National Geographic Documentary 2014 What Really Happened at Chernobyl Full Documentary HD 1

the devastation caused by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl is well known but the full story of the massive effort to contain the disaster has never been told

more than half a million Soviet men and women risked everything and thousands ultimately sacrificed their lives in a desperate struggle to prevent a far greater catastrophe a

second explosion ten times more powerful than Hiroshima that could have wiped out half of Europe this is the heroic and tragic story of the Battle of Chernobyl

Friday April 25th 1986 a beautiful spring day for the 43,000 inhabitants of

Pripyat in the Ukraine a day that will remain forever engraved in their memory less than two miles from the city the vladimir Ilyich Lenin nuclear power

plant where several thousand people go to work each day tonight the 176 employees of block 4 have been ordered to carry out a test on a self fueling system of the reactor

something that could save energy at 1:23 a.m. the security systems are deactivated and the experiment begins

a series of detonations go off in the core of the reactor while Pripyat sleeps peacefully the floor of the plant begins to tremble

the 12-hundred ton cover of the reactor suddenly blasts into the air an ultra powerful stream of radioactive vapor releases uranium and graphite over

hundreds of yards around the plant from the gaping hole a spray of fire charged with radioactive particles and fusion shoots more than 3000 feet into

the sky the most serious nuclear accident in history has just taken place

during the night right early in the morning I got the call around 5:00 a.m.

but I was told there's been some accident at the Chernobyl nuclear lock the first fireman on the scene battle the fire without adequate protective

gear they pour tons of water on this strange fire but nothing seems capable of putting it out there all exposed to

lethal doses of radiation two men died that night 28 more will follow in the next few months they are the first victims of Chernobyl

by early morning the clouds are already being contaminated by the radioactive column rising 3,000 feet into the sky Yegor Coastie was a photographer with

the news agency Novosti when a friend and a helicopter pilot offers to fly him over Chernobyl that morning all coasting knows is that something happened at the

plant during the night he is the first journalist to witness the gaping hole Gazette the near stop when we flew over the block I opened the

window of the helicopter yep I didn't realize then what a big mistake just was the thin translucent smoke he

sees rising from the ruins is in fact highly radioactive co steam is one of the few chernobyl reporters on the scene in the early hours of the accident to

have survived serious exposure to radiation this is the first picture ever taken of the breach once they returned

to Kiev Kiev I process my pictures and I notice the negatives were black and the colors very cool I didn't know it yet

but the photos had been exposed to radioactivity in yellow state at the core of the blown up reactor buried

beneath nearly 50 feet of rubble the graphite surrounding the nuclear fuel burns and melts the uranium the radioactive fallout will be 100 times greater than the combined power of the

two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the Kremlin eight hours after the explosion Gorbachev has little information on the situation Tero

informative luther queen ha the first information consisted of accident and fire from the river yet he

had a not a word about an explosion at first I was told they hadn't been an explosion Kotori the consequences of such false information would

particularly dramatic shielding problem where was Nick she meanwhile clouds filled with radioactive particles are being blown north by the wind between

the 26th and the 27th of April they drift more than 600 miles across Russia then over Belarus and the Baltics on the 28th they hit Sweden where the rise of

radioactivity is detected near one of their nuclear power plants the Swedish Minister of Energy affirmed me on the monday and i suppose my office in vienna

and she told me that they had measured very much increased radioactivity near our power plant in force mark in the east of sweden and they had concluded

that it must have come from the broad i did we know anything about it store appraisers what has happened Navid an explosion some a lot of radioactive

cloud vapors serious contamination we were surprised anybody it was Sweden let alerted us the crisis continues to grow at the

bottom of the destroyed reactor 1,200 tons of white hot magma continue to burn at over 5,000 degrees sending radioactive gas and dust into the

atmosphere all of Europe is at the mercy of the winds on the third day of the crisis Soviet general Nikolai and tochka-u' leads a fleet of 80 helicopters sent from Moscow

to fight the blaze and put the fire out in those days radioactivity was measured in units called run chills normal atmospheric level is about 12 millions of run tchen

general antoshkin is shocked by what he finds our dosimeter the instrument for measuring radiation only went up to 500

ranken's the needle was going crazy it was completely off the scale I think there were at least 1,000 ram guns at the height of 200 meters even at that

altitude just a half hour of exposure could be lethal the strong current of radioactive hot air streaming out from the reactor makes it impossible to get closer they will have to improvise some

way of carrying out their mission something needed to be done as quickly as possible put out the fire and seal up the reactor to be able to get close

enough to do other work it also needed to be closed up to stop the radioactive dust from spreading it was getting blown off by the wind we really needed to act

fast the gigantic ballet begins top pilots are being rushed back from the Afghan front to fly helicopters carrying soldiers who will toss a hundred and seventy five pound sandbags into the

blaze with their bare hands they hope to smother the fire by filling the reactor with tons of sand and boric acid which neutralizes radiation the first day 110

sorties the next 300 the radiation level above the reactor is over 3500 run cheon's almost nine times the lethal dose some of the pilots make up to 33

flights in a single day each time they went they received five or six runs ins if they were slow it was even more but after a few missions my

soldiers would go wash up and eat possibly after a while they'd start throwing up little sugar girl she would open her mind

since the crisis began radiation victims have been sent to Moscow's Hospital number 6 it has the country's only service that specializes in acute radiation sickness and illnesses linked

to massive doses of radiation exposure the initial symptoms of radiation sickness vomiting nausea and diarrhea are followed by a latency period it's

only later that much more fatal symptoms appear such as deterioration of bone marrow and burns that eat flesh down to the bone

mm I'm when they arrived at the clinic it was it was very hard psychologically speaking provide um they came straight from the airport to me

almost all of them were young yes um la they arrived during the latency period video mr. deckerd I felt

fine they were all dressed alike wearing the same pajamas they were making jokes eruption - damn it but we already knew

that a lot of them were going to die 27 of them died quite quickly forgive not what no ever bottoms they'd all

received huge doses of radiation and was suffering from life-threatening Bernese we just mean where is me by Shree those

are Luchini and sweeping that wishes positivity me is if mr. Murphy's natural

gym and it's only for 15 years only these first victims will be acknowledged by the authorities but many more will

confront the devastating consequences of radiation exposure because the massive battle to contain the catastrophe at Chernobyl has only just begun one week after the explosion at

Chernobyl a massive evacuation is finally underway the closeby town of Pripyat and the larger city of Chernobyl roughly four miles from the plant are

completely evacuated so are all the villages within a 19 mile radius 130,000

people are moved many of whom have already been dangerously contaminated an 1150 square mile area along the border of Ukraine and Belarus is

abruptly evacuated and isolated from the rest of the world meanwhile the radioactive cloud continues to drift over Europe it floats over Bavaria and northern

Italy radioactive cesium-137 & iodine-131 rained down on the South of France and Corsica crops and pastures are seriously

contaminated while French authorities deny its presence the cloud reaches Great Britain and spreads into Greece in Chernobyl the level of radioactivity

continues to climb 6,000 tons of sand and boric acid have filled the hole but underneath this gigantic plug 195 tons

of nuclear fuel is still burning giving off incredible heat that is gradually melting the sand on the surface of the plug cracks begin to appear

the lesson once we plugged up the hole the temperature started to rise we were afraid because it could have caused another explosions with Roberto for sure

it was terrifying scientists came to take readings and it was very worried they were afraid the critical temperature would be reached and this

would set off a second explosion that would have been a terrible tragedy the cement slab below the reactor core is heating up and in danger of cracking the

magma is threatening to seep through the water the firemen poured during the first hours of the disaster has pooled below the slab if the radio active magma makes contact with the water it could

set off a second explosion even more devastating than the first the country's top experts are called into action the you see below if the heat managed to crack the cement slab to be done then

yo debtor has plot only 1,400 kilograms of uranium and graphite mixtures teach you the cheat eeriest a killer hum Sooni see what we have needed to hear the water to set off a new explosion

Katie steam Arsenal sister quarters will be yeah the same to them the ensuing chain reaction could set off an explosion comparable to a gigantic

atomic bomb rush that our experts studied the possibility and concluded that the explosion to have had a force

of three to five Megaton in steel data loss means which is 320 kilometers from Chernobyl doom wished it would have been raised and Europe rendered uninhabitable

off yes ago worried oh sure we had to stop the process you've ever seen if it continued to kill Marissa but it

would have been an enormous disaster yeah a catastrophic an enormous nuclear disaster stone this second explosion would have been

accompanied by a terrible shock wave and a massive rise in radioactivity that could have claimed thousands of lives in a matter of hours also hopefully thank

God it didn't happen those means there were trains with over a thousand cars in mincing go Mel and Kia was ready to evacuate the population Fela the

situation is critical in Moscow the State Commission decrees two emergency measures first send in a battalion of firemen to drain the water from under the reactor they will later be declared

national heroes but will suffer from radiation sickness the rest of their lives second seal the breach more effectively to bring the temperature down once and for all

in two days general an touch condemned will drop 2,400 tons of lead into the reactor when we started dumping bled in

Tennessee where the temperature went down right away you loose it absorbed well and sealed the hole as it melted so there was less radiation but some of

this led melts when it hits the blaze and vaporizes into the atmosphere 20 years later traces of it can be found in the sick children of Chernobyl

just it's highly criticized today stolen me given the situation there was no better solution if karate and all the

people you know she's military or civilian officers or not worked selflessly killers to us I participated

in this first stage [ __ ] pyramid I can tell you two cannot Skookum evil doesn't it had to be done no it was

heroism a certain aesthetic way during this operation six hundred pilots are fatally contaminated with radiation all

of them will die but their efforts only by a few days although it has been

covered over the fire still isn't out flying over in helicopters isn't solving

the problem they need to get closer go down into the breach but how the blueprints of the plant revealed that the active zone can be approached

through the cable and pipe tunnels built out of thick cement a delegation of technicians from the Kurchatov Institute venture into the

labyrinth it's tough going parts of the tunnels have collapsed in the explosion they pierce through the shell of the fourth reactor with a blowtorch and

stick their radioactivity detectors and thermometers in along with cameras the result is terrifying the radiation levels are astronomical and their worst

fears are confirmed the white-hot magma has cracked the cement slab and seeped into the empty Basin it is now threatening to sink even further cause

motion there was a five to ten percent risk of explosions we drain the water from under the reactor but something absolutely had to be done something had

to be put underneath the reactor to keep the magma from seeping down something had to keep it from falling in us nothing is stopping the magma from

seeping even deeper into the sandy subsoil and beneath the reactor lies a huge store of groundwater that supplies the entire country

a new operation is launched the story of which has never fully been told a daring attempt to burrow beneath the reactor that will eventually claim many more lives you

17 days after the initial explosion thousands of miners are summoned to Chernobyl from across the Soviet Union their mission to approach the reactor

through what is now the only possible path underground the chillest our mission was this creature dig a hundred and fifty liter

tunnel from the third blurb to the fourth a tunnel 30 meters long but you then dig a room 30 meters long and 13 it as white almost lava to to hold a

refrigeration device for cooling down the reactor is presumably in one month ten thousand miners from Russia and the mining regions of the Ukraine are sent

down into the tunnel there between 20 and 30 years old inside the tunnel which has no ventilation the temperature hits a hundred and twenty degrees and radioactivity is at a minimum of one

runs in per hour we worked without any protective gear the - couldn t use masks because the filters would get damp after a few minutes so everyone just took them off

and kept on working without them with our shirts off - if we can we drank water out of open bottles which was really bad because the radioactive

particles were ingested right into our body some of the hardest thing was the

lack of oxygen and the incredible heat all the water was it was hot hot hot it

was a bottle and we had to work really fast what she at a crazy pace fast and faster

battalions of 30 miners will leave each other every three hours 24 hours a day in just over a month they dig a 500 foot tongue a job that in a mine would have

normally taken three months some more buses the most dangerous places were not underground there wasn't as much radiation below the reactors and what

would cause but as soon as we came up we had to run even faster motivation yes radioactivity at the mouth of the tunnel is 300 times higher

not a single minor is spared from exposure not once are they informed of

the real dangers they're facing let's be notable me someone had to go and do it I

snuck over to Julie last for someone else those two we did our duty the miners accomplish their mission but

the cooling system is never set up below the reactor the underground room is finally filled with cement to solidify the structure the official position is

that each miner received 30 to 60 run cheon's but survivors claim they received up to five times that amount

it is estimated that 1/4 of these men died before the age of 40 2500 lives

lost that don't appear in any official statistic the fire at Chernobyl is now

being kept in check but the breach and tons of highly radioactive rubble lie exposed to the elements it is urgent to cover the broken structure and clean up

the zone but for that more men will be needed many more men the radicchio issue 18 days after the disaster Gorbachev finally addresses the

Soviet people launching a massive campaign in response to the emergency Anna Warner's a tremulous AVST cloody Shastra novella movies over the entire

country was mobilized no bureaucratic formalities if someone had what we needed we took it no formalities we'd worry about the cost

later we took whatever we needed it was a frontline situation it was general Nikolai tarik on/off is sent to command

the land troops first was that's in one year a hundred thousand soldiers and officers passes food janaab ether euro you feeling were all reservists youth no

no they were summoned up by the top administration in their cities were sent to the front your problem is your military personnel or civilians officers

or simple soldiers all of them are Liquidators a term invented for the Battle of Chernobyl their mission clean up liquidate the radioactivity igor kostin

was one of five war reporters authorized by the kremlin to cover the battle the first in a country that kept everything hidden three of his colleagues are now dead you pull on yourself

point is there were no titles no ministers generals or soldiers no one was saying I'm a general to do what I say everyone was honestly doing what they

should and so the operation named the liquidation of the Chernobyl accident was set in motion a hundred thousand troops as well as four hundred thousand

civilians workers engineers nurses doctors and scientists from every Soviet republic passed through Chernobyl the Soviet Union is waging its last major

battle so please cheer yes 500,000 people she teamed up a troops in Chernobyl were bigger than the Polish

but our army got contaminated from the sky helicopters dropped tons of a sticky liquid dubbed Berber a mixture that coagulates and plasters the

radioactive dust to the ground meanwhile brigades of Liquidators are put in charge of cleaning up the zone and house by house removing the layer of

radioactive dust that covers everything the last villages with people still remaining in the zone are evacuated the houses are knocked down one by one and buried

around the plant a colossal operation is set in motion it goes on seven days a week without a single day off four hundred thousand cubic yards of

contaminated earth are bulldozed into huge ditches and covered over with cement this spot around the fourth

reactor is where the most dangerous missions of the zone took place eight weeks after the explosion the liquidators tackle the heart of the

problem in order to neutralize the toxic waste for the long-term and prevent it from spreading even more the entire blown out reactor has to be isolated Lev

bocharov was one of the engineers who designed the enormous structure that would entirely cover the fourth reactor

a sarcophagus of steel and concrete more than 550 feet long and 215 feet tall in the most we printed pretty Rohingya

down it was one of a kind a unique project sunless polka no one had ever built such a structure in a zone this radioactive uranium or you could only

work a few minutes at a time more katey sagal that had never been done before it is an enormous challenge how do you build a monumental structure in a place

where humans can work for only a few minutes or even just seconds at a time this utterly new situation will require more improvisation from the liquidators

and put more lives at risk you it has now been more than 12 weeks since the initial blast at block number four of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

to stop the deadly contamination the final attack is launched construction of a massive sarcophagus that will completely cover the damaged reactor

radioactivity in this sector is so high that only remote-controlled machines can be sent in but people will have to get the machines into position

workers can only stay a few minutes without receiving a fatal dose of radiation with each second their lives are more

threatened Watson here's one of the armored vehicles what it looks primitive dark enough that we had to build them ourselves

Kadir mo verde Scylla soba lines the cabs in Ty Lee with lead to protect our soldiers from the radiation as best we could each metallic piece of the structure is

prefabricated sometimes hundreds of miles away then brought one by one on to the site for assembly an extraordinary jigsaw puzzle beams a hundred and fifty

tongues and 230 feet long but race is a hundred and fifty feet high despite the extreme conditions work progresses a hundred thirty thousand

cubic yards of cement are used to make the structure the discovery of a new problem it forces the work to a halt your move of the plant is covered with highly

contaminated pieces of graphite boys head those are food it was ok with Monday can a proposal but they did issue them horizontally just rattle kuzava well system miss Kiki miss angel

description get up with the brinjal damn pieces but talk about the torso per capita Marathi sir by junction I said you're quite enough where could you find

you find you by doing if it was a weak idea to do these pieces of graphite enveloped uranium rods they've been blown from the reactor during the

explosion one single piece gives off enough radioactivity to kill a man in less than an hour they have to be gotten rid of before construction continues

robots are sent on to the roof to shove the lethal debris over the edge 200 feet below other robots gather it up and bury

it in ditches but after a few days the ambient radioactivity begins to affect even the machines their electronic circuitry can't hold up they break down

one of them hurtles itself into the breach robotic machines are no longer an option men will have to replace them

Russian soldiers nicknamed bio robots for the occasion this battalion of young soldiers is preparing to go up onto the

roof of the third reactor for the first time they're between 20 and 30 years old all of them reservists called to the front for the most dangerous and deadly

battle of Chernobyl no human has ever worked in zones as radioactive as this general nikolai tara Cano is in command of the operation and personally oversees

every detail down to the hand-sewn lead suits that every soldier is forced to make the night before the attack so don

does a killer blow it to the front on their backs in their boots moscow [ __ ] table covered in lace you sure device is a helmet not your

first Takashi talked leather mask to protect against later raise you as you got the whole uniform wait 26 to 30

kilos when the siren blows a crew of eight soldiers rushes up onto the roof along with an officer their mission is simple shovel up the

radioactive debris as quickly as possible and throw it off the roof about according to general Terra CONOPS calculations the level of radioactivity

estimated to be 7000 run cheon's per hour only allows the bio robots 45 seconds on the roof only enough time for a couple of shovelfuls Oh

do you keep the garbage we were like ants just as some we're finishing their task other would immediately take their place everyone did their job no matter how

small it was and that's how together we were able to fight the radioactivity for ten days a new crew of bio robots climbs onto the roof every 10 minutes

according to military personnel 3500 people participate in the cleanup some like igor kostin and konstantin Fedotov went up on the roof five times

is that you okay we picked up pieces that were 1,500 Rajan's sisters after day of work our hands

would ache and we could not make it

taste Chiaki baguette usually the first time I went up on the roof the whole

thing was covered in radioactive waste yeah my hands were shaking but I didn't know what world I was in and I started

snapping photos if you look close you can see traces of radiation on the film I was holding the camera like this and it was coming up from the ground like

that your eyes hurt and there was a metal taste in your mouth those are the two things you felt and once you felt

that you knew you had gotten more than your dose but you weren't like this but you couldn't hear anything

yeah everything was covered in let changing even today 20 years later I can still taste the lead in my mouth

thousands of them will discover that this peculiar taste means an invisible enemy is attacking as the bio robots are sacrificing their lives on the roof of

the plant the cleanup continues throughout the nineteen mile zone 24 hours a day rain or shine butum kakou terrible joke when normally

it would take one man one hour to do a job which he in turnable with 260 people that should essentially when we came down off the roof it felt

like our blood had been sucked dry by vampires we were drained we could not move to BC some people would have nosebleed a

fireman that will ride there if someone says no started bleeding they got sent to the hospital and she would collapsed we got sent home but we wanted to hold

out but at that time we were a young construction I held this shot we lost everything when they sent all those

people up onto the roof no one knew exactly the actual level of radiation now we know it was between 10,000 and 12,000 aranjuez per hour at

that level of radioactivity people never should have been sent seven months after the explosion the zone has been cleaned up and the sarcophagus completed five

hundred thousand people military and civilian have participated in the operation Oh ponte ponte net emotion might on

sarcophagus is a pantheon a 2-month a mausoleum mostly our second mausoleum at equity after that we stopped building

nuclear power plants what was little pin stylist roy turtle instance a bitter victory from which the country will

never recover the first snow has started to stick on chernobyl for authorities this proves the sarcophagus is airtight

at least for 30 years or so they predict the liquidators have gone home reactors 1 2 & 3 are back up and running the first battle of chernobyl has ended in a

victory that heralded the end of the USSR but for many it also marks the beginning of a war that 20 years later

still hasn't ended for the hundreds of thousands of atomic refugees as for the hundreds of thousands of veterans from the Battle of Chernobyl the fight

against their invisible enemy hasn't let up everyone who went to Chernobyl is still suffering from the radioactivity

their bodies absorbed in the months following the accident the liquidators flooded into hospitals all over the Soviet Union 20 years later those who

are still alive continued a frequent hospital number 6 they're all victims of what specialists have since named the Chernobyl Syndrome don't know Sochi

we've all got a bunch of symptoms heart stomach liver kidneys nervous system how hold bodies will radically upset by the

metabolic changes caused by radiation and chemical exposure through speech these men weren't even 30 when they were sent into battle the atom today the

survivors are not yet 50 years old but they struggle like senior citizens according to the military of the 500000 Chernobyl Liquidators 20,000 have already died

200,000 are officially disabled a pair of toaster oven is nice photos called Capri Yoshio - Maru you don't know what effects it will have on your children if

you have any it is ours - we know all that and we know the invisible enemy is eating away inside of us like a worm

Gaga Carson for you my [ __ ] open for us the war continues little by little we are slipping away from this world over

those ways anybody once caught wouldn't yet for two decades only 59 deaths have been officially attributed to the Chernobyl disaster not a single study

has been carried out of the 130,000 refugees from the zone not a single statistic on the state of the 500,000 Liquidators no figures on the population

that continues to live around Chernobyl and in the contaminated areas the real amount of radiation these people were exposed to has never been revealed to them the United Nations recently

reported an increase in rare childhood thyroid cancer cases but it found no evidence of higher birth defect rates that could be tied to the accident some charities and environmental groups

disagree citing local data that showed much higher rates for various deformities and developmental abnormalities in newborns since 2001 the three Chernobyl reactors

have been shut down once and for all but 20 years after the explosion a dosimeter flies off the chart at the base of the sarcophagus

high levels of radioactivity 100 times above normal are still contaminating the plant surroundings the structure has been weakened by rain and erosion since

its construction 3000 Liquidators have been watching over it trying to ward off damage but we build yourself office to

last 30 years thinking than 30 years after the explosion we could build a new sarcophagus without people having to run because of high radiation levels 20 years have gone by and nothing's being

done yet the video is urgent that it gets replaced but the Ukraine doesn't have anymore money neither do with the new sarcophagus is under way but its construction is

already 10 years behind schedule it is a structure 350 feet tall meant entirely to cover the first sarcophagus it will cost 1 billion dollars an international

fund led by Hans Blix has been set up we still are are not put the new sarcophagus on it will be ready in a couple years time when that is done

well then they can and do course later on remove the masses of spent fuel or three of melted fuel which there

20 years after the explosion the cooled magma at the reactors core nearly 50 feet underground is still a terrible threat and will remain so for years to

come they like regard the Cisco focus never collapses that would be the worst thing that could happen because inside there are hundred kilograms of plutonium

one microgram is the lethal dose for a human being that means there is enough plutonium to poison a hundred million people's a half-life of plutonium in

other words the time it takes for half of the plutonium to disappear is 245 thousand years this is something we

could just consider eternal there areas where there will never be light again despite this terrible warning interest in nuclear power appears to be

increasing once again in the u.s. more

than a dozen utility companies hope to build new nuclear plants to meet increasing energy demands and to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels which cause

global warming nuclear energy may ultimately help reduce global warming but this lifeless landscape will serve as an eternal reminder of the potential

risk involved and the enormous sacrifice a half million Soviet men and women made in the Battle of Chernobyl