Brazil's Nuclear Accident
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2018
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In September of 1987, two waste pickers in the Brazilian town of Goiania broke into a disused medical clinic and stole a radiotherapy machine, triggering the biggest ever radioactive accident outside a nuclear facility.Hundreds of people were contaminated and four people died.
Thomas Pappon spoke to one of the victims and the physicist who was the first to assess the scale of the accident.
Photo of technicians collecting nuclear waste in the contaminated scrap yard in Goiania. Copyright CNEN.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds just before this |
| 0:30.3 | BBC podcast gets underway here's something you may not know. |
| 0:34.4 | My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:38.3 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely |
| 0:46.0 | engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:54.2 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories. |
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| 0:59.4 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected. |
| 1:02.8 | Find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 1:06.1 | You're listening to the Witness History Podcast |
| 1:08.9 | from the BBC World Service, with me Thomas Papon. |
| 1:12.2 | Today we go back to September 1987 when two |
| 1:16.2 | waste pickers in the Brazilian town of Goyonje broke into a disused medical clinic |
| 1:21.6 | and found a machine which they dismantled. |
| 1:25.0 | Little did they know that they were triggering a chain of events which led to the biggest |
... |
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