Ulana Khomyuk quotes from Chernobyl

Khomyuk

I want you to think of Yuri Gagarin. I want you to imagine he had been told nothing of his mission into space until the moment he was on the launch pad. I want you to imagine all he had was a list of instructions he'd never seen before, with some of them crossed out. That is exactly what was happening in the control room of Reactor 4. The night shift had not been trained to perform the experiment. They hadn't even been warned it was happening. Leonid Toptunov, the operator responsible for controlling and stabilizing the reactor that night, was all of 25-years old. His total experience on the job? Four months. This was the human problem created by the delay. But inside the reactor core, something far more dangerous was forming. A poison. The time is 28 past midnight.

You work too hard.

Ulana Khomyuk

Where is everyone?

Oh, they refused to come in.

Ulana

Why?

It's Saturday.

Ulana

Why did you come in?

I work too hard. It's boiling in here. [opens a window. A radiation alarm goes off. Dmitri immediately closes the window and then checks the alarm's reading.] Eight millirontgen. Leak?

Ulana

No, it would've gone off before. It's coming from outside.

The Americans?

Ulana

Iodine-131. It's not military, it's uranium decay: U-235.

Reactor fuel? [Ulana goes to a phone] Ignalina, maybe? 240 km away?

Ulana

[calls the Ignalina power station] Yes, this is Ulana Khomyuk, with the Institute of Nuclear En...looking for...[listens to the person on the phone] Alright, stay calm- [gets interrupted by the other person on the line before getting hung up on] They're at 4. It's not them. Who's the next closest?

Chernobyl, but that's not possible. They're 400 km away.

Ulana

Well, then that's too far for 8 millirontgen. They'd have to be split open. Maybe they know something. [Calls Chernobyl, and takes a pill, passing the bottle to Dmitri] Iodine.

Could it be a waste dump?

Ulana

We'd be seeing other isotopes.

Nuclear test? Uh, a new kind of bomb?

Ulana

We'd have heard. That's what half of our people work on here.

Something with the space program, like a satellite, or...

Ulana

[looks up] No one's answering the phone.

Ulana Khomyuk

When the lava enters these tanks, it will instantly superheat and vaporize approximately 7,000 cubic meters of water, causing a significant thermal explosion.

How significant?

Khomyuk

We estimate between two and four megatons. Everything within a thirty-kilometer radius will be completely destroyed, including the three remaining reactors at Chernobyl. The entirety of the radioactive material in all of the cores will be ejected at force and dispersed by a massive shock wave, which will extend approximately two hundred kilometers and likely be fatal to the entire population of Kiev, as well as a portion of Minsk. The release of radiation will be severe, and will impact all of Soviet Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, as well as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and most of East Germany.

What do you mean, "impact"?

Legasov

For much of the area, a nearly permanent disruption of the food and water supply, a steep increase in the rates of cancer and birth defects. I don't know how many deaths there will be, but many. For Byelorussia and the Ukraine, "impact" means completely uninhabitable for a minimum of one hundred years.

[visibly shaken] There are more than fifty million people living in Byelorussia and Ukraine.

Legasov

Sixty, yes.

And how long before this happens?

Legasov

Approximately 48 to 72 hours. But we may have a solution. We can pump the water from the tanks. Unfortunately, the tanks are sealed shut by a sluice gate, and the gate can only be opened manually from within the duct system itself. So we need to find three plant workers who know the facility well enough to enter the basement here, find their way through all these duct ways, get to the sluice gate valve here, and give us the access we need to pump out the tanks. Of course, we will need your permission.

My permission for what?

Legasov

Um, the water in these tanks... the level of radioactive contamination --

Khomyuk

They'll likely be dead in a week.

Legasov

We're asking for your permission to... kill three men.

Well, Comrade Legasov... all victories inevitably come at a cost.

Legasov

Are you alright?

Khomyuk

They didn't hurt me. They let a pregnant woman in with -- oh, it doesn't matter. They were stupid. I was stupid. Dyatlov won't talk to me. Akimov, yes, Toptunov, yes, but... Valery, Akimov... his face was gone.

Legasov

You want to stop?

Khomyuk

Is that a choice I even have?

Legasov

Do you think the fuel will actually melt through the concrete pad?

Khomyuk

I don't know. A forty-percent chance, maybe.

Legasov

I said fifty. [chuckles] Either way, the numbers mean the same thing: "Maybe". Maybe the core will melt through to the groundwater. Maybe the miners I've told to dig under the reactor will save millions of lives. Maybe I'm killing them for nothing. I don't want to do this anymore. I want to stop. But I can't. I don't think you have a choice any more than I do. I think, despite the stupidity, the lies, even this, you are compelled. The problem has been assigned, and you will stop at nothing until you find an answer. Because that is who you are.

Khomyuk

A lunatic, then.

Legasov

A scientist.