40 Years After Chernobyl

Big Picture Science

Science, Technology

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2026

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On April 26th, 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Soviet Union blasted a plume of radioactive debris a half mile into the sky, blanketing Europe. Witnesses described a laser of blue light eerily shooting up from the reactor core. Built to represent the bright future of nuclear power, Chernobyl instead became the biggest nuclear disaster in history. In the first of a two-part series, we retell the story of the accident, the role that design flaws and human error played, and the futile attempts at radiation containment. We also consider the long shadow the catastrophe cast over nuclear power, and the significant political fallout of the Soviet coverup; the Ukrainian vote for independence and the fall of the U.S.S.R. Guest: Adam Higginbotham – Journalist and author of “Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster” Big Picture Science is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com to inquire about advertising on Big Picture Science. You can get early access to ad-free versions of every episode by joining us on Patreon. Thanks for your support! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast.
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0:37.1	In his book about the history of Wynn, author Simon Winchester recalls his memory of a day in 1986
0:43.3	when the wind would dramatically shape historic events.
0:47.3	I remember it vividly. I was making a cup of coffee in my kitchen in Oxford in England, where I was living at the time,
0:59.4	the BBC broke into its afternoon program, which it seldom does, and says that Swedish scientists have detected an enormous plume of radiation in the skies about 100 miles north
1:06.1	of Stockholm. The wind that day, April 1986 was blowing from the southeast.
1:15.8	So they tracked it back south of Stockholm, across the Baltic Sea, through Lithuania,
1:22.9	Latvia, Estonia, across the Iron Curtain, which then existed in 1986, into Western Russia,
1:30.0	specifically southwestern Russia, even more specifically Ukrainian SSR, and to a power station
1:36.3	one of two, they noticed, called Chernobyl.
1:40.9	The accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant would become one of the most significant nuclear disasters in history.
1:47.8	This is Big Picture Science. I'm Molly Bentley.
1:50.2	In the first of a two-part series, a journalist tells us the story of the accident and describes its long-term legacy.
1:57.2	This episode is called 40 years after Chernobyl.
2:01.6	The Chernobyl explosion occurred in the early hours of April 26, 1986.
2:15.6	But the Soviet Union said nothing at first.
2:18.3	The world learned about the disaster from Sweden
2:21.3	when officials detected those elevated radiation levels.
	...

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