Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster BBC Documentary Series

I accidentally found this BBC Documentary Series that recreates the Chernobyl Disaster. I must admit I was glued to it and have sat and watched it all the way through non stop.

The first episode follows the accident as told by Valeri Legasov (played by Adrian Edmondson), the Russian scientist who was a key member of the Soviet government commission formed to investigate the causes of the catastrophe and to plan the mitigation of its consequences.

This is quite a chilling tale of events. Some of the documentary was filmed on location in the abandoned town of Pripyat and inside one of the remaining nuclear reactors located at Chernobyl.

Here’s the BBC documentary series, Surviving Disaster, in its entirety.

Posted on June 26, 2010 | Filed Under Life

Stacey Says:

Thank you so much for posting this. It’s shocking how much of the true scale of this disaster is hiden, some official documents still claiming victims to only be in the lower double figures. The heroes of the disaster who prevented a second blast still not recognised and the many people still suffering.
Chris Says:

Excellent, thanks for posting this. It never ceases to amaze me how the ambitions of some make those, supposedly beneath them, expendable. Those who entered the flooded chamber knew they faced certain death, but they went in and saved thousands of other humans. Russia should be grateful to them for their sacrifice – we all should be.
ST Says:

This docu still does not give a clear picure of what happened, step by step before and during the disaster. It shows essential information very blurry in only a few seconds in the beginning, which is depicted as nothing relevant, just some mumbling of the people.

Also, this docu focusses mainly on what happened after, the prevention of the consequences and the mistakes people made, instead of their reasoning, why they did what they did.

The bad safety culture is shown much in this video. I wonder how much this really happened.

Some people are really shown as the ‘bad guys’,screaming and looking evil. C’mon, what about circumstances?

In hindsight it is easy to say that someone was foolish to continue the test, the wait with shutting the reactor down, but if you were in that situation, would you? Would you listen to the guy in charge? Or the procedures? The plans? Or your gut feelings?

And for those, who still want to point their finger, do you think these people thought “Ow, you know what, I’m evil today, I will let this place blow up, I will just be a dck and let them suffer, SO I keep going on with the procedure.”?