Quotes / Chernobyl

"What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth, and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn't matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: who is to blame? In this story, it was Anatoly Dyatlov. He was the best choice. An arrogant, unpleasant man, he ran the room that night, he gave the orders... and no friends. Or, at least, not important ones. And now, Dyatlov will spend the next ten years in a prison labor camp. Of course, that sentence is doubly unfair. There were far greater criminals than him at work. And as for what Dyatlov did do, the man doesn't deserve prison. He deserves ''death''. But instead, ten years for "criminal mismanagement." What does that mean? No one knows. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that, to them, justice was done. Because, you see, to them, a just world is a sane world. There was nothing sane about Chernobyl. What happened there, what happened after, even the good we did, all of it... all of it... madness. Well, I've given you everything I know. They'll deny it, of course. They always do. I know you'll try your best."

— Legasov's final tape entry, shortly before his suicide.

Dyatlov: What does the dosimeter say?
Akimov: 3.6 roentgen. But that's as high as the meter...
Dyatlov (ignores Akimov at that point): 3.6 - not great, not terrible.

Sitnikov: I... I walked around the exterior of Building 4. I think there's graphite on the ground, in the rubble.
Dyatlov: You didn't see graphite.
Sitnikov: I did.
Dyatlov: You didn't. You DIDN'T, because it's not there!

Legasov: Any contamination?
Shcherbina: It's mild. The plant manager, Bryukhanov, is reporting 3.6 roentgen per hour.
Legasov: That's actually significant. You should evacuate the surr—
Shcherbina: You are an expert on RBMK reactors, correct?
Legasov: Yes, I've studied—
Shcherbina: General Secretary Gorbachev has appointed a committee to manage the accident. You're on it.

Pikalov (having driven around the exploded reactor with a high-range dosimeter): It's not three roentgen. It's 15,000.
(Legasov closes his eyes in dismay)
Bryukhanov: Comrade Shcherbina...
Shcherbina (turning to Legasov): What does that number mean?
Legasov: It means the core is open. It means the fire we're watching with our own eyes is giving off nearly twice the radiation released by the bomb in Hiroshima. And that's every single hour. Hour after hour, 20 hours since the explosion, so 40 bombs worth by now. Forty-eight more tomorrow. And it will not stop. Not in a week, not in a month. It will burn and spread its poison until the entire continent is dead!

Shcherbina (discussing evacuation of town): Well, he's a medical doctor. If he says it's safe, it's safe.
Legasov: Not if they stay here.
Shcherbina: We're staying here...
Legasov: Yes we are. And we'll be... dead in five years.
Shcherbina: ...
Legasov: I'm sorry, I—, I'm sorry...

"You'll do it because it must be done. You'll do it because nobody else can. And if you don't, millions will die. If you tell me that's not enough, I won't believe you. This is what has always set our people apart. A thousand years of sacrifice in our veins. And every generation must know its own suffering. I spit on the people who did this, and I curse the price I have to pay. But I'm making my peace with it, now you make yours. And go into that water. Because it must be done."

— Shcherbina

"What's as big as a house, burns 20 liters of fuel every hour, puts out a shit load of smoke and noise, and cuts an apple in three pieces? A Soviet machine made to cut apples into FOUR pieces!"

— Glukhov

"Shut the FUCK up! This is Tula. This is our mine. We don't leave unless we know why."

— Glukhov, to the Soviet Minister of Coal Industries' armed guards

"What? You wouldn't give us fans, it's too hot for clothes, so we're digging the old way. This is how our fathers mined. We're still wearing the fuckin' hats!"

— Glukhov, digging a tunnel beneath Chernobyl, completely naked.

"Look. This happens to everyone the first time. Normally when you kill a man. But for you a dog. So what? There's no shame in it. You remember your first time, Garo? My first time, Afghanistan. We were moving through a house and... suddenly a man was there and I shot him in the stomach. Yeah, that's a real war story. There are never any good stories like in movies - they're shit. A man was there, boom... stomach. I was so scared I didn't pull the trigger again for the rest of the day. I thought, 'Well, that's it, Bacho. You put a bullet in someone. You're not you anymore. You'll never be you again.' But then you wake up the next morning and you're still you. And you realize: that was you all along. You just didn't know."

— Bacho reassures Pavel after Pavel's first time killing a contaminated animal

"OF COURSE I KNOW THEY'RE LISTENING! I WANT THEM TO HEAR! I WANT THEM TO HEAR IT ALL! DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING HERE?! TELL THOSE GENIUSES WHAT THEY HAVE DONE! I DON'T GIVE A FUCK! TELL THEM! GO TELL THEM! RYZHKOV! GO TELL THEM HE'S A JOKE! TELL FUCKING GORBACHEV! TELL THEM!"

— Shcherbina goes nuclear on the Kremlin

"The official position of the State…is that a global nuclear disaster is not possible in the Soviet Union. They told the Germans the highest detected level of radiation was 2000 roentgen. They gave them the propaganda number. That robot was never going to work."

— Shcherbina

Tarakanov: Comrade Soldiers, the Soviet people have had enough of this accident. They want us to clean this up, and we have entrusted you with this serious task. Because of the nature of the working area you will each have no more than 90 seconds to solve this problem. Listen carefully to each of my instructions, and do exactly as you have been told. This is for your own safety as well as for the safety of your comrades. You will enter Reactor Building Three, climb the stairs, but do not immediately proceed to the roof. When you get to the top, wait inside behind the entrance to the roof, and catch your breath. You will need it for what comes next. This is the working area. We must clear the graphite. Some of it is in blocks weighing approximately 40 to 50 kilograms. They all must be thrown over the edge, here. Watch your comrades, moving fast from this opening, then turning to the left, and entering the workspace... Take care not to stumble. There's a hole in the roof. Take care not to fall. You will need to move quickly and you will need to move carefully. Do you understand your mission as I have described it?
Conscript Soldiers: Yes, Comrade General.
Tarakanov: These are the most important 90 seconds of your lives. Commit your task to memory, then do your job.

— Tarakanov's speech to Soviet conscripts. The radioactive graphite would short circuit any robot, and would kill any human after 120 seconds, even if they were wearing protection. 3,828 men would each spend 90 seconds on Chernobyl's roof, clearing deathly radioactive graphite.

"It began with, of all things, a safety test. But why was there need for a safety test at all? Reactor Number 4 was not new when the accident occurred. In fact, it went into operation on December 20th, 1983. Eleven days later, on the last day of the year, Plant Director Viktor Bryukhanov signed this document certifying the completion of the construction of the reactor. As a result of finishing the work before the end of the year, Comrade Bryukhanov was awarded Hero of Socialist Labor. Comrade Fomin was awarded for Valorous Labor. Comrade Dyatlov was given an Order of the Red Banner. But their work was not finished. And this document was a lie. In order to sign this certificate, all safety tests had to have been successfully completed, and yet, one remained. A nuclear reactor generates heat in the core here. A series of pumps, here and here, send a constant flow of cooling water through the core. The core's heat turns the water to steam, and the steam spins the turbine here, and the result is electricity. "

But what if a power plant has no power? What if the power feeding the plant itself is disrupted? A blackout, equipment failure, or an attack by a foreign enemy? If there's no power, the pumps cannot move water through the core. And without water, the core overheats, the fuel melts down. In short, a nuclear disaster. The solution? Three diesel fuel backup generators here. So, problem solved? No. Bryukhanov knew that the problem was not solved at all. The backup generators took approximately one minute to reach the speed required to power the pumps and prevent a meltdown, and by that time, it would be too late .

So we arrive at the safety test. The theory was this: If the facility lost power, the turbine, which had been spinning, would take some time to slow down and stop. What if you could take the electricity it was still generating and transfer it to the pumps? What if the dying turbine could keep the pumps working long enough to bridge the 60-second gap until the generators came on? [...] To test this theory, the reactor is placed in a reduced power mode 700 megawatts to simulate a blackout condition. Then the turbines are turned off, and as they slowly spin down, their electrical output is measured to see if it's enough to power the pumps. The science is strong, but a test is only as good as the men carrying it out. Now, the first time they tried, they failed. The second time they tried, they failed. The third time they tried, they failed. The fourth time they tried... was April 26th, 1986."

— Boris Shcherbina's explanation on the incident in the court

Legasov: Fuel increases reactivity. Control rods and water reduce it. Steam increases reactivity, and the rise in temperature reduces it. This is the invisible dance that powers entire cities without smoke or flame. And it is beautiful... when things are normal.

Legasov: Dyatlov broke every rule we have. He pushed a reactor to the brink of destruction. He did these things believing there was a failsafe; AZ-5, a simple button to shut it all down. But in the circumstances he created, there wasn't. The shutdown system had a fatal flaw. At 1:23:40, Akimov engages AZ-5. The fully-withdrawn control rods begin moving back into the reactor. These rods are made of boron, which reduces reactivity, but not their tips. The tips are made of graphite, which accelerates reactivity.
Kadnikov: Why?
Legasov: Why? For the same reason our reactors do not have containment buildings around them, like those in the West. For the same reason we don't use properly enriched fuel in our cores. For the same reason we are the only nation that builds water-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors with a positive void coefficient. (beat) It's ''cheaper''.

— Valery Legasov condemns the flawed philosophy that influenced reactor designs in the Soviet Union.

"The first part of the rods that enter the core are the graphite tips, and when they do, the reaction in the core, which had been rising, skyrockets. Every last molecule of liquid water instantly converts to steam, which expands and ruptures a series of fuel rod channels. The control rods in those channels can move no further. The graphite tips are fixed in position, endlessly accelerating the reaction. Chernobyl Reactor 4 is now a nuclear bomb.

"1:23:42. Perevozchenko looks down on the enormous steel lid of the reactor, and sees the impossible: the control rod and fuel channel caps, which each weigh 350 kilograms, are jumping up and down. He runs to warn the control room. But there’s nothing he can do to stop what is coming.

"1:23 and 44 seconds. The steam blows more fuel channels apart. We do not know how high the power went; we only know the final reading. Reactor 4, designed to operate at 3200 megawatts... went beyond 33,000.

(beat)

"The pressure inside the core can no longer be held back. At long last, we have arrived. 1:23:45... explosion. In the instant the lid is thrown off the reactor, oxygen rushes in. It combines with hydrogen and superheated graphite.

"The chain of disaster is now complete."

—Legasov describes the final stages of the accident

Kadnikov: Professor Legasov, if you mean to suggest the Soviet state is somehow responsible for what happened, then I must warn you, you are treading on dangerous ground.
Legasov: I've already trod on dangerous ground; we're on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They're practically what define us. When the truth offends, we... we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes:... Lies.

Charkhov: Why worry about something that isn't going to happen?
Legasov: (laughs) "Why worry about something that isn't going to happen"? Oh, that's perfect. They should put that on our money.

Shcherhbina: Do you know anything about this town? Chernobyl? It was mostly Jews and Poles. The Jews were killed in pogroms. Stalin forced the Poles out. Then the Nazis came, killed whoever was left. But after the war, people came to live here anyway. They knew the ground under their feet was soaked in blood, but they didn't care. Dead Jews, dead Poles, but not them. No one ever thinks it will happen to them. And here we are. [...] Do you remember that morning when I first called you? How unconcerned I was? I don't believe much that comes out of the Kremlin, but they told me they were putting me in charge of the cleanup. When they said it wasn't serious, I believed them. Do you know why?
Legasov: Because they put you in charge.
Shcherbina: I'm an inconsequential man, Valery. That's all I've ever been. I hoped that one day I would matter but I didn't. I just stood next to people who did.
Legasov: There are other scientists like me. Any one of them could have done what I did. But you... everything we asked for, everything we needed; men, material, lunar rovers. Who else could have done these things? They heard me, but they listened to you. Of all the ministers and all the deputies, entire congregation of obedient fools, they mistakenly sent the one good man. For God's sake, Boris, you were the one who mattered the most.

"To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for the truth we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn't care about our needs or wants; it doesn't care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this at last is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, I now only ask... what is the cost of lies?"

— Legasov

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Valery Legasov took his own life at the age of 51 on April 26, 1988, exactly two years after the explosion at Chernobyl.

The audio tapes of Legasov's memoirs were circulated among the Soviet scientific community.
His suicide made them impossible to be ignored.

In the aftermath of his death, Soviet officials finally acknowledged the design flaws of the RBMK nuclear reactor.

The reactors were retrofitted to prevent an accident like Chernobyl from happening again.

Legasov was aided by dozens of scientists who worked tirelessly alongside him at Chernobyl.

Some spoke out against the official account of events and were subject to denunciation, arrest and imprisonment.

The character of Ulana Khomyuk was created to represent them all and to honor their dedication and service to truth and humanity.

Boris Shcherbina died on August 22, 1990...
four years and four months after he was sent to Chernobyl.

For their roles in the Chernobyl disaster, Victor Bryukhanov, Anatoly Dyatlov and Nikolai Fomin were sentenced to ten years hard labor.

After his release, Nikolai Fomin returned to work...
at a nuclear power plant in Kalinin, Russia.

Anatoly Dyatlov died from radiation-related illness in 1995.
He was 64.

Valery Khodemchuk's body was never recovered. He is permanently entombed under Reactor 4.

The firefighters' clothing still remains in the basement of Pripyat Hospital.
It is dangerously radioactive to this day.

Following the death of her husband and daughter, Lyudmilla Ignatenko suffered several strokes. Doctors told her she would never be able to bear a child.

They were wrong.
She lives with her son in Kiev.

Of the people who watched from the railway bridge, it has been reported that none survived.
It is now known as The Bridge of Death.

400 miners worked around the clock for one month to prevent a total nuclear meltdown.
It is estimated that at least 100 of them died before the age of 40.

It has been widely reported that the three divers who drained the bubbler tanks died as a result of their heroic actions.

In fact, all three survived after hospitalization.
Two are still alive today.

Over 600,000 people were conscripted to serve in the Exclusion Zone.
Despite widespread accounts of sickness and death as a result of radiation, the Soviet government kept no official records of their fate.

The contaminated region of Ukraine and Belarus, known as the Exclusion Zone, ultimately encompassed 2,600 square kilometers.

Approximately 300,000 people were displaced from their homes.
They were told this was temporary.
It is still forbidden to return.

Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991.

In 2006, he wrote, "The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl... was perhaps the true cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union."

In 2017, work was completed on the New Safe Confinement at Chernobyl, at a cost of nearly two billion dollars.
It is designed to last 100 years.

Following the explosion, there was a dramatic spike in cancer rates across Ukraine and Belarus.
The highest increase was among children.

We will never know the actual human cost of Chernobyl.
Most estimates range from 4,000 to 93,000 deaths.

The official Soviet death toll, unchanged since 1987...
is 31.

In memory of all who suffered and sacrificed.

— Epilogue

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