Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00April 25, 1986. Pripyat, the city of nuclear workers, three kilometers from the Chernobyl
00:12nuclear power plant. In a few days, the city's amusement park will be opened. On May 1st,
00:19one of the most important holidays of the Soviet Union.
00:49No one suspects that in 24 hours, the world will be a different place.
00:561986. The Chernobyl disaster. The end of all illusions about nuclear power.
01:27How does the accident at the power plant happen? Why is Moscow silent? And what is being covered
01:34up to this day? The search for the truth. Chernobyl. Utopia in flames.
01:42At that time, the young nuclear engineer, Alexei Breus, lived in this apartment block
01:58in Pripyat. Here, on April 25, 1986, he met his friend and colleague, Leonid Topdunov,
02:06for the last time.
02:30Alexei Breus has never been able to come to terms with the fate of Chernobyl and that
02:34of his friend, Leonid Topdunov.
02:55On this day, April 25th, a safety test is planned for Unit 4. The simulation of a power
03:03failure, followed by reactor shutdown and maintenance.
03:12So it wasn't, you know, an outrageous experiment. It was a scheduled test. It was a relatively
03:17normal, you know, test that they should have done a long time ago.
03:25The immediate test was postponed one more time because the dispatch service in Kiev
03:31said that they needed more electricity and they did not authorize the shutdown of the
03:35reactor when it had been originally planned.
03:40On April 25th, the safety test is repeatedly postponed. Until the night shift of reactor
03:47operator, Leonid Topdunov.
04:01Leonid Topdunov's shift begins here, exactly at midnight on April 26th, 1986, a night that
04:16will change the world.
04:31Boris Stolyarchuk was working at the desk next to Topdunov at the time. Stolyarchuk
04:38is one of the few who survived that night in Unit 4.
05:08From control room number four, the young team oversees one of the most powerful nuclear
05:15reactors in the world, an RBMK reactor. The RBMK is the pride and joy of the Soviet nuclear
05:22industry.
05:53In the mighty reactor core, almost 12 meters in diameter, steam is generated in some 1,700
06:01pressure tubes for the turbines, which are heated by uranium. Hundreds of graphite blocks
06:22delay billions of neutrons for the controlled nuclear chain reaction.
06:30The 211 control rods can be used to increase or decrease reactor power. Its small scale
06:36design makes the RBMK difficult to control. There are numerous serious incidents, all
06:42of which remain top secret.
07:00Even after more severe reactor accidents, such as in Leningrad in 1975 or in Chernobyl
07:13on Unit 1 in 1982, there is no exchange of information.
07:29In the Soviet Union, there was no such kind of knowledge transfer.
07:34In the Soviet Union, there was no such kind of knowledge transfer.
08:00At this console, at five minutes past midnight on April 26, 1986, Leonid Toptunov begins
08:13to reduce the power of the reactor to 700 megawatts. This is the target value for the
08:21safety test. Under his guidance are the 211 control rods in the reactor.
08:30The control rods are made of boron carbide, a neutron interceptor.
08:39The rods are lowered into the reactor to slow down the atomic activity.
09:00The aim is to keep the power in the reactor uniform. Toptunov can track the position of
09:07the 211 control rods on countless instruments. But what he cannot see is where and at what
09:14power level there is nuclear activity in the reactor.
09:37Toptunov has a huge reactor.
09:42Nuclear reactors are designed to operate at one level and forever. I mean, you know, as
09:49long as their fuel lasts and then they get shut down. Startup and shutdown are critical
09:54phases, always, in any reactor. So that was a critical phase.
10:01When Toptunov approaches the target of 700 megawatts, the reactor's output suddenly plummets.
10:10Toptunov tries to stabilize the reactor again manually. He does not succeed.
10:18The output drops further, to just 30 megawatts. The reactor is virtually cold.
10:26It is 38 minutes past midnight. An alarm sounds in the control room, but the crew is not worried.
10:36The uncontrolled drop in reactor power is nothing unusual for the nuclear technicians.
10:43Toptunov explains how he noticed the drop in reactor power.
11:14The test that the young team is conducting is supervised by Anatoly Dyatlov, the deputy
11:36chief engineer of the nuclear power plant.
11:40Dyatlov instructs Toptunov to increase the power again, to the target test rate of 700
11:47megawatts.
11:50Toptunov finally relents. He is the lowest-ranking worker in the control room, and Dyatlov is
11:57his superior.
12:27Toptunov explains how he noticed the drop in reactor power.
12:58Toptunov is under time pressure. To reignite the nuclear chain reaction, he pulls the control
13:07rods out of the reactor core. But the power barely increases. The reactor is contaminated
13:14with xenon-135. Xenon is a neutron poison that is produced during nuclear fission. At
13:22high power, it burns up. At low power, like now, it does not.
13:30Only after 25 minutes, when Toptunov has pulled nearly all control rods out of the reactor,
13:37is 200 megawatts reached. It is 1.03 a.m.
13:42Dyatlov now decides to carry out the safety test. Toptunov stabilizes the reactor at about
13:49200 megawatts, far from the planned 700 megawatts.
13:56This is the culture of deadline, right? Because that's how you are punished and how you are
14:05awarded in the Soviet system. The key thing is to do that on time and report about that.
14:13And you do whatever it takes to get there. This is a very, very Soviet feature.
14:44And everything was fine.
14:53In the following 36 seconds, the crew performs the test.
14:58They disconnect the external power supply. The emergency power generator switches on.
15:05The generator takes over the control of the reactor and the cooling circuit.
15:1136 seconds after the test begins, the emergency generator supplies power to the reactor.
15:18The test is a success.
15:28What the team doesn't know for certain is the status of the reactor.
15:34It has been running at low power for one and a half hours.
15:39In this state, it is particularly difficult to control.
15:43That's due to the measurement system.
15:47In normal operation at full power, it measures in 12 zones of the reactor and works reliably.
15:55But at low power, as now, the RBMK only measures in 6 zones.
16:02Less power means less information.
16:05And the measurements regarding the atomic activity in the reactor become inaccurate.
16:12In addition, the mainframe computer calculations often take 20 to 30 minutes.
16:21Real-time data from inside the reactor is not available to the team.
16:33This is one of the factors why the team stumbled into this accident unknowingly.
16:43They were not aware of the danger they were in and of the danger this reactor was already in.
16:53Unnoticed by the crew, the nuclear activity rises sharply, especially in the lower half of the reactor.
17:01Nearly all the control rods had been pulled.
17:05The reactor is de facto left to its own devices.
17:13Not suspecting anything, Toptunov presses AZ-5, the full shutdown button for scheduled maintenance.
17:21The reactor quickly shuts down.
17:24The seconds that follow lead to disaster.
17:31The 211 control rods now enter the reactor to actually stifle the nuclear chain reaction.
17:40But the graphite at the control rod tips can even ignite the nuclear chain reaction briefly.
17:46This is exactly what is happening now.
18:01Steam bubbles develop in the pressure tubes.
18:05This is a fatal effect that only exists in the RBMK, the so-called positive void effect.
18:13More vapor bubbles lead to more neutrons.
18:17This means more nuclear fission, more power, more heat and again more steam.
18:23Within fractions of a second, the power increases exponentially.
18:28The reactor becomes almost as hot as the surface of the sun, about 3500 degrees.
18:34The nuclear chain reaction in Unit 4 veers out of control.
18:39With nuclear energy, we deal really with the nuclear roulette.
18:46We are really gambling, because we are dealing with new technologies
18:52and it's imperfect like any other.
18:56We are dealing with new technologies and it's imperfect like any other.
19:04And it's imperfect like any other creation of a human mind.
19:16At 1.23 and 49 seconds, the reactor explodes.
19:33At 1.23 and 49 seconds, the reactor explodes.
19:47It was an indescribable sound, as it seemed to me,
19:52these are my subjective feelings, of the main concrete structures.
19:57It was an absolutely terrible sound of the exploding concrete.
20:02Immediately after that, the ventilation on the control panel sucked up the dust,
20:09in the form of fog, so to speak.
20:19Three seconds later, a second explosion occurs.
20:23When I looked at the control panel after the second explosion,
20:30I saw that all the mechanisms were in place.
20:33Everyone else, just like me, stood in silence, in a daze,
20:38looking at their controllers and, if I may say so, did not understand what was going on,
20:43just as I did not believe my eyes.
20:54There was no concept that a reactor could explode.
20:59That was just beyond imagination.
21:03Melting down, maybe.
21:06Even then, the entire reactor melting down, that was something that happened,
21:10maybe in the West, right, but never here.
21:12This could never happen in the Soviet Union.
21:17The power fails throughout the entire unit.
21:20Stoyachuk heads to the emergency control room with shift supervisor Akimov.
21:50Akimov speaks in Russian.
22:21Boris Stoyachuk is one of the few on site who realizes what is now happening.
22:26The fission products of the nuclear chain reaction are escaping into the night,
22:32ionizing radiation, radioactive emissions.
22:36The radioactive particle cloud is now in the atmosphere.
22:42The city built especially for the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
22:46It is 1.30 a.m. The city is asleep.
22:50Nobody notices the disaster.
22:53The city's chief architect, Maria Protsenko, is still awake.
22:57I came home late from work.
23:00While I was doing something, I heard a loud bang.
23:04I thought it was a bomb.
23:08I came home late from work.
23:10While I was doing something, while I was feeding them, while they were sleeping,
23:16I had another task.
23:18My friend, Tatiana, her music teacher,
23:24gave birth to her first child on the 25th.
23:28She gave birth to a girl,
23:30and then they named this girl after me, Masha, Maria.
23:35Maria Protsenko is supposed to call the friend's mother
23:39to deliver the joyful news of her first grandchild.
23:42The mother lives far away in Kazakhstan,
23:45but the operator-controlled telephone connection is delayed for hours.
23:51It was 2 a.m., and my husband shouted,
23:54How long are you going to be there?
23:58It's time to sleep.
24:00I said, now.
24:02It was at night. It was already, let's say, the 26th.
24:16I came out and thought, there was some strange noise.
24:19Cars were going back and forth.
24:21There was a signal.
24:23It was 1 a.m.
24:25It was 2 a.m.
24:27I listened and watched.
24:29It was a quiet, warm night.
24:32Like a Ukrainian night.
24:34It was quiet, like Gogol's.
24:36A quiet Ukrainian night.
24:52I'm picking you up.
24:54I'm picking you up.
24:56I'm picking you up.
24:58I'm picking you up.
25:15I was walking slowly down the alley
25:18towards the medical unit.
25:20It was a 1.5 km walk.
25:23The only thing I noticed was that the sky was black,
25:26and where the medical unit was,
25:28there was a crimson glow.
25:33And the birds stopped singing.
25:36Out of nowhere.
25:41On his short way there,
25:43Alexander Bugar passes by the Pripyat city administration.
25:48I noticed that the city administration,
25:52the city executive committee,
25:54was lit up on the 4th floor.
25:56This floor was the KGB department.
26:01The city administration was not lit up anywhere,
26:04but the KGB windows were lit up.
26:08I thought, the guys were working.
26:10I wondered why.
26:14When the young doctor arrives at the hospital,
26:16his boss takes him aside.
26:47If God would have allowed it,
26:49what would have happened?
26:51It was April 26,
26:53maybe 1.45 a.m.
27:01I immediately thought,
27:03I'm 25.
27:05What for?
27:07I've just started.
27:09Everything is fine.
27:11I wanted to call my parents and tell them I was alive.
27:14But this thought did not come to me.
27:20Three kilometers from the hospital,
27:22a nuclear inferno.
27:25The reactor building of Unit 4 has been torn apart,
27:28the roof destroyed.
27:31Fires blaze on the roof of the neighboring turbine hall,
27:34where the turbines and generators are located.
27:40Peter Khmel from the city fire brigade
27:42is one of the first to arrive on the scene.
28:12There were blocks,
28:14the stairs, the cells were torn apart.
28:25I was walking in my boots,
28:27and there was a little bit of...
28:31resin,
28:33it was warm,
28:35it stuck to my boots.
28:39Lying all around the firefighting team
28:42is burning material from the reactor,
28:45radioactive graphite and uranium.
29:08My consciousness is weak,
29:10I feel nauseous,
29:12I feel nauseous.
29:14I say,
29:16if you feel sick,
29:18go down the stairs.
29:26Machine oil from the gigantic generators
29:28is burning in the turbine hall.
29:31The fire threatens to spread to Unit 3.
29:34The men and women of Unit 4
29:36are battling the blaze on their own.
29:39These were heroic deeds,
29:41what they did there,
29:43because they succeeded.
29:45They actually managed
29:47to isolate the damaged plant
29:49from the other blocks.
29:51And that only happened
29:53because people used
29:55enormous amounts of radiation,
29:57and for that they paid with their lives.
30:03By this time,
30:05the Soviet secret service KGB
30:07has already cut telephone lines
30:09in the city,
30:11except for the secret lines
30:13of the nuclear industry.
30:17Sergei Parashin
30:19is party leader
30:21of the nuclear power plant.
30:23He represents the Communist Party
30:25and is as powerful
30:27as the director of Chernobyl.
30:35By the tone of the telephone operator
30:37and by the tone of my wife,
30:39I realized that something
30:41extraordinary had happened.
30:43So, without asking
30:45additional questions,
30:47I rushed to the station.
30:51Around 2 a.m.,
30:53the power plant management
30:55gathers in the facility's bunker,
30:57about one kilometer away
30:59from the accident site.
31:01The bunker is located
31:03in the administration building,
31:05shielded by thick steel doors
31:07intended in case
31:09of a nuclear conflict.
31:11The secret telephone line
31:13to Moscow is in place.
31:34No one in the bunker
31:36can believe that the reactor
31:38no longer exists.
32:03Everywhere in the Soviet Union,
32:05in all plant lines,
32:07there is a so-called fogging tactic.
32:09Power plant management
32:11orders the crew on Unit 4
32:13to follow standard procedure.
32:15Open the cooling water valves,
32:17cool the reactor.
32:19But from the control room
32:21this is no longer possible.
32:23The valve's control system
32:25has been destroyed.
32:27The young reactor operator
32:29Leonid Toptunov is called upon
32:31to leave the radiation-protected
32:33control room.
32:51Leonid Toptunov sets off
32:53with his shift supervisor
32:55to the emergency valves
32:57in the catacombs of the reactor.
32:59The power has failed.
33:01With great difficulty,
33:03they manage to open one valve
33:05after the other, but to no avail.
33:07After an inspection round,
33:09Deputy Chief Engineer
33:11Anatoly Dyatlov returns
33:13to the control room.
33:15He was also in the turbine hall.
33:29The power has failed.
33:31Apparently,
33:33both physically
33:35and morally.
33:43Toptunov
33:45has returned.
33:47I don't remember
33:49exactly,
33:51around 4 or 5.
33:53He was in a state of
33:55nausea,
33:57not even nausea,
33:59but vomiting,
34:01redness.
34:03He was in such a state
34:05that there is nothing to compare it with.
34:07It was as if
34:09he had sunburned
34:11and was very nauseous.
34:13Several times
34:15he had already
34:17pulled us out,
34:19and there was nothing
34:21left
34:23except for the insides.
34:28This drawing shows
34:30Toptunov on the night of the catastrophe.
34:32He is standing
34:34in the radioactive water
34:36of ruptured cooling pipes.
34:38When one
34:40of the dosimetrists
34:42told me
34:44the level of radiation,
34:46I didn't believe him.
34:48The level was very high.
34:50He was shaking
34:52from overexcitation.
34:54It was not even clear
34:56why he was so stressed.
34:58He was all sweaty.
35:00The levels of radiation
35:02that they measured
35:04everywhere,
35:06all of their
35:08typical machines
35:10were constantly maxed out.
35:12They didn't even have
35:14instruments to
35:16accurately measure
35:18the huge levels of radiation
35:20that they were operating in.
35:22The invisible
35:24radioactive emissions
35:26begin to have their effect.
35:28The men inhale particles
35:30of alpha radiation.
35:32It attacks the lungs
35:36and
35:38the digestive system.
35:42Beta radiation
35:44burns the skin.
35:52Around 5 a.m.,
35:54the power plant management
35:56orders the Deputy Chief Engineer
35:58Anatoly Dyatlov
36:00to the bunker
36:02hundreds of meters away.
36:22I went to work.
36:26I jumped out into the street.
36:32I was put in an ambulance
36:34and taken to the hospital.
36:46In the bunker,
36:48there is still confusion
36:50about the possibility of destruction
36:52of Unit 4.
36:54Even hours after the explosion,
36:56power plant management
36:58still does not dare
37:00to think the unthinkable,
37:02to address the dangers
37:04and draw consequences.
37:08It was impossible
37:10to imagine that the reactor
37:12was destroyed.
37:14This idea
37:16appeared gradually
37:18until
37:20around 4-5 p.m.,
37:22when we realized
37:24that something
37:26had happened
37:28to the reactor.
37:30Before that,
37:32we had completely different
37:34assumptions.
37:36We were discussing
37:38all kinds of violations,
37:40but no one could imagine
37:42that the reactor had exploded.
37:44The reactor did not explode.
37:46It was the first time in the world.
37:48So it did not work out
37:50in our consciousness.
38:08It's very easy to fall
38:10into the state of denial
38:12because you exploded the world.
38:16And you tried to do
38:18whatever you can.
38:20And once you
38:22already
38:24overcame your state
38:26of denial,
38:28going and
38:30telling your bosses
38:32that that's what happened on my watch,
38:34the
38:36responsibility in terms of
38:38career, in terms of your future freedom,
38:40political responsibility
38:42when you get to the upper,
38:44upper level.
38:46So there are at least three levels
38:48that stay
38:50between you and
38:52the word
38:54reactor is gone.
39:02The hospital in Pripyat is
39:04filling up with the injured from the nuclear
39:06power plant.
39:08Alexander Bugar's first patient
39:10is turbine worker Vladimir Shashinok
39:12from Unit 4.
39:42Music
39:44Music
40:12Music
40:42Music
40:46Dr. Bugar cannot save
40:48turbine worker Shashinok.
40:50He dies in the early hours.
40:52Rumors begin
40:54circulating in Pripyat,
40:56the town near the nuclear power plant.
40:58In the morning,
41:00Pripyat's chief architect
41:02Maria Protsenko meets
41:04with her neighbours.
41:12I said, if it was serious, I would have already been at work.
41:20They said, we don't know how serious it is, but we decided to chase Shidkov.
41:27And we already poured you, we knew that you would go down.
41:37It is the morning of April 26, 1986.
41:41Outside Chernobyl, people are at the start of a sunny April weekend, not suspecting anything.
41:50And they will not know what happened in Chernobyl for a long time.
41:55One thousand kilometers from Chernobyl, nuclear engineer Nikolai Steinberg begins his shift at a nuclear power plant in the Russian Soviet Republic.
42:11Steinberg is a Chernobyl first responder, having helped build Chernobyl.
42:17He begins the day with a morning telephone briefing, actually routine.
42:23Then he hears the disturbing news.
42:54There is data that two people have died and negotiations are prohibited.
43:02We also called other power plants.
43:08And everyone confirms, the negotiations are closed, there is no information.
43:12This means that the famous secrecy system has already taken effect, and no one should know anything.
43:26About the same time, at 8 in the morning on April 26, 1986,
43:31nuclear engineer Alexey Breos is riding a bus to his workplace at Unit 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
43:43Someone knocked on the bus window and said, there is something wrong with the unit.
43:48Then I turned my head and saw that the upper part of the unit was gone.
43:52And this is the moment, I remember all my life, when my hair literally turned white.
43:57This is a very strong emotional shock, so to speak.
44:03Despite everything, Alexey Breos will fulfill his duty today.
44:13Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
44:18The reactor was damaged, I did not want to believe that the reactor was damaged.
44:23I just could not believe it, although I walked through the territory of the plant
44:29and stepped over the debris of graphite that was thrown out of the reactor.
44:33I thought it was probably concrete, pieces of concrete,
44:39but I did not believe that it was from the reactor.
44:45Thousands of employees of the nuclear power plant start their shift,
44:49the first morning after the Chernobyl disaster.
45:08Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant