Customer Reviews

Nightline:Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster [VHS]

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I was disappointed with this video. I am a professor at a liberal arts college and wanted to show my Environmental Science class a video about the Chernobyl disaster. I was hoping to find a documentary that explained the disaster in detail, provided a critical assessment about what went wrong, and discussed the impacts of the disaster on people in the local and regional area. Given the limited description of the video and a positive review from another reviewer I hoped that this would be what I wanted.

Unfortunately, what the video shows is an ABC Nightline commentary about the disaster recorded on April 28, 1986 (3 days after the disaster). That is, it is simply a 30 min newscast recorded a very short time after the accident.

The quality of the reporting is very good considering it was made so soon after the event and during a time when the western press knew almost nothing about what was happening behind the iron curtain. However, almost all of the commentary is speculative. Indeed, they don't even mention the name Chernobyl (though it does appear on one map late in the program).

Thus, from my point of view this video was useless. From a teaching perspective, it is an interesting piece of video and could be useful as part of a journalism course. From a personal perspective, it is kind of interesting to see an old newscast, but it gets a bit tedious considering the speakers know essentially nothing about what happened.

Overall, this video is an interesting anachronism, but in no way will it help you gain a better understanding of the Chernobyl disaster.

Geez, what a huge and expensive disappointment. Don't be fooled by that other review saying that this is a detailed description of what happened.

First of all, it's only 23 minutes long, second; it contains no actual footage of what happened, no footage of the afternath; just a newsbroadcast, with an animation of a meltdown.

This is the actual broadcast of 1986, just days after the disaster, when nothing was a fact, and there only where rumours about what happened, because Russia kept silence.

After a long time, the world got to know what actually happened and how big the disaster was, and what the consequences were, but none of this is included on this tape. As I said, it contains a short news broadcast of a period when they didn't even know exactly what had happened. So there are only speculations about what could have happened, and what consequences it COULD have, when indeed that happened what they think had happened. But nothing was certain at that point.

Very disappointing and boring!