Chernobyl, Fukushima, Kyshtym | 60 Minutes Full Episodes

Some tragedies never end. Ask people to name a nuclear disaster and most will probably point to Fukushima in Japan 3 years ago. The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl in Ukraine was 30 years ago, but the crisis is still with us today. That's because radiation virtually never dies. After the explosion in 1986, the Soviets built a primitive sarcophagus, a tomb, to cover the stricken reactor, but it wasn't meant to last very long, and it hasn't. Engineers say there's still enough radioactive material in there to cause widespread contamination. For the last 5 years, a massive project has been underway to seal the reactor permanently. But the undertaking is 3/4 of a billion dollars short, and the completion date has been delayed repeatedly. 30 years later, Chernobyl's crippled reactor still has the power to kill. It's called the zone, and getting into it is crossing a border into one of the most contaminated places on Earth.

The 20-mile no man's land was evacuated nearly 30 years ago. But drive to the center of the zone today and you'll see a massive structure that appears to rise out of nowhere. It's an engineering effort the likes of which the world has never seen. With funds from over 40 different countries, 1,400 workers are building a giant arch to cover the damaged reactor like a casserole. It will be taller than the Statue of Liberty and wider than Yankee Stadium, the largest movable structure on Earth. Nicholas Kai is overseeing the arch's construction. You know, when you think about it, he had this massive project going on. All these people working here, billions of dollars being spent because of one day 30 years ago. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're you're you're right. It was the biggest disaster of uh the nuclear industry. Yes.

>> The disaster was sparked by massive explosions that tore the roof off of Chernobyl's reactor number four, spewing radioactive dust into the atmosphere. The Soviets drafted over half a million troops to put out the fire and clear the nuclear debris. Thousands got seriously ill from radiation exposure. Today, three decades later, the cleanup continues. But as this recent video shows, the reactor is still packed with poison. Heaps of gnarled steel and concrete pools of nuclear fuel that have hardened into a dense mass called the elephant's foot. There's still so much radiation coming from the reactor that workers have to construct the arch nearly a thousand ft away, shielded by a massive concrete wall. When finished, the arch will be slid into place around this sarcophagus, then sealed up.

>> We will push it in once. Um, the average speed will be around 10 m an hour. So, it's approximately the speed of a of a snail. Right. But that's pretty rapid considering the size of this thing. >> It is. Yes. >> But the construction itself will have to move a lot quicker. The old plant and sarcophagus are falling apart. Just two years ago, a snowstorm caused the roof of one of the buildings to collapse, forcing workers to be evacuated and raising fears of further contamination. Radiation is not subject to the usual rules of life and death. It is virtually eternal. When Kai took us on a tour of the site, we were fitted with dimeters to tell us how much we were being exposed to. Suddenly, the sound we didn't want to hear. >> Hey, this this beep is going off. You >> No, no, it's not. Uh, it's normal.

>> You sure? >> Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm definitively sure. >> I don't like a beeper in Chernobyl. I don't I don't like that sound. >> Building the arch under these conditions is challenging enough, but some of the biggest obstacles have nothing to do with radiation. As violence gripped Ukraine this year, one of the arch's contractors backed out. The project is also $770 million short and has been plagued by repeated delays. No matter when it's completed, vast stretches of the zone will never recover. This is the city of Pryyat, 2 miles from the reactor. 30 years ago, the population was 50,000. Today, it is zero. Pry was where many of the plant workers lived. Grateful for their posting in a town that was the model of Soviet modernity. Ninestory apartment buildings lined this boulevard. They're still there, but you can't see them anymore.

The forest has taken over. A vision perhaps of what the whole world might look like for people to just disappear. >> It was springtime in Pryat that day in 1986 and an amusement park was due to open in a few days. Andre Gloff lived here then. >> So that ferris wheel never had any kids in it. >> Never had any kids. These bumper cars on your left >> had never kids on it too. When you talk to your former neighbors, what do you call it? The accident, the catastrophe? >> We just call it 26, which was the date of the accident. >> 26. >> 26th of April. >> Sort of like the Americans call 9/11. >> Exactly. >> Back then, Gloff worked for Chernobyl's nuclear safety division. He took us on a tour through a part of the plant that had not been destroyed. He was off duty that night, but what he saw when he drove past the damage reactor was like nothing he or anyone else had ever seen.

>> The control room. >> This was a terrifying picture. It looked like a sunset in a distance about 100 200 yards from you. And this was the glowing core of the reactor. >> That was the first and the only time you saw it. >> No, that was the first time when I realized the scale of the disaster. Glof told his family in Pryyia to stay inside and close the windows. Soviet authorities covered the area with secrecy, told people they had nothing to worry about. But 36 hours later, over a thousand buses were sent in to evacuate everyone. Authorities told people it would only be for 3 days, one of many lies. The people never came back, and Pryotat is being overwhelmed by the elements. One of the only things still recognizable is that old Soviet iconography.

Drive through the zone and you'll find that many villages suffer the same fate as Pryat. A row of simple markers has been planted with the names of each one. But amidst this wilderness, the strangest sight of all people, >> just a few. Ivan Ivanovich and his wife Maria were evacuated to an apartment block near Kiev after the accident but couldn't take it. They weren't made for the city. So two years later they came back. Today there are three other people living in this village just a few miles from the old power plant. >> When you decided to come back to live here, did anyone tell you it was dangerous? It's really okay here. You know, when I lived in that apartment block, I got sick all the time. But when I came back here, I was fine.

And I've been fine ever since. You should never leave home. >> I would be long gone if I'd stayed there. >> I'd be in the ground. >> Despite the danger, Tim Muso also chose to be here. For the last 15 years, the University of South Carolina biologist has been studying the contamination's impact from a makeshift lab inside the zone. >> Aren't many uh serious labs I've seen that look like this. >> Yeah, this is an opportunistic lab. It's an old villager's house. >> Rous's research has shown that the catastrophe continues to take its toll. and we're going to attempt to measure just how radioactive these mice are. >> What's the comparison between the amounts of radiation a mouse would have here and a mouse somewhere else? >> Some of these mice have on the order of 10,000 times more radioactivity in their bodies than in clean areas.

>> The human toll has been profound as well. thyroid cancer and leukemia affected thousands, though the exact number of deaths is still being debated. >> There there certainly is evidence that some of the genetic damage that occurs at the level of the DNA can be transmitted from one generation to the next. >> So, a nuclear disaster is never over. >> There will be areas that will be contaminated for thousands, if not millions of years. This makes the zone like no other place on Earth, which is why it's attracting tourists. If you've done Paris in Rome, why not try a holiday in hell? Check out the apocalypse. >> How did your friends react when you told them you were coming on vacation to Chernobyl? >> Uh, they thought it was very strange. Yeah, but I mean, people have been coming here for a while, so I, you know, guess it must be safe. >> You guess it must be safe. What makes you believe it's safe?

>> Well, you know, would assume that the guides wouldn't bring people here if it wasn't safe. >> Right. Well, I hope you're right. >> So do I. >> Thousands of workers fled into the zone every day to look after what remains of the plant. Others live here year round in one of the few places safe enough for inhabitants, the town of Chernobyl itself. Yvan Ganchureno was our guide. He lives here too. >> Why are you living here and not in Kiev? >> Because uh I like this place for me. Um it's very um interesting. Um maybe even uh sacred place, >> a sacred place >> for me. Yeah. >> He spends much of his time writing music on his bass guitar. Music as desolate as the landscape surrounding him.

As desolate as the remains of this empire that has long since disappeared. A decade after the disaster. Workers here built a monument honoring their colleagues whose lives had been destroyed. >> The workers and the firemen made the monument themselves. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. >> And what what does it say? To those who save the world. >> To those who save the world. That may sound a bit hyperbolic, but when the reactor exploded in 1986, radioactive dust and debris were carried as far away as Italy and Sweden. Until the arch finally seals up that stricken reactor, and no one knows when that might be, something like that could happen again. Unlike other historic relics, Chernobyl does not belong to the past. Its power will never die.

Chernobyl is forever. There's a reason we use a Japanese word for a catastrophic seismic ocean wave. Japan has had more tsunamis than any place else on Earth. And the massive 9.0 earthquake 9 days ago and the subsequent tsunami has left nearly 8,500 people dead. some 13,000 missing and nearly a half a million homeless. And it leaves Japan teetering on the edge of a nuclear crisis that has already resulted in measurable amounts of radioactivity turning up in milk, drinking water, and in some crops. Scott P and a 60 Minutes team have been in Japan for more than a week, traveling from Tokyo to the port city Sai to the once beautiful resort of Matsushima and into the zone surrounding the Fukushima Dichi nuclear power plant.

There tonight, emergency crews are struggling to restore cooling and stabilize pressure inside the reactors. What we have found in Japan is a catastrophe that reveals both the power of nature and the fragility of human technology. The Fukushima Dichi crisis is not one nuclear emergency. It is four potentially catastrophic events standing side by side. In all, there are six reactor stations. Numbers one through four are in peril. Last week, crews risk their lives to get water onto melting uranium fuel. Through explosions and blasts of radioactive steam, a few hundred Japanese join battle with the most powerful force known to man. One of the Americans responding to the emergency is Julia Neshwat. She's a State Department official who was already in Japan working on nuclear issues. She served in Washington as deputy chief of staff to the director of national intelligence. In Tokyo, she's been on the Fukushima disaster from the start.

>> We're providing the full resources of the United States government. Everything we've got, we told them, is at their disposal. >> Absolutely. >> Our best people are on this. >> Yes, they are working non-stop around the clock um in each of the operation centers. >> And they are now working side by side with the Japanese. Yes. >> But that wasn't always the case. Not in the beginning. No. >> An American team of top experts arrived shortly after the disaster, but they were largely stuck at the US embassy. The Japanese didn't think they needed the help. But by last Tuesday, the emergency was out of control and the US gave the Japanese an ominous private warning >> that if you know we don't expand the efforts will will require heroic uh work done that could be you know quite devastating for the workers. >> What do we mean by that? >> That means they could very well lose their lives. An official with the US government told the Japanese that your people are going to have to die to save that plant unless you let us help you.

>> Yes. >> At one point during the week, the hazard was so great the Japanese took all but about 70 workers out of the plant. Their problem is water. The systems that keep the radioactive fuel rods cool failed. The rods are partially melting, releasing radiation. And it's not just the reactors. There are also used fuel rods, essentially nuclear waste, stored in pools nearby. They're also losing water, and American experts fear that one of these pools is already dry. Neshwat told us the danger is multiplied because the reactors are so close together. >> That is a grave concern at this time. If if there is an explosion, if there is a meltdown, a fire, it can absolutely affect the neighboring uh plants. >> What would that mean? Oh goodness. I don't want to even think what that could mean. That's just um um something that we would have to really plan for at the greatest scale. And um we're we're hoping and praying that that's not the case.

>> All last week, the US said the crisis was more grave than the Japanese apparently believed. And so far, the US experts have been right. Last Wednesday, the American embassy began a voluntary evacuation of US citizens. It wasn't until 2 days later that the Japanese acknowledged the threat was greater than they'd thought. The Japanese declared a voluntary evacuation zone of 12 m around the plant. The US says it should be 50 m. There is great uncertainty. Top experts disagree on fundamental questions such as whether melting fuel rods would cause an explosion or just a fire. Answers are critical to planning for a bigger emergency. It's just so uncertain. This is unprecedented and you know uncharted territory that uh the consequences could be greater than we expect. >> More than 50 American experts are in Japan, including engineers from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and public health advisers. Many are working in three joint emergency operations centers around Tokyo. One of their biggest problems is getting a good look at the damaged reactors. Surveillance pictures have been poor. you're dealing with the smoke, you're dealing with, you know, the debris. It's just very difficult to make such an assessment um of the situation. I mean, you're trying to really scrutinize the pixels of the picture.

>> The US team is using cameras and sensors carried by drones in the air and robots on the ground to get a clearer idea of what's going on. No one knows what will happen at Fukushima, but it's important to remember that even without this nuclear crisis, Japan has already suffered a catastrophe. history. The tsunami inundated about 400 m of the northern coast. >> You can't capture the enormity of it. So, we stopped in one small town. Matsushima was said to be among the most beautiful places in Japan, a famous vacation spot. The name has the same ring to a Japanese as Big Su or Cape Cod does to an American. Matsushima means pine tree island. The trees are about all that's left.

>> What was the personality of the town? What was this place like? >> Oh, everyone's very friendly. >> David Chum Runert is a native of Texas who's been teaching English in Matsushima schools for a couple of years. We met over a canal where tourists came to fish. That's a bridge we're on. The canal is full of houses and cars. >> This is where the kids from the school came from. >> Yeah. They would come from here and around this area. >> Noiru Elementary School is around the corner. David Sham Runert was among the teachers and students who were wrapping up the day when the building began to roll on the greatest quake Japan has ever seen. >> The the teachers like, "Let's go check the classrooms to make sure everyone's okay and start getting everyone to the gym." >> This is the earthquake reinforced gym which stands across the playground from the three-story school. some guy with a helmet on, he he ran in and he was like, "Tssunami's coming." And then uh the principal was like, "Okay, everyone run back to the school." The fifth grade teacher, he he was like at the front of the group and he said he saw a wall of water coming. So he's like, "Everyone run back inside."

>> It was too late. >> Yeah. >> To get out of the gym. >> Inside there were about 200 people, children from 6 to 11, parents who'd come to pick them up. Less than 30 minutes after the quake, they were swept up in a surge of seaater and debris. >> It was blasting through the door and it was like when it was hitting the walls, it would it would make kind of like a whirlpool kind of motion. So, at that point, it had risen up to the stage level. >> Water didn't stop there. >> No, it didn't. >> What happened next? >> I was starting to get like sucked out into the middle and I didn't want that to happen. And so I grabbed the wall and then a grandpa and some lady who was hanging on to him like they like washed by me and they managed to grab my shoulder and so they were like hanging on to me and we were like I could feel it getting pulled. >> What happened to the older man and woman who were holding on to you? >> I don't know. I don't know what happened to them. >> What happened then? >> I grabbed the railing and I somehow uh uh found my footing. I think I don't know what it was, but I think it was the top of the basketball goal.

>> The water was that deep. >> Yeah, it it came all the way up to the second second uh the balcony. >> This is the goal and the railing behind. There's narrow standing room between the railing and the wall. >> I saw like one of my kids like he was like struggling. So, I grabbed him. I grabbed his shirt and I was able to like pull him over to the side and he was able to grab onto the railing and I helped heave him over and I saw like a big desk with like four or five of my kids like hang on to it and they're like saying you know they're shouting like help me help help us help us and finally I was able to like get the grab a hold of the desk and pull it closer to me and then was able to grab them one by one and we were able to get them over and then there was one more lady and we got her over too >> in 2 hours. Night had fallen. >> You were in the total darkness in the freezing cold with the seaater all around you for 4 hours, 5 hours, >> about 6 hours, >> wondering when the rescuers would come.

>> Yeah. And then the aftershocks would come and everyone would just huddle down together and like afraid again. >> What were you saying to the children over that long dark night? >> I just kept uh saying like, "Hang in there. Hang in there. and just like try to like give them a little smile, make them smile a little bit. >> In a wrecked house nearby, we found a child rescued from the gym. Six-year-old SA Suzuki in her grandmother's arms. >> Came all the way up to here. >> She told us the water came up to my neck, up to my face. >> How did you get away? A teacher grabbed me by the arm and pulled me up out of the water. >> We don't know if it was David Chum Rundler who grabbed her. >> There's a lot that's unknown. >> How many survivors would you estimate were up there on the balcony?

>> I'm hoping at least over a hundred. I hope. I hope. I'm not sure though. >> We came back to the gym and were surprised to find those who did not survive lying across the basketball court and up there on the stage. Families searched for their loved ones, lifting blankets one by one in a combination of hope and dread. There are about 85 bodies in the gym by my count. It is now five days since the tsunami. The the army has come in and done the best they can. They pulled a car out of this entrance way and and wrapped most of the bodies up in army blankets. But the fact of the matter is there is no place to put this many bodies. The morgs are completely full and frankly there aren't enough people to move them. It is a fact in this part of Japan that at this moment in time there are not enough living to take care of the dead.

In Matsushima, we found this one small unit of Japanese self-defense force engineers. They seem to vanish in the vast destruction. They're clearing roads and searching houses, but the response so far seems strangely small. They're spread thin over the 400 miles. There's no sense of hurry. The engineers knock off at dusk, a sign that they're not expecting to rescue anyone. Not now. All across northern Japan, nearly half a million are homeless, nearly a million have no power, and more than 2 million are without water. In the coastal city of Sai, a city of a million people about the size of Detroit, we saw nearly 3,000 residents patiently waiting for a grocery store to open for the first time in days. There are shortages of food and lines for gasoline stretch half a mile. Add to all of this what you might call nuclear refugees. Thousands are in shelters because their homes are too close to the Fukushima reactors. Tomoori Kato came in to be checked for radiation. He was clean, but his home is half a mile from the nuclear plant. He's lived there 50 years, and he told us that he expects he will never return.

The nuclear refugees were loaded onto buses and hurried away, carrying almost nothing. Not only are their homes in danger of being irdiated, but every possession they own. Yoshihiko Igarashi's house is three miles from the plant. His daughter was born there. She turned 20 last week in the shelter. Like everyone, they've laid out a few square feet on the floor with no idea how long they'll be here. 1600 people are in this shelter alone. It's just 20 miles from where the reactor fires are burning. If you believe US experts, that's much too close. >> Iashi told us he feels that way, too. The Japanese are for the moment balancing between the disaster that has happened and the disaster that awaits. The prime minister told his people they will rebuild Japan. But all along the northern coast and in the town of Pineree Island, there is a powerful sense that for now time has stopped.

The magnitude 9 earthquake that struck Japan on March 11th, 2011 not only shook the ground, it shook the Japanese people's faith in their government and the nuclear power industry. You can see the impact of the disaster in the towns right around the plant. Only you can't get there. The earthquake did some damage. The tsunami did more. But the reason many of them are empty and off limits today is because of the nuclear accident at the Fukushima power plant next door. The whole area is now a radioactive wasteland. And the people who live there don't know if they'll ever be able to go home. Many don't know if they'll want to. Three years later, the events of March 11th darken their lives so deeply that many speak of it simply as 311. The hell that broke loose on March 11, 2011 was the strongest earthquake in Japan's history.

>> When the shaking stopped, the tsunami raced toward shore. With as much fury as nature can muster, almost all of the more than 18,000 people who died that day on Japan's northeast coast died in the flood. The quake didn't do much damage to the Fukushima Dichi nuclear power station, but the tsunami shut down the reactor's emergency cooling systems and they started to melt down. Hydrogen gases inside the buildings then exploded, spreading radiation into communities more than 25 miles away. Today, in the town of Tomioa, the radiation levels are considered safe enough to allow people in during the day. >> Loudspeakers warn visitors that they must leave by 300 p.m.

We were alone on the day we were there. The disaster seems to have stopped time. The clock shows 2:46, the moment the earthquake hit. And the damage to shops and homes looks like it could have happened yesterday. The stack of newspapers we found were dated March 12th, 2011, the day after the quake and tsunami. You can see people had to leave in a hurry. That was the morning The government told people of this town and neighboring towns to get out quickly. Welcome to Okuma, says the sign. Population today, 3 years later, zero. More than 11,000 people left town that day and never return. >> Would you ever want to go back to Okuma to live there again? >> Yes, I would like to before I die. Nio Kimura lived with his wife and two daughters next door to his parents. The tsunami killed his father, his wife, and his youngest daughter, Yuna, a bright and cheerful 7-year-old. This is what their homes looked like before March 11th 2011.

This is what's left today. Foundations and scraps of memories that he keeps in a small box by what was once the front door. This is a shoe she was wearing that day, which was found in a heap of rubble 6 months after the disaster. >> Because of radiation, Kimura can only visit his former home 10 times a year and stay only 5 hours. In February, his aotta day came in the middle of a blizzard. On each visit, Kimura brings flowers to a small shrine he built to honor his family. They were among the 111 people who died in Oka that day. The remains of 110 have been recovered. The only one still missing is Nio Kimura's daughter, Yuna. 10 times a year, he goes back home to search for her.

On Saturday, you were digging again in Okuma. It was snowing. It was freezing. Why? to find Yuna, of course. And also, if I stop searching or gathering her things, I will lose the connection with her. To be honest, the reason why I can live my life every day is because I have to find her and her things. I need to do this to keep my sanity. Volunteers now help Kimoda dig through the piles of debris left by the tsunami. Everyone's dressed in protective clothing to limit their exposure to radiation. The digging seems futile, but on this day, Kima unearthed clothing he says belonged to his surviving daughter, Mayu. On March 11th, the day of the tsunami, Kima made a mistake for which he will never forgive himself. He was at work on a farm and he stayed there.

>> Did you think then that there would be a tsunami? >> There was a radio at my work and my boss told me that the tsunami was going to be 3 m tall. My house is 5 to 6 m above sea level. So I was convinced that our home would be fine and didn't worry about it after that at all. Do you think there's anything you could have done to save your family? >> I should have gone home right away. >> I regret believing the information easily while my family was in life-threatening danger. Even now, I say to myself, what was I thinking? When radiation forced the evacuation of Okuma, the town leader told Norio Kimura to stop searching for the missing and start caring for the living.

Sahena's daughter moved here to the Japanese Alps, where the brisk air and the snowcapped mountains made radiation and tsunamis difficult to imagine. Kimura has traded farming for a guest house he's planning to open. His daughter Mayu talks about her mother more than her missing sister and doesn't ask why her father continues searching for her. Their new mountain home is 2,000 ft above the perils of the sea and 180 m from the Fukushima plant. Ghost towns surround the plant now, but 3 years later, there are still more than 4,000 workers there. All of them wearing layers of protection. Because of the exposure to radiation, the men in this building are only allowed to work 2 and 1/2 hours a day. They're not producing any electricity. They're just cleaning up.

>> Were TCO workers adequately trained to handle the emergency? >> I don't think so. Within months of the accident, Yawichi Fabashi, a former newspaper editor, headed an investigation into what went wrong and why. It was the only investigation not sponsored by the government, and its conclusions were brutal. >> I was very much concerned about uh the government uh not telling the truth to the public. >> The revelations in Fabashi's report added to the public's anger and dismay. He wrote that from the beginning the government had conspired with the industry to convince people that nuclear power is safe. >> So the government effort at the time was to convince people that there was nothing to worry about. >> Exactly. Nothing to worry about. Don't worry. Okay. Even don't prepare for that uh the uh uh severe accident. Okay. because that would cause that unnecessary unease and unnecessary misunderstanding >> and there's no reason to prepare.

>> No reason to prepare. So this avoidance ultimately translated into unpreparedness. >> Mother nature threw a real curveball to the Japanese with that huge tsunami. >> Last year, TCO hired American nuclear engineer Lake Barrett as an adviser. Barrett directed the cleanup at the Three-Mile Island nuclear plant after its accident in 1979. >> It's estimated that the cleanup is going to take 30 to 40 years. To a layman, that sounds very very long to me. That's that's not long at all. That that's what I would expect for that uh kind of thing. It's a huge challenge. It's it's a big on-site mess that they have to clean up and it's going to take them decades to do it. It took us 10 years to do Three-Mile Island and Three-Mile Island accident was much simpler uh than they have at Fukushima. >> Are they where you thought they would be 3 years later? >> I'd hope they'd be further along. Uh it's been challenging technically. It's been challenging culturally and politically for them. Uh but they're making good progress now.

>> Sounds like you're being a little diplomatic. >> Well, decision-m process in Japan is is complicated. Decision making in Japan requires consensus and reaching consensus often takes a very long time. The most difficult job will be to dismantle the melted reactors, but radiation is too high for workers to get there. For now, TCO is inundated with groundwater that leaks into the reactors and gets contaminated. Every day, a 100,000 gallons of radioactive water has to be pumped out before it reaches the ocean. TCO is filling storage tanks almost as fast as it can build them, and they're notorious for leaking. Another enormous cleanup is happening outside the plant. Entire communities are being cleared of contaminated materials that will have to be stored for generations. This part of Japan is known for its agriculture, but the only crop growing now is the multitude of black bags holding the radioactive waste, filling the empty spaces in towns like Okuma.

>> Now, some of the kids from Okuma live and go to schools 70 miles away. How many of you would like to go back to Okuma? Everybody. How many of you think you will go back to Okuma? >> What's keeping you from going back to Okuma now? You can tell me. >> Because there is a lot of radiation. There's a lot of radioactive material there. >> These kids will be middle-aged before the cleanup is finished. Their homes could have been rebuilt quickly if it had just been an earthquake and a tsunami. It's the man-made disaster which will take decades to repair. This is the class that Norio Kimuro's daughter would have been in if she were alive. Her friend Cura remembers they ate lunch together. >> Where is she now?

>> In Oka. >> She's lonely being alone in the town of Oka all this time. I think she must be lonely. About a third of the residents from Okuma decided to stick together and moved into what the government called temporary housing. Temporary is lasting a long time. The three generations of Kimuras that once lived together are now split apart. Norio and his daughter live in Nagono, 5 hours away from his mother Tamoe. She lives in the temporary housing alone in a cold and cramped room furnished with photographs. The Kimas, like many Japanese, have a strong connection to their dead and feel obliged to help them be at peace. As long as the dead are in limbo, so are the living. >> You've lost so much of your family. Why aren't you together with your son now?

I'm with my husband's ashes now. >> Once I find a proper place to put him, I'd like to go to Nagono. >> What do you think the right place will be? >> Our family cemetery in Oka is contaminated with radiation. Now, >> I could come back two or three times a year to burn incense for him, but my grandchild would not be able to come. I don't want to keep him or his grandchild whom he used to adore so much can't even come to visit. 10 times a year, Norio Kimura visits his ancestors in the family cemetery, a place where he thought he would be laid to rest one day and where his children would come to visit him. But he won't find any peace, he says, until after he finds Yuna. Do you think there's any chance you'll ever find your daughter?

>> I know that the chance is very slim. But no matter how slim the chance is, I still cannot stop. From the outside, looking in, I know that this is very unlikely. But I still can't stop even if I cannot ever find her. Suppose, just suppose that nuclear waste, those tons of radioactive debris that we thought had been buried forever, suddenly exploded and those deadly particles were carried in the air over a large inhabited area. The plot for a new disaster movie starring Jane Fonda? No. There is now overwhelming evidence that such a disaster has already taken place in the Soviet Union, although the Soviets have never confirmed it. For over 20 years, the Kistium disaster was kept secret from the general public in the west until Dr. Zores Medvidev, a Soviet scientist now living in exile in London told this story. When I first came to the west, I was very much surprised to find that nobody really uh knew here about this disaster which was the largest nuclear disaster until now.

As far I know uh more than several hundred people died very shortly after the disaster few weeks after disaster and several thousand died uh during few years after the nuclear accident according to Medvidev happened in the winter of 1957-58 in the southern Euros. This area industrialized since the days of Peter the great was chosen for the Soviet nuclear weapons program after World War II. The site is between the cities of Swedllos and Sherabinsk, a distance of about 120 mi near the town of Kishtim. The accident was known locally, says Medvidev, as the Kishtium disaster. >> This area is still contaminated and will remain contaminated for uh probably for two centuries from now. >> Here is what Meddev speculates happened. The first nuclear reactor was built in the Euros near Kiston to obtain plutonium for a nuclear bomb.

The product of that reactor was taken to a special chemical plant where the plutonium was extracted. Remember, the Russians at this time were behind the Americans and hustling to catch up. They had to deliver that first bomb in time for Stalin's 70th birthday. A complex mixture of dangerous radioactive substances then remained in liquid form. That nuclear waste had now to be disposed of, millions of gallons of it. The Russians, in their haste to catch up, simply buried this waste down bore holes and mineral workings which are numerous in the Euro mountains. Then in the winter of 1957-58, that highle radioactive waste spontaneously exploded. It was a small explosion as such explosions go, but the radioactivity it released was devastating. In the late 1950s, the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States was at its height. Here in Washington, US intelligence agencies were intent upon penetrating the Soviet's weapon systems. Now, was it possible that the Soviets, no matter how much they might have wanted to, kept secret an accident of such magnitude?

>> In 1977, prompted by Medvidev's claim, Ralph Nater and Richard Pollock, director of NATO's anti-uclear research program, Critical Mass, applied through the Freedom of Information Act to all the intelligence agencies in this country for any material they might have. Their search drew a blank until they received an envelope containing 14 documents from the CIA. How long did it take you to get these? >> About two months. >> The CIA has withheld 16 further documents and some they released were so sanitized as to be nonsensical. But one document reveals that the CIA received this report in 1958. Quote, all stores in commenced Gurowski which sold milk, meat, and other food stuffs were closed as a precaution against radiation exposure. The people in Kmencowski grew hysterical with fear with an incidence of unknown mysterious diseases breaking out. >> The chief of scientific intelligence for the CIA from 1955 until 1963 was Herbert Scoville.

>> And when did you first hear about the possibility of a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union? Well, I can't remember the precise dates, but sometime in the late 50s, but these reports were not very high level or certainly not confirmed. And we were intrigued by it, but it didn't wasn't a major issue at that point. >> I think you'll understand when I say it's difficult in the context of the present to believe that you weren't more interested at that time. >> Would they not have asked the question, what the hell is going on in there? What's all this about? Well, I I'm sure the question was asked, well, how did this accident occur and what happened? Uh, but you know, in those days, one wasn't worried that much about nuclear accidents. And I think one did not sense that this was anything like this on the scale that now it looks as though it was. But the most interesting evidence of a Soviet nuclear disaster was available for all Western scientists to see as far back as the early 60s. Not secreted in any classified intelligence files, but openly published, although buried, in Soviet scientific journals. Medvidev personally knew about the accident through his friendship with Soviet colleagues who were sent to conduct experiments on the contaminated site.

But it was to this Soviet scientific literature that he turned to prove that his claim was not science fiction. I was quite confident that I'd be able to find what other people be not able to find because very few people as I found really read Russian literature here in the west. They think that Russian science is very inferior and they don't read many journals which are available here >> scientific journals. >> Scientific journals. So I started to study this journal and I knew many names of people who worked there and I knew that they would publish something about this. Medv set about piecing together a scientific jigsaw puzzle. He found articles that were written in such a way as to disguise the fact that they were describing an accident. But it soon became clear that the levels of radiation were so large that they could not have just been created for experimental purposes. Not all Western scientists failed to read the Soviet literature and we found one nuclear physicist in London for whom Medvidev's revelations came as no surprise. But then we got the impression that nothing could surprise the brilliant and eccentric Dr. Jes Bradley.

For the last 25 years, he has probably read more Soviet scientific publications than anyone else. Because as a sort of part-time hobby, he has officially translated thousands of these Russian works into English for governments and foundations in Britain and the United States. >> What are these papers? >> Uh these papers are from the journal called atomnia in air gear which is published uh by uh the Soviet authorities the state commission on atomic energy and they deal with the contamination of two lakes. Now, you don't think that a knowledgeable scientist can read and digest these papers and not believe that this accident was caused by nuclear waste? >> I find it incredible that a competent scientist could reach any other conclusion from these papers. >> The scientific community in the United States at first greeted Dr. Medvidz claims with nothing short of derision. reactions ranged from the opinion that no such accident as he described could have been possible to disbelief that even if an accident such as he described had occurred that the Soviet Union would have been able to keep it secret for so long. But then a team of scientists at the Oakidge National Laboratory, Tennessee, did their own analysis of the Soviet scientific literature. And in a federal report published in early 1980, they unmistakably concluded that the Soviet Union had suffered a major nuclear waste accident.

Dr. John Trabulan and colleagues confirmed Medvidev's findings, but they suggested from additional evidence that the possible presence of a chemical, ammonium nitrate, could have caused the waste to explode. This seems more likely than Medbedv's own theory that a small nuclear reaction in the waste produced a massive steam explosion. The Oakidge group has added a chilling clue in this scientific detective story. On maps of the southern eurals before 1958, this L-shaped area, which received the heaviest contamination, was shown to have 30 communities, each with up to 2,000 inhabitants. On maps printed after 1958, those 30 communities have completely disappeared. If such an accident had happened in the United States, there would have been no shortage of eyewitnesses. But that area of the Soviet Union is closed to foreigners and few Jews, the only Soviet citizens who might be allowed to immigrate, live there.

Nevertheless, in recent years, several immigrants have come forward with strange reports. Michael Middleman now lives in Nashville, Tennessee. Although his home in the Soviet Union was in Moscow, he traveled widely in the Eurals and one day took the railroad from Sherbab to Swerlos. >> You were riding on a train. >> Mhm. >> And you're looking out the window of the train. >> Yes. >> And tell me what you saw that caught your attention. Well, uh it was uh I would say it was a summer time or beginning of the fall and everything around was green and nice and very quiet and uh all of a sudden uh this very strange area began. I said what's what's wrong? It was uh absolutely dead forest. I cannot explain this color. This this was a color of death. >> It seems hard to believe that such a nuclear accident really just escaped our attention. Recall it was just outside Spurlok that U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in 1960. His was one of a series of U2 photographing spy missions that had started in 1958.

Surely, you may say, those U2 photographs would have revealed some signs of the accident. In retrospect, that could have happened, Air Force intelligence sources told us, but at the time, they say, "We simply failed to piece all of the evidence together." Ralph Nater and others refused to accept this, charging a deliberate cover up on the part of government agencies anxious not to spread any bad news about nuclear energy. >> The critical question is, what is the CIA doing covering up a nuclear accident in Russia from the American people? The second question is in as much as the Soviet leadership knew all about this accident, who is the CIA keeping this secret from? Well, I don't I don't think that was the case. I don't think we helped to keep the so the thing secret. As a matter of fact, if we had had really hard information that there had been a disastrous accident, I think that the CIA would probably have loved to play games with it and would have tried to build it up to make the Soviets look very bad knowing the attitude of uh people who are in the covert uh action game. I think that's would have been the approach rather than vice versa.

>> Let's review what the situation was. The CIA definitely knew something had happened. uh that something probably had happened. >> Probably had happened. Do you remember whether it would have gone to the Atomic Energy Commission or not? >> Oh, it certainly would have gone to the Atomic Energy Commission. >> Uh well, I I have a copy of a paper uh in which um it was being translated for the United States Atomic Energy Commission as a specially commissioned translation at the time when this journal was in any case being routinely translated into English and published. >> All right. In 1963, someone from the American Atomic Energy Commission requested a special translation. >> Yes. From whom I don't know. I haven't checked whether it's my translation or not. I haven't uh I could obtain it and check that. But it was so that they knew that this was a significant paper. >> The AEC is now part of the Federal Department of Energy. We have talked with dozens of officials who were with the AEC in the late 1950s and 1960s. Officials who should have known about this Soviet nuclear disaster. They told us they did not. Regardless of where the real blame lies, it certainly was the AEC's business to have known about an accident involving nuclear power. And as we have seen, it was possible for them to have found out.

>> In the last uh eight years, there has been mounting public debate on nuclear power. That debate would have occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s in that critical period when the the government and the utilities had were deciding to go full blast with nuclear power plants around the country. If our government had disclosed evidence about this radioactive waste uh catastrophe in the Soviet Union, made it public and informed the people about the real risks of nuclear power. >> Do you think catastrophe is the right word? Is that a fair description or would accident be better? >> Let's put it this way. The nuclear industry has its own dictionary. They call accidents incidents. This was more than an accident. This was a catastrophe. It contaminated about a thousand square kilometers in the Soviet Union. It obliterated from the map 30 towns and villages. It inflicted untold casualties on the Russian people. It forced the evacuation permanently of several hundred thousand people. And it made the area uninhabitable. If that's not a catastrophe, I don't know what that word means in the English language.

>> Let's say that it happened in the United States and not in the Soviet Union. Let us suppose that instead of Chelinskaya, it was uh New York, New Jersey that we lost or Cleveland or Los Angeles or Seattle, Washington or Miami, Florida. What would we say? Well, there was only one accident. Can we afford to lose a city like that? Can we afford to lose a thousand square kilometers as the Soviets did? As we in the United States continue to invest in nuclear energy, such as this nuclear power plant under construction on Long Island, New York, should we really care about a nuclear disaster that occurred on a cold wintry day, not unlike this one, a continent away and over 20 years ago? The Soviets, after all, were incredibly careless. Their technology primitive. We are told it couldn't happen again. However, disposal of nuclear waste, waste that remains radioactive for centuries, is still the biggest problem dogging nuclear energy programs today. As the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has said, a nuclear accident anywhere in the world is a nuclear accident everywhere in the world.