Chernobyl (TV Mini Series)
Vichnaya Pamyat (2019)
Jared Harris: Valery Legasov
Photos
Quotes
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[last lines]
Valery Legasov : [on tape] To be a scientist is to be naive. We are so focused on our search for the truth we fail to consider how few actually want us to find it. But it is always there whether we see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn't care about our needs or wants, it doesn't care about our governments, our ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time. And this, at last, is the gift of Chernobyl. Where I once would fear the cost of truth, now I only ask: What is the cost of lies?
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Judge Milan Kadnikov : Professor Legasov, if you mean to suggest the Soviet State is somehow responsible for what happened, then I must warn you, you are treading on dangerous ground.
Valery Legasov : I've already trod on dangerous ground. We're on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They are practically what define us. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies.
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Boris Shcherbina : Do you remember that morning when I first called you? How unconcerned I was? I don't believe much that comes out of the Kremlin, but they told me they were putting me in charge of the cleanup. When they said it wasn't serious, I believed them. Do you know why?
Valery Legasov : Because they put you in charge.
Boris Shcherbina : I'm an inconsequential man, Valery. That's all I've ever been. I hoped that one day I would matter but I didn't. I just stood next to people who did.
Valery Legasov : There are other scientists like me. Any one of them could have done what I did. But you... everything we asked for, everything we needed; men, material, lunar rovers. Who else could have done these things? They heard me, but they listened to you. Of all the ministers and all the deputies. Entire congregation of obedient fools, they mistakenly sent the one good man. For God's sakes Boris, you were the one who mattered the most.
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KGB Chairman Charkov : What role did Khomyuk play in this?
Valery Legasov : None, she didn't know either.
KGB Chairman Charkov : After all you've said and done today, it would be curious if you chose this moment to lie.
Valery Legasov : I would think a man of your experience would know a lie when he hears one.
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Valery Legasov : [testifying] Dyatlov broke every rule we have. He pushed a reactor to the brink of destruction. He did these things believing there was a failsafe: AZ-5, a simple button to shut it all down. But in the circumstances he created, there wasn't. The shutdown system had a fatal flaw. At 1:23:40, Akimov engages AZ-5. The fully-withdrawn control rods begin moving back into the reactor. These rods are made of boron - which reduces reactivity - but not their tips. The tips are made of graphite, which accelerates reactivity.
Judge Milan Kadnikov : Why?
Valery Legasov : Why? For the same reason our reactors do not have containment buildings around them, like those in the West. For the same reason we don't use properly enriched fuel in our cores. For the same reason we are the only nation that builds water-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors with a positive void coefficient.
[pause]
Valery Legasov : It's cheaper.
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Boris Shcherbina : Do you know anything about this town, Chernobyl?
Valery Legasov : Not really, no.
Boris Shcherbina : They were mostly Jews and Poles. The Jews were killed in pogroms and Stalin forced the Poles out. Then the Nazis came, killed whoever was left. After the war, people came to live here anyway. They knew the ground under their feet was soaked in blood but they didn't care. Dead Jews, dead Poles, but not them. No one ever thinks it's going to happen to them. And here we are.
[shows Legasov the blood on the handkerchief into which he has been coughing]
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Valery Legasov : They will shoot me, Khomyuk.
Ulana Khomyuk : You told me to find out what happened. I spoke to dozens of people. Every word they said, I wrote down. Forty of these books: these are the ones who are still alive, these are the ones who are dead. They died rescuing each other: putting out fires, tending to the wounded. They didn't hesitate, they didn't waver, they simply did what had to be done.
Valery Legasov : So have I. So have I. I went willingly to an open reactor. So I've already given my life. Isn't that enough?
Ulana Khomyuk : No, I'm sorry, but it is not.
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Valery Legasov : In a just world, I'd be shot for my lies, but not for this, not for the truth.
KGB Chairman Charkov : Scientists... and your idiot obsessions with reasons. When the bullet hits your skull, what will it matter why?
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Valery Legasov : Every lie we tell incurs debt to the truth. Sooner or later this debt is paid.
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KGB Chairman Charkov : You will not communicate with anyone about Chernobyl ever again. You will remain so immaterial to the world around you that when you finally do die, it will be exceedingly hard to know that you ever lived at all.
Valery Legasov : What if I refuse?
KGB Chairman Charkov : Why worry about something that isn't going to happen?
Valery Legasov : [scoffs] "Why worry about something that isn't going to happen?" Oh, that's perfect. They should put that on our money.
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Valery Legasov : [as he begins his opening statement at the trial] But you don't need to be a nuclear scientist to understand what happened at Chernobyl. You only need to know this: there are essentially two things that happen inside a nuclear reactor.
[Legasov has 2 stacks of tiles in front of him, one red, the other blue]
Valery Legasov : The reactivity which generates the power goes up...
[he lifts a red tile]
Valery Legasov : ... or it goes down.
[he lifts a blue tile]
Valery Legasov : That's it. And all the operators do is maintain the balance.
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Valery Legasov : We're on dangerous ground right now. Because of our secrets and our lies, they're practically what define us. When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is, still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.
