S1 · E1 — Paradise
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On 26 April 1986, at about 1:23 a.m., a reactor explodes at Chernobyl. What begins as a safety test ends in an inferno. It remains the world's worst nuclear disaster to this day.
Now playingSince 1971, the young nuclear engineer Nikolai Steinberg has been working on the gigantic construction site of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. As a student in Moscow he first heard of the secret RBMK reactor, meant to power the Soviet economy. In the middle of nowhere, the Soviet Union builds a paradise for nuclear engineers and their families: the Chernobyl plant with its four reactor units, and the Ukrainian town of Pripyat.
On 26 April 1986, at about 1:23 a.m., a reactor explodes at Chernobyl. What begins as a safety test ends in an inferno. It remains the world's worst nuclear disaster to this day.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev receives a secret report of an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. How will the man so many hopes rest on respond to the disaster?
After the Chernobyl accident, the world demands answers from the Soviet Union. Moscow makes the plant's staff the scapegoats and keeps quiet about the flaws in Soviet technology.