POST
PRODUCTION
SCRIPT
Foreign
Correspondent
2019
Fallout
29
mins 34 secs
©2019
ABC
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Precis |
ItÕs
byword for disaster and contamination. A lasting reminder of the devastation
of nuclear meltdown, government-sanctioned cover-up and radiation sickness. |
|
|
Now, thanks
to the wild success of the HBO series dramatising the worldÕs worst nuclear
accident, the site of Chernobyl in Ukraine has become a global tourist
hotspot. |
|
|
Geiger-counter
in hand, Europe correspondent Linton Besser explores the enduring impact of
the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. |
|
|
He joins the
hordes of tourists who arrive each day to wander around the ghost towns and
near the abandoned reactor. ÒI heard a lot of storiesÉthere are mutants
there, there are creatures inside,Ó says Australian tourist Nick, one of hundreds
visiting the site from around the world. |
|
|
Besser goes
where tourists canÕt, beyond the decaying town of Pripyat, into the
contaminated exclusion zone where he meets the secret communities who have
defied evacuation orders to return home. |
|
|
The ÔbabushkasÕ
Ð grandmothers Ð continue to grow their own food and drink water from their
wells, despite the persistent presence of radiation. |
|
|
ÒThis is our
motherland, it cannot be replaced,Ó says one babushka, sipping homemade
vodka. ÒWe want to die in our village. ItÕs our most cherished dream,Ó says
another. |
|
|
Foreign
Correspondent uncovers the strange sub-culture of Stalkers, young rebels
attracted to the dangers of the zone - the threat of police, wild animals and
radiation. ÒLife among death, is the main philosophy of Stalkers,Ó says one
man whoÕs made a niche business smuggling thrill-seekers in by night. |
|
|
And we meet
the disasterÕs youngest victims Ð the children from the fallout zone who are
suffering from radiation-related illnesses. ÒThe soil should have been
removed from the contaminated area,Ó says one nurse at a childrenÕs hospital.
ÒBut that wasnÕt done. Everything was left as it was.Ó |
|
|
Thirty years
on, Ukraine still has 15 nuclear reactors providing the nationÕs energy and
many are operating despite reaching their designed lifespan. Local
anti-nuclear campaigners say another disaster is a real possibility. |
|
|
While some
locals see this tourism boom as exploitative, many are glad their story is
being told. ÒEveryone should know what had happened here,Ó says 73-year-old
Sofia, standing barefoot in her garden. ÒItÕs hard to remember. Very hard,Ó,
she cries. ÒRadiation is an invisible enemyÓ. |
|
Exteriors. Abandoned Pripyat |
Music |
00:00 |
Title:
FALLOUT |
|
00:14 |
Super: Pripyat, Chernobyl |
|
00:19 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: For 33 years this city
has been abandoned. |
00:24 |
Besser
walks through abandoned school. Super: |
|
00:32 |
|
Everything was left behind
Ð toys, shoes, books. Even the kidsÕ schoolwork is here. It looks like
they're practising their handwriting in this book. And I want to leaf through
it, but weÕve been told we can't touch anything because the dust covering
this might be radioactive, but itÕs incredible being here. |
00:41 |
|
Music |
01:06 |
Exteriors. Abandoned apartment buildings |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: This is Pripyat, now a city of ghosts.
At its peak, it was home to 50,000 people. A model Soviet city, |
01:22 |
Pripyat. Chernobyl reactor in distance |
built to service the nearby
Chernobyl nuclear reactor. |
01:35 |
Abandoned buildings |
With a modern hotel, an
indoor swimming pool, even an amusement park. |
01:41 |
Excerpt. HBO series. 'Chernobyl' |
|
01:54 |
|
Today, Pripyat is being
brought back to life, thanks to the wildly-popular
HBO series 'Chernobyl'. The site of the worldÕs worst nuclear disaster is now
|
02:00 |
Road signage 'Chernobyl-Tour, UA |
a major tourist
destination. |
02:13 |
Tourist buses at checkpoint |
Music |
02:19 |
Tourists alight from buses |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: WeÕre two hours out of Kiev and up here
|
02:27 |
Besser to camera |
is the Chernobyl checkpoint
where the exclusion zone begins, and there are dozens of tourist buses here,
hundreds of tourists. It really feels like weÕre
going to Disneyland. |
02:33 |
Tourists/Ice cream van/Hot dog vendor |
Music |
02:45 |
Tourists line up |
LINTON BESSER, Reporter: They
donÕt always come dressed for the occasion. |
05:52 |
Tourist in protective clothing |
Tourist: "We forgot to wear long pants, so
we had to buy a special suit just to enter the town." |
02:57 |
Tourists take photos |
LINTON BESSER, Reporter:
The tourists hail from all corners of the planet, including Australia. Tourist: "Aussie, oy!" LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Nick Singh is from
Melbourne. |
03:09 |
Nick Singh interview |
NICK SINGH: So thatÕs why I want to visit this site
to see the actual ground report. So thatÕs what interested me, because I
heard a lot of stories and documents about that there are mutants there,
there are creatures inside [laughing] É |
03:19 |
Buses into tourist zone |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: The tourist zone is
still highly restricted due to radiation risks. |
03:33 |
Tourists walk with guide, and carrying gigametre |
For their safety, each
visitor is assigned a guide, and a gigametre. |
03:42 |
|
FEMALE GUIDE: "You will see a reading much
higher level of the radiation than we saw before." |
03:50 |
Tourists measure radiation |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Tourists
measure radiation levels along the way. Limited exposure to one to two
microsieverts is safe, and thatÕs what theyÕre likely to get if they stay on
the paths. |
03:55 |
Besser to camera |
But there are hotspots, and
within just a metre it can spike to extraordinary levels. Down here it's
jumped straight to 30 microsieverts. |
04:10 |
Tourists walk with guide |
Prolonged exposure at this
level is dangerous. Those working here could be risking their health. |
04:21 |
Lara leads tourist group |
Guides like Lara Graldina
are spending more and more time here as the demand to visit Chernobyl
increases. |
04:30 |
Lara interview |
LARA GRALDINA: I come here quite often, nowadays itÕs
very busy. I spend about 20, 22 days a month. |
04:38 |
|
The busiest day maybe this
year what I remember was more than 1000 people, about 1200 a day. |
04:47 |
|
I can be wrong, but about
70,000 people last year, and this year I canÕt even forecast, I absolutely
donÕt know, but I suppose two times higher. |
04:56 |
Tourists take photographs |
OLEKSIY BREUS: Chernobyl
tourism is a very positive, necessary and useful phenomenon. It's useful in
the sense of preserving the memory of this event. It all depends on the attitude
of the tourists. |
05:11 |
Breus walks down path |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Oleksiy Breus lived in
Pripyat before the explosion. He
worked as a Chernobyl nuclear engineer. |
05:28 |
Abandoned Pripyat |
OLEKSIY BREUS: People used to get together here., they
held various events. They had events for kids here. The Ferris wheel had just
been built. |
05:38 |
[Archival] Chernobyl reactor after explosion |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: On April 26 1986,
everything changed. A routine
safety check went horribly wrong, and exposed terrible flaws in the design of
the Chernobyl plant. It sparked an explosion which tore open reactor number
4. Six hours later, Breus arrived
for his morning shift. |
05:50 |
|
OLEKSIY BREUS: I saw the destroyed block and I
thought it could not be true. |
06:19 |
Breus interview |
By around 11 a.m. it was
clear there was no reactor. It had already collapsed and there was nothing to
cool it down. |
06:25 |
|
But Moscow kept demanding
to continue the water supply to the reactor, even though by 10:00 a.m. weÕd
run out of water and there was nothing to pump. I call it Ônuclear surrealismÕ. |
06:36 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Oleksiy Breus and his
colleagues were stuck in the nightmare of Soviet denial, while the exposed
reactor pumped 400 times more radioactive material into the atmosphere than
the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. |
06:55 |
|
OLEKSIY BREUS: Black debris
was scattered on the ground. It
looked like the chunks of graphite from the reactor. I had helped assemble the fourth reactor, I know
what graphite looks like. But I
didn't allow myself to believe it was really graphite. |
07:11 |
[Archival] Chernobyl clean up |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Over the next 12 months
more than 200,000 so-called liquidators were called in to clean up the site. |
07:29 |
|
OLEKSIY BREUS: My friends and acquaintances , people
I was friendly with, some of them died, and, of course, it is very sad. |
07:39 |
Breus |
When I learned that one
person died, then the second, the third, that was tragic news that was hard
to bear. |
07:49 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: More first responders
would eventually succumb. A UN
report in 2005 found fewer than 50 people died as a direct result of the
accident, and estimated 4000 people could die from radiation exposure. |
08:02 |
Abandoned hospital |
PripyatÕs state of the art
hospital was the Chernobyl frontline. |
08:27 |
Besser walks through hospital |
|
08:34 |
Besser to camera |
These corridors would have
been absolutely chaotic with nurses and doctors trying to save people. This
is where they brought the firemen who were trying to put out the reactor. |
08:58 |
Besser down stairs |
The uniforms of those first
responders were stripped off them and theyÕve been stored in the basement
down these stairs, now contained under a giant mound of sand. ItÕs the most radioactive part of the
building. |
09:14 |
Drone shot. Apartment buildings |
The government ordered the
cityÕs evacuation 36 hours after the explosion. |
09:30 |
|
VOICE OVER
LOUDSPEAKER: "Attention!
Attention! Due to the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the
city of Pripyat, adverse radioactive conditions are forming." |
09:40 |
Interiors. Abandoned apartments |
LINTON BESSER, Reporter:
PripyatÕs 50,000 residents had just hours to pack. They were initially
assured they would be back three days later. They left everything behind. |
09:56 |
WRITING
ON WALL: "We will always
keep memories of you our dear apartment." |
Music |
10:10 |
Ferris wheel |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: The Ferris wheel never
actually operated; itÕs opening was scheduled five days later. |
10:15 |
GFX map showing exclusion zone |
Six days after the
explosion, an exclusion zone of 2,600 square kilometres was established
across Ukraine and Belarus. |
10:33 |
Village inside inclusion zone |
More than 300,000 people
were forcibly removed from their villages, but a few returned. |
10:51 |
Sofia in garden |
SOFIA BEZVERHAYA: We are used to our village. We love
this nature. We love our motherland. LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: About a year after the
disaster Sofia Bezverhaya took
an enormous risk and came back home. |
11:00 |
Sofia interview |
SOFIA BEZVERHAYA: Our grandparents and great
grandparents are buried here. We also want to be buried in our very own
graveyard, and nowhere else. We want to die in our
village. ItÕs our most cherished dream. |
11:17 |
Sofia harvests vegetables |
We begin to plant potatoes,
onions. We plant tomatoes, zucchinis, pumpkins. We planted 33 raspberry
bushes in autumn. TheyÕre survived and are already bearing fruit. We have strawberries. Today I woke up
early to work in the garden. |
11:29 |
|
LINTON BESSER, Reporter: For decades, Sofia has grown her own
food in her own soil in her village of Kupovate. The radiation here is less intense than in other parts of the
exclusion zone. SOFIA BEZVERHAYA: There is no better place for us. |
11:55 |
Sofia interview |
I find my work restful,
it's like a holiday. ItÕs my garden, where I can get up and see a squirrel
collecting nuts, hear the singing of the nightingale and the cuckoo. |
12:12 |
Sofia eats strawberries |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: ItÕs early in the
season and her strawberries are still a little tart. |
12:08 |
Sofia's outdoor shower |
At 73, she lives a hardy,
outdoor lifestyle, with few of the mod cons. Linton: "Is it cold?
Oh, itÕs good. What about in winter?" Sofia: "There is no shower in winter. It
freezes so we take the tank away." LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Sofia doesnÕt need to
worry about her modesty. |
12:36 |
Sofia interview |
SOFIA BEZVERHAYA: There is nobody here. You can run
naked on the highway. Nobody will see you. |
13:12 |
Besser and Sofia walk to abandoned council building |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Before the accident,
Sofia ran the local council. This is all thatÕs left. |
13:18 |
|
SOFIA BEZVERHAYA: People used to come to us with their
various problems. They brought their joys and sorrows here. Newlyweds used to
get married here. Everything was alright until the accident, and then, wellÉ
we have what we have. |
13:35 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: She was placed in
charge of the local evacuation. SOFIA BEZVERHAYA: They kept
telling us ÒItÕs only for three days, three days." "Take only your
papers.Ó So that's what they did. They only took their papers.. But the way
it all worked out, we were removed for good. |
14:03 |
|
ItÕs very hard to remember.
Very hard. |
14:27 |
Drone shot over settlements within exclusion zone |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Surprisingly, SofiaÕs
not alone. There are about 120
so-called self-settlers still living in the exclusion zone. |
14:30 |
Hanna and Linton drink vodka |
Hanna Zavorotnya is 85, and
lives a short walk away. She insists we sit down for a meal and a glass or
two of her own homemade moonshine. |
14:43 |
|
Linton: "You make this
vodka?... It's really good." |
15:04 |
|
HANNA ZAVOROTNYA: What has changed? Lots of things.
There are only 15 souls living here. Everything has changed. What can we do? |
15:10 |
Hanna's son fixes fence, draws water |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: HannaÕs son has come
for his first visit in two months, and thereÕs much to do. Living on
contaminated land is a choice theyÕve made. |
15:22 |
Hanna |
HANNA ZAVOROTNYA: We wanted to come back because this is
our motherland. It can't be replaced. Your mother and your motherland are
irreplaceable. |
15:41 |
Sofia walks into house |
SOFIA BEZVERHAYA: If we die, we die. Sooner or later we
all die, we are not afraid. We came home and we were happy. |
15:49 |
Drone shot over garden |
This was our land, our way
of life. We were born here and living here and this place was good to us. |
16:05 |
Church. Self-settler congregation |
|
16:13 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: The government turns a
blind eye to the Chernobyl self-settlers, including their local priest, who
serves the elderly community, and the others who live here for short stints
-- shopkeepers, soldiers and officials. |
16:23 |
|
Music |
16:50 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Another group is drawn to the exclusion
zone for very different reasons. |
16:55 |
Kirill walking in abandoned building |
TheyÕre illegal explorers
known as Stalkers, who seek out the danger. |
17:01 |
Kirill interview |
KIRILL
STEPANETS: Life among death is
the main philosophy of Stalkers. |
17:09 |
Kirill walking in abandoned building |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Kirill Stepanets has
snuck into the exclusion zone about a hundred times in the past decade. |
17:11 |
Kirill interview |
KIRILL STEPANETS: I still discover something new every
single time. I feel my whole life is connected with the Chernobyl zone and
somehow all the fateful meetings that happened in my life, all the key events
in my life, all the key people who've entered my life, it all happened
through Chernobyl. The zone is like a living being for me. |
17:30 |
Travelling to Chernobyl with tourists, dusk |
|
17:57 |
|
"To really meet the
Chernobyl zone you have to go on illegal trip." |
18:02 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Kirill Stepanets has
turned his passion into a business.
Tonight, heÕs taking four young British men into the Ôno go' areas of
the exclusion zone. |
18:08 |
Tourists in van |
TOURIST BOY #1: ItÕs an
amazing experience that most people canÕt say they have done and I think it
will be worth it. TOURIST BOY #2: The standard ones just seems so
boringÉ I want to explore the
cities and it is so restricted. |
18:21 |
|
TOURIST BOY #3: They said
there will be wolves and wild horses.
We never seen that in EnglandÉnone of that. I mean Adrian has seen a
lynx, once, but we have never seen any of that. |
18:35 |
|
LINTON BESSER, Reporter:
TheyÕll trek for several days and cover about 80 kilometres. |
18:48 |
Kirill in van |
KIRILL STEPANETS: Should be a long way, very hard. A lot of fucking mosquitoes. |
18:53 |
|
I hope everything will be
alright. |
19:00 |
Tourists and Kirill commence trek in the dark |
TOURIST BOY #3: ItÕs
dark, itÕs very dark. I dunno,
dunno what to expect. |
19:17 |
|
LINTON BESSER, Reporter: In one of the most contaminated places
on the planet, Stalkers seem under prepared. |
19:23 |
Boys show food rations |
TOURIST BOY #1: This is the
only food we have to eat for three days. For three days! |
19:31 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Kirill reminds them
theyÕll have to evade the police. |
19:40 |
|
KIRILL STEPANETS: Just one
kilometre from here first police check point. |
19:43 |
Tourists and Kirill commence trek in the dark |
|
19:48 |
|
KIRILL STEPANETS: Our
authorities say they have to get tough on it, |
20:11 |
Kirill interview |
but our people have been
brought up thinking the more you prohibit something, the more you want it. |
20:13 |
Village in spring |
|
20:20 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Outside the exclusion
zone the radioactive fallout is still present. |
20:25 |
Natalia and friend collect berries |
In the forests, locals
forage for blueberries, raspberries and mushrooms as theyÕve done for
generations. |
20:33 |
|
NATALIA: Here berries appear in June.
Mushrooms, too. It takes three hours to fill this plastic bucket. ItÕs hard
work. Mosquitoes bite. My back is sore. |
20:42 |
Natalia |
IÕm as black as an imp, all
over. |
21:01 |
Babushka sitting by roadside |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Everyone here has been
touched by the accident. ROADSIDE BABUSHKA: It was Chernobyl that took my
children. |
21:20 |
|
Chernobyl took them. My eldest son worked on an
excavator. My second son was removing that burned stuff with his tractor,
too. 26 years old. Both got sick and never got better. |
21:28 |
Drone shots over forests and villages |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Dangerous levels of
radiation are still in the food chain across northern Ukraine, poisoning the
environment and contaminating people.
|
21:46 |
Drone shots of hospital |
On the outskirts of Kiev, a
hospital treats the most recent victims. ItÕs called the Institute of Specialised Radiation Protection. It opened three months after the
explosion, but it is still taking on hundreds of new patients |
22:03 |
Children play in hospital |
every year. All of them are children. There |
22:20 |
Nataliya
walks down stairs |
Nataliya Moshko is the
instituteÕs senior nurse. NATALIYA MOSHKO: All the soil has to be removed from
the polluted territory. |
22:36 |
Nataliya
interview/Linton and Nataliya visit patient undergoing brain tests |
All the trees and
vegetation have to go, along with the soil. Only then the radiation would
disappear. But that wasnÕt done. Everything was left as it was. |
22:47 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Kristina is nine and
comes from a small village in the province that borders the Chernobyl
exclusion zone. |
23:03 |
|
NATALIYA MOSHKO: Kristina is undergoing a test that is
checking the way her brain is working, how is the blood circulates across the
vessels, what impulses are arising in the brain? |
23:13 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: They say theyÕre
testing for epilepsy. Like many
children here Kristina already has thyroid problems.. |
23:26 |
|
KRISTINA: Sometimes I feel
nauseous. I have a headache and my stomach goes around. NATALIYA MOSHKO: Why do you
think you're here in this clinic? KRISTINA: To get better. |
23:34 |
|
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: But many more
generations are likely to suffer. ItÕs the children who are the most
vulnerable to radiation exposure. |
23:50 |
|
NURSE: The girl does have an enlarged thyroid
gland, so thereÕs some irregularity. ItÕs a first-class enlargement. There
are no structural changes, but the thyroid gland is enlarged already. This is
very common for the Zhytomyr and Rivne regions. |
24:00 |
Medic runs test on children |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: The Institute struggles
to cope with outdated equipment and a lack of funds. |
24:20 |
|
NATALIYA MOSHKO: I donÕt think these children
understand the nature of their illness. They do understand that its dangerous
and scary. |
24:30 |
|
MEDIC: "ItÕs a long measurement, 30
seconds." |
24:40 |
Children playing in hospital |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Some of the children
stay here for 21 days just to reduce their exposure to contamination in their
home villages, but when they go home, the cycle begins again. |
24:51 |
Nataliya interview |
NATALIYA MOSHKO: ItÕs disappointing because you put a
lot of effort into them, you pour your soul into these kids and then they go
back home where it starts again. Yet itÕs not within our power as medics or
as an institution to change that. |
25:04 |
Kiev GVs |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: The capital city
Kiev looks grand, but the reality is Ukraine is one of the poorest countries
in Europe. And 33 years after the worst nuclear accident in history, you
might think Ukraine would look elsewhere for its electricity, but youÕd be
wrong. |
25:22 |
Khmelnitsky
nuclear plant |
Ukraine is so poor, itÕs
been forced to continue operating its ageing fleet of nuclear power plants.
WeÕve been given rare access to one of UkraineÕs operational nuclear power
plants -- Khmelnitsky. |
25:48 |
Besser to camera in nuclear plant |
It's incredible being in
here. This nuclear plant was
actually designed and built before Chernobyl happened. |
26:09 |
|
ItÕs
not the only one -- and nine of UkraineÕs 15 reactors are still in operation
even though theyÕve reached the end of their designed lifespan. |
26:18 |
Interiors. Nuclear plant |
A
national safety upgrade has been underway to keep them open, but by the end
of last year, only 60 per cent of the work had been done. |
26:30 |
Nosykov
walks |
Yevhen Nosykov, the plantÕs
deputy Chief Operating Engineer, admits Khmlenitsky reactor no. 1 will be the
tenth to be brought back on online before the safety improvements are
finished. He insists another
Chernobyl type accident could not happen. |
26:42 |
Nosykov
interview |
YEVHEN NOSYKOV:
All plants did their best to enact many measures before applying for a
licence extension. Currently, none in Ukraine have been able to enact this
program a hundred per cent. |
27:03 |
|
Music |
27:17 |
Iryna
Holovko in office |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: Ukrainian energy
campaigner Iryna Holovko says the risks are just far too great. |
27:25 |
Holovko interview |
27:33 |
|
|
I think that the main
lesson of Chernobyl is that there is no safe nuclear power. I mean, the
accidents of the scale that can have the tremendous impact on people, and on
the environment, even |
27:44 |
|
far beyond the borders of
the country where the plant is operating. These type of accidents are
possible, and they do happen. |
27:55 |
Tourists at Chernobyl |
LINTON BESSER,
Reporter: For now the Chernobyl
reactor is encased in a 30,000 tonne steel structure known as the Ônew safe
confinementÕ. Scientists estimate the reactor inside will remain radioactive
for 20,000 years. |
28:03 |
Aerial over Chernobyl and Pripyat |
The area may never again be
suitable for human habitation. |
28:26 |
|
Music |
28:30 |
Aerial over Sofia's house |
SOFIA BEZVERHAYA: I think everyone should see and know
what happened here. |
28:41 |
Sofia walks into house and cooks |
Radiation is radiation. I
have told you already it's an invisible enemy. |
28:46 |
Credits [see below] |
|
28:58 |
Outpoint |
|
29:34 |
CREDITS
Reporter
LINTON BESSER
Producer/Camera
MATT DAVIS
Editor
LEAH DONOVAN
Assistant
Editor
TOM CARR
Research
ANNE WORTHINGTON
Archival
Research
MICHELLE BOUKHERIS
Fixer
YULIYA KUTSENKO
Production
Manager
MICHELLE ROBERTS
Production
Co-ordinators
NELSON ROO
VICTORIA ALLEN
Digital
Producer
RUTH FOGARTY
Supervising
Producer
LISA MCGREGOR
Executive
Producer
MATTHEW CARNEY
foreign correspondent
abc.net.au/foreign
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2019 Australian Broadcasting Corporation