The Battle of Chernobyl Page #3

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.

A gigantic ballet begins.

Top pilots have been rushed back from the Afghan front to fly helicopters carrying soldiers who toss 80 kg sandbags in to 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 3,500 roentgens, almost 9 times the lethal dose.

Some of the pilots make up to 33 flights in a single day.

Each time they went, they received 5 or 6 roentgens.

If they were slow, it was even more.

After throwing 6, 7, 8 bags, they were drenched in sweat from the heat.

After a few missions, my soldiers would go wash up and eat.

After a while, they'd start throwing up.

Since the crisis began, radiation victims are being sent to Moscow's hospital number 6.

It has the country's only service which 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 horrible burns that eat flesh down to the bone.

When they arrived at the clinic, it was very hard, psychologically speaking.

They came straight from the airport.

Almost all of them were young.

They arrived during the latency period.

They felt fine.

They were all dressed alike, wearing the same pajamas.

They were making jokes.

But we already knew that a lot of them were going to die.

27 of them died quite quickly.

They'd all received huge doses of radiation and were suffering from life-threatening burns.

For 15 years, only the first victims will be acknowledged by the authorities.

Thirty kilometers east of the plant, the forest has been scorched by the radioactive blast from the explosion.

But the disaster area already stretches well beyond.

Since the explosion, radioactive particles carried by the clouds have been falling with the rain.

A "leopard-spot" pattern of contamination has affected the Ukraine as well as Belorussia and Russia.

On the first of May, the wind shifts, and areas of Kiev are also contaminated,

as seen from this map drawn up from the readings taken by Colonel Grebeniouk's men.

The seriously contaminated areas appear in red, surrounded by areas where the radiation level was normal.

But the population is still kept in the dark.

There is only one report, a tiny article on the bottom of page three of the Pravda, playing down the accident and claiming the danger has passed.

The roof was caving in, and there we were acting as if nothing was happening.

By going ahead with the May Day festivities, it was like the country refused to acknowledge the situation.

That was the second phase in the huge Chernobyl disaster.

Six days after the accident, despite radiation levels several thousand times higher than normal,

authorities encourage people to participate in May Day celebrations, even in areas they know to be seriously contaminated.

I watched the May Day in 1986 festivities with my own eyes.

I was there and I witnessed it, the parade of death.

It was a parade of death.

Those were terrible deaths.

Disturbingly, all footage of May Day 1986 has now disappeared from the Ukrainian national archives.

All that remains are Igor Kostine's photos.

Cherbitsky, the first secretary of the Ukraine, also went to the festivities with his family and his grandchildren.

It's true that, in theory, that seemed very important to us, to avoid any panic.

But had we known how much radioactivity was already in the air...

How many were contaminated during the festivities? Not a single study has yet been published.

Cherbinsky, first Secretary of the Ukraine Communist Party, Later committed suicide...

One week after the explosion, the exodus continues.

The inhabitants of the city of Chernobyl, seven kilometers from the plant, are evacuated.

So all the villages within a thirty-kilometer radius around the plant.

130,000 people are moved, many of whom have already been dangerously contaminated.

A 300,000-hectare area straddling the Ukraine and Belorussia is abruptly evacuated and isolated from the rest of the world.

A vast region uprooted, an entire culture ripped from its land, a world wiped out in a few days' time by an invisible enemy.

It was worse than a war.

Here, you couldn't see the enemy.

In a war, you see the cannons, the machine guns, the tanks.

Here, you see nothing.

The radiation is everywhere.

It goes right through you.

It gets into you and you only start feeling the effects later.

Sometimes years later.

It's terrifying...

Meanwhile, the radioactive cloud continues to drift over Europe.

It floats over Bavaria and Northern Italy.

Radioactive Cesium 137 and Iodine 131 rain 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.

6000 tons of sand and boric acid have filled the hole.

But underneath this gigantic plug, the white-hot magma continues to smolder.

10 days after the disaster, Gorbatchev personally invites Hans Blix, director of the powerful International Atomic Energy Agency, to visit the site.

He is the first expert - and the first Westerner - to visit Chernobyl.

Well, we have seen the sight from the air, and we have seen that a little smoke is still coming up from the damaged plant.

There was a good deal of talk about the risk of a second explosion.

I remember that, when we were in Moscow, actually we had a friend, a relative of one of my experts,

phoned in and said that you know we have rumor that second reactor might also explode.

At the bottom of the reactor, 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.

Once we plugged up the hole, the temperature started to rise.

We were afraid because it could have caused another explosion.

It was terrifying.

Scientists came to take readings.

They were very worried.

They were afraid the critical temperature would be reached and it 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 radioactive magma makes contact with the water, it could set off a second explosion even more devastating than the first.

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