOTS

We heard some gunshots -

machine guns.
YELLING

LOUD BOOM

And then they pulled
out their grenades.

The retreating Russians
ransacked Chernobyl.

They left the arch
and its deadly contents unharmed.

However, as the war dragged on,
tactics changed.

On the 14th of February,
in the early hours of the morning,

a Russian drone hit
the north side of the confinement.

ALARM BLARES

This drone attack,
14th of February this year,

I was completely destroyed.

I was absolutely horrified.

The drone hit the facility,

and it caused a fire on
the membrane in the cladding,

which spread all across the north
side of the arch,

and also spread over
to the south side

and damaged the ceiling
membrane of the arch.

The main volume of the arch,
underneath the arch,

is kept under pressure,
so that you have the air...

The tendency for the air
never to go outside

to minimise the release

of radioactive contamination
from the old facilities.

So when you burst a hole in the side
and you start a fire,

what happens is the fire
gets sucked through the structure,

and so there's very,

very significant fire damage on
the inside.

One of the problems was that

it wasn't just the area
where the drone hit.

In order to put out the fires,
the fire brigade had

to cut some 300 holes
in the steel structure of the arch.

And that could have led to

some radioactive material
escaping out into the air.

The two core design functions of
the arch

have been fundamentally compromised,

and the 100-year design life
of the arch

has been basically destroyed.

I felt everything.

I was angry, I was shocked.

I didn't know what to do,

what I can do

and what the consequences might be.

I do not believe we can get the full
designed functionality,

but we will try to be as close
as possible.

The drone strike and the war
have left an uncertain future,

both for Chernobyl

and the people who have lived
with its legacy for four decades.

In the year of Chernobyl
catastrophe,

when we were much younger
than today...

...it was a kind of adventure, really.

We did not feel the... fear.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media