BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Hello, sometimes you see a combination of words in a news story that just make you really

worried and you want to get to the bottom of it very quickly.

So that's what we're going to do in this episode of newscast.

And the news story was that there's been a power cut at the remains of the Chernobyl

nuclear power plant, which seems like quite a serious thing, but scientists actually are

not too worried about it.

And we can get some reassurance now from Professor Geraldine Thomas of the Chernobyl Tissue

Bank at Imperial College.

Hello, Professor Thomas.

Hi.

So first of all, what has actually happened at Chernobyl then?

Give us the really simple non-scary version.

Well my understanding is, for whatever reason, some of the power lines have been cut into

the plants, which obviously means the electricity supply is down.

My understanding is that the safety critical things that need electricity are all the different

power circuits, so they were okay.

But in any case, they've got diesel generators that they can employ to bring up electrical

power when they need it there as well.

And also I've been reading some of your colleagues in the Chernobyl kind of studying community,

saying that the important bits are kind of deep underwater and there's a lot of water there.

Yes.

...