I don't know the show you are talking about:

I am talking about actual voluntary suicide missions in chernobyl, like Lelechenko, Aleksandr Grigoryevich:

"in order to spare his younger colleagues from radiation exposure, he went through radioactive water and debris three times to switch off the electrolyzers and the feed of hydrogen to the generators, then tried to supply voltage to the feedwater pumps. "

And he and others did pretty much die right away.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...