[After a West German robot clearing graphite from the roof fails due to the radiation, Shcherbina is on the phone with Moscow, shouting furiously.]
Of course I know they're listening! I want them to hear! I want them to hear it all! [outside, Legasov and General Tarakanov can easily hear] Do you know what we're doing here?! Tell those geniuses what they have done! I DON'T GIVE A FUCK! Tell them! Go tell them! Ryzhkov! Go tell them he's a joke! Tell fucking Gorbachev! TELL THEM! [smashes the phone to pieces, then drags them outside before tossing them into the grass, then turns to Legasov and Tarakanov] The official position of the State is that a global nuclear catastrophe is not possible in the Soviet Union. They told the Germans that the highest detected level of radiation was two thousand roentgen. They gave them the propaganda number. That robot was never going to work. [to one of the guards] We need a new phone.
[General Tarakanov briefs his men before sending them to clear roof level "Masha"]
Comrade Soldiers, the Soviet people have had enough of this accident. They want us to clean this up, and we have entrusted you with this serious task. Because of the nature of the working area, you will each have no more than ninety seconds to solve this problem. Listen careful to each of my instructions, and do exactly as you have been told. This is for your own safety and the safety of your comrades. You will enter Reactor Building 3, climb the stairs, but do not immediately proceed to the roof. When you get to the top, wait inside behind the entrance to the roof, and catch your breath. You will need it for what comes next. [indicates photographs of the roof] This is the working area. We must clear the graphite. Some of it is in blocks weighing approximately 40 to 50 kilograms. They all must be thrown over the edge here. Watch your comrades moving fast from this opening, then turning to the left, then entering the workspace here. Take care not to stumble. There's a hole in the roof. Take care not to fall. You will need to move quickly, and you will need to move carefully. Do you understand your mission as I have described it?
SSoldiers
[in unison]: Yes, Comrade General!
These are the most important ninety seconds of your lives. Commit your task to memory, and do your job.
Congratulations comrades. You are the last of 3,828 men. You have performed your duties perfectly. I wish you all good health and long life. All of you are awarded a bonus of 800 rubles.
[Tarakanov goes down a line of Soldiers, shaking hands with each individual]
SSSoviet Soldier
I serve the Soviet Union.
SSSoviet Soldier
I serve the Soviet Union.
SSSoviet Soldier
I serve the Soviet Union.
[Pripyat, April 25, 1986 - twelve hours prior to the explosion]
I hear they might promote Bryukhanov. This little problem we have with the safety test, if it's completed successfully... yes, I think promotion's very likely. Who knows? Maybe Moscow. Naturally, they'll put me in charge once he's gone, and then I'll need someone to take my old job. I could pick Sitnikov.
I would like to be considered.
We'll keep that in mind. [Bryukhanov enters] Viktor Petrovich, preparations for the test have gone smoothly. Comrade Dyatlov's been working per my instructions, and reactor 4's output has been reduced to 1600 megawatts. With your approval, we're ready to continue lowering power to --
Are you going to ask me if there's a problem, Nikolai? You can't read a fucking face? Three years, I've tried to finish this test. Three years. [lights a cigarette] I've just had a call from the grid controller in Kiev. He says we can't lower power any further. Not for another ten hours.
A grid controller? Where does he get off telling us--
It's not the grid controller's decision, Dyatlov. It's the end of the month. All the productivity quotas. Everyone's working overtime, the factories need power, someone's pushing down from above, not that we'll ever know who. [sighs] So do we have to scrap it, or what?
No, I don't think so. If we need to wait ten hours, we wait.
[to Dyatlov] Running half power, not going to have stability issues?
It's safe. We'll maintain at 1600. I'll go home, get some sleep, come back tonight. We'll proceed then. I'll personally supervise the test, and it will be completed.
Well, I'm not waiting around. Call me when it's done.
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.
[During the test at Chernobyl, the reactor stalls, but Dyatlov insists on continuing the test]
No. I won't do it, it isn't safe.
[Dyatlov stares at Akimov for a moment, then Toptunov, then back at Akimov]
Safety first, always. I've been saying that for 25 years. That's how long I've been doing this job, 25 years. Is that longer than you, Akimov?
[to Toptunov] And you, with your mother's tit barely out your mouth? [Toptunov is silent] See, if I say "it's safe", it's safe. And if the two of you disagree, then you don't have to work here. And you won't. But not just here. You won't work at Kursk, or Ignalina, or Leningrad, or Novovoronezh. You won't work anywhere ever again. I'll see to it. I think you know I will see to it. Raise the power.
[holds out the duty log] I would like you to record your command --
[slaps the log out of Akimov's hands] Raise the power.
[Akimov picks up the log, then steps to the control console, as Dyatlov lights a cigarette behind him]
[to Toptunov] Together, then.
[As the courtroom is at a recess, Legasov meets outside with Shcherbina, coughing into a handkerchief]
Do you know anything about this town, Chernobyl?
It was mostly Jews and Poles. The Jews were killed in pogroms, and Stalin forced the Poles out. And then the Nazis came and killed whoever was left. But after the war, people came to live here anyway. They knew the ground under their feet was soaked in blood, but they didn't care. Dead Jews, dead Poles. But not them. No one ever thinks it's going to happen to them. And here we are.
[Shcherbina shows Legasov his handkerchief, stained with his blood from radiation sickness]
Maybe a year. They call it a...[coughs] They call it a "long illness". It doesn't seem very long to me. I know you told me, and I believed you. But time passed, and I thought, it wouldn't happen to me. I wasted it. I wasted it all for nothing.
Do you remember that morning when I first called you, how unconcerned I was? I don't believe much that comes out of the Kremlin, but when they told me they were putting me in charge of the cleanup, and they said it wasn't serious, I believed them. You know why?
Because they put you in charge.
[dejectedly] Yeah. I'm an inconsequential man, Valera. That's all I've ever been. I hoped that one day I would matter, but I didn't. [pats Legasov on the shoulder] I just stood next to people who did.
There are other scientists like me. Any one of them could have done what I did. But you... everything we asked for, everything we needed. Men, material, lunar rovers. Who else could have done these things? They heard me, but they listened to you. Of all the ministers, and all the deputies, entire congregation of obedient fools... they mistakenly sent the one good man. For godsakes, Boris... you were the one who mattered most.
[sees a small caterpillar on his lap and lets it crawl on his index finger] Ah, it's beautiful.
Dyatlov broke every rule we have, and pushed a reactor to the brink of destruction. He did these things believing there was a fail-safe. A-Z-5. A simple button to shut it all down. But in the circumstance he created, there wasn't. The shut-down system had a fatal flaw. At 1:23 and 40 seconds, Akimov engages AZ-5. The fully-withdrawn control rods begin moving back into the reactor. These rods are made of boron, which reduces reactivity. But not their tips. The tips are made of graphite, which accelerates reactivity.
Why? For the same reason our reactors do not have containment buildings around them like those in the West. The same reason we don't use properly enriched fuel in our cores. The same reason we are the only nation that builds water-cooled graphite-moderated reactors with a positive void coefficient... It's cheaper.
No one in the room that night knew the shutdown button (AZ-5) could act as a detonator. They didn't know it, because it was kept from them.
KKadnikov
Comrade Legasov, you're contradicting your own testimony in Vienna.
My testimony in Vienna was a lie. I lied to the world. I'm not the only one who kept this secret. There are many. We were following orders, from the KGB, from the Central Committee. And right now, there are 16 reactors in the Soviet Union with the same fatal flaw. Three of them are still running less than 20 kilometers away, at Chernobyl.
KKadnikov
Professor Legasov, if you mean to suggest the Soviet State is somehow responsible for what happened, then I must warn you, you are treading on dangerous ground.
I've already trod on dangerous ground. We're on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They're practically what define us. When the truth offends, we—we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is...still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how...an RBMK reactor core explodes: [turns around to face the members of the courtroom] Lies.
[Legasov is arrested by the KGB for refusing to toe the party line and is led to a private interrogation room]
CCharkov
[reads file] Valery Alexeyevich Legasov, son of Alexei Legasov, Head of Ideological Compliance, Central Committee. Do you know what your father did there?
CCharkov
As a student, you had a leadership position in Komsomol. Communist Youth, correct?
CCharkov
Answer the question.
CCharkov
At the Kurchatov Institute, you were the Communist Party secretary. In that position, you limited the promotion of Jewish scientists.
CCharkov
To curry favor with Kremlin officials. You're one of us, Legasov. I can do anything I want with you. But what I want the most is for you to know that I know. You're not brave. You're not heroic. You're just a dying man who forgot himself.
I know who I am, and I know what I've done. In a just world, I'd be shot for my lies, but not for this, not for the truth.
CCharkov
Scientists... and your idiot obsessions with reasons. When the bullet hits your skull, what will it matter why? [beat] No one's getting shot, Legasov. The whole world saw you in Vienna; it would be embarrassing to kill you now. And for what? Your testimony today will not be accepted by the State. It will not be disseminated in the press. It never happened. No... you will live, however long you have. But not as a scientist. Not anymore. You'll keep your title and your office, but no duties. No authority. No friends. No one will talk to you. No one will listen to you. Other men, lesser men, will receive credit for the things you have done. Your legacy is now their legacy; you will live long enough to see that. [beat] What role did Shcherbina play in this?
None. He didn't know what I was gonna say.
CCharkov
What role did Khomyuk play in this?
None. She didn't know either.
CCharkov
After all you've said and done today, it would be curious if you chose this moment to lie.
I would think a man of your experience would know a lie when he hears one.
CCharkov
[beat] You will not meet or communicate with either one of them ever again. You will not communicate with anyone about Chernobyl ever again. You will remain so immaterial to the world around you that when you finally do die, it will be exceedingly hard to know that you ever lived at all. [starts to exit]
CCharkov
[turns back to face Legasov] Why worry about something that isn't going to happen?
[scoffs] "Why worry about something that isn't going to happen?" Oh, that's perfect. They should put that on our money.
[Ending scene: As Legasov is driven away from Chernobyl by the KGB, his voice on tape is heard]
To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for truth, we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there, whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn't care about our needs or wants. It doesn't care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: "What is the cost of lies?"
Valery Legasov took his own life at the age of 51 on April 26, 1988, exactly two years after the explosion at Chernobyl. The audio tapes of Legasov's memoirs were circulated among the Soviet scientific community. His suicide made it impossible for them to be ignored. In the aftermath of his death, Soviet officials finally acknowledged the design flaws of the RBMK nuclear reactors. Those reactors were immediately retrofitted to prevent an accident like Chernobyl from happening again.
Legasov was aided by dozens of scientists who worked tirelessly alongside him at Chernobyl. Some spoke out against the official account of events and were subject to denunciation, arrest and imprisonment. The character of Ulana Khomyuk was created to represent them all and to honor their dedication and service to truth and humanity.
Boris Shcherbina died on August 22, 1990, four years and four months after he was sent to Chernobyl.
For their roles in the Chernobyl disaster, Viktor Bryukhanov, Anatoly Dyatlov and Nikolai Fomin were sentenced to ten years hard labor. After his release, Nikolai Fomin returned to work...at a nuclear power plant in Kalinin, Russia. Anatoly Dyatlov died from radiation-related illness in 1995. He was 64.
