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Welcome to Journey Through Time. I'm Sarah Churchwell.

And I'm David Olusiogger, and this is episode four of our series on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

So last time we were looking at the frantic first response, the helicopters, the evacuation of Pripyat,

and then the gradual

realization around the world that this disaster had occurred and that the Soviet Union was

covering things up. I mean, we've done three episodes and we are two days into this disaster, 48

hours. Yeah. Well, a lot happened in our defense. And we're still going to keep into a very tight time frame because there's still a lot to unpack in just the next couple of days.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, that first phase to deal with the disaster had been about trying to put out the radioactive fire. That has still not been achieved.

A plume of radioactive particles is being carried by the wind across Europe.

It's already been detected by the authorities in Scandinavia.

The rest of the world knows what's happened.

The Soviets, despite their instincts for secrecy, have been forced to release some information.

The word Chernobyl, the name Chernobyl, is now on the lips of literally billions of people.

But at this stage, the Soviet authorities are beginning to contemplate to other nightmare scenarios, beyond the radioactive fire in the core,

beyond the fact that the material expelled

from the core during the explosion has contaminated the plant and the area around it, making it the

most deadly place on earth. Even on top of that, there are two further, even worse scenarios.

...