They were wrong. She lives with her son in Kiev.
The actual railway bridge...
Of the people who watched from the railway bridge, it has been reported that none survived.
It is now known as "The Bridge of Death."
Photos of the miners...
400 miners worked around the clock for one month to prevent a total nuclear meltdown.
It is estimated that at least 100 of them died before the age of 40.
Photos of the interior of damaged reactor building 4...
It has been widely reported that the three divers who drained the bubbler tanks died as a result of their heroic actions.
In fact, all three survived after hospitalization. Two are still alive today.
Photos of liquidators...
Over 600,000 people were conscripted to serve in the Exclusion Zone.
Despite widespread accounts of sickness and death as a result of radiation, the Soviet government kept no official records of their fate.
High above the desolate countryside. Disintegrating boats rust in piles on the shores of the Pripyat River.
The contaminated region of Ukraine and Belarus,
known as the Exclusion Zone, ultimately encompassed 2,600 square kilometers.
Pripyat from above
Approximately 300,000 people were displaced from their homes. They were told this was temporary.
It is still forbidden to return.
Footage of Gorbachev presiding over a Labor Day parade...
Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the Soviet Union until its dissolution in 1991.
In 2006, he wrote, "The nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl... was perhaps the true cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union."
We move around the power plant as it exists now. The reactor building is entirely encased in a metal half-dome.
In 2017, work was completed on the New Safe Confinement at Chernobyl at a cost of nearly two billion dollars.
It is designed to last 100 years.
EXISTING FOOTAGE: Doctors examine children. Some are clearly sick.
Following the explosion, there was a dramatic spike in cancer rates across Ukraine and Belarus.
The highest increase was among children.
PRIPYAT - we move slowly toward: A MONUMENT. Two large, stone hands reaching up and cupping the reactor building.
We will never know the actual human cost of Chernobyl.
Most estimates range from 4,000 to 93,000 deaths. The official Soviet death toll, unchanged since 1987...
...is 31.
FADE TO BLACK: In memory of all who suffered and sacrificed.
END OF SERIES