Série - Tchernobyl

- Savez-vous comment un réacteur nucléaire fonctionne ?
- Non.
- Dans ce cas, comment saurez-vous ce que vous devrez regarder ?

Pourquoi s’inquiéter d’une chose qui n’arrivera pas ?

Ce modèle de réacteur utilise comme combustible de l’uranium 235. Chaque atome d’uranium 235 est comme une balle qui se déplace à une vitesse proche de la lumière et qui traverse tout sur son passage : le bois, le métal, le béton, la chair. Chaque gramme d’Uanium 235 recèle plus d’un milliard de billions de ces projectiles. Tout ça dans un seul gramme. Et Chernobyl contient plus de trois millions de grammes qui sont en feu à l’heure où l’on parle. Le vent va charrier des particules radioactives sur le continent tout entier. La pluie va les faire retomber sur nous. Trois millions de milliards de billions de ces balles dans… dans l’air que nous respirons, l’eau que nous consommons et dans notre nourriture. La plupart va continuer à se consumer pendant une centaine d’années et certaines resteront actives pendant cinquante mille ans.

Vous faites face à quelque-chose qui ne s’est encore jamais produit sur Terre.

- Nous, nous restons ici ?
- Oui c’est vrai. Et nous serons mort dans les cinq ans à venir.

Être scientifique c’est être naïf. Nous voulons tellement découvrir la vérité que nous ne voyons pas que peu de gens veulent vraiment que nous la découvrions. Mais elle est toujours là, que nous la voyions ou non, que nous le voulions ou pas. La vérité se moque de nos envies et besoins. Elle se moque de nos gouvernements, de nos idéologies, de nos religions… Elle reste là, pour l’éternité. Et finalement, voilà ce que m’a offert Tchernobyl. Avant, les implications de la vérité m’effrayaient. Maintenant, je me demande seulement : « Qu’y a-t-il de pire que les mensonges ? ».

3,6 Röntgen ? Ce n’est pas dramatique.

Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.

It’s not 3 Roentgen. It’s 15000.

Of all the ministers and all the deputies, entire congregation of obedient fools, they mistakenly sent the one good man.

- He is my husband.
- No, he is not. He’s something else now.

When the truth offends, 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.

- 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.
- Why?
- 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… It’s cheaper.

Valery Legasov : Have one of your men get as close to the fire as he can. Give him every bit of protection you have. But understand that even with lead shielding, it may not be enough.
Le général Pikalov : Then I’ll do it myself.
Boris Shcherbina : Good.

Ulana Khomyuk : When the lava enters these tanks, it will instantly superheat and vaporize approximately 7000 cubic meters of water, causing a significant thermal explosion.
Michail Gorbatchev : How significant?
Ulana Khomyuk : We estimate between two and four megatons. Everything within a 30-kilometer radius will be completely destroyed, including the three remaining reactors at Chernobyl. The entirety of the radioactive material in all of the cores will be ejected at force and dispersed by a massive shock wave, which will extend approximately 200 kilometers and likely be fatal to the entire population of Kiev as well as a portion of Minsk. The release of radiation will be severe and will impact all of Soviet Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, as well as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and most of East Germany.
Michail Gorbatchev : What do you mean “impact”?
Valery Legasov : For much of the area, a nearly permanent disruption of the food and water supply, a steep increase in the rates of cancer and birth defects. I don’t know how many deaths there will be, but many. For Byelorussia and the Ukraine, “impact” means completely uninhabitable for a minimum of 100 years.
Michail Gorbatchev : There are more than 50 million people living in Byelorussia and Ukraine.
Valery Legasov : Sixty, yes.
Michail Gorbatchev : And how long before this happens?
Valery Legasov : Approximately 48 to 72 hours.

There was nothing sane about Chernobyl. What happened there, what happened after, even the good we did, all of it… all of it… madness.

- What does that number mean ?
- 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.

- You have made lava?
- I anticipated this.

We live in a country where children have to die to save their mothers. To hell with your deal. And to hell with our lives. Someone has to start telling the truth.

You are dealing with something that as never occurred on this planet before.