Virginie Girod SEASON 2022 - 202315h07, 03 April 2023
On April 29, 1986, 80 combat pilots flew over the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The technicians on board launch into the crater formed by the explosion of the still molten reactor, bags of 80kg of sand and bags of carbonic acid. The objective: to try to smother the fire and absorb the radioactive particles. Everyone ignores the first symptoms of fatal radiation: nausea, sudden headaches, fainting... What media discourse is then propagated by the Soviet and European governments on the tragedy of Chernobyl and its immediate consequences? In this third episode of the Chernobyl mini-series of the podcast "Au cœur de l'Histoire", historian Virginie Girod tells the story of the fallout from the Chernobyl accident to Europe.
Topics covered: Chernobyl cloud – radioactivity monitoring – impacts of the Chernobyl accident in Europe – Glasnost policy – Chernobyl nuclear disaster - Mikhail Gorbachev – history of the USSR – Communist Party Soviet Union - Cold War superpowers - Eastern bloc
Listen to Virginie Girod's account of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in April 1986. Throughout Europe, nuclear engineers and scientists are bound by professional secrecy about the effects of the radioactive cloud. The most irradiated victims, especially among the firefighters called after the explosion, are taken to Moscow Hospital No. 6, the only one capable of treating people exposed to high doses of radiation. But the nurses know it: soon, these men will begin to decompose alive. And this is only the beginning of the hecatomb... This story is a Europe 1 Studio production.
SOURCES
Transcription of Legasov's tapes in English:
https://legasovtapetranslation.blogspot.com/2019/10/tape-3-side-b.html
Igor Kostine, Chernobyl, The Arena, 2020
DOCUMENTARIES
The Battle of Chernobyl, Thomas Johnson, 2006
Le sacrifice, Wladimir Tcherkoff, 2004.
Archives:
"Chernobyl: we have nothing to fear in France", interview with Professor Jean Chanteur, Benoît Duquesne, May 3, 1986
Testimonies of French students in Kiev, Alexandre Lichan, May 1, 1986
Interview with a Member of the European Commission on the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl on French agriculture, Eric de Riedmatten and Benoît Duquesne, 15 May 1986
Chernobyl radioactive cloud: psychosis on vegetable consumption in Alsace, Laurence Lacour, May 15, 1986
At the heart of history" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast.
Writing and presentation: Virginie Girod
- Producer: Adèle Humbert
- Artistic direction: Adèle Humbert and Julien Tharaud
- Director: Clément Ibrahim
- Original music: Julien Tharaud
- Additional music: Julien Tharaud and Sébastien Guidis
- Communication: Kelly Decroix
- Distribution and writing: Eloise Bertil
- Visual: Sidonie Mangin
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