Chernobyl: Memories of a Survivor

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

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4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2021

⏱️ 21 minutes

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Summary

On April 26th 1986 reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded sending a vast plume of radioactive material into the atmosphere, but what was it like for ordinary people nearby? It was the worst nuclear accident to that point in history and the catastrophic response to that meltdown and the mishandling of the messages around the accident helped to hasten the end of the Soviet Union itself. In this episode, Dan is joined by Sophia Moskalenko who was ten at the time and living in Kyiv around 60 miles from the site of the accident. She movingly describes her life before the explosion, the trauma of the events afterwards and the long term effect on her mental and physical wellbeing.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Year. I'm just sitting on a boat
0:05.7	bobbing up and down. In a marina on the third most populated island in this
0:10.0	wonderful North Atlantic archipelago, the British House, but everyone to call it,
0:13.0	this wonderful set of islands that we live on. The third most populated island,
0:16.6	which of course is Port Smith. Port Sea Island. The most dense sea populated part of
0:23.6	this archipelago, these ills, after London. There you go. What's people live on this
0:28.1	island of Port Smith. And I'm here because I'm making the Bismarck 80 show for
0:33.1	History Hit TV. It'll be out obviously next month. The end of next month is the
0:36.4	anniversary of the remarkable story of one of the last big gunned battleship
0:42.5	jewels in history. As the Royal Lago attempted to sink Bismarck, we're up this
0:48.8	morning at five o'clock trying to get the sunrise remembering that fateful day
0:51.6	in the North Atlantic when Hood and Prince of Wales decided to engage with
0:55.4	Bismarck as the sun came up on that cold May morning. And now I'm enjoying it
0:59.8	quite beer in the marina at the end of this long day. And I've got to say I'm
1:03.6	watching couples take ridiculous shots for Instagram. I'm looking at men take
1:08.6	the tops off and get horrifically sunburned whilst shouting at high-vehs cloud
1:12.1	security guards. And I can say everybody there's good news from the front here.
1:15.1	Nature is healing. We're getting back to normal. Everything's going to be okay.
1:21.0	Speaking of nature, healing or not healing, on April of 26th 1986, 35 years ago,
1:32.2	Chernobyl's reactor number four exploded. 60 miles away from the capital of
1:38.6	Soviet Ukraine, Kiev. It was the worst nuclear accident in history to that point.
1:43.4	The catastrophic response to that meltdown, the
	...

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