How an HBO mini-series brought the horror back

Thirty-three years after it happened, it’s taken an HBO mini-series about the Chernobyl disaster to give a terrifying insight into what took place. The first episode was truly apocalyptic. I had to keep reminding myself that it was not a work of fiction – that this really happened. It was so tense, in places, that I found myself shouting at the tv screen – ‘Oh no, please don’t do that! You’re all going to die!’ By the end of the episode, I was in a state of complete nervous tension and there were still four more to go.

The thing is though, I don’t remember being that worried about it at the time. I was a lot younger and more naïve, yes, but I can’t help thinking that maybe it was because we were never told the full facts. Or, maybe, I trusted that everyone involved had it under control. However the brilliant cast, including Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson, convincingly depict a situation in which nothing, whatsoever, was under control. The Soviet Union did not even admit that a reactor had exploded until nearly three days after, when radiation from the disaster set off alarms at a nuclear power plant in Sweden.

What made it even more chilling for me is that, two months before it happened, in February 1986, I was involved with taking a group of Dorset students to Russia. It was a cultural trip and the only danger we felt was present was that one of our group of teenagers would forget the lessons we’d given them on Russian etiquette and upset the locals. Or that they might get arrested for breaking one of the many incomprehensible rules that were present in public places and enforced by armed soldiers. If we’d had Risk Assessment forms in those days, I doubt that a level 7 nuclear disaster would have been on it. And yet Moscow, where we were based, is only 850 kms from Chernobyl – too close when you’re dealing with a cloud of toxic emissions.

Ukrainian officials estimate that the land round the Chernobyl Plant will not be safe for permanent human settlement for another 20,000 years. Whether this an accurate figure or not, we will never know, but if the human race survives that long it will be the year 22019 (I assume that is how the date will be written). To give some idea of how far into the future this is, it’s worth going back in history 20,000 years. Then the earth was in the grip of the Ice Ages. A few thousand individuals eaked out an existence living in tribes and mammoths were still around.

After the incident, a concrete sarcophagus was built around the destroyed reactors. It contains 100kg of plutonium, with a half life of 245,000 years. If that sarcophagus collapses, it will be enough to poison 100 million people. Perhaps this sobering fact was what made them decide, in 2017, to enclose Reactor No. 4 with a vast steel shelter designed to prevent radiation leaks from the site. It will be airtight for 100 years. But what happens after that …?