Original subtitles

The reason why Chernobyl seems such a dire warning to so many people around the world

is the nuclear disaster that happened there affected the entire planet.

I remember the first time going to the site itself.

It's a sinister place because you can't help remembering what happened there and how

it affected hundreds of thousands of people's lives.

Two miles from Chernobyl, the city of Pripyat, once home to 50,000 people, lies in ruins.

The vegetation is taking over.

There are trees that are growing into the upper floors of the tower blocks.

A 1,000 square mile exclusion zone has restricted access to the site for the past 36 years.

A Soviet dream that became a nightmare.

A disaster officials tried to cover up.

As a brave few battled to stop radiation spreading across the globe, using top secret Soviet documents

and hearing from those who risked everything.

This is the story of one of the world's worst nuclear accidents.

Early morning, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant gets ready to carry out a safety test

on reactor number four.

Three nuclear power station has to undergo a series of tests and one of the safety tests

that it needed to prove to continue to operate was to test what would happen to the coolant

system if there was a power cut.

Engineers plan to switch off four of the pumps to test their backup systems.

If there was a power cut and the emergency generators didn't kick in, there would be

a real problem.

React to number four has been running for two years when the long delayed safety test

is finally scheduled to take place.

The test will be overseen by Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Diatlov.

So Anatoly Diatlov was probably the most feared person at the facility.

If he was in the room, we had to listen to him and do what he said otherwise they'd

be trouble.

The test will take place on Friday the 25th of April.

Diatlov has briefed the staff and they know what's expected of them.

Everyone turned out expecting it to be a normal shift.

As it turned out it didn't go that way and everybody would make it home alive.

Two miles away in Pripyat, Chernobyl workers and their families prepare for the upcoming

May Day holiday.

It's a normal spring day with lots of people being about.

This is late April in Ukraine.

It's beautiful weather, generally the time when you felt summer is coming, the spring

has turned the corner, it's going to be warm and lovely.

Back at Chernobyl, inside the control room preparations for the test are underway.

To operate the test, the operators needed to lower the power output of the reactor.

This makes sense if you're going to test the brakes on your bike, you don't do it at 50

miles an hour, you do it at 5.

The reactors have been gradually powering down the reactor since 1 am.

By early afternoon, the power has been reduced to nearly three-quarters of the reactor's

normal power.

Inside the control room, the phone rings.

Part way through the day, the emergency grid controller asked them to stop lowering the

power the energy was needed.

Three hundred miles away, another nuclear reactor has had an emergency shutdown.

Chernobyl must keep producing power.

Rather than say, okay, we'll cut our losses and come back another day, DL have decided

now we'll carry on, we'll do it this evening.

For hours, the reactor continues to operate, but at a lower power.

No one really realized that while working at that lower power level, the reactor was

producing the chemical elements.

The so-called poisoning of the reactor was taking place.

With the reactor, there's been a build-up of a dangerous gas called Xenon.

Late in the evening, and the test still hasn't taken place.

The day shift transitioned into the evening shift, transitioned into the night shift.

There wasn't the information passed through each of the operators from day to evening.

New spirit, new spirit.

We're the Shiraz, we'll talk about the mobile bite.

New people came, the graveyard shift.

People who thought that by the time they come and start, their shift, the whole thing

would be over.

So they were not prepared.

After a nine-hour delay, the control room is finally given the go-ahead to carry out

the test.

So it was the night shift that we're conducting the test.

It actually started about 11 o'clock.

Some of the operators working the night shift is Leonid Toptenov.

Leonid Toptenov was one of the four operators that took over the operation of the reactor.

He was a young and very clearly talented engineer.

Leonid Toptenov's main job was to keep an eye on the power in the reactor.

The final steps to start the test are taken.

So having been left in this low-power state all day, the reactor was extremely unstable.

The build-up of Xenon gas inside the reactor is causing it to behave erratically.

Because the operators were relatively untrained and not prepared for the test, they didn't

really notice the signs that the reactor wasn't in a safe state.

Inside the control room, something happens that sets alarm bells ringing.

The power dropped really unexpectedly, which was unexplainable to the operators at the

time.

They certainly would avoid the accident.

Once power began to fall in the reactor, it carried on falling and it felt at disastrous

low levels.

The reactor was now in serious danger.

Toptenov takes steps to raise the reactor's power level.

But rather than bursting back into life, the reactor's power only creeps up to a 16th

of its maximum output.

Xenon gas has poisoned the reactor.

Toptenov can't increase the power to the level needed for the test.

An argument reportedly breaks out between Deatlov and the shift foreman, Alexander Akimov.

They were seen having quite a heated conversation.

And it's fair to assume that it was Deatlov saying, I want to go ahead and Akimov saying,

no, we should stop.

It's not safe.

The deputy chief engineer Anatoly Deatlov insists the test should go ahead.

The experiment was started at 123.

One of the eight pumps that were put in cooling water into the reactor, the power was taken

away.

When the cooling system was switched off, that water was no longer coming up past the fuel

rod quickly.

Any water that was in the system was boiled off.

The water was no longer being used to cool the fuel rods, and it bubbled off into steam.

This causes the nuclear reaction to speed up.

With more boiling, more steam is produced, the rate of fission increases.

Water that kept being pumped into the reactor, with the aim of cooling it down, had the opposite

effect.

It's a never-ending cycle until you get to a very dangerous, unstable point in the reactor.

When reactor 4's control room, Leonid Toptenov is monitoring the reactor's power level.

A few seconds into the test, he's scared by what he sees.

As a reactor overheated, Toptenov finally saw this.

He called across and said temperatures are just skyrocketing inside the reactor.

With the reactor out of control, there's only one course of action.

The emergency button to shut the reactor down was hit.

The test had been running for just 36 seconds.

Instead of shutting down, when that emergency button was pressed, the power continued to

increase.

The fuel channels ruptured.

The amount of steam increased.

He got more heat, more power, and a runaway reaction happened.

There's nothing that can be done at this point.

The unit 4 reactor explodes.

They wouldn't have been prepared for what had happened inside the reactor.

Two people die instantly in the explosion.

Others are now being exposed to lethal doses of radiation.

Inside a nearby fire station, the telephone rings.

The fight to save Chernobyl has begun.

The firefight has been a 17-story building.

It's clear the reactor's finished, it's gone, it's in flames.

The firefight has actually melted under the intense heat.

The ashfall under their feet was melting to sucking their boots off.

The severe heat is the least of the firefighters' problems.

The firefighters who were first on scene reported tasting and metallic taste in the

air.

This was essentially particles of the nuclear fuel itself.

The outloving his colleagues in the control room are trying to make sense of what's just

happened.

The control panel is telling Diaplov there's no water in the reactor system.

That would be amazingly terrifying.

I can't imagine what that must have been like.

You have to have constant supply of very large amounts of water to keep the reactor cool

or it will melt down.

Diaplov orders the gates of the coolant pipe valves to be opened to get more water into

the reactor.

One of the operatives from outside comes running in and he's got what's called a nuclear

tan.

His face is red and burned from exposure to radiation.

And he tells Diaplov that the Unit 4 reactor has exploded.

It's up in flames, it's not there anymore.

Diaplov flat out refuses to believe him.

He can't acknowledge the possibility that something so terrible has happened.

And Diaplov just carries on.

Even though the reactor he's trying to save no longer exists.

Twenty-five minutes after the explosion, making his way to Chernobyl is the power

plant's director, Victor Rucharnov.

Rucharnov receives a phone call at home and he's told there's been an accident at the

plant.

He's not told how serious it is so he doesn't really have a huge sense of urgency.

He actually takes the bus to the plant.

Rucharnov has been plant director here since construction started in 1970.

And he's been looking forward to the day Chernobyl is completed and he will preside

over the largest nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union.

But now he sees the wreckage of the Unit 4 reactor glowing red.

He retreats to what's known as the bunker, a safe room as it were, underground.

Built at the height of the Cold War as a shelter in case of nuclear attack by the West, now

it will act as a crisis center for the worst nuclear disaster in history.

Here, Rucharnov is soon joined by the power plant's resident officer from the security

services, the KGB.

They were the government watchdog really, performing the role of the nuclear regulator.

This question's need to be answered.

On the other side of the site, the fire around reactor 4 is still raging.

This huge fire, the spray extremely radioactive material into the air, the fuel itself, the

uranium fuels getting blasted up onto the bits of the roof that survived.

It's estimated that on parts of the destroyed roof, radiation is 16 times stronger than

a fatal dose.

The problem with radioactivity is that you can't see it, you don't know you're being

exposed to it until much later.

The firefighters are realising this is no normal fire.

The fire is starting to vomit.

In the bunker, Rucharnov is told radiation readings at the plant are off the scale.

He refused to accept the high levels of radiation that were given to him.

Rucharnov had a very difficult phone call to make to Moscow.

It was convenient for him to believe that maybe it's not as bad as we think it is.

Rucharnov orders water to be put into the system to save the reactor.

There was nothing to save anymore.

Five hours after an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, in the daylight it becomes

clear this accident is catastrophic.

The reactors nuclear core is exposed and sending smoke into the air.

Inside the smoke from the fire were particles of nuclear fuel itself.

So the actual radioactive material inside of the reactor core was emitted as smoke.

Toxic radiation, thousands of times higher than normal background levels, is spreading

far beyond the plant.

The town of Pripyat, two miles from the power plant.

It's a normal day, a spring day with lots of people being about.

Among them was electrical engineer, Vladimir Kagan.

There are lots of children about, the weddings taking place and they are absolutely unaware

of the catastrophe that has already happened and of the danger that they're in.

At the power plant, senior reactor control engineer Leon the Antonov and his foreman

are on a doomed mission.

They're following orders to get water into the reactor system to prevent nuclear meltdown.

But the electrics have failed, so they're doing the job manually.

They turn on the valves, allow more water to flow into the reactor.

But of course it's all to no avail, the reactor's not there anymore.

But in the process what they are doing is they're exposing themselves to what turn out to be

fatal levels of radiation.

In less than three weeks, Antonov would be dead.

At Pripyat hospital, the steady flow of plant workers and firefighters arriving from Chernobyl

is increasing.

They now had around 90 patients, all suffering from something the doctors had never encountered

before.

Radiation sickness.

If you get a big dose of radiation, it's got enough energy to damage DNA.

The reason it's called radiation sickness is because one of the first symptoms is vomiting

because the cells of this lining of your digestive system replicate rapidly and they're vulnerable

to radiation.

After the initial vomiting, other symptoms develop, like hair loss, fever and radiation

burns.

Tanka trucks start spraying the streets of Pripyat.

Mr Turgent is supposed to absorb the radioactive material from Chernobyl that already reached

the town.

But the people of Pripyat, going about their Saturday morning, have been told nothing

about the accident.

The Soviet Union wanted to keep a lid on this, they didn't want to tell anybody about that.

A man applied both to the West, but also to their own citizens.

They couldn't control radiation, so they were trying to control the information.

There was a ring of steel imposed around Pripyat.

If anyone tried to leave the city, they wouldn't have had much joy.

They cut down almost immediately the telephone communication between the city of Pripyat

and outside the world.

The Soviet Union didn't do bad news.

Catastrophies, accidents, nuclear disasters, didn't happen in the Soviet Union, they may

happen abroad, they may happen in capitalist countries, but not in the Soviet Union.

But word is starting to spread around Pripyat, about an accident at the plant.

The security services need to take action.

Secret documents reveal how they ensured silence.

The KGB reports measures have been taken to prevent the spread of information about

the accident and dissemination of panic causing rumours.

Panic is euphemism for people learning the truth.

The KGB was considered to be all-powerful organization with ears and eyes everywhere.

It didn't take much to convince the population that they had to be really careful.

No one is to find out what happened earlier that night at Chernobyl.

Moscow, more than 400 miles away from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

A report about the accident arrives for the leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev.

If you read that document, it looks like yes, something bad happened, but all that bad

mostly was in the past, that the radiation levels were low, manageable, the fire, extinguished.

But the Chernobyl disaster is so huge, it would prove impossible to hide.

With radiation continuing to pour out of the reactor, the government in Moscow will be

forced to act.

But in Pripyat, life carries on as usual.

Then, a day and a half after the accident.

The residents of Pripyat were told the city was being evacuated.

They were given one hour to collect together some belongings, a couple of days worth of

clothing, their identity papers, and told to assemble various points throughout the city

where buses had been laid on to take them away.

In just four hours, the entire population of Pripyat would be evacuated.

This was much too late, people had already been exposed to very large amounts of radiation.

Nobody knows how many people died as a result of that delay.

As Pripyat began to empty, a helicopter is taking off on a special mission.

It was pretty quickly clear that spraying water into the reactor was not going to put out these fires.

So they decided that they would have to smother the fire, and the only way to do that was to bring in helicopters.

These were military trained helicopters. So they knew what they were doing. They were very skilled.

And of course, they were very brave.

Captain Alexander Maruhin flew alongside other helicopter pilots who were trying to put out the fire.

These were the kinds of Velocirons. They didn't tend today up on threat, as the

automatically

They didn't live on the road before any of theicycle

It was a very risky undertaking.

They had to fly low because they were dropping material

into a space like five meters wide.

So the lower they were, the better chance they had of success.

But of course, the lower they were, the more radiation they were exposed to.

The more they were exposed to him.

The more they were exposed to him.

The more they were exposed to him.

Workers at a nuclear power plant north of Stockholm in Sweden went into work.

On their way walking to work, there was some rain.

They had to pass through the testing area,

designed to make sure they didn't take any radiation out after they'd been at work.

They were setting off the alarm bells as they walked in.

The Swedes didn't know to start with.

Why should workers coming into work in a nuclear power plant in the morning set off the alarm?

The radioactivity that was emitted into the atmosphere at Chernobyl,

it didn't form a single cloud that sat over the countryside and just poured radioactivity down.

It was spread out across a vast part of Europe.

And so any time that it did rain, there was a chance that radioactivity would come from the sky and fall onto the ground.

In Sweden, engineers check the power plant for a radiation leak. They find no problems.

They knew it wasn't from their reactor. They worked out where the wind had come from.

They realised it came from the south and it very quickly became clear that something had happened in the Soviet Union.

Despite the Soviets' best efforts to hide Chernobyl,

the accident is impossible to conceal any longer.

RS-TV

3 days after the toxic nuclear smoke started to be released by Reacto4 at Chernobyl,

novel. Radio Moscow broadcast this statement.

The

sort of a 22nd report that something has happened at the Chernobyl power plant. There's nothing

concrete that's telling people anything that they really need to know.

Despite the danger, life in the Soviet Union carries on as normal.

The May Day parades were coming up very soon in Ukraine and across the rest of the Soviet

Union. Tens of thousands of people on the street celebrating and exposing themselves to potentially

daily radiation.

First of May was a major holiday in the Soviet Union. It was the Labor Day as it is in this

country. But of course in the Soviet Union it had enormous political significance because

the Soviet Union is the state of the workers, the state of the laborers.

It was the day when you celebrated socialism. So there were military parades, people's parades,

everybody was out on the street.

May Day parades are also taking place throughout the USSR, including the towns and cities much

closer to Chernobyl.

Cancelling the May Day celebrations it would have sent a clear message that something was

clearly up, both at home and abroad. Gorbachev couldn't have allowed that to happen. It's

one of the more controversial decisions of his career.

But as the celebrations continued, the wind direction changed.

Refailing winds and the weather systems were moving the radiation cloud away from Ukraine

across Belarus and into Russia.

Within the Soviet Union all states are supposed to be equal, but clearly some are more equal

than others. And at the top of the tree was always Russia and it needed to be protected.

Reportedly a top secret operation named Cyclone begins.

It sounds like something out of the sci-fi movie or sounds ridiculous but it actually

happened.

Military airplanes loaded with silver iodide, took to the skies and chased those clouds

moving from the crane in the direction of the Russian Republic and shot the clouds.

Literally shot the clouds with silver iodide capsules to make it rain.

It rained of Belarus and the rain brought down the radioactive fallout matter onto the ground

and onto the people who lived there.

Over 100,000 people became victims of the radioactive rain.

In many respects Belarus has forgotten victim of Chernobyl.

It suffered extensive damage.

Its economy was ruined for many years and a large part of this or a contributory part

of this is the fact that the huge areas of its productive farmland, forests became irradiated.

Six days after the accident an exclusion zone is set up around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

The higher ups decided that maybe after all they ought to evacuate people.

From the 100 or so other villages in the surrounding areas so they created this 20 mile exclusion zone

around the reactor and that remains in place to this day.

But the exclusion zone is not the only area that has suffered radioactive fallout.

The whole of Europe was frightened by what might happen.

It's been eight days since Chernobyl's fourth nuclear reactor exploded.

The core of the reactor is smoldering, releasing large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Helicopters battled to stop this deadly radiation escaping from the molten core.

A number of different things were tried.

It was decided to dump a lot of sand on top of the reactor core.

Lead and a rare element called boron are added to the sand.

Up to 200 drops are made every day.

They were tasked with going what they call bombing runs, filling up sandbags and dropping them through quite a narrow hole in the roof onto the reactor below.

It's incredibly dangerous work.

The entire time the people in the helicopter were receiving quite high dose of radioactivity.

The reactor is leaking radiation that's up to ten times above a lethal dose.

One of the pilots who flew over the disaster site is Soviet captain Alexander Maruhin.

In total, 5,000 tons of materials are dropped onto the reactor.

Nine days after the disaster, the temperature begins to fall, and the radiation leak suddenly drops by 99%.

But by then, the radiation leak outside the plant is huge.

Large areas of Ukraine are now highly radioactive.

The Soviet government announced an ambitious cleanup operation.

Thousands of people are drafted into Chernobyl from across the Soviet Union.

They become known as liquidators.

Liquidators was a Russian term to describe the people who were engaged in the cleanup.

Mostly soldiers and other military people, many often conscript, brought in to do the dirty work.

This is a high risk operation.

Working in and around the disaster site, the liquidators risk being exposed to high levels of radiation.

The liquidators were definitely inadequately equipped for the dangers that they were facing.

Many liquidators travel miles from Chernobyl.

They move from village to village, searching for radiation hotspots.

Where a building was infected, it was sprayed with a decontuminate.

It was a viscous liquid that caused any radiation to adhere to the side of the building.

So the building itself became a kind of almost fly paper, where the radiation material was stuck to it.

In other places where the radiation levels were even higher,

all those were sent in and entire villages were completely flattened.

Abandoned homes are searched.

Cars are collected.

Anything registering high levels of radiation is removed and buried.

Then some liquidators are sent on a bleak search and destroy operation.

You needed to remove all the livestock and much of the wildlife as well, because it was radioactive.

They went into towns, villages, found animals, pet dogs, cats and shot them.

It was terrible soul destroying work.

As the cleanup operation continues, helicopter pilot Alexander Maruhin is recruited for a special mission.

During one flight over this contaminated countryside, Alexander makes a surprise discovery.

Now we have no major strain back in time, not just here, so we can sell off more items.

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The situation none of us operate this much, it's not just highways.

It's not a private boat.

Thanks Markblin.

And the only thing is that the

cows are likely producing milk that's highly radioactive.

If radioactive iodine gets into the food chain and particularly into milk,

almost all of it goes to this small thyroid gland in our neck.

And so they got really very very high doses of radiation to their thyroid gland.

Across the vast radioactive landscape, many people fear that they've been poisoned.

They didn't know what physical damage they'd suffered.

Whether they had radiological symptoms, whether they were suffering more cancers than you would have expected, they feared it.

Soviet authorities face a dilemma.

Chernobyl used to produce 10% of Ukraine's electricity, and that power is still needed.

Despite the huge dangers involved, it's decided the three working reactors must be switched back on.

Before Chernobyl can begin producing power again, two things must happen.

Highly radioactive material has to be disposed of, and the destroyed reactor must be enclosed.

This was easily said to them because nothing like this had ever happened before.

And nobody had the experience of building a containment device to prevent further radiation escaping.

An ambitious plan is drawn up. A large metal structure will be built called the sarcophagus.

It was essentially a series of flat-packed slabs of concrete and steel built off-site, put together, moved into position around what was left of the reactor building, and then assembled.

The walls of the sarcophagus are built, but next to the exposed reactor is a roof, covered in highly radioactive material.

Before operators can go back to work, this has to be cleared.

They tried using robotic vehicles, automated vehicles, but it didn't work.

Essentially, the radioactivity fried the circuits of those robots, and they died.

It became very clear, very quickly, the only solution was to use humans to do this work.

And in a grim piece of soviet irony, they became known as biorobots.

Radiation levels on the roof are extreme.

Liquidators are given strict time limits. Within 90 seconds, they could receive an entire year's dose of radiation.

Things people were following more than they were told to do.

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battery, or what designed

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risen more than you ever knew from soon.

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I'm not a person. I'm a person.

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The official death toll stands at just 31.

But those who are at the disaster site

tell a very different story.

They think that thoseULE

in return

What an ironically

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It's the inside of the surreallook.

When weACE the whole nation.

but we don't trust...

The exact number of deaths caused by the radiation will never be known.

But the UN estimates it could be as high as 4,000.

Five months after the explosion, the roof's radioactive material has been cleared.

The Chernobyl power plant's three working reactors can now be switched back on.

They managed to put up the entire erection in around about 250 days, which is quite remarkable.

In late November, the sarcophagus is sealed.

The radiation leak has finally been stopped.

The world breathes a sigh of relief.

The summer of 1987, Chernobyl makes headlines once more.

Twelve miles from the disaster site inside this building, a trial is taking place.

In the dock are six people, including Anatoly Diatlov, who was in charge on the night of

the disaster, Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomen, and Chernobyl's plant director, Viktor Brukharnov.

Brukharnov, you quite well that sooner or later he would end in prison.

That was part of the unwritten rules of the game.

Within the Soviet managerial system, the director would be always kept responsible for what

happened.

For many, the verdict in this trial is a foregone conclusion.

The authorities have made up their mind who was responsible, but there needed to be some

form of public acceptance and show of trial and retribution.

As authorities prepare to pin the blame, secret KGB documents now reveal they knew these people

weren't responsible.

Chernobyl's style of reactor had major design flaws.

This document states that in 1987 there were 66 emergency shutdowns at nuclear power

facilities across Ukraine, which seems to be really very high.

80% of these shutdowns are associated with design and process equipment.

It tells me straight away that the design is arguably not fit for what its purpose would

be.

Rather than admit, Soviet design was at fault.

Witnesses are called to try and pin the blame on those on trial.

All are found guilty of violating safety measures.

The Atlov, Brukharnov and Fomen received the maximum sentence, 10 years hard labor.

5 years after the Chernobyl disaster and its impact is still being felt.

Disillusioned with how it has been handled, the Ukrainian people declare their independence.

It's the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

The city, just two miles from the disaster site, remains a haunted wasteland.

Without human interference, nature is reclaiming the area.

But at Chernobyl, there's a growing problem that threatens to raise radiation levels once

more.

Inside the sarcophagus, it was essentially continually raining.

It was because of the heat difference between the inside of the sarcophagus and the outside.

So everything inside of the reactor building, inside of the sarcophagus, was corroding really

very badly, including the fuel itself, which when it corrodes, it creates radioactive dust.

The sarcophagus is falling apart.

Recognizing the threat Chernobyl still poses, 45 countries including the United States,

Russia and the United Kingdom all donate towards a new, safe confinement shelter.

It was decided that the best solution was an arch that could be built some distance

away with a relatively low levels of radiation exposure and then slid over the facility once

it's completed.

This is to be the largest movable land-based structure ever built.

Sliding something three times the weight of the Eiffel Tower was a millimetric precision

over several days.

We encountered tremendous challenges in terms of the radiological risk there.

The worst was places where workers could work for about five minutes a day in terms of sealing

the old structure because of the radiation levels so high.

The shelter is finally in position.

As the new confinement structure is sealed into place, radiation levels fall by 90%.

Lifetime with the new safe confinement is 100 years.

It's designed life 100 years.

I have every expectation that it will actually last considerably longer than that.

Reactor 4 is now safer than it has ever been.

But six years on, the contained Chernobyl plant is about to face another catastrophe.

Ukraine is under attack.

It has been since the early hours of the morning.

Russia pouring troops and tanks into the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

In some areas, the indicators were showing that the radiation level went ten times up.

What happened was that Russia was moving tanks and heavy equipment through the zone.

And that raised radioactive dust.

The rise in radiation levels is relatively low.

But it's a frightening reminder of what could happen.

After 13 hours after the invasion begins, Russian forces take over Chernobyl.

200 workers are taken hostage.

Information leaks out that the Russian soldiers don't understand the danger that Chernobyl

plant holds.

They won't have been briefed of the hazards in Chernobyl.

In fact, there are reports to suggest that many of them had never even heard of the Chernobyl

disaster.

With every passing day, there's a growing fear about what's happening inside the plant.

Suddenly, all monitoring systems and all communications to the outside world are cut.

Communication is absolutely key.

Once you lose your situational awareness, then one's mind starts to run rise.

After five days, Chernobyl is reconnected to the power grid.

When we realized that actually, Chernobyl was back up and running the powers, running

people were there.

The flow of information was happening.

That was a huge relief.

Russian troops have now pulled out of the heavily contaminated Chernobyl nuclear site.

After 24 days of captivity, the hostages are finally released.

And replacement workers are allowed to enter the site.

It was a relief.

Things were starting to get back to normal.

But it's a reminder that in order for the safety procedures to function properly, people

need to be allowed to go in and out, not kept there in circumstances which must have

been at times terrifying.

The Russian targeting of Chernobyl has highlighted the potentially devastating role of nuclear

installations in wartime.

At the last time that we had a large-scale war in Europe, the Second World War, this

was not a Europe weather and nuclear power stations.

And I think the return of 20th century war combined with this technology that was supposed

to be part of a peaceful future has really scared people.

The unthinkable of attacking nuclear power stations has happened.

And we must make sure that it doesn't happen in future.

Chernobyl's deadly legacy began over 30 years ago.

And we'll continue long into the future.

The Chernobyl reactors today are a stark reminder of what happens when you don't think things

through, when you don't have a plan for what to do when something goes wrong.

Particularly when we're talking about radioactive materials that could have severe health consequences,

those materials are now there.

They may still be there for another 30 years, maybe 300 more years.

On My 5, the incredible documentary with Ben Fogel, Inside Chernobyl streaming now on My 5.

It killed Britain's and left devastation as it swept across the country, the story of

Britain's killer hurricane of 1990, brand new, tomorrow at 935.