1986's Chernobyl disaster - FROM THE ARCHIVE - BBC Newsnight
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- čas přidán 25. 04. 2019
- It has been 33 years since the Chernobyl disaster - the worst nuclear catastrophe in human history.
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In the early hours of 26 April 1986, one of four nuclear reactors at the Chernobyl power station exploded. Chernobyl is north of Kiev, Ukraine.
Since the explosion an area of more than 4,000 square kilometres has been abandoned.
There is no official account of how many died and suffered as a result of the meltdown, and the health implications of the disaster have long been debated.
Newsnight is the BBC's flagship news and current affairs TV programme - with analysis, debate, exclusives, and robust interviews.
Website: www.bbc.co.uk/newsnight
Twitter: / bbcnewsnight
Facebook: / bbcnewsnight
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Wow todays news has seriously been dumbed down
Quackhouse Productions pretty much came here to comment this exactly. Incredibly detailed report and well read by the presenter
You're right, but it's worth noting that Newsnight isn't quite 'the news'- it's an editorial programme that analyses one or two topics from the news bulletin and goes into more depth, so you'd expect bit to be more detailed and thorough. It was definitely more technical then than it is now though.
everything had.. wake up thats what they want even our music is being dumbed down
So hard to rely on news nowadays
@@aaronturner4597 I'm sure you're a mensa level intellect
This is old school BBC. Clever, informative and doesn't talk down to you. You are mean't to keep up with it - not it with you
Yep. These days the story would be sold as "trending news" followed by a mass of inane tweets from micro celebrities,the article would be expressed with glove puppets and emojis,whilst explaining that nuclear energy is a kind of energy before quickly moving onto more important items like a new social media feud between footballers wives!
True. And nowadays it's unwatchable.
Maybe, but the presenter really down plays the accident and doesn't dare say will the cloud reach Britain. Also, I remember people frantically asking the BBC to show where the cloud was over the coming days, but it was left to the Met Office to do this as part of the weather report
@@matejfele9971 *Not* saying the BBC is faultless. But the fact. That dickheads. Like Andrew Adonis. & Alistar Campbell. Call it "Right-wing. *Whilst* other dickheads. Like Farage. Says its lefty. Shows how impartial. It is.
JONNOG88 very very true, you don’t find many rational people who can see this, great comment 👍
It is evident with hindsight that these experts really knew what they were talking about. Information was incredibly scarce at the time of this news piece (they had no idea that the entire building blew up and the core was completely exposed), yet the advice and predictions these experts gave were still helpful and mostly accurate.
Yeah those blokes are right on. Quite impressive.
uhh not really the reactors at Chernobyl were all RBMK-1000 reactors not PWR reactors. this entire analysis is wrong so I don't know where your getting at saying "they really knew what they were talking about" when they didn't even get the reactor type correct
they couldn't have even imagined that the reactor could've exploded (speaking of the leacks)
Serious news without an agenda. I miss this.
Me too
okay I know this is a year old but to say this doesn't have an agenda is insane. It is so clearly trying to display the picture of the incompetence of the USSR and to play a hand in their favour in the Cold War. I am not defending the USSR in the Chernobyl disaster whatsoever but to say this doesn't have an agender is just wrong.
@@kanehawkins7008 100%
Hahaha. No agenda..
Really ?
Media has always had an agenda 1886 ,1906,1836.... 1986...2021..
@@kanehawkins7008Except... They were still reporting facts, not making them up.
Good to hear Brian O'Hanrahanrahan reporting live from the scene.
Peter**
Brian you've lost the news!!!!!?!
@@murrayp4 Peter****
@@esinach Yeah, but the real life hanrahan is called Brian
Brian! Peter! Brian!
Calm, factual, informative, and objective journalism. Rest In Peace 😪.
He’s actually on the phone 😂 how naive of me to not expect that
Their guesses about reactor types were wrong, but you can't blame them under the circumstances.
arguscontrol That’s why I find these old news broadcasts so interesting. I love all of the news speculation, as very little was known about what was going on in the Soviet Union.
@@justanotheryoutubechannel We still kind of get that with 24 hour news networks now. I remember 9/11 being reported initially as a fire in the tower and 7/7 being reported as an electrical fault.
@@michaelkitchin9665 I noticed that after major events a cloud of confusion starts to form almost immediately.
Cold War my friend. Not all that much was known about USSR. All we had was some readings in South-Germany and Sweden. News footage from Soviet-Union was not common. All i remember was some blurry footage of people being evacuated in buses.And later on some black and white footage of liquidators running on top of the roof with a clock measuring time how long they were in the zone with high radiation.Lots of milk, fruits and vegetables on the fields were discarted. Pretty scary times back then.We had a lot less info than nowadays with internet etc.And the Soviets were lying their asses off in the beginning..
@@mrdojob Watched Fukushima unfold in realtime... The cloud of confusion was even seeded by authorities (re cause of / type of explosion in Unit 3 for example)...
When news was news, not propaganda. And you were treated like an adult, even if you were a kid! I was 6 when this happened, but it fascinated me.
That pronunciation of Chernobyl though
It's a common failing of all of us when we are trying to speak languages we aren't used to. At least it's not as bad as Chekhov's pronounciation of 'vessel' in Star Trek
Chernobile alabama
My late dad was Ukrainian and he said it should be pronounced "Chairnobeel"
Chernobeeeel
Maybe there's a different Russian and a Ukrainian pronunciation?
Wow, looking back 30 years later. I’m surprised how accurate Dr Medvedev described the situation, he really knew this stuff.
At this point as the BBC reported i don't think even the Soviet government realised how bad it was. That the reactor had been completely destroyed and was on fire and they had no idea what to do about it.
@Blob B I should have clarified that Moscow had no idea what was going on. The local executive committee and the plant manager Brukanov were in total denial about what was going on and didn't want to admit what was going on because they had no idea what to do about it.
The USSR leadership did not even announce the world about this for 3 days. The information slowly got out, and here we are.
" they had no idea what to do about it."
They still don't know.
@@ranc1977 They had prior experience with nuclear disasters and cover-ups. Look up the Kyshtym disaster.
amazing how much has changed in 33 years.. the world was forced to speculate about the type of reactor, the nature of the accident, etc. in this broadcast he says it's likely a pressurized water reactor (PWR) and in reality it wasn't that at all
And? Like the Soviets would have said what type of reactor it was! They at first didn't admit there had been a accident at all.
@@blackcountryme he meant that now you cannot hide the information so well and basically you can check, in that case, what type of reactor is in every NPP on the world. Of course I am not writing about the military accidents.
@@blackcountryme You should read TWICE and ensure you understand a comment before you write a dumb reply.
@@OrphanAndy... Thanks for the advice, you may well have saved myself and many others from a potentially embarrassing situation.
"It must've been a PWR! It couldn't been an RBMK, they have a flawless design!"
I really like this old school presenting. Everything is so dumbed down now because people have no attention spans these days.
This is in an episode of Newsnight which tends to go over 1 or 2 topics that are currently in the news and then go more into depth about the news, as opposed to what the new headlines would be. But of course this archivial episode does seem a lot more dumbed down from what we see now in the 21st century.
TLDR
Let's take a moment to remember the 2 million litres of milk contaminated in 1957 at windscale...
@@ucantjustdoit fuck you
Think of all the Bailey's. That could of made!! 😞😖
@@JONNOG88 🤣🤣🤣
Seascale... Windscale.... Sellafield? They changed the name every time there was an accident ....or that might be an urban myth.
There's no point crying over contaminated milk.
Chernobyl was a nail in the USSRs coffin but the lack of transparency in the weeks surrounding it outraged the Soviet peoples who had greater press and speech freedoms under Gorbachev and that was even more detrimental
Man, was journalism great in those days... Never got to see it, I hope my generation can get to see some quality journalism like that
It’s happened again fallout snow in the uk March 31 2022
Mimicking the accident
Of March 1986 Yugoslavia fallout snow that came from the site of Chernobyl.
My husband said to me this is odd the snow reminds me of the snow in Yugoslavia of the month of March 1986 it was abnormal snowed the whole month everybody’s bones hurt.
I told him that’s the year Chernobyl happened he got scared.
I laughed I said: mistakes of the past recorded for the future here’s now journalist 👄 ooo ❄️ yet no mention of ☢️ waste
Something is wrong with the now now journalisms. Keep it covered up.
LIES
comrade Dyatlov, did you ever get payment from the CIA?
Legend
"For God's SAKE, Dyatlov!" - Comrade Bryukhannon
Well you would say that. Unbelievable. 😂
Comrade Dyatlov Legend has it you’re still in the toilet to this very day...
I remember watching this, I was 16. Where I lived there was always a fear of Sellafield, not too far across the sea on the Cumbrian coast. Chernobyl, however, scared the life out of us.... we knew it was bad, very bad. Those initial days concerned it was a water tank / hydrogen incident.....little did we know! And yes, today's news has been dumbed down immensely.
At the time of this BBC Newsnight broadcast, the BBC got it wrong about the type of reactor Chernobyl was. Peter snow says the reactor is probably a 'Pressurised Water Reactor', or more specifically the soviet designated 'VVER' Vodo-Vodyanoi Energetichesky Reaktor' (Water-Water Power Reactor). In fact it was a much higher powered, and as it turned out, far more dangerous RBMK Reactor 'Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalnyy' or High Power Channel-type Reactor.
I'm no nuclear scientist, but the difference between the two is that the VVER uses water as it's main 'Neutron Moderator', whereas the RMBK uses Graphite, and at that time, graphite tipped control rods. It is understandable that the BBC wouldn't know this, the whole Soviet nuclear industry was highly guarded and effectively a state secret.
And? The Soviets were secretive, the enemy, and wouldn't admit to the colour of shit, if they were asked. So your "Oh I know what it is..." That's nice dear, I walked around the area on a psVR thing.. but not at the time!
Yeah you've definitely watched the HBO Chernobyl tv show
RBMK reactors don’t explode, you’re delusional. Someone take him to the infirmary.
Jesus christ we know they didn't have the details exactly right, how could they have, and well done on being able to read Wikipedia
@@blackcountryme why do you keep commenting this
Was it just me that found it funny during the phone call to see the reporter whip out a handheld phone
Why shouldn't you wear boxer shorts in Russia?
Chernobyl fallout.
*tumbleweed crosses road*
Well that's an old one... And it was y fronts, not boxers
I like that! 😂👍
Haha
Wearing nothing but boxer shorts might actually be a good idea seeing radioactive dust can cling on to clothes.
Soviet nuclear reactor technology lagged only slightly behind British tripod technology
That is one of worst maps of Finland I've ever seen.
Perkelenaattori definitely looks pre-independence (minus suomi-neito's missing body parts, so to say. i say this because part of the word Scandinavia was covering the Finland/Sweden border and it looked colonised again
Perkelenaattori oh no the line isnt there at all at first.
Perkelenaattori anyway, obligatory "torille"
@TheWelshy83 lmao what
Worst map of Belgium/Netherlands as well for that matter
The tip off was that the state news broadcast even admitted anything because the Soviets never admitted any accidents or mistakes or bad news. The fact that their state news even admitted that measures were being taken to reduce consequences was a sign that a real catastrophe had occurred. The Soviets dropped the ball, they for years had built tons of reactors on the cheap, they thought nuclear power was a symbol of Soviet technology but they built reactors on the cheap and very flawed, combined with a system of covering up and outright lying to their people. The Soviet system was already failing and Chernobyl was one of the final nails in the coffin.
Crazy how little was known at the time
This is just a couple of days after the disaster and the Soviets had not given away any revealing information
We have the same situation today....PEOPLE JUST DONT LEARN
Welcome to Soviet Russia
Has Peter snow ever been young
He popped out of the womb smoking a pipe.
I was just wondering this!
He looks 86 here he is probably 35
I love how Sweden and Finland look like they're the same country on that map
Genuinely had me thinking they were joined up at one point and I'd never heard about it. Just a rubbish map.
Haha well they were joined up until about 200 years ago, but definitely not in 1986
I was assured that the radiationlevels are about 3.6 roentgen, the same as getting a x-ray. So dont worry everything is fine
Incidentally it's More like 400 x rays ~ Valery Legasov
Indeed, comrade. 3.6. Not great, not terrible.
No it wasn't.. the meters they had to measure it maxed out at 3.6..
@@s44yyr This man is clearly insane. Bring him to the infirmary.
@@conchitavoght9122 😂
Wow can you imagine today's news programmes trying to explain how a reactor works? On a NEWS programme! Never going to happen. Those days are gone, friends!
very true! sad to admit it
Wobbly camera, somebody forgot to switch on the lights... Bbc back in the day...
A "Breaking news" item, film it in a shed, and be quick about it.
Looked darker because of the tube cameras and engineering practice
I'd like to think it's because they were more worried about presenting accurate facts in a way any Jonny could grasp if they paid attention, rather than making sure you're "entertained"......oh well :(
Call from Brian O'Hanrahan-hanrahan.
9:40 sounds like “RBMK reactors don’t explode!”
Good, classic news. Straightforward, no hype. Definitely a lot of speculation, i.e. "containment building" when in fact there wasn't one. This is a good example of how very isolationist and secretive the Soviet Union was, and how well they were able to keep news from getting out.
Damn this is some fine reporting given the circumstances. Almost forgot I was watchinga news broadcast.
The broadcaster’s analysis of what might have caused the explosion was similar to what Dyatlov believed happened. It is because of their notion that the core itself cannot explode, but it did. Dyatlov insisted that it is the steam with hydrogen that caused overpressure and tip the lid off of the reactor, hydrogen then auto ignited and thus fire occurred.
I hate how the series has portrayed Dyatlov as the devil himself. He had decades of experience working with nuclear power and was also a victim of a nuclear accident on a submarine before this. There is no possible way that any person in the control room could've known in any way that the core exploded. In their minds it was literally the LAST POSSIBLE event that could've happened that caused the damage. I would wager that the men conducting the test were speculating just like the broadcasters and experts here on what happened. I also read that they never knew about the flaws with RBMK reactors.
The series dramatized this incident and legitimately slandered Dyatlov.
Who is after HBO mini series?
Me.
Everyone ffs
Nope
A lot of people knew about chenobyl before the tv series......
Ah...Americans...
The chap with the beard sounds just like Kermit the frog.
I C Ha. He really does!
Pahahahaha
Similar to uxwbill too
Nah, he doesn't have the whining voice qualities that Peterson has.
It's not easy being green lol
I was not yet sixteen and took my O Levels that year. Remember hearing about it when I was in the classroom. The nuclear fall-out caused a radioactive cloud across North Wales and today the danger is still happening!
1:24 worst map ever xD
The Benelux countries just happen to be part of West Germany haha
Just also noticed Sweden and Finland are one
@@RedDot4504 it suddenly separated at 2:02
I never realised that Olivia O'Leary (RTÉ TV - Ireland) had worked at one time for the BBC.
Alot of them did, how incredibly posh she sounded 🤣
The BBC would have anyone who had a nice accent, put a "r" in Pakistan, you've got a job
@@blackcountryme lol if she was using her own natural accent she wouldn't have got in the door 🤣🤣🤣
@@irishcountrygirl78 She WAS using her natural accent. In fact she still works occasionally for RTÉ - and sounds exactly the same:-)
@@PatGleeson123 so she's naturally a posh git then. I guess practice makes perfect. Not natural to talk like that when you're from the Emerald Isle 🇮🇪. One sounds like one has a rod up her hole. 😊
Bit rude of snow to sit on the phone during a broadcast 😏
They didn’t put protective domes over the reactors so they could refuel them every 90 days, so that the pu 239 wasnt over transmuted to pu 240. Pu 240 is unsuitable for nuclear weapons
Why can't you release the entire archive somewhere? Like thamesTV did
I hope they sacked the cameraman from the beginning
He was just helping create a sense of drama and uncertainty to match the report.
He drank Vodka. For the radiation
Walt Paterson sounds like an older Jordan Peterson
Jeezo...i remember watching this at that time with my dad, i hadn't a clue about nuclear technology back then (i was only 8 though). Hindsight makes watching this report after all these years makes it seem all the more chilling.
Is this how Hanrahan got his big break before Brass Eye?
Wrong prog. It was The Day Today.
@@esinach I must be wearing orthopaedic shoes, because I stand corrected
@@nbarrett100 Pretty damn funny, I'm saluting you right now. God speed.
Top journalism and reporting there . The facts presented are correct . Why don't we have quality reporting like this now ?
Chair-no-beal?
Patrick Carroll say it in a Russian accent / faster
more correct than the current pronunciation
Ukrainian cousin to Irish Ally McBeal
Patrick Carroll The CORRECT UKRAINIAN spelling is: CHORNOBYL AND NOT CHERNOBYL ( The Russian Spelling) It should read CHOR AND NOT CHER CHOR is the shortened version of CHORNY which means BLACK in Ukrainian, The full word CHORNOBYL means “BLACKSTALK” This is how the word appears in Ukrainian: ЧОРНОБИЛЬ
5:10 omg he's actually ON the phone
The way the presenter says chernobyl haha
Fact checked badly. It was known in 1986 that Chernobyl did not have PWR reactors.
Great to see Brian Hanrahanrahan.
Am currently reading Chernobyl :a history, have seen the mini series and this is a good addition to what I'm reading. All I have to do now, is go there. Interesting stuff.
Likewise. I'd love to go. Saw Guy Martin on TV went there. He got the full tour and went into reactor No4 building.
I swear this is the first time I see the anchor taking a phone call on TV during a news program.
That's a couple of old school experts there 👍
Utter BBC bollocks. The RBMK reactor was not a PWR. If it had been, the runaway excursion that caused the explosion would not have occurred.
Well they were speculating, since they did not have reliable sources. Sure the Nuclear Science Expert would have known, but they did assume a gaseous material leak, (wich also can an RBMK do) not a blow the roof of scenario...
You have the power of hindsight. This was 1986, the very secerative USSR was not prone to give good or any qualitative information. The western world had to do a lot of speculation at this time.
This map, tho.
The Scandinavian Union, my favorite country
Still waiting for John Cleese to enter frame
The map at the beginning:Didn't know that West-Germany annexed the benelux states lol
And French took most of south of Germany
Yes, let the Dutch be Deutsch! Avoids a lot of confusion... ;-)
I also didn't know that Zealand became independent from Denmark and Finland retrieved it's lost territories from the winter war in 1940.
Well, ze germans did have a habit of doing these things in the 20th century
The odd camera zoom, the harsh lighting and the mistakenly early cut to the clip. So many hiccups in the mid 80’s broadcast. It’s kinda charming though in a vintage sort of way.
As they said on the Simpson, a meltdown is an unrequested fission surplus.
I like how @ 3:00 the BBC is reporting as if it was a PWR failure, and were very concerned that perhaps the surrounding area might be without electricity...
"chair nob eeeel!" 🤣🤣🤣
Chairnobeale....
Funny to see how Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Luxenburg are all put together as one country....
8:33 ”It’s impossible to conceal this”
USSR since 1917: Am I a joke to you?
‘Chair-No-Beel’
This is horrible ☹️
3:33 little had they known there was no reactor left
Man, they didn’t even begin to imagine it was an RBMK reactor having issues, let alone one that exploded.
Worth a visit to Pripyat and Chernobyl - VERY interesting.
*No. F@cking. Way.*
never worth the risk.
@@irishcountrygirl78
This video is an eye opener when it comes to radiation exposure. Places that people expect to glow in the dark are actually not as bad as they think.
czcams.com/video/TRL7o2kPqw0/video.html
Very interesting indeed. Was there last year.
Worth a trip!
When nuclear scientist Sue Ion [ spokesperson for BNFL ] went on BBC Desert Island Discs [ light radio show in the UK where famous people choose music and discuss their lives etc ] in 2016 she tried to underplay the disaster. That shows how touchy the news media and the nuclear industry are about Chernobyl
How long has this been going on ?
Interesting fact. The head of the 5th shift of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (i.e., he was Akimov's boss) Boris Rogozhkin, one of those who was later convicted of the accident, worked at Mayak in 1957 and was one of the liquidators of the accident, which you know as Kyshtym. A lucky man. By the way, two guys from the tourist group that mysteriously died in the Urals in 1959 (which, ironically, was headed by a guy with the surname Dyatlov) also worked there at that time and they could well have been familiar with Rogozhkin.
In general, the awareness of Western society about the Ural accident is interesting. In the USSR, the public learned about this only in 1991, and for a long time the society discovered all the consequences of the activities of this enterprise, for example, about a radioactive river and villages dying of cancer on its banks. At the same time, all the details in this plot are incorrect.
It is also interesting why in this story it was decided that different types of reactors were used at the station, such combined stations had never been built in the USSR. They appeared only in modern Russia, when it was time to decommission the RBMK units. Of course, the second stage of the station had a slightly different design, two blocks in one building and more common communications, but that's all. It was hardly a secret to the world: the IAEA and all that
still find it crazy Sweden were the ones to report the incident first
1:32 apparently Chernobyl used to be in Minsk
The guy at the start with the grey jacket; can anyone confirm that it is Sir John Stanley MP? He was housing minister at the time.
God, that map graphic is painful to look at! (And 'the Ukraine' would be an unthinkable thing to say these days!)
Back when the news was newsworthy and didn't treat the viewer like an idiot. Actual information, what a shocker!
Not true but okay. You're young.
jezzermeii because media propaganda only existed after 1986 right /s
@@je6874 No, that's not what I'm saying. I just found it refreshing that there were a lot of technical details explained in this broadcast. A lot of that gets skipped over now. Also, a lot of news that we see today is so frivolous. This broadcast felt like we were actually being informed of something in a factual and intellectual way, rather than an emotional one. That's all I meant. :) Always try to think independently, because you're right that we get sold certain narratives!
jezzermeii I dream for every new story to be broadcasted in this way again.
@@Lettersfromhome18 So do I brother, but I doubt it. The news is so very emotional now and a lot of the news stories we see are either a complete joke (designed to distract us), or are devoid of fact and scary. I wish that news was a balanced and matter-of-fact. There's always going to be bias in the media and censorship/propaganda. However, it seemed like it was much better back then. I literally don't pay attention to news any more, as I don't believe a word! Peace :)
How long have they been banging on about sizewell B? Two and a half decades....
You know nothin', Peter Snow!
Our nuclear correspondent Brian O’hanrahanrahan
No containment building over reactor 4. Terrible.
Not terrible, but not great.
Shoddy russian architecture for ya!😀😀😀😀😀🤣
There is one now, it just took a few decades to get around to it
My main question here is - was Peter Snow really conducting the interview by telephone, or was that handset just a prop?
The water reactor did not explode
10:38 I've heard nowadays it's a ghost town...
what is happening with the camera at the very beginning? camera man doesn't keep it very steady
Chernobyl shock wave.
No one talks about the St Petersburg
accident in 1977, same faulty design
It was classified
What about the 3 mile island
Nitpicking Nerd We probably never got the whole story on Three Mile. But, as far as I know, the design included containment, which “minimized radioactivity”. But yeah, right!
4:17 hey i live right by browns ferry
I'm impresed by the video quality. If someone told me this is early HDTV I would believe it.
If it hardly affected the UK , then why were some farms in Wales and Scotland prevented from food production until nearly 30 years after the event ?
It was only 3.6 roentgen. Not great, not terrible.
When this report was first on TV there was loads of speculation. They didn't know how bad it was.They talk about it being a radioactive Steam leak like at three mile island, when in reality the core had exploded. Different radioisotopes have different half-lives. Iodine-131 half-life is 8 days so by the time it had blown over the UK and dropped in rain it's radioactivity would of reduced significantly. So not a major cause for concern. The Cesium-137 that came with it however has a half-life of 30 years.This was a big concern. Anyway it could of been neptunium-237 and they'd be closed for over 2 million years.
I think this was broadcasted like a few days after the accident.
Probably thanks to the windscale fire
David Nightingale Windscale is also fascinating However, Radiation levels in some parts of Britain in the wake of Chernobyl were only deemed safe in 2011. Checks on Sheep and cattle were carried out and restrictions put in place as a result of Chernobyl until a few years ago.
I learned English watching this
Q: What did the Mexican man say when he insisted on paying for his date's meal?
A: 2:32
Brilliant
Chernobly wasn't a PWR (pressurized water reactor). They only make assumptions based on if it were this type. They guessed, wrong.
The science behind nuclear power is strong the human factor is the weak link
If only they had spent the extra money to put proper containments, like we had in the west at the time, around the reactors and maybe it wouldn’t have been as bad as it was.
My god it's josiefienus