American Rhetoric: Movie Speech

"Chernobyl" (2019)

Ulana Khomyuk Details at Trial the Human Factor in Chernobyl Disaster

[TRIAL ROOM]

ULANA KHOMYUK (O.S.): To understand what happened that night, we have to go back ten hours earlier, April 25th, the day the test was meant to take place.

By 2:00 in the afternoon, the reactor has been lowered by half, from its normal output level of 3200 megawatts to 1600 megawatts, and is stable and ready to be reduced to its final output level for the test -- 700 megawatts. But before they can proceed, there is a phone call. Power grid officials in Kiev say that they cannot afford a further reduction in their electricity until after midnight. They are asking for a 10-hour delay.

This is the first critical moment, the first link in the chain of disaster. Competent management would have insisted on canceling the test. These three men [Viktor Brukhanov, Anatoly Dyatlov, Nikolai Fomin] allowed it to proceed.

Why was this delay so dangerous? It created two problems. One of them is scientific in nature; and the other is very human. This is the one we will consider first.

[FLASHBACK]

Anatoly Dyatlov: We've been cleared to run the tests. 1600 [megawatts] -- good. Now, is it too much to ask that you all know what you're doing?

Leonid Toptunov: Well --

Alexandr Akimov: Yes. Absolutely.

Anatoly Dyatlov: Stolyarchuk?

Boris Stolyarchuk: Yes.

Anatoly Dyatlov: Kirschenbaum?

Igor Kirschembaum: Uh, I haven't reviewed -- we only just found out --

Anatoly Dyatlov: [throwing a bindered manual at Kirschenbaum] There. Review it. Or, you can just do what I tell you. [I] mean even you, as stupid as you are, can manage that.

Well, let's go.

Leonid Toptunov: Supposed to switch the turbine off while the reactor's still running? This is not good --

Anatoly Dyatlov: Shut [redacted] up and do your job.

Toptunov, reduce power to 700 [megawatts].

Leonid Toptunov: I've never done this with the power so low before.

Alexandr Akimov: It's okay. I'm with you.

Leonid Toptunov: Reducing power to 700.

[TRIAL ROOM]

ULANA KHOMYUK (O.S.): I want you to think of Yuri Gagarin [Soviet Cosmonaut and the first person to reach outer space].

I want you to imagine that he has been told nothing of his mission into space until the moment that he is on the launch pad.

I want you to imagine that all he has is a list of instructions that he has never seen before, some of which have been crossed out. This is exactly what was happening in the control room of Reactor 4.

The night shift had not been trained to perform the experiment. They hadn't even been warned it was happening. Leonid Toptunov, the operator responsible for controlling and stabilizing the reactor that night, was all of 25-years-old. And his total experience on the job? Four months.

This is the human problem created by the delay.

But inside the reactor core, in the space between atoms themselves, something far more dangerous is forming: a poison. The time is 28 past midnight.