A DISASTER OF NUCLEAR PROPORTIONS

From the initial explosion and resulting cover-up to the global fallout that continues to this day, a new documentary about the Chernobyl meltdown tells the full story 40 years on

- By Dominic Bliss

IT TALL started with the push of a simple button. The Chernobyl disaster — the worst nuclear accident in history, which occurred 40 years ago this month — was triggered when a power plant operator pressed a button marked AZ-5, as part of a scheduled, run-of-the-mill safety test.

“There was silence for a few seconds,” remembers Igor Kirschenbaum, one of the Soviet operators working in reactor number 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on April 26, 1986. “Then there was a rumble. ‘Thunder. Dust falling from the ceiling.”

At 1.23am and 49 seconds precisely, the reactor went into meltdown, causing an explosion and a fire which ultimately spread radiation across much of the Soviet Union and Europe — even as far as the UK. It is estimated Chernobyl released 400 times more radioactive material than the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

Two workers were killed instantly, and 28 more from radiation in the weeks that followed. The full scale of the radiation sickness may never be fully known, but many thousands of people suffered long-term health effects, particularly thyroid cancer. Many suspect it caused birth defects in the ensuing years.

Although Soviet authorities attempted to cover up the real causes, initially blaming it on human error, it was actually proven to be a design fault in the control rods for the reactor core that led to the meltdown - all triggered by the pushing of that simple button labelled AZ-5.

Marking the 40th anniversary of this tragic accident, the TV channel National Geographic is broadcasting a four-part series called Chernobyl: Inside the Meltdown on Sunday. A powerful and harrowing exposé, it tells the full story - from the moment the reactor exploded and the resulting cover-up, to the global fallout and cleanup operation, right up to the present-day war in Ukraine, revealing how the site has again become geopolitically sensitive.