The Battle of Chernobyl Page #6

But the discovery of a new problem forces the work to a halt: the roof of the plant is covered in highly contaminated pieces of graphite.

These pieces of graphite enveloped uranium rods.

They've been blown from the reactor during the explosion.

One single piece gives off enough radioactivity to kill a man in less than one hour.

They absolutely have to be gotten rid of before construction continues.

Robots are sent onto the roof to shove the lethal debris over the edge.

60 meters below, other robots gather it up and burry it in ditches.

But after a few days, the ambient radioactivity begins to affect even the machines.

Their electronic circuitry can't hold up.

They go berserk and break down.

One of them hurtles itself into the breach.

On the roof, robotic machines are no longer an option.

Men will have to replace them.

Russian soldiers, nicknamed "bio-robots" for the occasion.

This battalion of young reservists is preparing to go up onto the roof of the third reactor for the first time.

They're between 20 and 30 years old, all of them reservists called to the front for the most dangerous and deadly battle of Chernobyl.

No human has ever worked in zones as radioactive as this.

General Nikolai Tarakanov is in command of the operations,

and personally oversee every detail.

down to the hand-sewn lead suits that every soldier is forced to make the night before the attack.

On their front, on their back, in their boots - they were covered in lead.

A helmet, a mask to protect against beta rays and a special apron.

Double layers of protection on the hands.

The whole uniform weighed 26 to 30 kilos.

Obviously, some people didn't want to go, but they had to.

They were reservists.

They had to go.

For me, there was no question: I had to go to my duty.

Who was going to do it for me?

Who is going to clean up this disaster and stop the spread of radioactivity all over the world?

Somebody had to do it.

Two and a half weeks of hell.

But hell only lasted 2-3 minutes for each soldier, or sometimes even just 40 seconds when the level was too high.

We were careful to calculate out the time to save as many lives as possible.

When the siren blows, a crew of 8 soldiers rushes up on the roof along with an officer.

Their mission is simple: shovel up the radioactive debris as quickly as possible and throw it off the roof.

According to General Tarakanov's calculations, the level of radioactivity estimated to be 7000 roentgens per hour

only allows bio-robots 45 seconds on the roof only enough time for a couple shovelfuls.

We were like ants: just as some were finishing their task, others would immediately take their place.

Everyone did their job, no matter how small it was, and that's how, together, we were able to fight the radioactivity.

For ten days, a new crew of bio-robots climbs on the roof every ten minutes.

According to military personnel, 3,500 people participate in the clean-up.

Some, like Igor Kostine and Constantin Fedotov, went up on the roof five times.

We'd pick up pieces that were 1,500 roentgens.

After a day of work, our hands would ache and we couldn't make a fist.

The first time I went up on the roof, I was struck by the mystical feeling there.

It was like being on another planet.

The whole thing was covered in radioactive waste.

My hands were shaking.

I didn't know what world I was in, and I started snapping photos.

If you look close, you can see traces of radiation on the film.

I was holding the camera like this, and it was coming up from the ground, like that.

Your eyes hurt and there was a metal taste in your mouth, those are the two things you felt.

And once you felt that, you knew you'd gotten more than your dose.

You couldn't feel your teeth up there.

Your mouth was full of this lead taste.

You went like this, but you couldn't hear anything.

Everything was covered in lead.

Even today, twenty years later, I can still taste the lead in my mouth.

Thousands of them will discover that this peculiar taste means the invisible enemy is attacking.

As the bio-robots are sacrificing their lives on the roof of the plant,

the clean-up continues throughout the 30-kilometer zone,

24 hours a day, rain or shine.

Where normally it would take one man one hour to do a job, here in Chernobyl, it took sixty people.

When we came down off the roof, it felt like our blood had been sucked dry by vampires; we were drained, we couldn't move.

Some people would have nosebleeds.

The firemen were right there.

If someone's nose started bleeding, they got sent to the hospital.

If we collapsed, we got sent home, but we wanted to hold out.

But at the time, we were young and strong.

Our health is shot, we've lost everything.

They wrote in my record that we'd got 20.5 roentgens.

But what did that mean? That number was several times lower than the actual dose.

As reward, each soldier received a liquidator certificate from the army.

and a 100-rouble bonus the equivalent today of about 100 U.S. dollars

They had risked their lives.

But they have only reduced the radiation level on the roof by 35%.

When they sent all those people up onto the roof, no one knew exactly the actual level of radiation.

Now we know it was between 10,000 and 12,000 roentgens per hour.

At that level of radioactivity, people never should have been sent!

Seven months after the explosion, the zone has been cleaned up and the sarcophagus completed.

500,000 people, military and civilians, have participated in the operation.

l told the commission that, for having confronted such levels of radioactivity,

having cleaned up all that graphite, and having accomplished such heroic tasks,

our soldiers needed something symbolic like putting up our flag.

Putting the flag up was like putting the flag on the Reichstag when the Red Army conquered fascism.

For them, the flag was a symbol of their triumph over radioactivity.

Each team of liquidators celebrates the end of the operation in their own way.

Bocharov and his men etch their names onto the final metal piece to go up on top of the sarcophagus.

Our sarcophagus is a Pantheon.

A tomb... A mausoleum...

Our second mausoleum! After that, we stopped building nuclear power plants.

A bitter victory.

The country will never recover.

It cost us 18 billion rubles.

At that time, a ruble was worth one dollar.

18 billion! That's huge!

And if you consider that, shortly after, the price of oil collapsed,

you can imagine the trouble our country and perestroika were up against.

The first snow has started to stick on Chernobyl.

For authorities, this proves the sarcophagus is airtight.

At least for 30 years, or so they predict.

The liquidators have gone home.

Reactors 1, 2 and 3 are back up and running.

The first battle of Chernobyl has ended in a victory that heralded the end of the USSR.

But for many, it also marks the beginning of a war that, 20 years later, still hasn't ended.

Twenty years later, Pripyat is still a ghost town.

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