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La Bible avait prédit Tchernobyl (et on vous l'a caché) — Transcript

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0:00In April 1986, in the north of Soviet
0:03Ukraine, 50,000 people lived 3 km from
0:05a nuclear power plant in Pripyat. The
0:09city was built for a single reason. To
0:11house the staff of the Vladimir I.
0:13Lenin power plant. But in those
0:15apartment buildings, for some weeks now
0:17, the residents have begun to sleep
0:19poorly. Some have the same dream
0:21several nights in a row without being
0:23able to say what they saw. And at least
0:26five plant employees allegedly saw the
0:28same thing above the buildings. An
0:30immense, black, headless silhouette
0:33with open wings and two red dots
0:35instead of eyes. Some even went so far
0:38as to report it to their superiors. We
0:40are just days away from the catastrophe
0:41. On April 26, 1986, at 1:23 a.m.,
0:45reactor number 4 exploded twice, three
0:49seconds apart. When the first
0:52firefighters climbed onto the roof,
0:54they were convinced they were putting
0:55out a roof fire. But several of them
0:57allegedly described a black shape with
1:00a 6-meter wingspan gliding through the
1:02smoke above the reactor. And this is
1:04not the first time a creature has been
1:06spotted before a disaster. In November
1:091966, in Point Pleasant, a small
1:11American town on the Ohio River,
1:13residents reported a 2-meter shape with
1:16wings folded on its back and red eyes.
1:20Dozens reported it over 13 months; they
1:23called it Mothman. On December 15, 1967
1:26, at 5 p.m., the bridge crossing the
1:29river collapsed with 31 cars on it,
1:32leaving 46 dead. And there were never
1:35any reports after that day. Two cities,
1:39two black shapes, and each time the
1:41reports stopped on the day of the
1:42disaster. But in Ukraine, there was a
1:45second warning, and this one didn't fly
1:48. It was written, and it had been since
1:51the end of the 1st century, long before
1:54this city existed and long before it
1:56was given a name. Before 1970, there
2:02was neither a city nor a power plant in
2:04this place. On February 4, 1970, the
2:07Soviet Union opened a construction site
2:10in a swamp and forest area by a river
2:13150 km north of Kiev. Everything was
2:16decided before anyone lived there. The
2:18number of buildings, the number of
2:19schools, and the number of hospital
2:21beds. This type of city has a name in
2:23Russian. They call it an "atomgrad," a
2:26city of the atom. It is a city built
2:29for a power plant and inhabited only by
2:31those who run it. As of January 1, 1986
2:34, Pripyat had 49,400 inhabitants, and
2:37the average age was 26. On the central
2:40square, there is the Palace of Culture
2:42for Energy Workers, the Prometheus
2:44cinema, and the Raduga department store
2:46, where you can find goods unavailable
2:48in Kiev or Minsk. Salaries there are
2:51higher than the national average, the
2:53apartments are new, and the work is
2:56stable, prestigious, and presented as
2:58the most important in the Soviet Union.
3:00This power plant is named Vladimir
3:02Ilyich Lenin. It began operations in
3:05December 1977. It has four reactors in
3:08service, with two more under
3:09construction. And in official brochures
3:12, the energy it produces is described
3:14as the safest in the world. These
3:16people have exactly the same lives as
3:18you and me. They have jobs, children in
3:21the neighborhood school, colleagues
3:23they meet at the pool on Saturdays, and
3:25a nearby fairground that opens from
3:26time to time with bumper cars, swings,
3:28and a yellow Ferris wheel waiting to
3:30take its first turn. But while this
3:33city was being built, someone was
3:34speaking of a completely different
3:36reality. It remained classified for 30
3:39years and talks neither of pools nor of
3:41salaries. As early as May 1970, even
3:44before the first buildings rose from
3:46the ground, the KGB opened a department
3:49in the town. In July 1976, 9,294 people
3:54were working on the construction site.
3:56The KGB screened every one of them and
3:58sent the results to Kiev. 31 had German
4:01origins, four had been convicted of
4:03crimes against the state, two were
4:05Chinese, and 11 exchanged mail with
4:07people living in capitalist countries.
4:11On-site, agents and informants
4:13recruited from among the workers
4:15reported under code names: Magistre,
4:18Petrovic, Ivan, or Tina. The service
4:21tapped phones, opened mail, and kept
4:23apartments in town with no names on the
4:25doors to meet with its informants. And
4:28what these reports describe is a
4:30privileged city that wasn't actually
4:32all that privileged. It is a city
4:34lacking bread and drinking water. It is
4:36families spending years in overcrowded
4:38worker dormitories before obtaining an
4:40apartment. It is a young population
4:43constantly monitored in a place they
4:45had come to specifically because life
4:47was supposedly better there than
4:49elsewhere. These reports went to Kiev,
4:51the Party recorded them, the Party
4:54filed them, and bread was still in
4:56short supply. On May 1st, the Ferris
4:58wheel was supposed to spin for the
4:59first time. It will never spin. On
5:03February 21, 1979, another report left
5:06for Moscow. It no longer speaks of
5:08bread, nor drinking water, nor housing.
5:12It discusses how the plant was built
5:14and states that its defects could lead
5:16to damage and accidents. This report is
5:19signed by the head of the KGB, Yuri
5:21Andropov. In less than 4 years, this
5:23man will lead the Soviet Union. No one
5:26will respond to his memo before April
5:2826, 1986. This was not the oldest
5:31written warning about this place. The
5:34oldest one had been written before
5:36Russia even existed. This report from
5:39February 1979 is not the first. The KGB
5:42has been monitoring this plant since
5:43the first day of construction and
5:45reporting everything. The quality of
5:47the concrete, defective equipment
5:49delivered by subcontractors, safety
5:51rules not being followed, and
5:53breakdowns. According to historian Gala
5:56Ackerman, who examined these archives,
5:58there were nine major accidents and 68
6:01significant failures before the
6:03explosion of reactor 4. And between
6:071977 and 1981, the plant experienced 29
6:10emergency shutdowns. 29 times in 4
6:13years, a Chernobyl reactor shut down in
6:16an emergency. Each time a report was
6:19sent, and each time it was filed away
6:21with no follow-up. The very first one
6:23dates back to 1976, one year before it
6:26went into service. A regional office
6:29official wrote that launching the first
6:31reactor under these conditions was
6:33impossible and unacceptable, that the
6:35actual state of the site and the winter
6:37made a premature startup likely to
6:39cause a critical situation associated
6:41with radioactive contamination of the
6:43environment. The reactor started up in
6:46December 1977. In 1982, an incident
6:49released into the atmosphere what
6:51documents call significant quantities
6:54of radiation. The men who were there
6:57had to sign a document in which they
6:59pledged to tell no one about it. And in
7:021984, the KGB produced a summary. It
7:05methodically listed the structural
7:07defects of units 1 and 2 and ended with
7:10an administrative sentence. The
7:13necessary measures have not yet been
7:15implemented. That is 8 years of reports
7:18. All of this is what was poorly built
7:21at Chernobyl. A botched construction
7:23site, mediocre materials, and teams
7:26moving too fast. The rest had been
7:28poorly designed even before
7:30construction began. The four reactors
7:32at Chernobyl are of the same model. A
7:35Soviet model designed in Moscow between
7:381964 and 1968 and built in series from
7:41Lithuania to Ukraine. It bears a
7:44four-letter acronym: RBMK. It is the
7:47most powerful national reactor the
7:49country produces and the pride of its
7:51nuclear program. It also has
7:53particularities not found anywhere in
7:55the West. The first is that it has no
7:58containment building. On a Western
8:00reactor, a reinforced concrete shell
8:02surrounds the core to contain what
8:03might escape in the event of an
8:05accident. The RBMK, well, it doesn't
8:07have one. It is too large and a
8:10containment building would cost too
8:11much. The second peculiarity is its
8:14behavior at low power. Below a certain
8:17threshold, the reactor becomes unstable
8:19and a power increase tends to trigger
8:21another instead of leveling off. And
8:24there is a third one that isn't written
8:26in any brochure. In the control room of
8:30every RBMK, there is a button. It is
8:33the emergency shutdown button, which
8:35inserts all control rods into the core
8:37at once and is supposed to stop the
8:39reaction in seconds. It bears three
8:42characters: AZ-5. When this button is
8:45pressed, 211 rods descend into the
8:47reactor core. They are there for that
8:50purpose, to stifle the reaction in
8:52their path. But under every rod, there
8:54is a piece of graphite. And graphite in
8:57a reactor does the opposite of a rod.
9:00It sustains the reaction. So when the
9:03button is pressed, well, it is this
9:05piece that enters the core first.
9:07During the first few seconds, pressing
9:10the emergency shutdown button actually
9:13makes the power rise. And this is not
9:15the first time a reactor of this model
9:17has run away on its own. On November 30
9:19, 1975, at the Leningrad plant, unit
9:22one was restarted after maintenance.
9:26Power rose without anyone asking for it
9:28. Operators triggered the emergency
9:30shutdown, and while the rods were
9:32descending, part of the core melted. 32
9:35fuel assemblies were destroyed or
9:37damaged, and radioactivity was released
9:39over the Gulf of Finland. It was the
9:42same reactor model as at Chernobyl and
9:45the same button, 11 years earlier. At
9:48that time, no one was talking about
9:50graphite yet. What was learned from
9:52Leningrad is that an RBMK can run away
9:55and that an emergency shutdown can
9:57arrive too late. 5 years later, the
10:00Moscow institute that designed this
10:01reactor finished a confidential study.
10:04It listed nine major design flaws and
10:07stated that accidents were not just
10:09possible in rare circumstances, but
10:11probable during routine operation. The
10:15reactor was not modified. And the plant
10:18personnel were not even warned. The
10:20exact role of the graphite was only
10:23understood in 1983. And by the Soviets
10:26themselves, that year, two new reactors
10:28underwent their commissioning tests.
10:31The teams pressed the emergency
10:33shutdown button and the power rose. The
10:36first of these two reactors is in
10:38Lithuania. It is called Ignalina 1. The
10:41second is reactor number 4 at Chernobyl
10:44. These engineers did not hide anything
10:47. They wrote down what they saw. They
10:49requested that the rods be modified,
10:51and the report went back up to the same
10:53Moscow institute. It goes back down to
10:55the management of the other plants and
10:57stops at the directors 'doors. The rods
11:00will never be modified and the file
11:02never reaches the operators, those
11:04spending their nights at the control
11:06desk, 1 meter from the button. And do
11:09you know what is just a few centimeters
11:12below your screen? It’s the button to
11:14subscribe to this channel. Obviously, I
11:17release one video per week on topics
11:19crazier than the last. So don't
11:22hesitate to join us. We are a great
11:24bunch of happy campers. That same year,
11:27Moscow receives a memo ranking the
11:29Chernobyl plant among the most
11:30dangerous in the Soviet Union. Due to a
11:33lack of safety equipment. But the
11:35matter of the rods never leaves the
11:37offices. Reactor number 4 is declared
11:39complete on December 31st of that year.
11:42It joins the other three, and the men
11:44who will run it know nothing of what
11:46the startup teams saw. A reactor that
11:48runs away when taken down too low. An
11:51emergency shutdown button that starts
11:53by worsening what it is meant to stop,
11:56and a system that files its own
11:58warnings in folders no one reopens. But
12:01none of that explodes as long as the
12:03reactor is running at full power. It
12:05would take one night. A night where it
12:08was brought down very low and held
12:10there. That of April 25, 1986. That
12:18night in Chernobyl, a safety test is
12:21being conducted. At this plant,
12:23everything depends on water. Pumps
12:25circulate it through the core
12:26constantly, and if it stops, the
12:28reactor continues to heat up without
12:30anything to remove it. The pumps run on
12:33the power produced by the plant itself.
12:35So, when the plant shuts down, it stops
12:37with it, and it takes about a minute
12:39for the backup diesel generators to
12:41take over. Be aware that one minute
12:44without cooling on a reactor of this
12:45size is already too long. Yet, there
12:48remains a power source during that
12:50minute. When the steam is cut off, the
12:52turbine does not stop instantly. It
12:54continues to spin from its momentum,
12:56and as long as it spins, it produces
12:58power. That is what we want to measure
13:00that night. How long and how much
13:02current? The test has already been
13:05attempted at this plant and failed each
13:07time because the voltage produced by
13:09the turbine fell too quickly to power
13:11anything. Engineers have since designed
13:14two voltage regulators, and tonight is
13:16meant to test them. The test is
13:18scheduled for Friday, April 25th during
13:20the day, with the team preparing for it
13:22since the morning. The power reduction
13:24began at 1 a.m. on April 25th and
13:26lasted all day long. In the early
13:28afternoon, one of the two
13:29turbogenerators was shut down. Then, as
13:32the test program required, the
13:34emergency cooling system valves were
13:36manually closed so it wouldn't trigger
13:39mid-test and pump cold water into the
13:41core. At 2 p.m., 15 minutes before the
13:44scheduled start, the phone rang in the
13:47control room. It was the Kiev dispatch
13:49center. Another power plant had just
13:50gone offline. The grid was short on
13:52power, and reactor 4 had to keep
13:54producing. The test was therefore
13:56postponed. It would wait 9 hours—9
13:59hours during which the reactor ran at
14:01half-power with its emergency cooling
14:02manually shut off. Authorization
14:05arrived at 11:10 p.m., and by then, the
14:08men who had prepared the test all
14:10morning had gone home. In the control
14:13room was Anatoly Dyatlov. He was the
14:16deputy chief engineer. He was the
14:18highest-ranking official in the
14:19building and the one directing the test
14:21. Operators in the room that night
14:23would later recount that he insisted on
14:25continuing the test against their
14:26advice. Beside him, Alexander Akimov
14:29was leading the shift. He was in
14:32command of the team and it was his
14:33responsibility to stop the test. And at
14:36the reactor console was a 25-year-old
14:39man named Leonid Toptunov. He had
14:42arrived here in March 1983 with his
14:44engineering degree and had held this
14:46position for 2 months. This was the
14:48first reactor shutdown he was piloting
14:50himself. At 11:10 p.m., these three men
14:52resumed the descent. The test program
14:54required the reactor to settle between
14:56700 and 1,000 MW and remain there for
14:58the duration of the test. This reactor
15:00produces 3,200 MW when running at full
15:02capacity. These 700 MW were not chosen
15:05at random. Below that, an RBMK becomes
15:08unstable, and one power surge triggers
15:10another. At 12:28 a.m., during the
15:13switch from one control system to
15:15another, the power continued to drop.
15:17It fell to 30 MW—30 out of 3,200. And
15:21a reactor that falls that low begins
15:23producing xenon, a gas that absorbs
15:25neutrons. At full power. This xenon is
15:28consumed as quickly as it appears. At
15:3030 MW, it no longer is. So, it
15:32accumulates in the core and stifles
15:34what is left of the reaction. And the
15:36less the reaction functions, the more
15:38it accumulates. What the rules say in
15:41this specific case is that you must
15:42shut down the reactor and wait 24 hours
15:44. According to testimonies collected
15:47after the disaster, Alexander wanted to
15:49stop the test and Anatoly refused,
15:51threatening to hand the shift over to
15:53someone else. The test continues. To
15:56raise power against the xenon, there is
15:58only one way: pull out the control rods
16:00. So, the operators pull them out one
16:03by one, and the power slowly rises. At
16:051:00 a.m., it stabilizes at 200 MW.
16:08That is 500 below the planned level;
16:10the reactor is running in its most
16:12unstable zone. At 1:03 a.m. and then
16:151:07 a.m., two additional pumps are
16:17turned on so that eight pumps run
16:19during the test. They send more water
16:22into a core that is producing much less
16:24heat. The water boils less, steam
16:26decreases, and to compensate for this
16:28loss, more rods must be pulled out.
16:31There is a rule on these reactors that
16:33no operator is allowed to break. Keep
16:36at least 30 rods inside the core at all
16:38times so that the emergency shutdown
16:40can act quickly. At 1:22 a.m., only 6
16:44to 8 remain. In the control room, the
16:47needles are low; the unit is in the
16:48process of shutting down. There is only
16:51a 40-second test left to perform. At
16:531:23 and 4 seconds, the steam intake to
16:55the turbine is closed. The test begins.
16:59The turbine slows down. The pumps it
17:01powers slow down with it. The water
17:03circulates less quickly through the
17:05core, so it heats up more. So it starts
17:08to boil. And in an RBMK, the more steam
17:11there is, the more the reaction
17:13accelerates. Power begins to rise. At
17:161:23 and 40 seconds. Leonid Toptunov
17:20presses AZ-5. That is what the
17:22procedure says, and that is what he was
17:24taught to do. When the power rises, you
17:26press the button that is supposed to
17:27stop everything. This famous action
17:29will kill him. 18 seconds later, the
17:32211 rods begin to descend, and the
17:34graphite tips enter the core first,
17:36displacing the water ahead of them in 3
17:38seconds. The heat produced by the
17:41reactor exceeds 12,000 MW, almost four
17:43times what it produces at full capacity
17:45. After that, the instruments go off
17:47the scale. No one will ever know the
17:48actual peak. The uranium fragments
17:50inside its cladding. The water in the
17:53circuits turns to steam all at once,
17:54and the pressure lifts what seals the
17:56reactor from above. A concrete and
17:59steel lid 17 meters wide and weighing
18:022,000 tons.
18:04>> The resulting blast is such that the
18:06upper slab and its 2,000 tons are
18:07lifted, rupturing the pressure tubes.
18:11>> It is 1:23 and 44 seconds when the
18:13steam blows the lid off. A few seconds
18:15later, a second explosion blew off the
18:17roof and the tops of the walls. At 1
18:20a.m., I heard the sound of a small
18:22explosion. I thought that something had
18:27happened. After that, about 4 seconds
18:30later, I heard a quite loud explosion
18:32and saw a column of flame rise above
18:34the roof. Then there was a release of
18:37blackish-gray smoke topped by a
18:38mushroom cloud of about 300 meters.
18:41Around the building, on the asphalt and
18:43on the roof of the turbine hall, there
18:45are now blocks of graphite. Analyses
18:48conducted later on these fragments
18:49would show they were over 1000 degrees.
18:53Ejected from the core. Inside, 1700
18:56tons of graphite left in the reactor
18:58catch fire upon contact with the air.
19:01This graphite is found in only one
19:03place in this plant, inside the core,
19:06and none of the men present ever
19:08learned it could escape. It is not
19:10written in any Soviet manual. So, the
19:12three men do what one does when a
19:14reactor has a problem. They look for
19:17the fault, they give the order to send
19:18water into the core to cool it, and
19:20they call the firefighters for the fire
19:22that started in the turbine hall. There
19:24is no longer a reactor to cool. The
19:26core of a nuclear reactor is open to
19:28the sky for the first time in human
19:30history. 3 km from there, in Pripyat,
19:34it is 1:24 a.m. and 50,000 people are
19:38sleeping. At 1:25 a.m., the siren goes
19:43off at the plant's barracks. Lieutenant
19:46Volodimir Pravik is in command of the
19:48guard that night. He is in his office
19:50at the moment of the explosion, and 2
19:52minutes later, his men are in the
19:53trucks. On the road, he radios his
19:55brigade chief and describes what he has
19:57in front of his windshield. The flames
19:59are blue. No one in those trucks knows
20:02what that means. What they were told
20:04was that it was a roof fire. That is
20:06the only thing a Pripyat firefighter
20:07could imagine because a Soviet reactor
20:09does not explode and because that is
20:11written in all the documents they have
20:13read. They are all wearing canvas
20:15jackets, helmets, and rubber boots.
20:18None of them has a dosimeter, the
20:20device that measures the dose of
20:21radiation one receives. At 1:35 a.m., a
20:24second truck arrives from the city. It
20:27is the Pripyat barracks and it is
20:29commanded by Lieutenant Victor Kibenok,
20:3123 years old. Among these men, there is
20:35a 25-year-old sergeant major named
20:38Vasili Ignatenko. When they get out of
20:41the trucks, there are black pieces
20:42everywhere on the ground around the
20:44building. Grigor Khel, one of the
20:46drivers, would later recount that he
20:48kicked one of them aside and one of his
20:50colleagues picked one up by hand before
20:52simply saying it was hot. These pieces
20:54were coming from the reactor core. The
20:57men climb onto the roof, not that of
20:59reactor 4 which no longer exists, but
21:01that of reactor 3, right next door in
21:02the same building onto which the
21:04explosion had thrown burning pieces of
21:06graphite. That reactor is still running
21:09with its men inside. So, they unroll
21:12the hoses and put out the fires one by
21:14one for 40 minutes. After barely 20
21:17minutes, the first ones start to vomit.
21:20They have headaches, they can no longer
21:21carry their equipment, and they all
21:23have a metallic taste in their mouths.
21:25Around 2:30 AM, a new team goes up to
21:28replace them. Vasily Ignatenko comes
21:31back down, supported by his comrades.
21:33He is transported to the Pripyat
21:34hospital around 2:35 AM. On that roof,
21:38in 40 minutes, these men received what
21:40a nuclear worker should not receive in
21:42an entire career. It cannot be seen, it
21:46cannot be felt, and it does not hurt at
21:48the time. What can be seen is the skin.
21:52It has browned as if they had spent
21:54several days in the bright sun, and in
21:56Chernobyl. Well, we call that a nuclear
22:00tan. It is a burn that starts from
22:03inside the body and takes days to reach
22:06the surface. At the hospital, the
22:08firefighters are undressed and their
22:10belongings are taken down to the
22:11basement. The jackets, helmets, and
22:13boots are all still there. These
22:16fabrics have absorbed fuel dust and, 40
22:19years after that night, this basement
22:21remains one of the most radioactive
22:23places in Pripyat. At the power plant,
22:27at 6:00 AM, the next shift comes to
22:30relieve Alexander Akimov and Leonid
22:32Toptunov. But the two men refuse to
22:35leave. They realized that water was not
22:36reaching the reactor and they think a
22:38closed valve is blocking the circuit
22:40somewhere. So, they go down into the
22:42half-destroyed feed pump room and open
22:45the valves on the two pipes. Then they
22:48move into another room where they
22:49remain standing for hours in a mixture
22:51of water and fuel that comes up to
22:53their knees. They are there, manually
22:56turning half-submerged handwheels. They
22:59only stop when the radiation prevents
23:01them from staying on their feet. During
23:03the day, the irradiated men are put on
23:05buses. They are taken to Boryspil
23:07airport, near Kiev, and sent to Moscow
23:10by plane. They are taken to Hospital
23:12Number 6, the only facility in the
23:14country that knows how to treat this.
23:16Vasili's wife is named Ludmila. She is
23:1823 years old. They were married 3 years
23:20ago and she is 6 months pregnant. In
23:23Moscow, they refuse her entry. They
23:25cannot let anyone through, especially
23:26not a pregnant woman. So, she says she
23:28is not. She pays an employee to pass
23:31the door and she settles in. She stays
23:33there for 14 days. She recounted her 14
23:36days to the writer Svetlana Alexievich
23:3910 years later. She says she met a
23:41different man every morning, that his
23:43skin peeled off in layers and changed
23:45color, and in the end, there was not
23:47much left to touch. Yet a nurse had
23:49warned her from the very first day. She
23:52could stay on the condition that she
23:53did not cry in front of her husband. So
23:55, she decided to do what anyone would
23:57do for the person they love. She stayed
23:59glued to a body that was a radiation
24:02source all on its own for 14 days while
24:04she was carrying life. On May 11,
24:07Volodimir Pravik and Victor Kibenok die
24:10a few hours apart. Alexander Akimov
24:12dies the same day. Vasili Ignatenko
24:15dies on May 13 at 11:20 in the morning
24:18at only 25 years old. Leonid Toptunov
24:21dies on the 14th. On the day of
24:23Vasili's funeral, his feet have swollen
24:25so much that they can no longer put his
24:28shoes on him and they have to cut his
24:30suit to manage to dress him. They put
24:32him in a zinc coffin, weld the lid shut
24:34, and lower him into the Mitino
24:37cemetery under a concrete slab. The 27
24:39others are buried in the same way in
24:41the same cemetery. Ludmila, she will
24:44survive. Her daughter Natasha is born
24:47months later with severe malformations
24:49and she will only live for a few hours.
24:51These men had been agonizing in Moscow
24:54for 4 days when on May 1st in Kiev,
24:56they made school children march in the
24:59street. The reactor explodes at 1:23
25:02a.m. on Saturday, April 26. The order
25:05to evacuate Pripyat comes on Sunday,
25:07April 27 at 10 a.m. and the kitchen
25:09loudspeakers announce it at 1:10 p.m.
25:12Between the two, 36 hours passed. [In
25:16the event of an accident][an
25:21unfavorable radiation situation has
25:23developed in the city of Pripyat.][To
25:26ensure the safety of the people, a
25:28temporary evacuation of the residents
25:30to the nearest locations in the Kiev
25:32region is necessary.] During these 36
25:35hours, the city lives on. Children go
25:38to school, people do their shopping at
25:40the store, and some go out onto their
25:42balconies to watch the light above the
25:44power plant. The announcement that the
25:46residents hear that Sunday is read by a
25:48calm woman's voice. She explains that
25:50because of the accident, radiological
25:52conditions are deteriorating, the party
25:53and the army are taking the necessary
25:55measures, and the population must be
25:57temporarily evacuated. She advises
25:59taking documents, some personal
26:01belongings, and a bit of food for 2 or
26:033 days, just in case. 1,200 buses
26:05arrive from Kiev. The city is emptied
26:08in 3 and a half hours. Nobody panics
26:11because nobody understood what was
26:13happening. None of them will ever
26:15return. Today, Pripyat is still full of
26:18dishes, photos, clothes, and children's
26:21toys. The next day, Monday, April 28,
26:241,100 km away, an engineer arrives at
26:27work at the Swedish Forsmark nuclear
26:29power plant. He goes through the
26:32routine entry check and the detector
26:34goes off on the soles of his shoes,
26:35even though he just arrived. So, what
26:39he has on his soles, he didn't pick up
26:41at the plant. The Swedes search for a
26:43leak of their own. They find none. So
26:46they look at where the wind is coming
26:47from, and the wind is coming from the
26:49east. Stockholm calls Moscow and asks
26:52if something has happened. Moscow
26:54replies no, but as a security measure,
26:56the Swedes contact the International
26:58Atomic Energy Agency. And it is only at
27:00that moment, on the evening of April 28
27:03, that Soviet television broadcasts a
27:05four-sentence statement to say that an
27:07accident has taken place at Chernobyl
27:10and that measures are being taken. The
27:12same day, the head of the KGB, Viktor
27:14Chebrikov, writes to the Central
27:16Committee to report on his work. They
27:19are monitoring diplomats and foreign
27:20correspondents. They are limiting what
27:23they can learn about the accident and
27:24countering what he calls the
27:25anti-Soviet propaganda campaign in the
27:27West. The Soviets evacuated Pripyat
27:30before Sweden discovered anything at
27:32all. They knew, but they waited until
27:34they were forced to say it. 3 days
27:36later, it is May 1st. It is the biggest
27:38holiday on the Soviet calendar. In Kiev
27:41, 130 km from the plant, the parade is
27:44maintained. Hundreds of thousands of
27:47people take to the streets, and leading
27:49the columns, as every year, are the
27:52schoolchildren. The wind has turned,
27:54and the cloud has passed over Kiev. At
27:56the city's botanical institute, the
27:58devices record a clear rise in
28:00radioactivity. As early as Saturday,
28:03KGB officers arrive and seal them off
28:05to avoid panic and rumors. But the
28:08authorities refuse to cancel the parade
28:10. They even demand that schoolchildren
28:12be brought out to show that Kiev is at
28:15no risk. They parade for 4 hours. The
28:19children of the party leaders had been
28:21put on planes and taken out of Kiev a
28:23few days earlier. The inhabitants would
28:25only learn about it years later. In the
28:27city, too, everything was carrying on
28:29as usual. The shops were open, children
28:32were out walking, everything seemed
28:33normal. And the cloud continued to
28:36settle over the fields. It fell on the
28:38grass, on the crops, and on the animals
28:40that had been grazing outside for 5
28:42days. In Ukraine, 50,000 cattle, sheep,
28:45and goats were loaded onto trucks, and
28:4825,000 went straight to the
28:50slaughterhouse. A country that had been
28:53short of meat for 40 years suddenly had
28:5525,000 radioactive carcasses on its
28:57hands. Ukraine supplied the whole
29:00country with wheat, milk, and meat. So
29:04many goods lost due to the
29:05irresponsibility of a few.
29:08>> On May 8, 1986, the Ministry of Health
29:10set new radiation thresholds acceptable
29:13for the population. 10 times higher
29:15than the previous ones, and up to 50
29:17times in some cases. On the same day,
29:20the Politburo, the office of the
29:21Communist Party, met to decide what to
29:23do with the carcasses. They solved the
29:26problem by washing the animals with
29:27water and removing their lymph nodes.
29:29Slaughterhouses were ordered to
29:31classify the meat according to its
29:32radioactivity. Low, medium, or high.
29:36The low and medium went to be mixed.
29:39One part contaminated meat for 10 parts
29:41healthy meat, in sausages and canned
29:42goods. They were labeled normally and
29:45distributed throughout the country.
29:47Only one city was excluded from the
29:49distribution: Moscow. Mikhail Gorbachev
29:52spoke on television on May 14, 18 days
29:55after the explosion. He announced
30:06deaths from the explosion and deaths in
30:08the hospital. He did not say a word to
30:11the European countries that had
30:13received the cloud, and he spent part
30:15of his speech accusing the Western
30:17press of exaggerating. In July 1986,
30:20the Politburo met regarding the causes.
30:24The report presented to it concluded
30:26that the designers of the RBMK had not
30:28ensured the required level of safety
30:30and had not seriously evaluated the
30:32reactor's reliability. Gorbachev lashed
30:35out at the leaders of the nuclear
30:36industry. A year later, on July 7, 1987
30:39, a trial opened in the House of
30:41Culture in the city of Chernobyl. On
30:45the bench were the plant director
30:47Viktor Bryukhanov, chief engineer
30:49Nikolai Fomin, a shift manager, a
30:52reactor chief, a safety inspector, and
30:54deputy chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov,
30:57the man who directed the test that
30:59night. He was the one the operators
31:03blamed. Those who were in the control
31:06room that night recounted that he
31:08refused to stop the test when the power
31:11collapsed and threatened to hand the
31:13reins to someone else, Anatoly D. He
31:15survived that night and would spend the
31:178 remaining years of his life defending
31:19himself in a book and various articles.
31:22To him, the reactor was rigged. No one
31:25had told the men he was leading, and
31:27operators were being judged for a flaw
31:28they could not have known about. This
31:34reactor should never have been in
31:35operation. The true culprits are the
31:39authorities in charge of the nuclear
31:40program. We did not have the necessary
31:48documentation regarding this reactor.
31:51The explosion was inevitable. On July
31:5529, Viktor, Nikolai, and Anatoly
31:57received the maximum sentence. 10 years
31:59in a penal colony, which is to say,
32:01forced labor. What the tribunal did not
32:04judge, however, was the reactor. The
32:07defect in the graphite rods, known
32:09since 1983, was never mentioned. The
32:121980 study predicting probable
32:14accidents remained in Moscow, and no
32:16one asked why this reactor lacked a
32:18containment structure. These six men
32:21were convicted for failing to follow
32:23safety rules for a reactor whose flaws
32:25were still being hidden. 14 other
32:27reactors of the same model were running
32:29in the country at the time of the
32:31verdict. The State lied about the
32:34causes, the radiation doses, and the
32:36deaths.
32:43>> One thing remained to be made to
32:46disappear, and it wasn't in the
32:48archives. It was on the site, and
32:50600,000 men were going to see it. The
32:55reactor had been burning in the open
32:56air for 12 hours, and no one in the
32:58world had ever put out such a fire. So,
33:00the Soviet Union did what it knew how
33:02to do. It sent men there between 1986
33:05and 1992. Between 500,000 and 800,000
33:09people passed through Chernobyl. The
33:12figure most often cited is 600,000.
33:15Young men doing their military service,
33:17recalled reservists, coal miners,
33:19drivers, masons, and factory workers
33:22detached by their companies. Almost
33:24none of them chose to go there. A man
33:26is summoned, and the man leaves. They
33:30are called the liquidators, those who
33:32liquidate the consequences of the
33:33accident. One of them is named Anatoly
33:37Koliadin. He is an electrician. He
33:39arrived at the site in the hours
33:40following the explosion and would stay
33:42there for 3 years. The first operation
33:44began on the afternoon of April 27 in
33:46the sky. The core had to be smothered,
33:49and the only way to do it was to bury
33:51it under sand, boron, and lead. MI-8
34:05helicopters took off from Kiev. The
34:08pilots fly through the forest of pylons
34:10surrounding the plant, hover 100 meters
34:12above the building, and their crew
34:14pushes the bags out the open door by
34:16hand, aiming by eye. There is no
34:19armored floor in these aircraft. There
34:21is an open door, and below, an open-air
34:24reactor. Between April 27 and May 10,
34:27they perform over 5,000 sorties and
34:29drop about 5,000 tons of material into
34:32it. On October 2, one of these
34:34helicopters passes overhead and snags
34:36the cable of a construction crane. Its
34:38blades shatter, it crashes, and the
34:40four men on board are killed. But these
34:435,000 tons dropped from above create
34:45another problem. They crush what
34:47remains of the core against the
34:49concrete slab supporting it. And if the
34:51molten fuel burns through that slab, it
34:54will descend to the water table. The
34:56one that feeds the Pripyat, the Dnieper
34:58, and Kiev's drinking water. The
35:00contact between molten fuel and water
35:03produces a steam explosion. They must
35:05get underneath the reactor before that
35:08happens. In May, 400 coal miners arrive
35:10in Chernobyl. They come from the Tula
35:13basin in Russia and the Donbas in
35:15Ukraine. They dig a 168-meter tunnel
35:18that leads exactly beneath the reactor.
35:21They work in 3-hour shifts, day and
35:23night, without ever interrupting the
35:25site. The underground temperature rises
35:28to 50 ° C, and they cannot ventilate
35:30because ventilating would mean drawing
35:32in air from outside. The tunnel is
35:34completed on June 24, 60 days after the
35:36explosion. Inside, the engineers
35:38install a heat exchanger. It is a
35:40machine designed to pump heat from
35:42under the reactor to keep it from
35:44sinking any further. Except that the
35:46core finished cooling on its own while
35:48they were digging. The machine is
35:50installed anyway, but it will never be
35:53turned on. While the miners are digging
35:56, no one goes up to the roofs; the
35:57explosion had showered them with pieces
35:59of graphite and fuel. They must be
36:02removed because that is where the
36:04concrete lid that will seal the reactor
36:07must rest. The army divides the surface
36:09into three sectors and names them Katya
36:11, Nina, and Masha. On Masha, the
36:13instruments display values found
36:15nowhere else on earth. The Soviets
36:18first send machines; they bring out
36:20robots derived from their lunar rovers
36:22and buy a bomb-disposal robot nicknamed
36:24"the Joker" from the West German police
36:26. The Joker climbs onto Masha and gives
36:30out even before it could clear anything
36:32. So the Soviet army sends men back up
36:35onto the roofs with shovels. In the
36:37documents, they are called biorobots.
36:39There were 3,828 of them between the
36:42summer and autumn of 1986. Each goes up
36:46once and has 90 seconds, watch in hand.
36:49>> Once in that sector, you count to 90.
36:52After which, drop your tools and head
36:54back at a run.
36:56>> They wear aprons and lead plates cut
36:57from sheets ripped from the walls of
36:59the Chernobyl administrative offices.
37:02This lead reduces the dose by about a
37:04third, but the rest passes right
37:06through. They run, they take three or
37:08four shovelfuls of graphite, they throw
37:10them into the reactor hole, and they go
37:11back down. In 90 seconds up there, a
37:14man receives the dose a nuclear worker
37:16should not exceed in their entire
37:18career. That is why you only go up once
37:21. Except the records show that some
37:23went back up a second time, and
37:24sometimes even a third. Most were
37:27between 20 and 30 years old. The
37:29construction of the sarcophagus lasted
37:31206 days. From June to the end of
37:32November 1986. The men erected 400,000
37:36m³ of concrete and over 7,000 tons of
37:38steel around a reactor you cannot
37:40approach. What they encased in there
37:42was 7,400 m³ of debris and
37:44contaminated earth. Enough to fill 300
37:47Olympic swimming pools?
38:03>> And the radiation is such that they
38:04work without ever being able to check
38:06what they are assembling. The plates
38:08are lowered by crane and placed against
38:10each other without welding. In the end,
38:12there were over 1,000 m² of holes in
38:14the roof where the pieces did not meet.
38:17>> The first expedition proved that the
38:19sarcophagus is anything but a solid,
38:21airtight concrete coffin. It is a thin,
38:25cracked cover, full of holes everywhere
38:27, into which rainwater seeps and which
38:30birds have taken over. This sarcophagus
38:33was meant to last 30 years. In November
38:371986, the work ended and the men went
38:40home. The Soviet Union then treated
38:43them as heroes. It gave them medals,
38:45official status, disability pensions,
38:48and sometimes even an apartment. In
38:501991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
38:54Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus took over
38:57the burden. In 2011, Ukraine decided to
39:00reduce their pensions. So, these men
39:03took to the streets and some stopped
39:05eating to make themselves heard.
39:07>> The trouble began when police
39:09dismantled the tent where the
39:10protesters were staying warm. But what
39:15is happening in this country to treat a
39:17protester this way? They killed a man.
39:20But why?
39:22>> In Donetsk, the police charged and one
39:23of them died. Ukrainian President
39:26Viktor Yanukovych replies that the
39:27country does not have the means to keep
39:29the promises made to them. In Belarus,
39:31the cuts began even earlier. Today, the
39:34lowest of these pensions are around €
39:3770 per month.
39:39>> Last October, about a hundred
39:40liquidators walked from Tula to Moscow,
39:43200 km, to the walls of the Kremlin to
39:45protest a bill that would further
39:47reduce their compensation. which would
39:49deprive their families of a pension
39:50after their death. They threw away
39:52their medals. If we still owed anything
39:55to our homeland, said the president of
39:56their association, we have paid it back
39:58.
39:59>> No state has ever counted their deaths.
40:02It is the Chernobyl veterans themselves
40:04who take care of it by setting up their
40:05own associations. The largest one
40:08reports 60,000 dead and 165,000
40:10disabled out of 600,000 men. Other
40:14estimates go as low as 20,000 deaths.
40:17What we know is that 600,000 men buried
40:19this reactor under 400,000 cubic meters
40:21of concrete. They could not bury the
40:24name of this place, and that name was
40:27written somewhere 1,900 years earlier.
40:32The last book of the Bible was written
40:34at the end of the 1st century on a
40:36Greek island called Patmos. It is
40:38called the Apocalypse. It tells of the
40:41end of the world in seven stages. Seven
40:44angels sound the trumpet one after
40:45another, and each trumpet triggers a
40:47catastrophe. Here is what the text says
40:50for the third angel. The third angel
40:53sounded his trumpet, and a great star,
40:56blazing like a torch, fell from the sky
40:59and landed on a third of the rivers and
41:02on the springs of water. The name of
41:05this star is Wormwood. And a third of
41:08the waters turned into wormwood, and
41:11many men died from the waters because
41:13they had become bitter. Let us take
41:16this text line by line, please.
41:18Wormwood is a plant. There is a
41:20specific species, a weed that grows
41:22everywhere in Europe, on roadsides and
41:25on vacant lots. It grows to the height
41:27of a man, it is bitter, and its stems
41:29are dark. In France, it is called
41:32mugwort. In northern Ukraine, it is
41:35called chornobyl. from "chorniy"
41:38meaning black and "bilya" for stems.
41:43The name of this plant therefore means
41:45black grass. It is what gave its name
41:49to a village in the region, and this
41:50village gave its name to the power
41:52plant built 15 km away. The verse then
41:55says that the star was blazing like a
41:57torch. The core of reactor 4 burned in
42:00the open air for 10 days. 1,700 tons of
42:03graphite caught fire at over 1,000
42:05degrees, and the column of light was
42:07visible from the windows of Pripyat.
42:10The first firefighter to arrive on the
42:12scene reported over the radio that the
42:15flames were blue. The verse then says
42:17that the star fell upon the rivers and
42:19the springs of water. The plant is
42:22situated on the banks of the Pripyat,
42:24the river that gives its name to the
42:26city. This river joins the Dnieper, and
42:29the Dnieper provides Kiev with its
42:31drinking water. In the months that
42:34follow, the Soviets build dikes in an
42:36emergency to hold back what flows
42:38toward the river. And the last line of
42:41the verse says that many men died from
42:43these waters because they had become
42:44bitter. After April 1986, the water,
42:48milk, fish, and vegetables of the
42:51entire region become unfit, yet nothing
42:54shows it. The water tastes exactly the
42:56same as before, and that is what makes
42:58it dangerous. The Ukrainians made this
43:01connection before anyone else, and they
43:03did it immediately. In 1986, very few
43:06people owned a Bible in the Soviet
43:08Union. Those who had one opened the
43:10Book of Revelation in the days
43:12following the explosion and stumbled
43:14upon the name of the star. In their
43:16language, this name designates the same
43:18family of plants that gave its name to
43:19the power plant. People talked about it
43:22among themselves, in lines, on trains,
43:24and within a few weeks, the news had
43:25spread across the country. On July 26,
43:281986, the New York Times published an
43:30article by its Moscow correspondent,
43:33Serge Schmemann. The title is "
43:35Chernobyl Fallout: An Apocalyptic Tale.
43:38" Chernobyl fallout, an apocalyptic
43:40tale. And in Moscow, well, they are
43:42worried. For 60 years, this country has
43:44been fighting religion. It has closed
43:47churches, imprisoned priests, and
43:49taught atheism in school. So in 1986,
43:51it put leaders of the Russian Orthodox
43:54Church on television. They came to tell
43:56people that this verse predicts nothing
43:58and that no one can know when the end
44:00times will come. The same power that
44:03lied about the doses, the dead, and the
44:06food was afraid of a 1,900-year-old
44:09text. It is strange, all the same. 25
44:13years later, independent Ukraine does
44:16exactly the opposite. On April 26, 2011
44:19, it inaugurated a memorial in the
44:21center of the city of Chernobyl in the
44:23presence of the Ukrainian and Russian
44:24presidents. The artist Anatoly
44:26Gaidamaka sculpted a metal angel
44:28blowing into a trumpet there. It is the
44:31third angel, the one from the verse.
44:33The work bears its name, and the entire
44:35park is called the Wormwood Star
44:37Memorial. A state has therefore had
44:40this prophecy engraved into the
44:42landscape 15 km from the reactor. This
44:45connection, however, has two weak
44:47points, and they are well known. The
44:49first is that in Slavic Bibles, the
44:51star's name is not Chernobyl, but
44:53Wormwood, the name of the entire family
44:55. Chernobyl is just one plant in that
44:58family, the one that grows in northern
45:00Ukraine. The second is that the verse
45:03says men died by the waters, and at
45:06Chernobyl, the deaths of April and May
45:081986 came from the air, the roof, and
45:10the graphite. That objection is true
45:13for the first three months. It is no
45:15longer true for the 20 years that
45:17follow. During the 10 days the core
45:19burned in the open air, the reactor
45:21released more than just graphite. It
45:23also released a radioactive gas called
45:26iodine-131. This gas rose with the
45:30smoke, traveled with the wind, and
45:32settled on fields, vegetable gardens,
45:35and pasture grass. The wind carried it
45:37primarily toward the north. Belarus,
45:39the neighboring country, received about
45:4170%of everything that fell on the
45:43Soviet Union. Iodine-131 does not last
45:46long. Its radioactivity is halved every
45:498 days, and after 2 months, almost
45:51nothing remains. Except that during
45:54those two months, cows ate the grass
45:57and people drank the milk. The human
46:00body needs iodine to function. The
46:02thyroid gland is responsible for it.
46:03This small gland located at the base of
46:06the neck captures all the iodine
46:07circulating in the blood and stores it.
46:11And it makes no distinction between
46:14normal iodine and radioactive iodine.
46:17In an adult, this gland is large enough
46:19for the dose to be diluted. In a child,
46:22it is tiny. For an equal amount of
46:25iodine ingested, an infant receives a
46:27dose in the thyroid several times
46:29higher than an adult. There was a way
46:31to prevent this, and it was known to
46:33all radiation protection services in
46:35the world. You just have to have the
46:37population swallow tablets of ordinary
46:40iodine. The thyroid fills up, it
46:42saturates, and when the radioactive
46:44iodine arrives, there is no more room
46:46to take it. Poland did it. On April 28,
46:49a measurement station in the north of
46:51the country saw the cloud pass by. The
46:53next day, the government launched the
46:55distribution. In 3 days, 10 million
46:57children and 7 million adults received
46:59iodine. It is the largest preventive
47:01operation ever conducted in such a
47:03short time in the history of medicine.
47:05And in Poland, unlike in Belarus,
47:07Ukraine, and Russia, we never saw an
47:09increase in thyroid cancers. The Soviet
47:12Union took a week and only covered a
47:15portion of the population. Between 1991
47:19and 2005, 6,848 cases of thyroid cancer
47:22were diagnosed in Belarus, Ukraine, and
47:25Russia. And all this in people who were
47:29under 18 years old in April 1986. By
47:322015, this total was approaching 20,000
47:35. The UN estimates that about one in
47:37four cases is directly attributable to
47:39radiation. These are mostly those who
47:52were under 4 years old at the time,
47:54those who drank the most milk. You
47:55rarely die from it when caught in time,
47:57but you don't get back a thyroid that
47:59had to be removed at age 12. It is the
48:01only consequence of Chernobyl that
48:03everyone agrees on. So the verse says
48:05many men died from the waters because
48:06they had become bitter. At Chernobyl,
48:09it wasn't the river that caused the
48:11most illness. It is primarily the
48:15analysis of the frequency of genetic
48:17disorders in blood lymphocytes that
48:19should allow for the assessment of
48:20doses received by power plant personnel
48:22and those who took part in the
48:24liquidation of the accident's
48:25consequences.
48:27>> So one objection out of two remains.
48:29The verse names the plant family but
48:32not the city. At the end of the 1st
48:34century, someone wrote the name of a
48:36plant. He told the story of a torch
48:38falling onto the rivers and the waters
48:40becoming bitter. In 1970, the Soviet
48:43Union built its largest nuclear power
48:45plant next to a town that bears the
48:48name of this plant. After the disaster,
48:52the authorities drew a 30 km circle
48:54around the plant and evacuated everyone
48:56from it. We call this place the
49:00exclusion zone. It is closed to the
49:03public and no one is supposed to live
49:05there. Except that today, in 2026, the
49:08zone is not empty. Around the plant,
49:14there are now 2,600 km² of forbidden
49:16territory. It is a rectangle of forest,
49:19empty villages, and closed roads
49:21surrounded by a fence, guarded by
49:22soldiers, and accessible only with a
49:24pass. 20 years after the explosion
49:27around the Chernobyl plant, access to
49:29the contaminated zones remains strictly
49:31controlled at both entry and exit. At
49:34the center of it all, there is still
49:37reactor 4. The sarcophagus that 600,000
49:40men built around it was designed to
49:42last 30 years. It began to crack well
49:45before that.
49:49>> The sarcophagus, the structure is
49:51unstable. It was a rudimentary
49:55construction that was carried out under
49:57the difficult conditions of 1986. The
50:03sarcophagus meant to isolate the
50:05destroyed reactor was in fact nothing
50:07more than a thin, makeshift cover
50:09riddled with cracks and holes that let
50:11radioactive dust escape.
50:15>> So in 2010, a project began to cover
50:17the sarcophagus itself. More than 45
50:19countries and organizations are
50:21providing the money because Ukraine
50:22alone cannot pay the 2 billion euros.
50:24Among the initial donors is Russia.
50:27What they are building is a 36,000-ton
50:30steel arch, taller than the Statue of
50:32Liberty, and it is the largest mobile
50:34structure ever built on Earth. In
50:37November 2016, it was slid along rails
50:40for 15 days until it completely covered
50:43the reactor and its sarcophagus. It is
50:45designed to last 100 years. In February
50:482022, the Russian army entered the
50:50exclusion zone and seized the power
50:52plant. The staff on duty remained
50:55locked on-site for a month. These
50:57soldiers set up their position in the
50:59Red Forest, the most contaminated part
51:00of the entire zone. They dug trenches
51:03there in soil where no one has been
51:06allowed to turn the ground since 1986.
51:09The plant's engineers warned them, but
51:11they continued. The Russians left on
51:14March 31. On April 5, the director of
51:17the Ukrainian agency that manages the
51:19zone went on-site and photographed the
51:21trenches. Since then, the zone has been
51:24closed to visitors, and on February 14,
51:262025, at 1:50 a.m., a Russian drone
51:28struck the roof of the arch. The
51:30explosion pierced the two steel shells,
51:33and the fire burned for more than 2
51:35weeks. In December 2025, the
51:37International Atomic Energy Agency
51:39published its assessment. The arch has
51:41lost its primary safety functions,
51:43including the ability to confine what
51:45is underneath. And what is underneath
51:48is about 190 tons of molten nuclear
51:51fuel. Repair estimates range from 100
51:54million euros for the bank financing
51:56the site to nearly 500 million for the
51:59French government. Temporary work is
52:01planned for 2026. Full restoration will
52:05have to wait until the end of the war.
52:07This arch, designed to last a century,
52:09lasted less than 10 years. Officially,
52:12no one lives in this zone. In practice,
52:15three categories of people have been
52:16entering it for 40 years, and they are
52:18the ones who created everything we are
52:20told about this place. The first are
52:23the tourists. Between 2011 and 2022,
52:25Ukraine opened this zone to visitors.
52:28Agencies organized guided tours with
52:30mandatory dosimeters and marked paths,
52:33and tens of thousands of people came
52:36every year. Then the war stopped
52:38everything. These 11 years have left
52:40stories, and the same ones keep coming
52:42back. Visitors claim to have seen
52:45silhouettes in Soviet firefighter
52:46uniforms near reactor 4. Some say they
52:49heard voices responding to each other,
52:51like men coordinating during an
52:53operation. In the hospital, others
52:55report hearing groans. In the
52:58apartments of Pripyat, he finds objects
53:00that are no longer in the same place
53:01from one visit to the next. And in the
53:03park, there is the big red and yellow
53:05Ferris wheel, the one that was supposed
53:07to turn on May 1st, 1986. Some say they
53:10have heard it creak on windless nights.
53:14You might tell me that people who pay
53:15to visit a ghost town always end up
53:17seeing ghosts. Yet, there is one room
53:19in this city that the guides ended up
53:21sealing off. And it's not because of
53:24ghosts; it's the basement of Hospital
53:26126, where the firefighters' uniforms
53:28were taken the first night. They are
53:31still there, and dosimeters exceed 900
53:34microsieverts per hour in that spot.
53:37One hour in that room is equivalent to
53:39an entire tour of the zone. Since
53:42tourists keep going down there despite
53:44the ban, the authorities ended up
53:45dumping a ton of sand in front of the
53:47door. But the second category of people
53:51who enter the zone never really left it
53:52. They are called the "samosely." These
53:58are residents who returned home after
53:59the evacuation, illegally, because they
54:01didn't want to end their lives
54:02elsewhere.
54:03>> We have a good vegetable garden, three
54:05cows, two pigs, 28 chickens. How could
54:08we abandon everything we earned by the
54:09sweat of our brow? There were about 200
54:14of them. Today there are about a
54:16hundred, almost all of them very old,
54:18living off their gardens and what is
54:20brought to them. They are the only
54:23people in the world who sleep in this
54:25zone every night, and they are not the
54:27ones who tell ghost stories. Those who
54:30tell them form the third category, and
54:32they enter at night without
54:34authorization. They are called "
54:37stalkers." You see men illegally
54:39crossing the barriers of a forbidden
54:42territory called "the zone." The men
54:44who cross the Chernobyl fence have
54:46given themselves the same name. They
54:48come at night and cross dozens of
54:50kilometers of contaminated forest to
54:52reach Pripyat. They sleep in abandoned
54:56villages, and one of them even says he
54:59spent a full year of his life inside
55:01the city over 5 years of travel. Many
55:04do not take dosimeters because what you
55:06don't measure isn't scary. They are the
55:09ones who go the furthest at night
55:10without a guide or a marked path. And
55:13they are the ones who report the most
55:14things about this place. None of them
55:16has ever seen the black silhouette with
55:19open wings that five plant employees
55:21claimed to have glimpsed above the
55:22buildings in April 1986. No one has
55:25seen it again. Not a tourist, not a
55:29resident, not a stalker, not a plant
55:32worker in 40 years. That is exactly
55:35what happened at Point Pleasant. For 13
55:38months, dozens of people reported a
55:40red-eyed shape. The bridge collapsed on
55:44December 15, 1967, and from that day on
55:46, nothing. Both stories stop at the
55:50same point, the day of the disaster. No
55:52one knows where this story comes from.
55:55No trace before the 1990s. No names, no
55:59documents from that time. This creature
56:01story only emerged after the fall of
56:03the Soviet Union. The nightmares, the
56:06phone calls, the silhouette above the
56:08buildings, the shape in the reactor
56:09smoke, everything happened after 1991
56:11when no one could question them anymore
56:13. For many, that settles the matter. A
56:18story that only appears once the
56:20witnesses are gone is not testimony,
56:22but others point out something else.
56:25Between 1986 and 1991, in that country,
56:28everything related to Chernobyl went
56:31through the KGB. They were the ones who
56:34put the measuring devices in Kiev under
56:36seal. They made workers sign silence
56:39agreements. They monitored foreign
56:41correspondents and had priests appear
56:44on television to deny a verse. This
56:46state. lied about the causes, the doses
56:49, and the deaths. It silenced workers
56:52regarding an incident in 1982 and
56:54scientists regarding a radioactivity
56:57reading in 1986. So, employees telling
57:02of seeing a black shape above a reactor
57:05in that country between 1986 and 1991,
57:07well, there are two ways to explain why
57:10we never heard them. Either these men
57:15never existed, or someone did their job
57:18. Information was not lacking at
57:24Chernobyl. Neither the KGB reports, nor
57:28the 1983 tests, nor an old text from
57:301900. What was lacking was someone to
57:34stop the reactor and thus stop
57:36production, stand up to the ministry,
57:38put their career on the line, and admit
57:40to Moscow that the national reactor had
57:43a flaw. So, the reports went up and the
57:46answers never came back down. Reactor 4
57:50exploded after 10 years of men who knew
57:52and kept quiet. This country was not
57:55lacking in warnings. It received them
57:58in writing, stamped, signed, and filed
58:01them away. It received them from
58:03workers who said they had seen
58:05something above their plant and it
58:07silenced them. And it had one last one
58:10written long before this country
58:12existed and which named the plant. That
58:15one either. No one read it. So, how
58:19many warnings are needed before we
58:21agree to read them? If tomorrow
58:24somewhere someone swears they saw a
58:25black shape with red eyes above a city,
58:26people will tell them they didn't sleep
58:28well, that they're crazy and that it
58:29doesn't exist. And they will probably
58:32be right. But as for me, I think I'll
58:36look at the sky anyway. If you liked
58:44this story, well, I invite you to go
58:45watch my video about prophecies that
58:47actually came true.

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