Today, it´s 25 years ago since the worst nuclear power plant accident in world history occurred in Chernobyl, Ukraine. The worst accident so far, I should add as the jury is still out on Fukushima Dai-Ichi, Japan. Like Chernobyl, the latter is now also upgraded to a 7 on the INES scale.
As I have strong memories from my childhood from the events of Chernobyl and the 25 year date was coming up, I have spent some evenings the last couple of weeks checking out several documentaries about what actually happened back in 1986.
As always with documentaries, you learn a lot of new things about a phenomena or event, but what really sent chills down my spine was when I learned that there was in fact a 5-10% risk of a second, much bigger explosion: An explosion that could have been equivalent to a 3-5 megaton atomic bomb rendering Europe uninhabitable…
See for youselves (from 31:50 and appr. 5 minutes onwards in the following clip):
As always if you are interested in a certain topic, Youtube is a great source for finding documentaries and here are a couple of other documentaries I can recommend if you are interested in Chernobyl:
This one, is broken down into 6 parts and details what happened on the plant right before the explosion. Unfortunately, it has Russian subtitles for the dialogue between the workers at the plant, but it´s still definitely worth it even if you like I cannot understand a word of Russian.
Here is another really interesting and well-filmed piece (but with a totally different angle), covering the animal life in the forbidden zone and how it has developed after the accident.
Last, but definitely not least, “Chernobyl Heart” won the Best Documentary Short Subject award at the 2004 Academy Awards and shows the true human cost of nuclear energy.
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