All language subtitles for Chernobyl The Lost Tapes (2022).EN

("Swan Lake Op.20, Act II:
Dance of the Cygnets" playing)

It does now seem like

that sometime
in the last couple of days

there's been perhaps
the worst accident

in the short history

of the world's nuclear
power industry.

In Moscow, Western diplomats
have spent the day

trying to get more information

about the accident
with no success.

A zone with a 19-mile
radius around Chernobyl

remains a poisoned
no man's land.

Soviet television tonight
accused the western media

of spreading
slanderous inventions

about the Chernobyl accident.

It's now clear
that the Soviet Union

has suffered
one of the worst disasters

in the history
of nuclear power.

Massive quantities
of radiation

have apparently been
released in an accident

at the Chernobyl Power Station
in the Ukraine.

The Soviet version is this,

one of the atomic reactors

at the Chernobyl
Atomic Power Plant

in the city of Kyiv was damaged

and there is speculation
in Moscow

that people were injured
and may have died.

The Soviets may have
been fairly quick

to acknowledge the accident

because evidence in the form
of mild and nuclear radiation

have already reached beyond
the Soviet borders

to Scandinavia.

There are indications

the accident
could have happened

several days ago.

It would take that long

for radiation to drift
to Scandinavia

and to make
the political decision

to announce it.

You can be sure

that the decision to,
to disclose

was made
at the very highest level,

undoubtedly by
Gorbachev himself.

The Soviet press is paying

signally little attention
to the disaster.

Newspapers carry only

the brief
official announcement

inconspicuously placed.

People have noticed
the small paragraph

but seemed unaware
of the potential dangers.

People in the cities,
towns, and villages

of the Ukraine

just haven't been told

what dangers they may face.

On the eve of
the Seven Nation Summit in Tokyo

both Mrs. Thatcher
and President Reagan

have urged the Russians
to say more about Chernobyl.

Meeting with
Italy's Premier Craxi,

Mr. Reagan was demanding
answers from the Russians.

Come forward and tell everybody
exactly what happened.

You can hardly call this kind of
an accident an internal affair

when other countries
are threatened

with the fallout of ra...

dangerous radioactivity.

A report in this morning's

Communist party
newspaper "Pravda"

indicates that the fire
at the power station

still may not have been put out

ten days after it started.

The newspaper says
there was an explosion

followed by two fires
at the plant.

Brian Hanrahan:
The "Pravda" pays tribute
to the firemen whose efforts

it says limited the scale
of the damage considerably.

"Brave bold men"
it calls them,

fighting courageously,

hardly able to breathe
for soot and smoke,

their boots
sticking in the asphalt

melted by
the high temperatures.

Diplomat:
As an American
I'm very privileged

to be able to represent

in the Soviet Union
the concern of Americans.

We have agreed

to a joint
Soviet-American effort
in this regard.

Until the accident,
there were 50 nuclear reactors

operating in the Soviet Union

generating 11%
of that nation's electricity.

Most of the larger
Soviet plants

differ in design
from US reactors.

The major difference is

most Soviet nuclear plants
do not have

containment buildings,

the thick concrete
dome structures

Americans are used to seeing
built around US reactors.

When the worst American
nuclear accident occurred

at Three Mile Island,

most leaking radiation
was kept inside

the containment building.

If as seems to be the case
there was no containment

around the reactor
as is the general--

Interviewer:
Can we be sure of that?
What do you--

I do not, I do not know.

Interviewer:
Do you think there's
a containment building?

I don't think that there is
a containment building

because the policy of
Soviet atomic constructors

was that the reactor's
absolutely safe

and so there is no need to have
this kind of precaution

because it indicate
possibility of disaster

which Russian always
con-considered,

uh, absolutely impossible.

So going to be clear about this,
you're, you're going

as far as to say you think it
almost certain or just probable

there was no protective shield
around this reactor

which appears to have
melted down?

No, I think that
there is no protection,

protection shield
around this reactor's

certainly the case,

because the building
as such indicate

that there is no shield.

Walter Patterson, if that is so,

what is the danger to life?

Well, obviously if radioactivity
got as far as Scandinavia,

how long, however long
it took to get there,

a great deal must have escaped
close to the site.

(marching band music
playing on TV)

What has been remarkable
is how much the Soviet people

in spite of all the evidence
still seem to be believing

the fairy stories the government
is still telling them.

It could be argued, Martin,

that only the Soviet Union
could have kept a lid

on what might have been
a situation of public panic,

only a totalitarian state
could have got away with it.

I'm not sure they have
got away with it.

Sunday's outbreak of fighting

is only the latest
in four months of violence

in the tiny
Caucasian republic of Georgia.

Spasms of unrest
in the Soviet Union

were felt
in the southern republics

of Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The rebellion against
Communist authority

has now spread

and there's almost certainly
more trouble to come.

The decision to send in troops

was taken by
President Gorbachev.

("Swan Lake Op.20, Act II:
Dance of the Cygnets" playing)