Drama documentary about the 1986 explosion at a Soviet nuclear plant which released four hundred times as much radiation as the Hiroshima bomb. The story is told from the perspective of scientist Valeri Legasov, who later committed suicide, and the reconstruction exposes the disturbing truth that victims of Chernobyl were victims of secrecy and denial by those in authority, who believed the threat of the truth was far worse than the threat of the radiation itself.
"Examining the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, this docudrama is hard to watch. Told from the perspective of investigating scientist Valeri Legasov, the story makes no bones about being a subjective attempt to tie together the social, political and human fallout from the world’s worst nuclear accident. And seeing the graphically recreated effects of grotesque levels of radiation, it quickly becomes clear that here were both human bravery and stupidity beyond measure.
Workers at the power station had not been informed of the potentially dangerous design flaw in their reactor – that information was classified – and so staff didn’t know that hitting the button to shut the plant down could, in fact, cause it to go into meltdown. Scared for their jobs when they should have been scared for their lives, management then claimed the problems could be sorted when in fact there was no reactor left; the minister, meanwhile, initially felt that “panic is worse than radiation.” Later, divers knowingly swam to their deaths in a successful attempt to avoid a thermal explosion that would have levelled 200 square kilometres and irradiated 200 million people’s water supply. "
