All language subtitles for chernobyl.days.that.shocked.the.world.s01e01.1080p.web.h264-cbfm[EZTVx.to]_track3_[eng]

End of April 1986 was very warm.

It was very nice.

Forever long,

sunny and warm day.

An accident has occurred at

the Chernobyl atomic power plant.

The nuclear fuel

started to melt... melt down.

You have all this radioactivity
up in the sky

and a nuclear reaction
that is out of control.

Each telephone of

the private citizens were cut

to avoid a spread of information.

As much as you wanted
this accident to be a secret,

the world began to be suspicious.

There was the banner headline,

"Death Cloud Approaches Britain".

Oh, this is the centre.

So the concert hall is
where I'm standing,

and that is the shopping centre.

Pripyat was built in the 1970s,

at the height of the Cold War...

Oh, it's... it's wonderful.

It's being back in time, really.

...a time when Ukraine was cloaked by

the Iron Curtain of Soviet secrecy.

It's tragedy that you can't

actually revisit the place

because everybody is
all over the world,

if they're lucky to
be alive, that is.

Alla Kravchuk attended
the high school.

We moved to Pripyat in 1982.

The town is surrounded with forests.

I learned to ride my bike

for the first time in my life

because there was lots of
open places and spaces,

especially around my school.

I think everybody in the world

remembers their youth
as the best time of their life.

So do I.

Halyna Sulimova
and her husband, Valeriy,

arrived soon after
graduating from university.

We immediately loved Pripyat

from the first sight...

...because the architecture and

the layout of this city was very,

I would say, for that time,
very modern.

Very nice squares and boulevards.

This new Soviet city

was an enticing utopia,

created for just one purpose.

Pripyat is the city of

the nuclear workers

for the Chernobyl Power Plant.

The Chernobyl Power Plant,

known in Ukrainian as Chornobyl,

was just 2km from Pripyat.

Two reactors went online in 1977.

Alla Kravchuk's father, Volodymyr,

helped build two more,
in the early '80s.

He was the building engineer,

so he would calculate the structure.

He would then observe it

being built correctly.

It was new.

It was clean energy.

It was built with latest technology.

It had fantastic future.

Of course, you would be
proud of being involved.

Much of this historic footage

has been preserved by
Oleksandr Syrota.

Now a journalist, in 1986,

he was a nine-year-old
Pripyat schoolboy.

You can say that the key

element of the nuclear power plant

is the nuclear fuel,

and you will be right.

But I would say, as a chemist,

the main element of
the nuclear power plant,

it is water,
because water is a coolant.

Oleksii Breus was a reactor operator
for Unit 4.

Dad explained that there were
going to be three levels of safety.

If one of the safety
systems did not work,

it immediately sparks
the next, and so on.

And, um, there was no concern.

We trusted the safety. We did.

Overnight,
on Friday, the 25th of April,

plant operators
planned a safety test

to coincide with routine maintenance

on Reactor Unit 4.

As Friday ticked into Saturday,

Halyna arrived at the plant.

SHE CHUCKLES

And I have suspicions

that my wife will come back.

I heard... steps...

...and, "Oh!

"Welcome back. Congratulations.
Happy birthday." OK.

Pripyat surgeon Dr Oleksandr Bugar
was also fast asleep.

Five hours after
Chernobyl's reactor exploded,

in nearby Pripyat, no-one yet

knew there was a problem.

It was a normal school day
for Oleksandr Syrota.

Reactor operator Oleksii Breus
was due on shift at Unit 4.

Chernobyl chemist Valeriy Sulimov

was preparing
for his wife Halyna's birthday.

In the morning, when I woke up,

I decided to go to the local market

to buy something for the party.

But then I saw my friend and,

"Oh... Did you hear?

"The plant, it is exploding."

"No, you are joking.
You are kidding me.

"It is impossible,
because it is impossible."

And he told me,

"There is no Reactor Unit 4.

"The northern and south walls

"are destroyed completely.

"It is a fire there."

"Ooh, holy shit!"

The explosion had ripped
Reactor 4 open,

exposing its radioactive core.

A lot of nuclear materials

and fission isotopes

went to atmosphere.

Even the parts of

the nuclear rods were dispersed

nearby the Unit 4.

At the hospital,

Dr Oleksandr Bugar did all he
could for Volodymyr Shashenok.

Firefighters, who'd been battling
the blaze, arrived at the hospital.

While fire raged on the roof,

reactor operator Oleksii Breus

was down below, trying to cool

the overheating fuel.

This melted nuclear fuel has
approximately 2,000 degrees Celsius

and easily can go through

the concrete steel

under the reactor.

The molten core was now blasting

radiation in all directions.

And, yet, in nearby Pripyat,

shops and schools
were still open as usual.

The first day, on Saturday 26th,

it was, I would say, silent

from the local authority.

Even from the top level

of the government of the
Soviet Union, complete silence.

And the Soviet authorities

wanted to keep it that way.

Each telephone of
the private citizens were cut,

disconnected from the network,

to avoid spread of
information out of Pripyat.

At the Chernobyl Power Plant,

more than 24 hours
after the explosion,

workers like Oleksii Breus

were still struggling to cool
the molten reactor core.

Heavily-contaminated steam

and debris were blowing from

the burning reactor,

triggering desperate attempts
to smother it.

As the helicopters circled,

the Soviet government maintained
its total information blackout.

Alla Kravchuk was in Kyiv,
with her father,

Volodymyr, who had helped
to build the reactor.

When the accident has happened,
nobody was informed.

We arrived to the bus station.

It's a big, huge place.

Completely deserted.

No people, no buses.

And Dad went to the information desk
to find out what's happening.

He was told that
there would be no buses today,

because all the transport
was sent to Pripyat.

There was some kind of accident.

And, um, I remember my dad
going white in colour.

He said, "What kind of accident
needs that many

"transportation forces?"

"Oh, they have to evacuate
the town."

That's when he realised

something serious has happened.

Few knew just how serious.

Nearly 36 hours after the explosion,

local officials finally ordered
the evacuation.

And at 2pm, sharp,

I don't know how many buses

run to each building.

And so, we collected

what they suggested,

and my daughter and my wife

went to evacuation.

Leaving a handful of plant workers

like Valeriy behind,

Pripyat's citizens
were forced to flee.

In maybe two hours,

50,000 Pripyat citizens
were evacuated.

The evacuees had no idea

where they were going

or if they would ever be back.

Meanwhile, the authorities continued

to hide the disaster from

the Soviet people and the world.

We were monitoring in Sweden
at seven, eight stations around,

and we had one monitor
up close to our lab.

Nuclear scientist Lars-Erik De Geer

worked for Sweden's
Ministry of Defence,

keeping watch for
illegal nuclear weapons tests.

I was excited by working with
disarmament on nuclear weapons.

I used to say that we could measure
just one atom in a room.

Two days after
the Chernobyl explosion,

Sweden's Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant

reported unusually high
radiation readings.

Monday, the 28th of April, 1986,

I was sick, so I was in bed,

and I heard on the radio that
something had happened at Forsmark.

Immediately, I had to
redefine myself as non-sick.

Lars-Erik's colleague
Ingemar Vintersved

was already checking
one of their air filters.

On my way from Stockholm
Central Station to the laboratory,

I changed the filter

and put it on a detector and, wow,

we had a signal that was
100,000 to one million

higher than we ever had collected.

I called Ingemar and I said, "I'll
come in to the lab immediately."

I could see the radionuclides

appearing was something that

could not have come from
a nuclear explosion.

It must have come from
a nuclear reactor.

At Forsmark, they do have portals,
where they look if people

are radioactive,
who leave the reactors...

...but after a while,
they found that people arriving

were the most radioactive ones.

Higher radiation levels outside

Forsmark meant contamination

must have blown there

from somewhere else.

We had always,

from the
Swedish Meteorological Institute,

information on, every day,

from where the air had come,

so it took a quarter of an hour

to determine something must have

happened in the Soviet Union.

The Swedish government

confronted officials in Moscow.

Meanwhile, Ingemar revealed

the shocking news to the media.

I gave an interview

at four o'clock in the afternoon.

Apparently, Reuters

said that I had suggested
that this is an accident

in the former Soviet Union.

Moscow still denied everything,

but American-funded radio

was breaking through
the Iron Curtain.

They reported that
Swedish monitoring station

reported about the rising of
the radiation in the atmosphere.

Nearly 72 hours after the accident,

the Soviets responded with this

deliberately vague announcement.

OVER RADIO: An accident has occurred
at the Chernobyl atomic power plant,

as one of the atomic
reactors was damaged.

Measures are being undertaken

to eliminate
the consequences of the accident.

Aid is being given
to those affected.

The truth was not containable,

because as much as you wanted
this accident to be a secret,

the world began to realise
that something is happening

and, uh, the world
began to be suspicious.

In the UK, on the evening of

Monday, the 28th of April,

Dr Alan Flowers had just finished
a lecture in London

on nuclear power plant safety.

Monday evening, I would often,
at the end of my lecture classes,

go out to my car
and listen to the Six O'Clock News.

Put the car radio on,

they summed up by saying,

the Soviet Union had admitted...

...there'd been an accident at
the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

The first reaction is,

this has to be big.

An accident where radioactivity
is reaching Sweden,

that is a significant accident.

If this had reached Sweden,

the radiation has every possibility

to reach the UK.

Fear of radiation was spreading

across the world. But at the plant,

a new crisis was looming.

So you've got two big things
going on -

radioactivity dispersing
through the atmosphere,

so it's going to be global,

because this is going to cross

the borders of the Soviet Union.

And at the same time, you've got

local issues of controlling

a nuclear reaction that is

out of control.

Very high temperature
molten material,

and the worry about, well,
where is this going to go?

Is it going to burn its way
down into the ground?

Four days after the explosion,

Unit 4's molten core WAS burning down

through concrete and steel,

towards a cooling pond.

And what the danger
of this situation?

If the melted nuclear fuel

comes to the water,

it will cause another
and more powerful explosion.

Burning hot fuel would instantly
vaporise the water,

blasting thousands of tonnes
of radioactive steam

and debris into the sky.

Three people from

Chernobyl Power Plant,

two engineers

and Boris Baranov -

he was shift supervisor,

I knew him very well -

they said, "OK,

"we will try to open valves
to drain water,

"to prevent the reaction of
the molten fuel with water."

In the full darkness,

they succeeded to find the wells

and open several of them.

And in maybe hours,

the water drained completely.

After this, uh,

I would say, heroic action, they

ruined the more powerful explosion.

A far greater catastrophe
had been prevented,

but there was no stopping
the radiation,

already high in the sky.

The radioactivity
that has gone into the atmosphere,

that is at extremely high levels.

You can't see it.
It doesn't glow or anything.

It's travelling in the atmosphere.

It's dropping down on the ground.

And there was some diffusion
to the south,

and to the great city of Kyiv,

with a population around
three million.

Alla Kravchuk was living in Kyiv,
with her parents.

Kyiv was only 167km away, so it was

exposed to danger any time.

I remember washing the floor
every day,

keeping the windows closed.

The streets in Kyiv were washed

every morning, before people enter.

There would be a big machine

driving and spraying the water.

It was difficult to grasp

the size of the disaster.

It was something
which was not visible,

but everybody felt it.

The invisible cloud of
radioactive debris

continued to spread across Europe.

The Friday after the accident,

the 2nd of May, I have a lasting

memory of the morning papers.

There was the banner headline,

"Death Cloud Approaches Britain".

It took around about six days before

the radioactivity reached the UK.

MAN WHISTLES AND SHOUTS

More than 2,000km west of Kyiv,

Glyn Roberts had only recently
settled his family

on their sheep farm.

We had the tenancy of this farm
in 1984, eh?

I heard about Chernobyl
the next day, on the news,

but at that time, we hadn't got
any idea of the implications

that would have on
agriculture and us

in Wales, because it was
such a long way from here.

But in early May, heavy rain

brought the radioactive fallout
crashing to Earth.

In the night that
the Chernobyl fallout came over,

it was a very misty,

warm, drizzly night.

I remember about four or five of us

standing in that drizzly rain.

That contaminated drizzle
was soaking Glyn

and the fields on which
his sheep were grazing.

The concern was that caesium
and iodine, and things like that,

would be taken up in the foodstuff.

The responsibility was to protect
the whole population.

And the risk that a few people
in the population shall die

if they did eat everything
of that...

...was real.

HE WHISTLES

I was, I remember, in the mart,

selling some lambs,
when the announcement

came over from the Government

saying that we, as farmers,
would not sell

the product if there were
any caesium in the meat.

But they didn't realise
the implications

that had on the farmer himself,

because they couldn't sell
their animals.

The restrictions remained in place

for more than two decades,

and signalled that the Chernobyl
disaster had become a global crisis,

even hijacking
President Reagan's state visit

with President Suharto, of Indonesia.

MAN: Mr President,
what do you know new about

the Soviet nuclear accident?

I don't think we have
any information

that isn't available to the public.

Are the Soviets telling us all
we need to know about it, sir?

Well...

...they're usually a little
close-mouthed about

things... Would you rather...
...and this is no exception.

Would you rather hear more
from Mr Gorbachev?

Yes, I think it would be helpful.

This was the first time where
the Russians' lies didn't function,

because they couldn't deny that
something had happened when we could

read it in the atmosphere.

Cover-up or not, the race was now on

to understand just how dangerous
this disaster was.

People in the path of
the radioactivity outside

the Soviet Union - through the
media and the free information

that was available -
very quickly got to know

what the situation was.

But the Soviet state

continued to conceal the truth

from its own citizens.

The Soviets, of course, knew that

you could say nothing
to the people -

say, it's all right,
carry on as normal -

and the people weren't going to see
anything out of the ordinary.

So you could get away with
this fooling the public,

except in the very close,

high-activity area around the plant.

People realised
things were going wrong.

At very high levels,
you get a reddening on the skin.

You also get sick very rapidly.

The danger could no longer be denied.

The authorities set an exclusion zone

30km around the plant.

More than 100,000 people

had now been forced to leave.

Dr Bugar's parents had no idea
if he was dead or alive.

Oleksandr Syrota had fled
to Kyiv with his mother.

The evacuees had packed
for three days,

but there seemed little chance
of returning.

An army of decontamination workers,
known as liquidators,

was moving into the exclusion zone.

There was a monumental effort
from the liquidators.

So you're talking over 100,000

workers that were putting on
protective clothing,

and they were tasked with
cleaning up as much of the fallout,

the debris, that they could find.

They were washing the radioactivity

off the roofs of houses

and then turning over the soil.

If you've got about

10cm, 15cm of soil

over the top of the radioactivity,

that would at least contribute
a degree of shielding.

Back at Ground Zero,

the wreckage of Unit 4

wouldn't be buried so easily.

The nuclear material from the core

is very, very dangerous to approach

or even to spend any time
looking at.

It is an incredibly
radioactive structure.

It was like a ghost town.

The group was told not to step on

the grass, not to touch the trees.

My insider at Chernobyl plant

showed me the picture, and I saw

the Russian tanks

on the square.

RAPID GUNFIRE

If you were
going to attack

the Chernobyl site,
you would attack

the jewel in the crown
of the Chernobyl site,

which is the New Safe Confinement.

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