Hi, I'm Craig Mason, creator of the HBO and Sky Mini series Chernobyl.

This is a follow-up podcast to the podcast that we did for the series, and it is going to

be a terrific discussion between myself and again Peter Segal, and we're going to also

be joined by Jared Harris, who portrayed Valeri Lagassev on the series.

But before we begin that conversation, I have a little prologue to add, because current

events have taken a strange turn and a reminiscent turn lately.

I'm talking about a nuclear explosion that happened in Russia, and just a few days before

I'm recording this now, on August 8th, five nuclear specialists deployed by Ross Atom,

which is Russia's state atomic energy company, as well as two military personnel were killed.

They were killed in an explosion at a military test site in northern Russia, the Nanaska-Misal

test site.

We believe here in the United States that this explosion involved a new kind of cruise

missile that Putin is particularly proud of.

This cruise missile apparently can reach any corner of the earth, because it is not a typical

missile that's powered by liquid fuel like a normal rocket.

It's a cruise missile that is powered by a small nuclear reactor.

Well, it exploded.

Now Ross Atom did not confirm that anyone died until Saturday, August 10th.

So two days go by before they say anything about anyone dying.

And it's not until August 11th, three days after the explosion that they come out and

admit that it was nuclear in nature.

The words they used, and these are fascinating, is that the failure occurred in quote,

...