The Battle of Chernobyl Page #2

At the nuclear institute, the figures provoke a shock.

Such a level of radioactivity has never been seen before.

Gorbatchev hurriedly creates a governmental commission made up of the country's top experts in nuclear energy.

This is led by the academician Legassov, a nuclear physicist of international renown.

He immediately leaves for Chernobyl at the head of a scientific delegation.

We hoped they would be able to evaluate the situation quickly, but for the first couple days, they weren't able to tell us anything.

It was a dramatic situation.

We'd be in session, waiting for information,

we were demanding information, but they weren't able to tell us anything.

Twenty hours after the explosion the level of radioactivity continues to climb.

By now, windows and doors should be sealed and iodine tablets swallowed to counteract the effects of radioactivity.

Yet no such orders have been given.

Despite rising tensions in the city the population has still not been informed of the situation.

Yulia Martchenko was only five at the time.

She lived in Pripyat with her family.

Her father worked at the plant.

My parents took me to the day care center like usual.

Everything was absolutely normal.

My father already knew there'd been an accident, but no precautions had been taken yet.

30 hours after the explosion, the first security measures are enforced.

More than 1000 buses have arrived.

At 2:
00 pm the army announces the city to be completely evacuated.

I remember the teachers at the kindergarten gave us iodine pills.

Then parents came to pick up their kids.

Everyone was running around, but they weren't panicking.

We thought we were only going to be gone for three days.

To avoid any panic the authorities concealed the seriousness of the situation.

Inhabitants are given two hours to gather their belongings and assemble in front of their buildings.

They told us to get in the buses.

I remember perfectly well having to choose which toys I was going to take.

I had a lot of dolls and wanted to bring them all, but I couldn't.

We couldn't even take any warm clothes.

People have to leave everything they own, their entire lives, behind.

They will never return...

One old man didn't want to go.

He stayed behind.

They found his body a few weeks later.

People didn't really believe what was happening.

They thought they were being lied to.

They remembered the German occupation and said that in 1941, there were bombs that fell.

But now there was nothing.

The elderly people didn't believe in an invisible enemy and there was no time to explain.

My soldiers and I were simply carrying out orders.

In three and a half hours, 43,000 people are evacuated tearfully but peacefully.

Buses carry Europe's first atomic refugees.

They have been exposed to doses of radiation that may alter the composition of their blood, and engender fatal cancers.

48 hours after the disaster, the only people left in the ghost town are the military personnel

and members of the scientific delegation head quartered at the Pripyat hotel.

As if unaware of the danger, they eat, sleep and work right on the premises.

These were upstanding people, specialists.

I couldn't believe they would do something irresponsible or suicidal.

No, it meant they'd underestimated the situation.

Our old criteria were no good anymore.

There'd been nuclear accidents before, in our country as well as in the US, but that information had been kept secret.

There'd never been an accident of this scope.

They even thought the reactor would be back in service by May or June.

Meanwhile, clouds filled with radioactive particles are being blown North by the wind.

Between 26 and 27 in April, they drift over one thousand kilometers above Russia, then over Belorussia and the Baltics.

On the 28th, they hit Sweden where the rise of radioactivity is detected near one of their nuclear power plants.

Soon after, television news alerts the population.

Radioactive dust from Chernobyl rains down on Stockholm.

The authorities send a squadron of fighter planes to take readings in the clouds.

The level of radioactivity suggests there's been a major accident somewhere.

60 hours after the disaster, still no official word has been reported outside of the Soviet Union.

The Swedish Ministry of Energy phoned me on Monday and I was in my office in Vienna.

And she told me that they had measured very much increased radioactivity near our power plants in Forsemark in Eastern Sweden.

And they had concluded that it must have come from abroad.

Did we know anything about it was her question.

And we said that no, we did not, but we already to contact and others contacted the Poles, they had normal nuclear power plant.

But if there was anything else and it could happened that we contacted the Russians of course.

What had happened? An explosion?

A radioactive cloud? Serious contamination?

It was Sweden that alerted us!

3 days after the accident, while Gorbachev is still trying to gather data,

American and European spy satellites turn to the Soviet Union and discover the ruins of the Ukrainian plant.

The smoke wafting from the gaping hole shows up clearly in thermal vision.

In the evening of that Monday the 28th, we had a message from Mr Petrossian,

the head of the Atomic energy commission in Russia, in which he told us about the accident.

And about the same time, the Russians released the information to the world.

Obviously over at the Politburo, we immediately decided it was essential that all facts be reported to us from then on.

So I called on the KGB.

I told them to follow everything that was happening over there, and to report the conversations the scientists were having.

I told them to report all of that information back.

To me personally.

It has taken over 48 hours to get accurate information about the disaster.

Two days during which the 43,000 inhabitants of Pripyat are exposed to contamination.

The crises continues to grow.

At the bottom of the destroyed reactor, 1200 tons of white-hot magma continue to burn at over 3000 degrees,

sending liters of radioactive gas and dust into the atmosphere.

The whole of Europe is at the mercy of the winds.

On the third day of the crisis, General Antochkine and his fleet of 80 helicopters are sent from Moscow to fight the blaze and put the fire out.

When he arrives the general flies 200 meters above the blown-out reactor.

Because of the fire, the temperature at that height was between 120-180 Celsius.

Our Dosemeter (the instrument for measuring radiation) only went up to 500 roentgens.

The needle was going crazy.

It was completely off the scale.

l think there was at least 1000 roentgens at a height of 200 meters.

Even at that altitude, a half hour of exposure could be lethal.

The strong current of radioactive hot air streaming up from the reactor makes it impossible to get closer.

They will have to improvise some way of carrying out their mission.

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