- Valery and Boris attempt to find solutions to removing the radioactive debris; Ulana attempts to find out the cause of the explosion.
- Residents are evacuated from the wider Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and decontamination operations are underway. Civilian draftee Pavel (Barry Keoghan) is paired with Soviet-Afghan War veteran Bacho (Fares Fares) to patrol the Zone to shoot and dispose of abandoned animals due to radioactive contamination.
In Aug 1986 (4 months after the explosion) Chernobyl liquidator commander General Nikolai Tarakanov (Ralph Ineson) deploys Lunokhod program rovers to clear the plant's roof for a shelter on the less radiated levels of the roof. The roof has 3 level and Legasov has given them names. The safest level, "Katya" has radiation of 1000 roentgens, where 2 hours of exposure is fatal. The second, Nina, measures 2000 roentgen. The highest level is Masha, with 12,000 roentgens, where 3 mins of exposure is fatal. Unless the debris is cleared from the roof, the reactor core cannot be contained. Containment of the reactor core requires building a structure over it.
In Sep 1986, a West German police robot, requisitioned to clear the Masha level of the roof, almost instantly fails on the most irradiated level (The Soviets never told the Germans the real radiation level on Masha. They were given the official number of 2000 roentgens.), In October 1986, Tarakanov is forced to cycle 3,828 liquidators (men in minimal protective gear) to clear it by hand, allowed only 90 seconds each, once.
Khomyuk investigates the Moscow archives and confronts a recovering Dyatlov, who knows the government is not interested in the truth. Khomyuk asks Dyatlov if he knew about a positive void coefficient and the pressing of the AZ-5 button (initiating an emergency shutdown). She implies that a similar accident in 1976 had the exact same operating parameters 10 years prior in the running of a similar RBMK reactor. But the findings were suppressed by the KGB.
Meeting away from KGB bugs, Shcherbina and Legasov inform Khomyuk they must testify as experts in the trial of Dyatlov, Bryukhanov, and Fomin, and Legasov will address the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Khomyuk reveals an article about an identical incident at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant in 1975, suppressed by the KGB, and tells them Lyudmilla gave birth to a girl who soon died from radiation poisoning. Legasov knew about the article. He tells Khomyuk that after the boron control rods are fully withdrawn from the reactor (as they were in Chernobyl to bring the power back up), when they try to insert them back in the first thing that enters the reactor is not Boron, but graphite as the rods have graphite tips, which increases radioactivity in the core before it will subside. The operators of Chernobyl did not know this as the findings from the 1975 accident were suppressed by the KGB.
Khomyuk urges Legasov to tell the IAEA the complete truth, while Shcherbina urges caution to avoid government retaliation. Khomyuk argues that there are 16 RMBK reactors in the Soviet Union that have the same dangerous flaw. She wants to force the central committee to take action by going public.
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