jigsaw training review

(applause) >> thank you, erica. let's start out by saying,i'm a traveler. i'm neither academicnor historian. i've been in this roombefore in those seats. after i graduatedfrom western, on a whim, i decided i mightwanna become a diplomat so i took theforeign service exam, and it happenedto be in this room.(audience chuckling)

the fact that i've been in thelumber business for 31 years tells you how idid on the exam. (audience laughing) so why chernobyl? why would i goto chernobyl? last december, i wasin europe on business, it was at the end of theweek and as i plan my trip, i thought, "well, it's--i'll wake up friday morning "and i can eitherget on a plane

"and come back to grandrapids for the weekend," or if you drawa radius around rome which is where i ended up andyou look at all the cities that are within a two-hourplane ride of rome, there are some prettygreat places to go. so, i had itnarrowed down-- i was gonna go either to parisand hangout in montmartre and drink some nice red wineand have some bouillabaisse, or i was maybe gonna go toamsterdam, see the canals

and all the wonderful museums,or i could visit the site of the greatest technologicaldisaster of the 20th century. that was an easychoice for me. so, i headed up tokiev that weekend, and i don't know why but it'salways been a dream of mine to visit the chernobyl becausei've always been very curious about whatthat's all about. so, if you rememberchernobyl like i do, it was terribledisaster.

the human toll wasunbelievably bad but we didn't know thenwhat was recently revealed about the seriousness ofwhat really did happen, and i'm gonna reveal thatto you in a little bit. so, where ischernobyl? chernobyl is asmall enough town that it really doesn'teven hardly make the map. that is a map of ukraine andthen belarus to the north, and if you see if i had a laserpointer here-- which i don't--

directly above kiev, youcan barely read that-- there's a little lakethere and a river. it is a little town of pripyat,and just south of pripyat by a little bit less than2 miles is the town of kiev, is the townof chernobyl, and that's wherethe plant is. here's a littlebit bigger map. as you recall, ukraine andbelarus were both satellites of the soviet unionin '70s and '80s.

the plant was builtin the '70's in order to supplyelectricity to ukraine. it supplied 10% ofthe electricity which is prettyimpressive, considering therewere 40 million people in ukraineduring that time. the plant used fourrbmk-1000 nuclear reactors. now, why isthat important? reason that thatis important

is because they areuniversally recognized as beinginherently flawed. and unfortunately, even asthey were installing them, they knew that theywere inherently flawed. the warnings hadgone out before. in addition, the plant lackedbasic safety regulations, and it was just-- you could--the handwriting was on the wall, it was going to bea dangerous place. on april 26, 1986, they decidedto test a self-fueling system

in order tosave energy. at 1:23 in the morning, theydisabled the security systems, including theautomatic shut down. after they did that,the experiment begun and during that time, therewas a number of operations in which they violated all theirstandard operating procedures. there was achain reaction which caused the top ofthe reactor to the blow up. 1,200-ton reactorblasted away.

it released graphite anduranium into the sky. almost immediately, therewas a second explosion-- 3,000 feet up in the airwent all the nuclear material. in the next few hours,in very basic terms, just about everything theydid to mitigate the disaster only increasedits severity. the first respondingfiremen poured water on it which did absolutelynothing at all. these men wore noprotective equipment at all

and were immediatelyexposed to lethal radiation. a senior operatorwas to die in the ruins ofthe first explosion. he would bethe first death. that night, later on,there was another death, and over the nextcouple of months, 28 more peoplewere going to die. the immediate fallout from theexplosion, in radiation terms, was about 100 times that ofnagasaki and hiroshima combined.

at 5 o'clock that morning,the kremlin was notified. incidentally, thisexplosion took place about 1:30in the morning. at 5 am, theyinformed the kremlin. they said, "there's beenan accident, a fire, "but no explosion,everything is safe. "we have everythingunder control." the kremlin was kept in thedark of the very basic nature of this explosion, not onlyfor that day and the next day

but for severalweeks on. the consequencesof such an omission would prove tobe quite dramatic. for residents ofthe town of pripyat which was about2 kilometers away, it was a morning justlike another morning. there would be no informationabout the accident. there were rumorsthat there was a fire since they could seethe plant from pripyat,

and there was smokecoming out of the reactor. interestingly, theeyewitnesses from pripyat tell the story that thesmoke was not black, the smoke was notwhite or gray... the smoke was blue. and they also got noinformation from the soldiers that were running around thestreets with gas masks on. what they did not wantto do is instill panic on the population.

pripyat was a model,planned city. it was the place tolive in soviet russia-- or actually, thisis in ukraine. it was the place tolive in the soviet union because they heavily recruitedall the smartest kids out of college,all the scientists, all the hardestworkers to work on thesenuclear power plants. there were five schoolsand 15 kindergartens

because there were alot of children there. they had a lotof foreign goods. the apartments weremore spacious. the food was better. and overall, there wasa perception of prestige among the wider society inthe soviet union for pripyat. what i like about looking atphotos of the soviet union and what they did was, thisis a playground in pripyat and they are equally adept--the soviets are--

at not just appropriatingamerican and western trademarks but making even playgroundequipment look stalin-esque as you can see bythat elephant there. the readings of theradioactivity that afternoon in pripyat would be 15times higher than usual. by that night,it would be 600 times. during the first day,inhabitants were to absorb over 50 times whatwas considered safe. the next day, 1,000 busesarrived in pripyat,

soldiers empty out of thebuses, go door to door, and they say,"you have two hours. "gather yourimportant documents. "don't bring clothes,you can't bring clothes, "you can't bringfurniture." they were told that thiswould be a very short visit. maybe we'll go camping inthe woods for the weekend, we'll be backvery shortly. a few days turnedinto a few weeks,

which turned intoa few months, which turned into, well, themore liberal estimates are, they can return topripyat in 3,000 years. the more conservativeestimates are 20,000 years. now, there'ssort of a-- i've read, in doing myresearch for this, there are two schoolsof thought on this. some people think that theyare allowed to come back in a few months andget a few things.

other reports saythat they are not. i'm not surewho to believe. special teams camein and emptied the contents ofthe apartments, burned everything that wasin them and buried the ash. for the next several months, theonly people living in pripyat would be soldiers andscientists sent there to work onthe problem, a problem which theyunderestimated greatly

from the verybeginning. within a couple of days,the radioactive cloud was to spread up north intobelarus through the baltics, and intoscandinavia. outside, a swedishnuclear power plant, they had some unusually highreadings of radioactivity, and so, they decidedto send a plane up and check the atmosphere andwhat they found was shocking. they knew a major accidentmust have occurred somewhere

but they couldn'tfigure out where. so, they called hans blixdown in the iaea. you may rememberhans blix from the "weapons ofmass destruction" days. and he was in-charge ofthe iaea then, and he said, "no, i have no idea wherethis is coming from." finally, someamerican spy planes were able to detect the wreckageof the number four reactor, and then, the news spreadfairly quickly after that.

incidentally,mikhail gorbachev found out from the swedes whatthe problem was. he did not find outfrom his own people. as of may 1st, there wasa tiny blurb in "pravda," and it said, "there wasan accident at the plant, "everything's fine,everything is safe," and as you recall in communistcountries, may 1 is mayday, which is a reallyimportant date and they alwayshave a big parade.

once again, because theydidn't want a sew panic, they didn't tell people notto go out and celebrate mayday, so all over western russiaand ukraine, people went out fortheir mayday parades. and in kiev, today it's stillknown that particular mayday as the"parade of death." and the ukrainian archiveshave been scrubbed of all evidence of thatday, that mayday parade, all the photographsand all the films

are missing fromthe archives. so, on the third day,helicopters and pilots from moscow and afghanfront were rushed in. they dumped tons andtons of sandbags and boric acid to tryto quell the flames. 600 pilots would flyhundreds of sorties, and they all received at leastnine times a lethal dose. they sent in anotherbattalion of firefighters, now they dumped leadinto the breach

in an attempt tolower the temperature. what happened thenwas the lead combusted, it went up intothe atmosphere and just adding tothe contamination. so they scrambledhelicopters up to spread a substancewhich congealed and brought all of thelead down onto the ground, and now, they had toget the bulldozers out and bury allof that.

yes, sir? >> you said they poured asubstance that congealed. what was it-- whatwas its name? >> the substance was"i have no idea." no, jamie, i have no ideawhat the substance was.(chuckling) yeah, it's a goodquestion, though. so after one weekhaving gone by, the towns of chernobyland pripyat have been completelyevacuated.

45,000 people from pripyatand all villages within 20 kilometershad been evacuated. 130,000 people, most of whomwere already contaminated. so at this time, europe wasat the mercy of the winds. as you can see here,the radiation spread into western europe,into france, into theunited kingdom, and it was now contaminatingmillions of acres of crops. so the newswas spreading.

now, these are just a fewdays after the disaster and the death claims areterribly exaggerated in these. long-term, there wouldbe gross underestimations of the amount of peoplethat did actually die. not revealed untilrecently was... there was a great fearthat there's a 50% chance of a second explosionoccurring several days after the first one. there were 200 tonsof nuclear fuel

which was still burning andthe temperature was rising. the scientists wereabsolutely terrified that the cement slab belowthe reactor would collapse, which would set offthe second explosion. had it happened, the forcewould have been 10 times that of thehiroshima bomb. the city of minskwhich is 150 miles north and east of chernobylwould've been razed, kiev would have notdone much better,

and half of europe wouldhave been made uninhabitable. we didn't know thatat the time. they sent 1,000train cars into minsk to start an immediate evacuationof 2 million people. so, what theycould determine was the magma wasstarting to seep down, there was a crackalready in this slab. below that wasan aquifer, just underneathwhere that slide is.

the aquifer suppliedwater to most of ukraine and went directlyto the black sea. so, it's timeto get serious. they brought in 10,000miners to dig underneath-- they wanted to dig a tunnel,tunnel in through, and get to rightunderneath the reactor. it's 150 metersto get there. it's 120 degrees in thattunnel as they're going, there's verylittle oxygen,

and no, they were not wearingprotective equipment. it took them one monthto go 150 meters. it's estimated today thata quarter of the guys that were in there died beforethey reached the age of 40. on the top of the roof--sorry about the quality of these photos but youcan't find anything better. on the top of the roof, it'sfull of shards of graphite. one shard of graphite can killa man in just a few minutes. so, they hadto clear these.

what they did wasthey sent in robots. they had robots thatthey were developing for the space program,to land on the moon, you know, take care of mars,etcetera. within two days, the circuitryin the robots went kablooey. they couldn't operate in ahighly radioactive atmosphere. so, they sent in what theycalled-- and i'm not kidding-- "biorobots." those are biorobots.

they hand-sewedtheir lead suits. they made them sortof from scratch and they kinda madetheir own covers for the boots,etcetera. and you can see, thoseare hand-made shovels. and their job was-- and they'regiven 45 seconds to do this-- they would run out,they would shovel, they would get ashovel-load of graphite run to the side of the roof...(chuckling)

and pitch it over the sideof the roof in 45 seconds. now, naturally,the amount of radiation they were subjected to wasvery much underestimated by the people sendingthem out to do that. and incidentally, they had tosign nondisclosure agreements before they went outand did that job.(chuckling) and i've read interviewswith the liquidators, the guys that didthis and they said, "you know, we werein the reserves,

"it is our duty,we had to do it." so, the entire reactor now--it's gotta be isolated somehow. they gotta builda sarcophagus. they have to buildsomething to cover it up. they've gotta build somethingthat's gotta be 550 feet long and 200 feet high. it's gotta be an utterlyoriginal design, designed from scratch. it's gotta be madein pieces and parts

from all overthe soviet union, some of the parts comingfrom thousands of miles away. they've gotta truck itall in and fit it together in sort of ajigsaw puzzle way. so, how do you installa massive structure that no one'sever made before? when humans can onlysafely work on it for a few minutesat a time? you have to do itvery painstakingly

and it took themseven months to do it. there's a picture of itonce it was done, there. and the beforeand after. so now, we've gotteninto the part where it's 18 dayspast the disaster, and mikhail gorbachev finallyaddresses the soviet people, the first time they had talkedabout it in their country. so, what does the immediatedisaster look like in the surrounding area?

this is not a postcardfrom vermont in october. this is called "the red forest,"an immediate area around, all the deciduous treeswent bright, bright red from the radiation. i'm not gonna show youa lot of these but you've probably heardabout what's happened, what happenedto the wildlife, the offspring of thewildlife as you go through. you can find many picturesof what happened

to the humans there, you can find picturesof the birth defects, what happened to thenext generation. decorum prevents me frompresenting those pictures to you today,though. if you're gonna look'em up, you can, but i really wouldn'trecommend it. in the first year, 100,000reservists are called in. they passed through chernobylin one way or another.

they called them"liquidators." their job basically was agigantic clean-up project. another 400,000civilians are brought in, they're hired to workon the disaster, 24 hours a day,seven days a week. liquidators are thereto knock down houses, knock down buildings, takeout the contents, burn, bury. there's over a million cubicmeters of earth was picked up, put into larger holes,and covered with cement.

the radiation victimsthemselves, the ones at leastthat where symptomatic, they were all sent to moscowhospital number 6. this is a picturefrom there, where they had the-- idon't know how much good that plastic aroundthat guy is doing but it specializesin radiation exposure. i could also describewhat happens after they're exposedto the doses they were,

but...(sighing) you probably wannalook that up yourself. so, what does itlook like today? this is the entranceto the exclusion zone. it's a 30-kilometer circle--not really a circle, but sort of arectangle. around the plant itselfis a highly secured area. i went with fiveother people. you have to do a wholespecial visa requirement

before you go,send them your passport, get a bunch ofthings stamped, and when you show up,everything's gotta be right. it's a prettysecure area. this is a typical road leadingthrough one of the towns, a typical house inone of the towns, it is really-- naturereally has taken over. this is the insideof a typical house, one that hasn't beencompletely emptied.

you'll see that it'sbeen kinda torn up. one of the big problemsthat they had was looters. when the reservistswent in, one of the reasons theycall it "war of chernobyl" was that they're wereat war with the reactor but they're alsoat war with looters. people who'd thoughtthat they could go in and just take tvs and stereosand whatever they wanted. i don't know if they knewthat they get a free case

of thyroid cancerwhen they do that but that was mostlikely the case. and there are storiesfrom the liquidators of transactionsbeing made... you know, look the other wayas the looters go in if they bring in a case ofvodka for the reservists. this was a grocery store inone of the towns we're in. the liquidators themselvesdidn't really care muchabout littering. you know, the wholeplace is a disaster,

so we found a lot ofcanisters and gas masks. this was interesting becausea lady lives there today. this is well withinthe exclusion zone, and a woman in herearly 80s went back. there are what theycall "self-settlers." people that wantedto go back. they allowed somepeople to go back. she lives in thislittle house. you can see there's afairly new fence there.

they take her into kievmaybe once a month for her to getprovisions. we were unluckythat day. oxana, our tour guidesaid, once in a while, she'll come out and greettourists and say "hello," but she said sometimes, shedoesn't like her picture taken because even thoughshe's in her early 80s, she's still a womanand she's still vain, and if she doesn't lookjust right that day,

she doesn't wanther picture taken. this is oxana here. she's explaining as we comeinto the town of chernobyl, which is that signsays "chernobyl," what we're about to see. if you'll notice the pipe--it's above ground. after the disaster, any hvac,any steam, electrical conduit, water, etcetera, wasall built above ground because they could notput a spade in the earth

because of all thecontaminated soil. so, everywhereyou'll see anything meant to service the town,it's above ground. there aremonuments there. there are sculptures there,commemorating what happened. this is aninteresting story. this is a museum dedicated towhat happened to chernobyl. it was built several monthsafter the disaster. you can see the storkson the outside

which symbolizerebirth and birth, and right afterit was finished, top officials from bothukraine and russia went in and inspected it and came out,they locked the doors. they never openedit up again. it's been sitting therefor 30 years untouched. oxana couldn't explainwhy but, apparently, there were things inside theyjust didn't want people to see. this concrete slab here isfull of these little pucks.

inside each one isa little light. at night,it lights up. they represent the villagesthat were destroyed. as you take thiswalk down here, every one of these isa village or a city that's when theexclusion zone. they have the nameon one side, and as you walk byon the other side, they're crossed out...

which, to me, it lookslike "do not enter" sign. so that european "no"which is-- i'm not sure-- it's a little insensitiveway to think about ex-towns. i don't know-- it's astrange memorial, though. i thought while walkingthrough there, "okay, they're justplain x'ed out." it was kind ofan odd thing. there was plenty ofgreat propaganda there. a lot of theneo-socialist art.

this is the kind of art thatyou saw in the soviet union, that you saw in chinain the '60s and '70s, and that you seein north korea today. it's still the same style--it's all over the place. wonderful stuff,actually. here's a bigsurprise for me. i didn't know we'regoing to see this. (coughing) this is an entrance,a big gate,

and why this guydecided to have dolls at the bottom of theirgate, i don't know why, but this is the entranceto the duga-3 radar array. most of the west didn'tknow that this existed for many years. this is an array that isabout a half-a-mile long and 450 feet high. it's moscow's eyeon the west. it is meant to detectincoming u.s. missiles.

there's another one--was another one just like it in southern ukrainethat kept its eye on china. there was anotherone in siberia. it's almost ahalf-a-mile long. it was so big-- it wasso tall and so big, it was kindof a misty day, that we could notsee the top of it. there was a-- it was nicknamed"the russian woodpecker" because it wasa 10 megawatt--

it had 10 megawatts of power andit would interrupt short waves and other radio trafficfor thousands of miles. (mimicking rapidelectrical ticking) it did that 24 hours a day,seven days a week. and so, it was known as"the russian woodpecker." and no one couldfigure out what it was or where it wascoming from. finally, afterseveral years, they used the triangulationthat they use

and they finally foundout where it was. and even as theylooked at it, through satellite photosand photos from the air, they really couldn'tfigure out what it did because it wasunprecedented. i found it endlesslyfascinating because, to me, it was like agiant sculpture. i just couldn't stoptaking pictures of it. it was an incredible,incredible sight.

as you can see,it was so tall, it just disappearedinto the air. there was speculationthat the soviets were using itfor mind control, they were using it forweather control, etcetera. the soviets listed it on mapsas a children summer camp. (audience chuckling) sorta throw peopleoff the scent. that's about as good as icould get it, at showing scale,

but, you know,like most things, you just can't telluntil you get there. there it isfrom the air. that gives you a little bitbetter idea of the scale. that's a modern picture,obviously. that's not my picture. next door is the controlcenter for the array. that was pretty interesting,also, to walk around outside. this is where thelooters also struck.

i'm sure they've foundplenty of nice copper and other metals totake away and sell, so that they canhave children with birth defectsmaybe someday. and going inside,which was not allowed, but which was really funand interesting. i went all theway to the back and i discoveredthis great mural, sort of the sovietspace aspiration

for greatnessthat they had. more socialistrealist art. this one in particularwas especially spooky, sort of a metaphor for thewhole place, i suppose. you may have heard of chernobyland the surrounding area being one of the world'sbiggest wildlife refuges and it is-- wildlifeactually is thriving there. these are called"przewalski's horses." i'm not sure i'mpronouncing it right.

nine pair were introducedshortly after the disaster to try to growthe wildlife there, and now, there'sover 100 there. and fox, deer, all sorts ofanimals are thriving there. it's kinda like thedemilitarized zone between north andsouth korea. there's two kilometers onboth sides of the border, no men,no anything, from one side of thecountry to the other side,

and that's become alsoa great wildlife refuge. a lot of placesthat we went, oxana would pull out herdosimeter and warned us that we could only staythere for a few minutes. this is outside a school,and there she is, she's telling us, "we must movenow, we must keep walking." outside the school-- this was afairly spooky place to visit. you may have seen photographslike this in other places but it was really sadbecause it's sorta--

you know, when you thinkabout kids and the tragedy, and everything thatit went through. it was just a very oddfeeling being in there. anyone knowrussian? "we are proud to callourselves pioneers" is what that says. very typical. as we went pastthe school, we soon got towhere the plant is.

that's not an activeconstruction site. that was a constructionsite in 1986, and after the disaster,they just shut it down and they left everythingexactly as it was. there's so much metal therethat has been so contaminated, they're not even going inthere to take it apart. they're not even gonnabother to liquidate the area. and just beyond that is theadministration buildings for thechernobyl plant.

little bit beyondthat, as we go, you can see theover-ground pipes there, is reactors number1 and 2. and now, we get tothe fourth reactor, the one that blew up,with the sarcophagus. and you see on the right,the new sarcophagus. and there it is. i wanted to get this photoas the bus coming out just to give you a scaleof how big that thing is.

this new sarcophaguscost $2 billion. they're not quitefinished with it yet. it was due to bein this year because this is 30 yearssince the disaster, the sarcophagus has a30-year serviceable life, so it's expiring thisyear-- it is ready? no. ukraine kept runningout of money. it cost $2 billion, so theyhad to scrape their knees

with other countriesand ask for donations in order tofinish this. they think they're goingto able to slide that over some time in 2017. and there she is whipping outthe dosimeter again, saying, "we gotta go." i couldn't believe, actually,how close they let us get to the number 4reactor that blew up especially with the radiationthat's near there.

now, it's really--it's kinda hard to see but if you see above thisfence, you keep going up, you see the littlewhite dots up there along that vertical area--those are hard hats. those are the construction guysthat are on the site today, getting it ready to slidethe new sarcophagus over. they make-- the ukrainiansmake 11 euro per hour-- this is all from oxana. they make11 euro per hour.

the guys from outside ukrainemake way more than that. now, you're thinking11 euro per hour-- by the way, euro nowis about $1.12. 11 euro-- that'sterrible wage. in ukraine, 11 euro an houris a really good wage. oxana is a teacher. her wage-- the average teacheris 80 to 100 euro per month. the average doctoris slightly higher, maybe 150 europer month.

so, 11 euroan hour? that's a good wage. so, what's in there? this is a renderingwhat's in there today-- the wreckagethat remains. there is still 20 tonsof nuclear fuel in there, and no one really knows whatkind of shape it's in, either. there's also100 kilograms of plutonium. one microgram ofplutonium can kill a man,

so there's enoughplutonium in there to kill100 million people. now, the math is easyand it's a little glib but it's stilla scary statistic. you know what,it's also the grave-- the permanent grave ofone valery khodemchuk who was the nighttimeoperator at the plant, the first guyto die there. he is still inthere somewhere.

that's a little memorial rightoutside the reactor number 4. so, that was pripyatbefore the disaster. let's go back into pripyat andsee what it looks like today. that's the entrance. that is the-- that wasthe sort of the town hall administration building, the parking lotin front of it. this was interesting--i asked oxana, since there's english lettersthere that say "atom"

but there's cyrillicall around it, and i asked her whatthat said, and she said, "let the atom do thefighting, not the soldier," which was... which makes sense, butthen it's really scary when you think aboutwhat happened there. (clearing throat) this was the culturalcenter of the town. we went inside there.

by the way, i lovedour tour guide because, in 2013,tourists were banned from going into anybuildings in pripyat because one of theschools had collapsed, and they were afraid thatother buildings would collapse, but we only hadsix people on our tour and she said, "ahh, ifyou keep it to yourself." so "oxana" is acodename, by the way. i told her i wouldn'ttell anybody.

she said, "you keepit to yourself, "we can go intosome buildings." so, we were reallyhappy about that. so, we're able to goin this building. there was interesting treesgrowing up inside it. that was themovie theater, gymnasium, more gymnasium. this was rightoutside of there.

it's very strange art-- i don't know if hewas playing badminton or doing bubbles--i don't know. you know, these are someof the iconic images that are taken by me but therea zillion of these taken. you'll see 'em on the weband other places of the playgroundin pripyat. what's interesting is theplayground never opened. they built it and they weregonna open it on mayday.

explosion happened on april 26,so it never opened. the kids never gota chance to enjoy it. that was a reallyspooky place, too. oxana tested us and she said,"what do you think this was?" and we're lookingat it, we can't-- i have no ideawhat that was. well, that wasa soccer pitch. so, that shows you howmuch nature has taken over the entire townof pripyat.

and in front of the otherside of the soccer pitch were the bleachers. i thought that wasa little poignant to show the little kidscrossing the street where that was nevergonna happen again. inside anotherschool in pripyat. different thingson the wall. everything isstill there. nice, it's-- actually,it's a cool image,

nice stencilof lenin. the looters werethere, obviously. that's kalinin, anothermarxist revolutionary in thebolshevik days. cafeteria. and obviously, theliquidators where there. i don't know why butthere was one room that was just full ofgas masks in this school-- i'm not sure why.

pool-- now, here's thehighlight of the day. at the end of theday, oxana said, "okay, well, wecan go to the bus "and we can driveback to kiev "and you can get home and getback in time for dinner... "or would you like to goto the top of an apartment "and see the city?" and we kinda,"oh, i guess so," and she said,"it's 16 stories."

i'll go. so, we went up to thetop of this apartment and i wish thelights were lower because you're gonna lose a lotof the effect of that slide 'cause it was really,really spooky. we're gonna turnthe light down. oh, i should've donethis from the beginning! oh, it's stillnot very good. anyway, so-->> start over.

>> (laughing)yeah, let me start over! that's a good idea.(all laughing) oh, so, this was wonderful'cause it was just spooky. it was-- we're 16 stories upand we get this view of all pripyat, whichis absolutely silent. there's no light,there is no sound, and you see allthese empty boxes for about as faras you could see. absolutely fascinating-- it'snothing like it anywhere.

it was dusk-- it was 4:30in the afternoon, and the sun wasalready going down. so, here's looking southpast the apartment and some of theother buildings to what do you think thatmight be on the horizon there? that would bechernobyl plant, where they work on it 24 hoursa day, seven days a week. and you can just see theshape of the new sarcophagus that they're gonnapull over that.

i did a little bitof telephoto-- it just makes itmore grainy but... it was really just probablythe highlight of the day 'cause it wasjust so weird. i've never experiencedanything like it-- absolute silence at thetop of that building. so, as we go down, i wentthrough some of the hallways and some of the apartmentsand, you know, see what the looters gotand what they didn't.

some mailboxes. as you leave theexclusion zone-- as a matter of fact,before we went to lunch in this little buildingand as we left, we had to go throughthese machines to make sure thatyou're not carrying too much contaminationout with you. back to thedisaster. that august, there was acommission convened in vienna

to review the disaster, in whichthe soviet participated fully. you can see hans blix there,in the middle there. they were shockedat the testimony that were given by thesoviets, especially by-- given by this man,valery legasov. he was the guywho was the head of the soviet commissionfor this. he told the truth. he told everythingthat he knew.

the commissionand the soviets tried to changestatistics, they tried it tamp down a lotof the really scary numbers, but he was insistenton telling the truth. two years to the day afterthe disaster happened, he took his own life. so, he was-- a lot ofpeople consider him sort of the heroof chernobyl. he's not theonly one.

a lot of people who triedto tell the truth, though, eventually, they eitherjust disappeared or they wound up in jailduring that time. the soviet union--it would never recover from this disaster. you could call chernobylsort of a monument to the extinctionof the soviet union. the symbolismis rife. i mean, the whole metaphorof decline, etcetera,

is very prominentwith this disaster. nuclear power for the sovietswas much more than a utility. it was the symbol of thetechnological perfection of the soviet ideal, of theother utopiate of communism. this disaster cost theminitially $18 billion, and if you think of what thebudget of the soviet union was at the time-- sorry, rubles anddollars were about at par then, so $18 billion, which is asizable chunk of their budget. now, if you include latermonths and years of reclamation

and resettlements, movingof the people, etcetera, some estimatesare $200 billion. so, when we think about thewest winning the cold war-- you know, how didwe win this cold war? well, it's because of,you know, ronald reagan. "mr. gorbachev,tear down this wall." john paul ii... pope john paul ii,right? these were kinda thearchitects of this.

in later interviewswith mikhail gorbachev, he lists chernobyl asone of the top reasons for the dissolutionof the soviet union because of what that cost themnot just in rubles and dollars but in prestige, and it justshocked the country to the core. i've read the accountsof a lot of liquidators. it's interesting to hear whatthey have to say about it. a lot of them were veteransof the war in afghanistan, and when they talk aboutthe war of chernobyl--

when they talk about cominghome from afghanistan, they say, "if you camehome and you survived "your tour of duty,then you survived." "when you did thewar on chernobyl, "when you came home,you had no idea "whether or not youwere going to survive." and i thought thatwas very poignant. there was a lot of guyssaid that same thing and their remembrances.

most of the liquidatorsnever did lead a normal life. most of them have what'scalled "chernobyl syndrome" which is a wholelist of maladies that i don't reallywanna get into but they've hadtough lives. liquidators in their 50s looklike senior citizens today. 20,000 are have estimatedto have died, 20% of that numberthrough suicide. and 200,000 are listedas disabled today.

today, the officialnumber of deaths-- 59. because there are no officialgovernment statistics that say exactly whatthese things are. they just have neverpublished this. so, they relyon statistics from world health organizationand other people for that. ironically,out of this and out of mikhail gorbachev'sanger... came "glasnost." he was so mad that he wasnot informed of the details

of the disaster and thegravity of the disaster during the firstseveral days and weeks, and then once legasovstarted spewing what the real numberswere at the commission, he decided we'vegotta open up, and, as you know, "glasnost"means "openness," etcetera. so, the twin pillars ofgorbachev sort of revolution... "revolution" maybebeing the wrong word in the contextof russian history.(chuckling)

but his big, big change--"perestroika" on one side and "glasnost"on the other. glasnost came-- pretty muchstarted from chernobyl. so, despite thecontamination of the site, chernobyl 1and 2 reactors continued to operatefor 14 more years. they shut down the lastone in the year 2000. today, 8 million people livein the contaminated areas of belarusand ukraine,

and they continue to eat foodfrom the contaminated farm land. 1,200 people wereallowed to move back. there's probably600 left. these are calledthe "resettlers." today, 4,000 peoplelive in chernobyl town, and they're there, dedicatedto keeping the place safe and keeping theplace secure, and putting thatnew sarcophagus on. contrast that withthe old pripyat--

there are no kids there,there are no schools, but there is the lastremaining statue of lenin in all of ukraine isin chernobyl town. over 400 villagesand settlements were wiped off the map,either razed or buried. and in 2011, ukraine openedup the exclusion zone to add people like myselffor tourism to see what-- see firsthand what theafter-effects were. well, i'll leave ya, as faras chernobyl, with one quote.

there was a guynamed georgi kopchinsky who is director of thesoviet central committee on nuclear energy,and he said this, "we knew this--three years earlier, "we'd sent out awarning to all plants "with the reactorswith these absorbers, "warning of this problem butno actions had been taken. "this was our arroganceat the time. "we believed we were the mastersof the atomic reactions.

"it was a horriblemistake." so, what it lookslike today. you've got pripyatup on the left, which is pretty muchtaken over by nature. and then, directlydown from that, you can see thiswhite area here. that's the plant--that's the sarcophagus. so you can see howclose they were but that's what itlooks like today.

so, how doesthat compare? how does that compare withthree mile island and fukushima? it doesn't. there's really no comparisonbetween those disasters. i'll be quietfor a minute. i'm not gonna readthis slide to you-- you can read this slide,it's pretty interesting. when i read up onthe fukushima one, i, like i thinkmost people,

thought that a lot of peopledied from radiation poisoning and from the plant blowingup, and they didn't. now, it dependson what you read. it depends on--it gets political when you talkabout this. a lot of people believethat there will be no deaths from radiation,the cloud went out, it dissipated,everything is safe. one estimate that is by a prettywell-respected organization

says they thinkthat there will be between 300 and 600 cancerdeaths in the future. and then, if you readfrom other activists, they say, you know, it'sa disaster yet to come. i can't pick a side--i don't know what to think but i was kindashocked at the stats that i did readon that. and three mile island-- i mean,that was a pretty scary thing but epidemiologicalstudies still--

they have not founda single cancer case that they can trace directlyto three mile island. i'm sure you'llread other things that say something different,but that's a comparison. now, i'd like to open up it upto any questions and answers. if it's about physics,i'm not gonna answer it. >> the radiation isthat's there now-- more than(indistinct), is the radiation justcontained in the soil?

is there anything that'sgoing up into the atmosphere through the rains and throughthe sea, beach into the sea, and anythinglike that? or it's just kindastationary in the soil? >> yeah, from what i know,they buried it and they buriedit pretty deep. and a lot of places where theyhad very radioactive buildings, and furniture,and clothes, etcetera, they buried it and then theycovered it with concrete.

so, to the extent it doesget into the water table and then eventually comesback out, i can't answer that. i don't know.>> they don't haveany monitoring going on there to...?>> oh, i think they do, yeah. i think they do, but i don'tknow what the statistics are for what-->> all those maps, you know, after was there wereall those clouds were... is there anythinglike that currently that they can see or tellif there's anything

up in the atmosphere?>> that, i don't know. my guess wasprobably, yeah. yes, al?>> you mentioned farming. question on farming-- are theymonitoring or what is...? >> you know, that'sa great question. and no one could answerthat really well for me as i asked, because thatwoman's house that you saw, she grows stuff there. and there's people that livein the town of chernobyl

and other little towns--these resettlers, they grow foodand they eat food, and, as we know today,lots of acres of farm land outside the exclusionary zonewere contaminated, as well. since there'sno official-- i'm sure some peopleare monitoring this but as far as i'm concerned,i haven't read anything that's published on whathappens to that food. while we were there, one of mypictures had a bunch of apples

that had droppedfrom a tree, and all i can think ofwas i would eat that apple and i'm gonnaget cancer. i mean, just--so i don't know. sometimes, when people moveback to places like that, they just-- that's theirhome, and if they die there because of that,that's okay with them. >> as i look back in thelate '50s or early '60s, there's quite a bit of,concerning the states,

with dairy milk.>> right. >> well, there was testingthat was going on. >> yeah, the wholelove canal thing and other stufflike that, yeah. yes? >> if their had been acontainment vessel in the first place, would ithave made any difference? >> you mean with theexplosion, with the explosion? i doubt it.

i don't know that itcould have operated with a containment vesselover it-- i don't know, but i doubt it. yes, jamie? >> when did theyopen permitted tours? >> in 2011... is when theyopened up the exclusion zone for tourists--yes, sir? >> on your last slide, you hadthat (indistinct) scale. what's the range of that?zero to 10, zero to 20?

>> yeah, 7.>> 7's the highest? >> 7's the worst.>> okay. >> yeah...yup, bill? >> yeah, you mentionedthat the soviets knew that the design was flawedand these reactors were flawed, and obviously were installedin other locations. did the soviets go backand re-engineer this or (indistinct)? >> with the kind of griefthey took for chernobyl,

i imagine they did. you know, up untilthey opened up again, it was pretty closed societyso i can't answer that with any sortof accuracy. i don't know, but you'dthink that they would 'cause the whole physics,nuclear physics community knew of the flaws-- well, theyknew of the flaws themselves. as a matter of fact, threeyears before, in lithuania, and a soviet reactor, theyhad an accident similar.

it was not nearly as dramatic,but three years earlier in lithuania, they hadthe same thing happen. they said, "well, probablyshould change some things," and we seewhat happened. yeah, i was shockedto read that, too.(chuckling) mark?>> so, the tours-- are they advertised and promotedlike a tour of camp gettysburg, or-- and-->> chernobyl tours, chernobyltours.com.

you know, it just-- i thought, "i wonder if youcan go through that place?" i googled "chernobyl tours,"went right to the website, (gasping)"oh, yes!" so it's great--it's really great. yes?>> about the childrenof pripyat, how many children werethere-- 5,000 you said? >> well, there was-- thepopulation was 45,000 and there was a lot of kids,there were five schools

and 15 kindergartens.>> any follow-up, i mean, withworld health? >> yeah, i'm sureworld health organization probably hasfollow-up studies of what happenedto those kids. you know, i kinda includedthat in my macro view of 20,000 peopleeventually died, 20% of those via suicide,and 200,000 disabled. yeah, but there's noofficial statistics, anna.

like ukraine has not said,"okay, here's what happened, "we followedthese kids." no, nothinglike that. yes?>> i'm curious about who gets to account forthe damage to human beings? and i'm thinkingspecifically of hiroshima which i'm hopingto visit next month and i have read,well, first of all, i've readjohn hersey's work,

and then i read somethingelse that talk about peoples' skin liquefying--i couldn't finish that. >> yeah.>> but then i decided to check the atomicenergy commission. and i was frankly--i mean, i would think that that would be areally (indistinct) site, but i was shocked,and what seemed to me to be a really minimal countof human consequences of-- >> yeah, the iaea came undersome fire after chernobyl

because, as i said, when legasovwas giving off his statistics, they were complicitin trying to hide some of thedisaster's results. and i haven't goneto their site. i've never read anyof the stuff they do, but yeah, it'snot a surprise. that hersey book is--that's a pretty gruesome book. i read that,as well. and the skin meltingoff right to the bone--

that's chernobylsyndrome all over. yeah--oh, yeah. yeah, i've seen some of thepictures-- it's terrible, yeah. judy?>> so, when you left, you went through thoseradiation meters. >> yeah.(mimicking buzzing noise) >> how much were youtaking out with you? and how comfortablewere you feeling that thosewere reliable?

>> oh, you mean themachines themselves? i don't know.(chuckling) maybe it wasfor show. i have no idea.(laughing) i was comfortablewith the amount of-- >> you've had your thyroidchecked, right? >> uh, no. yeah, you know, i thoughtabout that before i went. i think there's-- althoughliability in eastern europe

is not quite thesame as liability in the united statesof america. i would think that it's afairly popular thing to do now. you know, i just kinda--i think it's okay. oxana was pretty good,she has a dosimeter, she says, "okay,we gotta go." and the other thingthat gave me ease was she seemed like asmart "with it" a person, she's a teacher, and she doesthese things every weekend.

well, she make 10 times whatshe does teaching school, doing that, but so--i'm not that bothered by it. as a matter of fact, you get--x-rays and different things, flying in a plane,you get radiation. so anyway, al? >> well, i understandthat flying in a plane over a certainlength of time-- >> yeah.>> worse than that. >> yeah, that'sexactly right.

thanks for bringingthat up-- it's-- and i fly a lot inplanes and, you know, 15 hours la to sydney andi've done that seven times, so i probably-- i wasexposed to a lot more than walking throughthe exclusion zone. >> we have time forone more question. >> all right. okay?>> the sarcophagus. >> yeah.>> 30 years-- what's going on?

time to builda new one? >> oh, yeah,that one is-- >> that's whatthey are building? >> that's what that giganticthing is that you saw right-- that giantreally shiny one. it's nice and new-- they polishthat thing every single day. they really want to make thatthing really look really good 'cause they spent$2 billion on it, so it bettershine nicely.

uhhh, there it is,right there. that's gonna be on rails--they're gonna push that bad boy right over the other one,and then seal it. now, that one is for--oh, i can't remember. that one is forseveral hundred years. that's what theythink it'll be. quick!>> there was fourreactors there, right? >> yes.>> the one blew up on a test. it didn't evenget going, right?

>> no, no, it wasfully operational but they wantedto save energy, they were gonna doa test on it so-- >> then the other ones, did they shut 'em down, orwere they still running? 'cause you said they justclosed the last one down. >> yeah.>> so they shut theother ones down and start them up sometime in the future? >> my guess is that theywould've shut them down

during those seven monthsthat they were doing the battle ofchernobyl. >> start it back up?>> but that's what's goes on. i suppose, yeah,'cause it-- >> when did thepeople move back in? the resettlers.>> the resettlers moved in, i think, overa year later, they started lettingpeople back in. >> wow.>> yeah.

yeah, okay, well,thanks very much.