Horizon TV - Jim Al-Khalili TV - The Battle of Chernobyl TV - Greenpeace - Mikhail Gorbachev - Vladimir Grebeniuk - Bio-Robot - Days that Shook the World TV - What the Green Movement Got Wrong TV - Louisa Vinton & UN Report - Chernobyl: A Natural History TV - Grigorii Khmel - Mark Thomas TV - The Russian Woodpecker 2015 - Destination Truth TV - Chernobyl Heart 2003 - Zero Hour: Disaster at Chernobyl TV - Inside Chernobyl’s Mega-Tomb TV - Life After: Chernobyl TV - Chernobyl TV - The Real Chernobyl TV - Chernobyl’s Deadly Secrets TV - Inside Chernobyl with Ben Fogle TV - Return to Chernobyl TV - Seconds from Disaster: Meltdown in Chernobyl TV - Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes TV - The Chernobyl Disaster TV - Chernobyl: The New Evidence TV -
A team of Soviet scientists risk their lives in the aftermath of the disaster go to inside Chernobyl. Five years ago Horizon went with them – the first Western television unit to do so. They revealed the extent of the danger from the reactor and the sarcophagus built around it. Horizon: Inside Chernobyl’s Sarcophagus, BBC 1996
Chernobyl 1991: Five years after the accident this is the final resting place for one hundred and thirty-five tons of uranium, plutonium and other extreme radioactive elements. The contents of this tomb will remain radioactive for at least one hundred thousand years. ibid.
The hunt for Chernobyl’s escaped nuclear fuel has been vital since the first moments after the accident in April 1986. The nuclear explosion destroyed the top of the reactor building and radioactive smoke was pouring forth. ibid.
Entire content of the core had simply vanished. If it wasn’t inside the reactor, where had the escaped fuel gone? Attention switched to the intensely radioactive rooms underneath the reactor. ibid.
A British scientist who saw Horizon’s film took blood samples from the Soviet team. High radiation doses had left their mark: abnormal chromosomes. ibid.
While Chernobyl becomes a billion-dollar bargaining card the fate of the sarcophagus remains as uncertain as it was five years ago. ibid.
For the last fifty years we’ve lived with the fear of radiation ... A growing number of scientists are asking whether it’s time to think again about the dangers of radiation. Horizon: Nuclear Nightmares, BBC 2006
Back in the 1920s and ’30s devices were sold that deliberately increased our radiation exposure ... In fact radiation became so fashionable it was used as a brand name to sell ordinary household items. ibid.
In the mid-1950s Britain opened the world’s first nuclear power station. Other countries raced to catch up. Nuclear power stations spread across the industrialised world. ibid.
Then in 1979 came America’s worst nuclear accident. Three Mile Island shook America’s confidence in nuclear power. Though there was no significant release of radiation. ibid.
Tatiana lived in the town of Pripyat within sight of the power station. Driving down the main street memories of the evacuation flood back ... Some 200,000 abortions are thought to have been performed. Tatiana was one of the few to resist, and Aliona was born healthy six months later. But the family has lived in fear ever since of what her exposure to radiation might mean. ibid.
The accident sent a radioactive plume of fear across Europe. If Three Mile Island had been bad for nuclear power, Chernobyl was a catastrophe. The expansion of the nuclear power programme came to a halt. It had become environmentally and politically too controversial. ibid.
47 deaths among liquidators, 9 deaths from childhood thyroid cancer ... That makes a maximum of 56 deaths that can be directly attributed to the effects of radiation. ibid.
In Chernobyl today thanks to the clean-up operation radiation levels are no higher than normal background in many parts of the world. Yet people’s lives are still being scarred by the fear of it. ibid.
It sounds totally improbable but it appears radiation may actually help the body resist genetic damage. What could be going on? ... Low level radiation may be beneficial. ibid.
Some scientists now believe the impact of this same radio-phobia could be very damaging. ibid.
Chernobyl ... They are lower than anyone expected ... Thyroid cancer: the numbers are very low. Jim Al-Khalili, Horizon: Fukushima, Is Nuclear Power Safe? BBC 2011
They live in constant fear of what the radiation might have done to them. ibid.
The floor of the planet begins to tremble. The 1,200 ton cover of the reactor suddenly blasts into the air. An ultra-powerful stream of radioactive vapour releases uranium and graphite. The Battle of Chernobyl, 2006
For the next seven months five hundred thousand people will wage hand to hand combat with an invisible enemy. ibid.
43,000 people are evacuated tearfully but peacefully. Buses carry Europe’s first atomic refugees. They have been exposed to doses of radiation that could alter the composition of the blood and engender fatal cancers. ibid.
The initial symptoms of radiation sickness: vomiting, nausea and diarrhoea are followed by a latency period. It’s only later that much more serious symptoms appear, such as deterioration of bone marrow and horrible burns that eat flesh down to the bone. ibid.
The roof of the plant is covered with highly contaminated pieces of graphite. These pieces of graphite enveloped uranium rods. They have blown from the reactor during the explosion. One single piece gives off enough radiation to kill a man in less than one hour. They just have to be got rid of before construction continues. ibid.
Russian soldiers nicknamed bio-robots for the occasion. His battalion of young reservists is preparing to go up on to the roof of the reactor for the first time. They’re between twenty and thirty years old ... No human being has ever worked in zones as radioactive as this. ibid.
As a reward each soldier receives a liquidator certificate from the army. And a hundred rouble bonus. The equivalent today of about $100. They risked their lives. But they’ve only reduced the radiation level on the roof by 35%. ibid.
Today 8,000,000 people live in contaminated areas of the Ukraine, Russia and especially Belarus. ibid.
Meanwhile, beneath the ageing reactor of sarcophagus #4 a poison remains deadly. ibid.
The estimate predicts 93,080 total excess deaths associated with the Chernobyl accident. Greenpeace International Chernobyl Report April 2006
It was Sweden who alerted us. Mikhail Gorbachev
Good evening, comrades. The accident at the power plant in Chernobyl has rocked the Soviet people and risen concern around the world. This is the first time we had had to face such a danger. Nuclear energy escaping human control. Mikhail Gorbachev, televised address 14th May 1986
There was a metallic taste in our mouths. An acidity. Vladimir Grebeniuk, colonel Civil Defence
When we came down off the roof it felt like our blood was sucked dry by vampires. Bio-robot survivor
April 26th 1986 ... The Chernobyl power station has four separate nuclear reactors on site. Days that Shook the World s1e9: First Nuclear Reaction/Chernobyl, BBC 2003
The roof blows off rector number four. Five seconds later the core erupts and scatters fifty tons of nuclear fuel, graphite and debris up to three kilometres away. ibid.
It’ll burn for another nine days. ibid.
Chernobyl is the world’s worst nuclear disaster. ibid.
Soviet authorities tried at first to conceal the accident. A cloud of radiation spread across Europe. First reports said five million people were contaminated, and that at least one million would die of cancer. What the Green Movement Got Wrong, 2010
The problem with Chernobyl is that there’s always been this divergence between what scientists know is the impact of Chernobyl and what the public thinks is the impact of Chernobyl. In fact the health effects of Chernobyl are much more mild than anyone has really assumed. Louisa Vinton, coordinator of UN Chernobyl Report
The conclusion is that there was no connection between Chernobyl radiation and birth defects of any sort. No-one was born deformed as a consequence of Chernobyl. ibid.
The biggest public health impact from the Chernobyl accident was psychological. Fear of radiation has proved to be a far more potent threat to health than radiation itself. ibid.
Dear Tourist, for your own safety, opening the windows is prohibited. Chernobyl: A Natural History, opening scene man on bus instructing tourists
On April 26th 1986 at 1:23 a.m. Reactor Number Four in Chernobyl’s Lenin Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine went out of control. ibid.
Contaminating vast areas in numerous countries. ibid.
The next day the 135,000 inhabitants living in this zone were evacuated. They would never return. Within this zone, now prohibited to human life, the wild fauna and flora were left on their own. What has happened to them in all these years? ibid.
For the past twenty years of all of the scientists it is Sergei Gaschak who has without a doubt has participated in the most studies behind the exclusion zone. ibid.
The exclusion zone is inhabited by numerous species of wild animals, some of which were not there before the accident. Several bears have moved in; you often see wild dear ... All the animals seem to be perfectly healthy. ibid.