Surviving Disaster2006

Legasov:
It seems there's almost no-one in this room who understands what this means. It's on fire. The graphite moderator, which in itself is just - unbelievably radioactive, and what's left of the fuel core, are on fire. Now, that's about two and a half thousand tons of carbon, which, burning at one ton an hour will burn roughly for 3 months. And every day that it burns it will send into the atmosphere more radiation than has ever been released in - in all the nuclear accidents that have ever happened anywhere in the world all put together. Every day! For 3 months! You have my word that people that are asleep in their beds in this town tonight have effectively died today. As I speak, radiation is entering the bodies of everybody in this room, everybody outside for hundreds of miles. We can no longer pretend. It's criminal. And - and it's got to stop. And you [pointing at Boris Scherbina] have got to stop it.