• Hello good afternoon, I am reporter Yesenia and today we are going to have

the opportunity to interview a person who witnessed what happened on April

26, 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

• What happened at Chernobyl?

• April 26, 1986 takes place in Ukraine along with Fukushima in Japan in 2011
as the most serious nuclear accident in nuclear accidents, thus being one of
the biggest environmental disasters in history.

• As an informative note the city and the plant were never directly related; at
the same time the plant was built, the city of Pripyat was also built in close
proximity for the plant's workers. On February 4, 1970, this city still housed
almost 50,000 people before the city was sealed and evacuated.

• We will now welcome Mr. Daniel who will answer a series of questions as well
as tell us about his experience.

Hello good afternoon, my name is Daniel Negrete and I was a chemical engineer at
the Chernobyl plant.

• To begin this interesting interview, tell us how all this started, how did you live
it at that moment?

Of course, it was a Saturday, April 26th, I was routinely doing chemical tests in the
laboratory and recently those days I visited the fourth reactor where the exposure
took place, that day an alarm to activate by an explosion in the plant, the reason for
this was the performance of a test already scheduled and authorized by Moscow a
day before.
Not just did an explosion occur that day, but a few seconds later a second explosion
blew the slab and the walls apart, throwing nuclear fuel out of the plant and creating
a layer of reactive dust in the atmosphere.

• Can you tell us what was your reaction or what was done by the personnel
who were at the plant that day?

After the first explosion we began to suspect that something bad would happen and
we began to take indications and signs that the security team was giving us, at that
moment we began to proceed whit caution and go down to the second floor, which
is where we were.

When the second explosion was heard all we did was kneel down, crouch down to
the ground and start crawling as some of the directions they did not give was to keep
us at ground level for a few moments, then give us more directions and take the
nearest evacuation routes and get out of the plant.

• And from that day until now, have you ever had any symptoms or after-effects
from all the chemicals and gases inhaled?

Well, for ago 36 years now after the explosion in ’86, I haven’t had any symptoms or
problems affecting my life, yet. Whit the exception I lost my left arm because of acids
falling on it.

• What an interesting and terrifying experience, I thank you for your time and
participation, thank you very much.

Thank you, see you later.