While many people remember the final shutdown of Unit 3 on 15.12.2000, they often forget the disastrous days preceding it. One such day was 6th of December, when due to a leak in the KMPC loop (in room 404/1) an AZ-5 signal was triggered.
A camera crew from Slavutych was there on that day and recorded the efforts to stabilise the reactor in following minutes.
Hey people of this sub, David here,
About a year ago, I went to Slavutych to conduct interviews with a couple folks that lived in Pripyat or were related to the accident. It's more or less a thing I do in free time, however a bit more advanced than the "Armchair Historian" folks.
One of those people was a journalist who wanted to remain anonymous, he worked for the Central Television, the Ukrainian SSR branch of it.
In 1986, he was one of a few camera crews sent to record news reports in the zone. All those years later, he gave me 3 first (maybe second) generation tapes. 2 of the tapes contain news reports. However 1 tape (and the beginning of the 2nd) caught my eye.
They contained the long lost portions of the trial footage, which was caught by news camera crews for the trilogy documentary "Chernobyl: Two Colors of Time". Of course immediately, I enlisted the help of my (better technologically suited) friends and we ripped them.
As it turns out, the 2nd tape was overwritten with news reports, so the opening statement cuts out unexpectedly.
You can find the available footage at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VQRafXNkhM
Unfortunately I lost access to the channel a couple months back, so I can't upload the rest of the news reports on the tapes (although I posted 2 of pretty interesting news reports in December).
Since then, I have donated the tapes to the Ukrainian National Archives and I retain the digital rips on my PC.
I don't know of anyone owning other copies (the original cameraman and the narrator of the "Chernobyl: Two Colors of Time" trilogy both died in 2022), and most of the cameramen sent to Chernobyl are dead. I certainly doubt it, but perhaps this subreddit could find the missing portion of the footage!