A Story of Chernobyl Plant Liquidator That Wasn’t Included in the HBO Series — Transcript

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1. 0:00[Laughter]
2. 0:04[Music]
3. 0:15[Laughter]
4. 0:19[Music]
5. 0:26this wasn't here last time I came
6. 0:34[Music]
7. 0:46[Music]
8. 0:54Ross
9. 1:07the change that the view out of the
10. 1:09window has changed substantially over 30
11. 1:11years that have lost there were fewer
12. 1:13trees you could see the plunge layer
13. 1:15even though it wasn't lower than what
14. 1:17was days confinement it was visible in
15. 1:19the morning of April 26 when I was
16. 1:21getting ready for my shift I just did
17. 1:23not look out the window I had no idea
18. 1:25what had happened there I just slept in
19. 1:27this flat on the sofa over there I
20. 1:28didn't hear a thing
21. 1:29I was a sound sleeper I got up to go to
22. 1:31work in 70 April to 911 from the main
23. 1:36station came in he was wearing white
24. 1:38clothing the one you were inside the
25. 1:40reactor
26. 1:40it was odd to see he said that the wind
27. 1:42had turned toward a town of pretty the
28. 1:44level of radiation here had gotten worse
29. 1:46in some places it was over one rung in
30. 1:48an hour three or four days like this and
31. 1:50you'd get radiation sickness operators
32. 1:52were also being evacuated we had to go
33. 1:54to the central square where a bus will
34. 1:55be waiting for us yeah because just
35. 2:11before the explosion I started
36. 2:12renovating my class even then it didn't
37. 2:14look too good
38. 2:14the water came off because of the
39. 2:16humidity like sockets and light switches
40. 2:17were all stolen by the marideth I
41. 2:19thought if I drop paintings no one will
42. 2:21be able to take them walls can be taken
43. 2:23off
44. 2:31Tork I did this one in the summer or
45. 2:34spring so now that the rainfall washed
46. 2:36it alone nothing remains
47. 2:38I did this to beautify somehow and his
48. 2:39elimination in this elation this can't
49. 2:41be taken out it's official to national
50. 2:44[Music]
51. 2:45[Applause]
52. 2:45[Music]
53. 2:51my mother from poor fellow me on the
54. 2:54ground floor used to live Alex he had an
55. 2:55in one of the three circle two noble
56. 2:57divers he went underneath the reactor to
57. 2:59drain the water so-called fear no no no
58. 3:12who entered the history of humanity with
59. 3:13knowing that this is a person and during
60. 3:15the night of April 22nd press the button
61. 3:17to bring the reactor to and imagine them
62. 3:18to stop and it just didn't work it
63. 3:20exploded because of a design for Mary
64. 3:33Thompson's mother Kennedy she visited
65. 3:36the plant Chernobyl nuclear power plant
66. 3:37organized the visit and she asked me
67. 3:39chair comes in from Houston here in this
68. 3:41flat she left flowers for her son that's
69. 3:44all that remains of them
70. 3:48[Music]
71. 3:51[Laughter]
72. 3:55[Music]
73. 4:08[Music]
74. 4:13so we'll test Port Phillip
75. 4:15responsiveness Street approximately here
76. 4:17was the Buster where the workers were
77. 4:19picked up from to get to the power plant
78. 4:21for work as usual in the morning of
79. 4:23April 26 I came to the stop to go to
80. 4:25work
81. 4:26the bus was all quiet all the workers
82. 4:27were silent then one of the workers
83. 4:29uttered what's with the block then I
84. 4:31looked I saw the destroyed block before
85. 4:33might resume over there walk
86. 4:52propose new shenmue around 7:00 a.m. to
87. 4:55power than the whites work that's right
88. 4:56from here looking out of the bus I saw
89. 4:58the building was half destroyed my hair
90. 5:02stood on it wasn't clear why they
91. 5:04brought here what else could be done
92. 5:06everybody turn now that for us the
93. 5:08operator that was still a lot of work I
94. 5:10immediately got to work at the control
95. 5:14for me the main task was to feed water
96. 5:17to the reactor his chest miss Blanchard
97. 5:19Moscow officials kept ringing and
98. 5:20demanding not to stop the flow to be
99. 5:22reacted when I returned at the control
100. 5:25panel
101. 5:25I experienced a sense of exaltation
102. 5:27celebration excitement it seemed to me
103. 5:30that I was capable of everything ready
104. 5:32to do anything at any cost the sky was
105. 5:34the limit for me it was called radiation
106. 5:35euphoria I didn't know it existed
107. 5:39in the evening up to 4:00 p.m. when I
108. 5:41left the fourth reactor and took off my
109. 5:42clothes I was very surprised the skin
110. 5:44was brown in color as if tanned and my
111. 5:46face and hands were red we worked a full
112. 5:48shift my colleagues on the night shift
113. 5:50work till they couldn't stand no more
114. 5:53radiation exposure about that date was
115. 5:55120 BRR it's a Soviet measure biological
116. 5:58equivalent of RAD it's not quiet 120
117. 6:01according to the Soviet norms nuclear
118. 6:03plant all days of no more than five burn
119. 6:06every year
120. 6:22[Music]
121. 6:31[Music]
122. 6:39as I was not enter a new place we find
123. 6:41ourselves in the central square they
124. 6:44used to be a bus stop there where the
125. 6:45buses stick to the nuclear plant in the
126. 6:48night of April 29 accusation began from
127. 6:51here it was the first phase of the
128. 6:53evacuation of operators of the Chernobyl
129. 6:55nuclear power plant as we were waiting
130. 6:57on the bus arrived we kept checking out
131. 6:59watches it was very late already someone
132. 7:03had an electronic watch which was quite
133. 7:05a novelty at the time that person was
134. 7:07surprised to see a very strange hour
135. 7:08something like seven to two hours and 95
136. 7:11minutes in mid-may I saw that my
137. 7:13services were no longer needed and
138. 7:15croissant that was to take a vacation go
139. 7:17wherever you want we'll call you when we
140. 7:18start work on the third block I obeyed
141. 7:20that was never an even again neither for
142. 7:22the third block nor the first - the
143. 7:24situation was entirely
144. 7:28[Music]
145. 7:53pristine between the first month
146. 7:55following the Chernobyl accident
147. 7:56I even had a sauna document for the KGB
148. 7:58not to disclose information about
149. 8:00Chernobyl that was a three page list the
150. 8:03very first point forbid talking about
151. 8:04the real causes of reactor accident at
152. 8:06the Chernobyl nuclear power plant my
153. 8:09understanding is that I couldn't talk
154. 8:10about the red stop button leading to the
155. 8:12explosion initially I really did not
156. 8:14like the fact that the workers were
157. 8:15accused of an Chernobyl explosion I
158. 8:17became a general agent I completed
159. 8:19two-year postgraduate program at the
160. 8:20journalists Faculty of the cave
161. 8:21university I also began to write about
162. 8:23this topic among others at first I wrote
163. 8:26and no one wanted to publish me I
164. 8:27thought I wasn't writing well so I would
165. 8:29do a course and I did if I it turned out
166. 8:31that the problem was different your
167. 8:33Nobel was a forbidden topic then the
168. 8:35Soviet Union collapsed taboos
169. 8:36disappeared the KGB was gone my
170. 8:38subscription was invalidated so I was
171. 8:40keen to tell everything I knew and what
172. 8:41I thought about the whole thing the
173. 8:43traditional Finnish had later in the
174. 8:46early 2000s a growing interest in
175. 8:48painting that's when I met artists from
176. 8:49the strontium-90 group in journalism for
177. 8:52quite a long time I touched on different
178. 8:54aspects of Chernobyl but never what I
179. 8:56experienced myself I never wrote about
180. 8:58my own experience as an artist I have
181. 9:00many more opportunities artists have no
182. 9:02frameworks artists are free core
183. 9:09professional once I wrote that Chernobyl
184. 9:11had distorted reality ecological
185. 9:13financial political all other aspects of
186. 9:16present this distorted reality is unlike
187. 9:18any other Kanak scheme
188. 9:22[Music]