Living in the Zone: People Who Stayed After the Worst Nuclear Disasters | ENDEVR Documentary

[Music] on the 26th of April 1986 reactor 4 at Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded catching the whole world off guard [Music] for the first time in history massive quantities of radioactive particles were spewing out of the core of a nuclear reactor a veritable War had to be waged to contain the deadly emissions [Music] Ten Years Later an extra 15 billion billion beckerels of radioactivity were spread all over Europe over 80 percent of the elements in the Fallout from the explosion had a short half-life however one of them iodine 131 caused an epidemic of thyroid cancers among children 30 years on it continues to claim lives the other 20 percent will affect the environment for centuries to come some will be radioactive for tens of thousands of years [Music] and kind and the planet the long-term consequences of This Disaster were a Plunge Into The Unknown from then on millions of people would be living on land contaminated by radioactive pollution [Music] on March 2011 the accident at the Fukushima power plant reminded us of the constant risk there was only one-tenth as much Fallout as a Chernobyl but another region was polluted and other men and women were abruptly faced with the prospect of Life on contaminated land [Music] accidents change our world for eons [Music] but 30 years after Chernobyl and five years after Fukushima what do we know about the consequences of living with this contamination [Music] foreign explosion The Misfortune they said the wind brought it it flooded us like a wave I don't know exactly how but that's what happened [Music] The Fallout from Chernobyl mapped out a type of territory quite new to human history huge areas characterized by their degree of radioactive contamination the most Fallout had settled around the planet [Music] a 30 kilometer radius was marked out where the radioactivity exceeded 40 curies per square kilometer it was declared the exclusion Zone too poisonous to inhabit it became known as The Zone and in the collective imagination it now represents the ultimate consequence of a nuclear accident land from which man has excluded himself for an eternity 250 000 people who lived in the area have been evacuated from their homes never to return two cities and hundreds of villages were abandoned empty shells but just outside this forbidden zone a somewhat Different Story begins here cesium-137 levels were lower than 40 curies per square kilometer but still over one Curie per square kilometer considered to be a normal amount of background radiation this radically new kind of territory covered over 120 000 square kilometers after the fall of the Soviet Union it was under the jurisdiction of three countries Russia Ukraine and Belarus the last of which inherited 70 of the Fallout [Music] nobody was evacuated from these contaminated territories as they would henceforth be called life was officially considered to be possible there as long as certain precautions were taken the inhabitants were free to stay in the area or leave they could sign up for re-housing living in the zone exposes the inhabitants to doses of radioactivity officially classified as low but the exact Health consequences for them and their children due to these low levels of radioactivity is still beyond the limits of scientific knowledge since 1928 the international Commission on radiological protection has been setting World standards for exposure to radiation [Music] above something like 100 millisiever it's clear that radiation causes cancer increases the chance of getting cancer but at lower doses it's not so clear the best I can say is that at these very low doses we've never seen effects in the population using epidemiological studies but there is at least a theoretical risk of very small effects at these very low doses in fact like everything in the post-chernobyl world life in these areas is a big open-air science experiment and it is not limited to the regions adjacent to the plant at the time of the disaster the winds carried radioactive particles over thousands of kilometers they fell to the ground mainly with rain creating contamination hot spots in 1986 Norway which has no nuclear power plants was the Western European country that received the most Fallout particularly affected were the sparsely populated mountainous areas in the center of the country traditionally used by the indigenous Southern Sami people as grazing land for their herds of reindeer they too would now have to live with the consequences of the pollution in the aftermath of the explosion a total of nearly 7 million people found themselves in the gray zones created by Chernobyl the sheer numbers of people concerned make the ordeal of living with contamination the biggest consequence of the catastrophe [Music] it we quickly lost track of the fate of these men and women other priorities took precedence in March 2011 the accident at Fukushima power plant 1 created a new exclusion Zone this time in the heart of Japan one of the world's great economic powers authorities applied the same radiation limits as a Chernobyl and 170 000 people were evacuated and once again tens of thousands of people suddenly discovered they were living on contaminated land and their future is outstanding most of them want to stay where they belong but no one really fully understands the degree of gravity of the situation the village of swatsugi is located less than 30 kilometers south of the plant but radiation levels are lower than 40 curies per square kilometer it is therefore classified as a low-level contaminated Zone one year after the accident the inhabitants still couldn't understand why no one considered evacuating them how are safe limits defined what risk are they being made to run yeah should they leave everything behind or should they stay and live with an invisible threat said to be slight vital questions arise [Music] can they really live here what are the risks how can they protect themselves and their loved ones if they stay what are their prospects for the future and in answer to these simple questions they obtain no clear response just a pile of contradictory opinions and an avalanche of mysterious figures [Music] amid this confusion an idea emerged the Japanese might get some solid answers from people with 30 years of experience of life in the Chernobyl control Zone the only place on Earth similar to theirs by 2012 various ngos had managed to establish links between Japan Belarus and Norway the Japanese were surprised by what they heard in Belarus and in Norway I was told the same thing learn the lessons from our experiences it really surprised me I was happily surprised to know that they were really concerned about us and that they felt true sympathy they were afraid of breathing in contaminated air they were afraid of eating the food one woman said to me I'm even afraid to drink the water initially just after the accident we were afraid of everything too it took years for the authorities to set up measures to deal with the problem in later years they were implemented of course at first we were afraid it's frightening the people of Fukushima were interested in what we had done and how we had done it I told them you're lucky you can learn from our mistakes but we were the pioneers the tale they told the Japanese was that of a complex disturbing path it was their own personal story and they were aware the story would not be the same for all the people who had remained but it was also for that reason they felt the need to share it if when it happened there have been people like us to support us and tell us calm down don't give way to panic despite the situation um just giving recommendations for everyday living that would have minimized what happened at the time we didn't have that support the information was not yet available we could have avoided a lot of mistakes and there wouldn't have been so much suffering [Music] is a Belarusian village with a population of about one thousand it was among the most heavily contaminated in the district of stolen by the Ukrainian border Pasha and Vladimir polakoshko volunteered to discuss the terrible post-chair Noble years with the Japanese but nobody [Music] um foreign [Music] [Music] although the sammies of Southern Norway faced less contamination they spoke of the same despair the same uncertainty and of the anxiety it aroused security and the uncertainty had the biggest impact hello all the bases of our Traditions everything our future held they don't at the time it was difficult to know what was going to happen people everywhere were struck by their powerlessness to overcome this baffling Invisible Threat like an inescapable Doom I have four children alive today one died I don't know why it's nice they said it was because of the radiation it was his Destiny people especially the elderly didn't believe they didn't understand and they didn't trust what they were being told what could happen to them but time revealed that there were more cancers my mother died from cancer and my sister's husband died from cancer as did many neighbors but they were eager to communicate with the Japanese victims because dealing with Decades of anxiety has produced some essential wisdom life got back to normal when we were able to obtain the information we now possess when we understood that we didn't need to be as frightened as all that when we understood that life had to go on for us but we needed to be aware where we were living Ten Years After the catastrophe as a part of the EU ethos program a French team came to Omani to help the local people they were struck by the hopelessness of the people and how much it was caused by the lack of information about their situation actually the almanians had no idea of the radiation level no one came to fetch their milk anymore and they interpreted that as a sign that the situation was bad [Music] and the question that kept coming up was can we stay here can we still live here the ethos team tried to teach the inhabitants how to understand the pollution in their surroundings so that they could make informed decisions about what to do when the French arrived a new life began in the village there were a lot of projects covering various topics and a lot of people got involved we took an interest in things and change started to come about it was gradual though not all of a sudden the first thing the French brought was instruments to measure the radioactivity they were not the first to do so but they were the first to hand over the devices to the locals themselves and to discuss the results with them for the inhabitants of Omani it was a revelation they were discovering the real face of the environment they'd been living with for 10 years already so little by little we started to see a new image of the village Emoji Levels varied drastically there was no mean value for example background radiation in one person's yard might be the same as in Paris right next door the radiation levels could be five or ten times higher all of us were pleasantly surprised to find that indoors radiation levels yeah even on the scale of a village radioactive particles are not evenly scattered there can be enormous gaps between sites that are very close to each other background levels were still rather high in certain Gardens and above all in the forest but thanks to the measurements the radioactivity ceased to be an invisible omnipresent threat foreign [Music] in Fukushima the inhabitants were able to obtain the necessary instruments more rapidly again access to knowledge provided great relief in swatsugi Mr Endo started carrying out hundreds of measurements all over the village his findings enabled him to draw up a detailed map of the contamination a map on a scale that was much easier for the locals to read than the official reports actually by carrying out the measurements and mapping the hot spots I was able to see the ghost Footprints the map became a way to find out where the Fearsome ghosts were hiding and whether they were way ghosts powerful enemies or enemies that are hard to fight in the so-called lightly contaminated zones it is the accumulation of doses received over the years that presents a Potential Threat to health avoiding the most contaminated areas or limiting the time spent there significantly reduces the theoretical risk involved in the first few years after a nuclear accident the contamination evolves particles can be moved by wind and especially by rain levels of ambient radiation drop in some places and rise in others hot spots where particles have collected in order to obtain a clear reading of the new environment ongoing measurements are necessary they alone provide the data needed to deal properly with the threat we take measurements every day when a parent saw that radiation levels were dropping they were willing for us to let the children play outside for longer five years after the accident in the cities that received low levels of Fallout like Fukushima City the background radiation is again equivalent to that in Paris in urban environments the particles do not penetrate the soil and are eliminated more rapidly partly due to daily cleaning [Music] gomel is the second largest city in Belarus in 1986 it was one of the most contaminated zones in the country today it has a population of over half a million thirty years after the accident ambient radiation levels are normal as they are in nearly all belarussian villages most of the remaining hot spots are in the surrounding forests however the villagers are aware of the new parameters and consider them as the new Norm I have lived here for if I was born I was born in 1985 in Cameron and grew up here we know exactly where in the forest we can go and we know where we can go in the river that's why we're not bothered by the radioactivity in the sense that we wouldn't go there the closed off zones are closed off we just don't go there that's all there were barriers and information panels there aren't any problems with the other places [Music] but massive contamination of the environment is not limited to ambient radiation [Music] gradually the leaves and grasses absorb the radioactive particles they accumulate in the hummus seep into the Earth and are taken up by the roots of plants and trees they are then ingested by the animals that feed on the plants the biggest long-term problem that locals face is lasting contamination of the entire food chain [Music] a phenomenon that was largely underestimated by the scientists who only discovered the extent of the issue in the decades after Chernobyl grains vegetables meat milk all products are affected to varying degrees and could become sources of exposure for those who eat them [Music] the areas polluted by Fallout from Fukushima and Chernobyl are mainly farming regions the town of dates is located about 60 kilometers to the north of the Fukushima power plant its surroundings have a reputation for the quality and richness of their Orchards the accident happened in March a few months later the harvest season began it started with small plums then larger plums and peaches we discovered radioactive cesium in all the summer fruit then we also discovered it and the Persimmons there's a young tree over there we dug out a big hole there with a machine and through all persimmons foreign that went on for two years I was terribly affected by it maybe more to cry in Belarus Europe's third biggest milk producer 20 of the country's Farmland was polluted by Fallout from Chernobyl finding a way to maintain the economic activity of those areas was therefore a priority for the state [Music] the scientists knew very little about how these radio nuclides spread through nature and how they penetrated plants in 1991 a major scientific program was like the development of countermeasures measures to protect Agriculture and the management of farm produce so that the end products would contain minimal rates The Institute of radiology created just after the disaster was one of the spearheads of the farming rehabilitation program to which Belarus devoted nearly one-fifth of its budget over the last 30 years scientists there have carried out ongoing tests of the Region's soils and farm produce and they have gradually put together a whole battery of Technical Solutions in order to adapt production to soil contamination in Belarus agricultural production is organized in kolgo's or Collective Farms Tamara kudan runs a collective of 3 800 plots of Farmland in the district of brain The gomel Institute of radiology developed maps of cesium and strontium contamination in the region the main task of our experts as well as mine is to carefully position the crops in relation to the contaminated land we also use phosphorus which we add in the spring and we also use nitrogen fertilizers all these discoveries are the result of pioneering research in various Fields carried out to solve problems that nobody ever had to deal with before they required a great deal of back and forth exchanges between theoretical research and experience in the field and it took around a decade for this work to bear fruit foreign around 1994 on major farms in the state sector large cooperatives and State Farms we succeeded in getting all the produce to conform to Norms in that day unions of small farmers are cooperating in a gigantic undertaking decontamining their Orchards according to the scientists recommendations we have decontaminated the barks of all the persimmon trees we spray them with high pressure hoses [Music] decontamination using high pressure water took a total of four months 35 000 people have been involved we did contaminated a total of 550 000 fruit trees including 250 000 persimmon trees we worked until March 2012. four years later production is showing signs of picking up again but the Cooperative has had to invest a large amount of money in a high-tech lab to test the produce and guarantee its safety relaunching a Region's farming economy even on a lightly contaminated land can be done but it requires an effort on a scale comparable to post-war reconstruction in Belarus unfortunately it was discovered that even this was still far from sufficient due to isolation in remote rural Villages people had always subsisted and still subsist today on produce from their own vegetable gardens on the milk from their cows and on berries and mushrooms gathered in the forest five years after the accident 400 radiation safety centers were established in the affected areas in order to measure the contamination of local food produce KO volunteered at the center in Omani yeah during the tests I gave them the produce they put it in the device and the radioactivity was off scale the meter went from 18 to 37 000 and we exceeded 37 000 backgrounds in fact since the accident practically all the produce locals were consuming on a daily basis was contaminated some of it very heavily when we first got here everything had been outlawed Gathering mushrooms and berries drinking the milk it was forbidden to go into the forest that just didn't make sense for the people living here so in reality everybody went into the forest and everybody gathered mushrooms and everyone was living with the same idea more or less well here we are surrounded by pollution we ingested every day in the end it'll ruin our health and the health of our children but we have no choice [Music] but the measurements revealed a surprising phenomenon within the same forest or the same Village some food was highly contaminated while other food was hardly contaminated at all at the time locals were totally unaware of the situation ten years after the accident when the first tests were finally carried out to measure contamination within the population itself the consequence of this discovery came to light the whole body gamma-ray counts of children from the same Village varied widely food was the main culprit the glid with the help of the local mothers we examine children's daily quotas then carried out calculations we wondered what the result would be if the family was lucky enough to consume the least contaminated products that figure was somewhere between 30 and 50 beckerels ingested on a daily basis then we looked at figures in the unfortunate case of a family eating the most contaminated products in the village in other words the same diet but with the most contaminated products was somewhere between 700 and 800 ingested a day so that makes a huge difference [Music] the contamination of the food chain caused the Sami people another major problem in addition to the problem of livelihood these animals do not fare well in captivity they need vast areas of land where they can forage freely all year round [Music] in Winter they mainly feed off lichen and they're also very fond of mushrooms but lichens and mushrooms have the terrible property of concentrating radioactivity first season after Chernobyl all the reindeer Mead in the region had high betrayal counts so that first year all the meat was declared unfit for consumption of course it was sad to see good reindeer meat being buried or treated as toxic waste but we had received promises that we would get help from the first year campaigns to test the meat and systematic financial compensation for the farmers were implemented to avoid economic disaster for the Sami people the first year but traditionally we ate the entire animal the awful the blood the Marin and the head marigbane Poe these products were difficult to obtain from elsewhere so we couldn't perpetuate the traditions [Music] I started to fish less because the fish had high levels of contamination we gathered fewer berries and fewer edible white plants such as Sorrel Alpine so Thistle and Angelica semiculture is based on a balanced exchange with the environment and on total use of the animals they slaughter [Music] this way of life in harmony with nature is the core of Sami identity passed down through the generations to give it up to avoid radiation poisoning was a painful psychological sacrifice lavrant scooterud works for the Norwegian radiation protection authority in 1996 during a measurement campaign he realized that due to a lack of meaningful exchange with the Sami people the severity of the consequences of this situation had gone entirely unnoticed I had worked for several years on a project in Russia Ukraine and Belarus carrying out measurements on people and studying their diet I didn't expect to find in the Sami population of central Norway levels that were as high as in the most contaminated populations around China [Music] in Omani whenever a child showed abnormally High gamma-ray counts members of the ethos program visited the home to enlist the family's help in identifying the foods or behaviors responsible because contamination of our bodies is not irreversible once we stop eating radioactive particles our bodies can eliminate the buildup naturally and levels gradually fall [Music] within a year we brought down the levels in children who had very high levels to among the least contaminated levels in the village because suddenly the family had the ability to Monitor and regulate the daily intake this approach was so successful it was extended to four other contaminated districts of Belarus under the core program in the beginning of the 2000s although the situation was not an easy one the people of Almani were gradually regaining control s [Music] they now knew it was possible to fight contamination by experimenting with various new behaviors and adopting those that would achieve results [Music] we had the milk tested and stopped consuming our own we bought milk from the shop we tested the produce we grew in our vegetable patches too if it was contaminated we stopped planting it following the French recommendations we tried to grow our own cucumbers cabbages and tomatoes they were all clean and we could sell them we began to learn there were ways of reducing the contamination I carried out my own experiments I picked mushrooms from various places and threw away the brine half the radiation comes out in the brine then I'd make up a new brain I was happy with the results and I showed them to people it's true that the mushrooms weren't quite as good as before but I managed to obtain results that were within them detailed knowledge began to emerge resulting from a combination of advice from experts and self-made local discoveries new behaviors were integrated into daily life forming a new culture instead of a top-down approach where authorities were dictating what people should do there was a Grassroots movement people talked among themselves made decisions and started acting on them because they owned those decisions instead of being helpless victims people became motivated individuals certain that they would lead Better Lives as each day went by we were just in Norway as a result of closer dialogue between experts and reindeer herders appropriate countermeasures were gradually adopted the main measure was to provide herds with special father that brought their contamination levels Back Down Under the limit of the time of Slaughter we had to build feedlots for the reindeer because we Slaughter several thousand head over the course of a year when the reindeer are corralled and fed clean lichen for a few weeks their bodies naturally eliminated a large percentage of the radioactivity levels of contamination fell rapidly cancel to import ant quantities of reindeer lichen for the clean feeding phase what a big and we had to change the annual reindeer Slaughter to Early Autumn we have kept it that way all of these adaptations involved a great deal more work for the Sami herders but they've proved to be effective 30 years after the accident the most recent measurements carried out before Slaughter are encouraging even if great variations still occur from year to year the ones we have today we have learned that the highly radioactive mushrooms the reindeer eat are the culprit this year there are very few mushrooms and we were expecting the animals to be fairly clean today in Belarus the teachings of the ethos and core programs have been integrated into the functioning of the medical systems in the control Zone today in the affected areas There are 16 radiological control stations including our Laboratories any locals wishing to do so can contact any of the centers to test their food projects they can also test food from the forest like mushrooms and berries whole body counting has become a quick simple medical exam it is free and people can drop in at the district hospital without an appointment all the patients we hospitalize are systematically tested on our machines we carry out over 8 000 tests about 2 000 children and the rest are adults these tests play a key role they relieve anxiety and more importantly they detect spikes in gamma-ray levels that can then be dealt with Tatiana cutlabai is a nurse in dosimetrist at the camarine test center she does post-exam follow-up with families helping them understand the results if necessary she suggests changes in dietary habits [Music] for several years now we no longer have contaminated milk or contaminated cultivated produce the risks are mainly linked to Wild Foods berries game of course and fish from the closed off basins we always discuss these risks with people our recommendations are simple if you go game hunting and pick berries and mushrooms you must have everything tested or you just don't hunt don't gather and don't eat any of these products this tailor-made approach has since proved to be effective I remember years when there were over 200 school children in our money with high radiation levels but over the last three years we haven't detected a single person with a level above one millisievert a year we're very happy about that [Music] foreign ERS also judged that their way of life has returned to normal in the past several years [Music] we have gone back to eating our traditional everyday diet of dishes made of organ meats and blood the way we did before Chernobyl we pick mushrooms we eat fish and we have resumed our old ways the only difference is we want to be tested every year to make sure that everything is okay I also think no other community in the world knows as much as the southern Sami people about radioactivity and its effects and for the new generations other problems have already replaced those of Chernobyl so today we have tests for our own radio activities vets also come to test the radioactivity levels in the reindeer but we don't really think about it on a daily basis it's not a problem the situation now generation faces is totally different from the one our parents experience our parents were mainly worried about the radioactivity whereas the issues we're concerned with are predators and Society in general which is encroaching on our open range it has been up for 30 years now and seems unlikely to disappear soon [Music] I remember one event at primary school we were being tested and I had very high levels in terms of backgrounds [Music] [Applause] the teachers told us our children might have birth defects [Music] yes people who come from outside are also the most skeptical they give us their opinion and frighten us the most our parents and other people who have always lived here told us they were very frightened when they didn't have the necessary knowledge but they have since gained that knowledge and that's what they have passed on to us they couldn't stop some hide today the views of people living in braheen and stolen are much the same as those of the samis in Norway it's been 30 years now we're living the way we did 30 years ago we're at peace now and balanced we've gained life experience quite simply we learned a whole lot about radioactivity we learned how to manage it so to speak and doubts about public health continue to loom in the control Zone due to scientists uncertainties about the effects of low-grade exposure the fact is that science has not been able to establish how harmful low doses of radiation are our own experience will help answer this question here as in Norway people observe the same phenomenon one of the most difficult things to live with is the Judgment of people from outside the area I think that other people don't want to understand our lives or quite simply they're not interested today we also want to develop economically I wish they'd understand that for us Chernobyl is something distant that we are inhabitants of Belarus just like everybody else if only we could get past the Chernobyl not Chernobyl divide I think our problems would be solved and the region would develops [Music] today in Belarus efforts are aimed at disseminating the knowledge acquired in these pilot districts 30 years after the disaster people in other regions and probably in Ukraine and Russia are under-informed and anxious lacking the Peace of Mind of those in Almani in camarin education is the key from an early age children are now taught the reality of the conditions for a sustainable life in the control Zone [Music] and it is because the samis and the people of Belarus know the importance of peer-to-peer transmission that they eagerly took part in the Fukushima dialogues 12 of these encounters under icrp auspices were held in the province of Fukushima between November 2011 and November 2015. they were an opportunity for Japanese people to converse with people living in contaminated areas elsewhere and with experts besides providing practical and Technical information these encounters enabled victims to compare experiences bringing certain unsuspected consequences of the contamination to light we've learned a lot about recovery in Fukushima different than was learned from Chernobyl a big lesson is that even in an accident where there doesn't appear to be any health effects from exposure to radiation there are still enormous consequences social economic consequences uh from the accident the human dimension of a nuclear disaster is enormous enormous and I think it was not taken sufficiently into account even after China it was brushed aside we are so deeply focused on public health aspects and measures that we tend to be blind to the impact on society since Chernobyl we have all been petrified by the very idea of radioactive contamination and yet we continue to build and operate nuclear power plants in this world nobody's immune nobody can say they are protected and that it would never happen again people must acquire the necessary information so that if one day such a disaster were to happen again they are prepared and they know who to turn to for help and where they can access knowledge [Music] that's the feeling we're left with they're Fearless obviously but the next time we'll already know a lot more [Music] what these people reveal about the full meaning of living with contamination confronts us with an even bigger issue other Industries other Technologies are leaving a pollution footprint on our planet the gray zones are growing are our comfort and convenience really worth adapting Our Lives to a poisoned environment with all of the constraints involved [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] foreign

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Keywords: Free documentary, documentaries, full documentary, hd documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), Business Documentary, living in nuclear zone, nuclear extraction zone, living in chernobyl, living in chernobyl exclusion zone, living in fukushima, chernobyl documentary, fukushima documentary, chernobyl, fukushima

Id: eePm9RGtoQE

Length: 52min 0sec (3120 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 16 2023