An explosion still echoing: Chernobyl at 40
Economist Podcasts
The Economist
4.3 • 5K Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2026
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We go deep inside the Chernobyl nuclear-power plant and the surrounding exclusion zone, recounting the history of the accident on April 26 1986, and speaking with plant workers who were on shift that day. A pre-eminent Chernobyl historian discusses the lessons learned and yet to be learned from the disaster. And we consider the science still being done at Chernobyl.
In 2024 “The Weekend Intelligence” went to Ukraine to consider the aftermath of the Russian invasion and occupation of Chernobyl, and then of the Zaporizhia nuclear-power plant. What we found was an industry that had no expectation that could even happen, and nothing of a plan when it did. Listen here.
Guests and host:
- Serhii Plokhy, historian, Harvard University
- Olena Pareniuk, radiobiologist, Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants
- Jim Smith, environmental scientist, University of Portsmouth
- Jason Palmer, co-host of “The Intelligence”
Topics covered:
- Chernobyl nuclear-power plant, history
- nuclear safety, nuclear-energy policy
- radiation exposure, radiobiology, radioecology
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist |
| 0:02.0 | The Economist |
| 0:05.0 | But cold water, you're ready. |
| 0:12.0 | Okay, try not to touch anything. |
| 0:16.0 | Don't sit on the floor, don't lay on the floor, don't lick the ground. |
| 0:20.0 | Just follow us, okay? This is your safety and |
| 0:24.6 | because you are our guests, okay? |
| 0:26.6 | ...s sanitary potunner, when we go there, we're per-scuping, and when we go |
| 0:30.6 | ... So now you don't need to step in that, on the way back, you have to step in and step here and go. |
| 0:40.3 | Today, on the intelligence, some perspectives on an event that really did shape the world 40 years ago. |
| 0:51.4 | We visit the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, four decades after a devastating explosion, |
| 0:59.0 | the worst nuclear disaster in history. |
| 1:05.0 | They definitely didn't tell us that the reactor was completely destroyed. |
| 1:13.6 | Now it's a site that became part of a war. |
| 1:17.6 | We look at what lessons Chernobyl still has, even after all this time. |
| 1:21.6 | Nothing was learned from 1986. |
| 1:24.6 | The insectually became worse. |
| 1:35.3 | From Moscow came the good news in 1954 that the first atomic power plant in the world |
| 1:38.3 | had begun operating in the Soviet Union. |
| 1:41.3 | Its creation was not only a great scientific achievement. |
| 1:45.1 | In the midst of the Cold War, there were few societal advancements that couldn't be pitched |
| 1:49.3 | as a competition between either side of the iron curtain. |
... |
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