Environment - Inside Chernobyl

A film based on current conditions in Chernobyl and Pripyat, where the Soviet Government tried to cover up a catastrophic nuclear accident - something the world had never seen before. Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had exploded releasing lethal amounts of radiation into the atmosphere. In the control room, Leonid Toptunov, a young but senior technician, begun an experiment which led to an extremely unstable reactor configuration. To this day many of the switches in the control room remain untouched, still in the same position they were the morning of the accident. As the reactor core was exposed, a plume of highly radioactive smoke continued to rise into the skies. Chernobyl, located 82 miles North of the Ukrainians capital city Kiev, was once a small town located in the far west of the Soviet Union. Nuclear fallout from the explosion was initially spread hundreds of miles carried by the wind and clouds. Neighboring towns and cities were heavily contaminated. However nearly 1000 miles from Chernobyl, Sweden was the first country to detect that something disastrous had happened.