Original subtitles

12,000 roentgen.

Under no circumstances can men go up there.

It would be fair to say that

that piece of roof is the most dangerous place on Earth.

CRAIG MAZIN: The Soviets, and particularly

the people of Ukraine, and Russia and Belarus,

threw themselves at this task in a way that is shocking and beautiful,

and also terrifying and heartbreaking.

TARAKANOV: These are the most important 90 seconds of your lives.

(MEN TALKING INDISTINCTLY)

MAZIN: We're talking about 700,000 people being sent

to clean up this impossibly contaminated area,

an area that is still off-limits today.

Pavel.

JOHAN RENCK: Pavel represents all these innocent men

coming into this grinder, you know,

and then being spat out on the other side.

You're not gonna walk away with an experience. It's not that at all.

It's very similar to war. It's the pointlessness of that...

"Here I am. I'm 18, I'm going somewhere,

"I'm killing a bunch of people and coming back."

Has it made anything better for anyone? No.

Because that's not the way it works, you know. "And here I am now,

"being dehumanized, basically."

MAZIN: Nuclear power and nuclear weapons

were not just aspects of Soviet pride.

This was among their most protected secret industries.

Well, the State must protect its secrets, Comrade.

MAZIN: And when nuclear isotopes that were decayed products of Soviet fuel

ended up in Sweden, then the cat was out of the bag.

Humiliating.

They needed to admit to the world not only that this had happened,

but that they hadn't told anybody until they got caught.

And as a result,

they attempted to try and tell the truth.

Up to a point.

KHOMYUK: The truth.

Is that what you're going to say in Vienna?

She's sort of similar to the Horatio character in Hamlet,

in that she is his conscience.

KHOMYUK: You have a chance to talk to the world, Valery.

EMILY WATSON: It goes, kind of, to the heart of your humanity, really.

You've got to stand up and be counted, no matter what the consequences,

when the stakes are this high.

Khomyuk says, "Tell the truth. Tell the truth at whatever price."

Shcherbina says, "Tell whatever truth is necessary,

"and keep the lid on the truth

"that will just make it harder for us to work and improve things."

We can make a deal with the KGB.

SKARSGARD: You have to make choices

that has a chance to survive in a system like that.

You have to lie a little to make things happen.

And that is the conflict of the more idealistic Khomyuk,

who has this passion for truth, no matter what the consequences.

KHOMYUK: Go public.

Force the Central Committee to take action.

WATSON: Shcherbina, he's at a very high level,

and he's involved in the politics of it all.

And the kind of level where people just get shut up,

and they get incarcerated, and I say to him, "Well, look.

"These are all the people who just gave their lives unthinkingly.

"What about them?

"There's your example."

To hell with your deal.

To hell with our lives.

Someone has to start telling the truth.