Inside the sarcophagus

I've found a documentary on YouTube about the sarcophagus. The picture quality is pretty inferior, as I have the feeling that it was ripped from a VHS tape. Most of the time its dark, but you can see some very creepy and chilling pictures as the scientists take readings inside the Chernobyl containment - known as the sarcophagus.

The commentary comes again with the old scare tale: "[...] under the right conditions this missing fuel could unleash a chain reaction [...]". The key phrase here is under the right circumstances, since I believe the chance of that is infinitesimal.
It is pretty funny how the commenter refers to the film crew wearing "western respiratory equipment". Yes, the far superior western respirators will shield you from gamma radiation. Probably the paper masks worn by the Russian scientists filters out the dust just as well... Another gross error in the commentary is "[...] Roentgens or Rads". Well these units are different and their definitions are not identical. Rad is obsolete anyways, its use is discouraged in scientific community. Sometimes I really have the feeling that journalists as other humanities graduates feel that science is complicated, so they have the right not to understand it and misreport things. See the health scares, reports on homeopathy and other funny stuff: Bad science...

Well, if you have not been put off by this introduction, here are the short movies. Note that the documentary has been split into two parts, due to the ten minutes limit on YouTube videos:

The Battle of Chernobyl

The Battle of Chernobyl is a recent documentary made by Discovery Channel. Describes both the catastrophe and the aftermath and presents well informed neutral picture of the events. Some documentaries in my opinion are very biased and too demagogue - but this is not one of those. Contains rare original footage, pictures and some good re-enactments. Michael Gorbachev is also interviewed several times throughout the movie. Playtime is over 90 minutes, but it's well worth watching if you are interested in the topic. Hopefully it will not be removed soon due to the (obvious) copyright issues.

Inside the Sarcophagus

There is a BBC Horizon documentary about Chernobyl on Google Video at the moment. I guess the upload violates every possible copyright law. Since it's been "dugg", I don't expect it to stay around much longer. But I highly reccomend to watch it.

There is some incredible archive footage I've not seen before. And believe me, I've seen a lot about Chernobyl. The film crew went inside the infamous reactor 4 control room and the sarcophagus. Even if I had the chance, there is no way I would do that. Especially with highly radioactive dust and extreme radiation around. Some of the footage makes me shiver, truly creepy: