Chernobyl

**Benny Profane** · 05-30-2019, 03:57 PM

Originally Posted by Summit

Having studied this accident extensively from my former field of study, and having friends who became so when our family hosted them when they left Ukraine following the accident, I was quite excited to watch this series.

I've only watched episode one. It is well done. There is quite a bit of dramatic license from the technical standpoint, but whatever, so far it hasn't departed to unreality driving unreality. I'm excited to watch the rest.

My first thought was that it was a stroke of brilliance to start the storytelling at the moment of the explosions. There is so much story in the disaster, leading up to the explosion there were so many failures of design, management, culture, planning, and systems. But if you start telling the story at that moment of explosion there are just as many failures of just as many types following the explosion, and you don't have to explain nuclear engineering to understand most of those failures, and much more drama suitable to the big screen as opposed to black and white text.

The final episode, they tell me on the podcast, will explain the cause of the explosion as well as a short miniseries dealing with such a complex incident in history can. But, then again, who really knows the truth, as the contol room manager waiting for a lead bullet (as opposed to the trillion tiny bullets millions more were taking) said. Smoking like a train.

**TahoeJ** · 05-30-2019, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by detrusor

Hell even Reed College in Portland has a reactor. Does get much more left tree hugging than Reed! It really surprised me

Well, Berkeley's Livermore lab has a pretty sizable reactor and is one of the primary research labs in the country for all things nuclear, founded back in the early 50's. Left / tree-hugger doesn't necessarily mean anti-science. Ironically, one of their primary goals in the beginning was weapon-specific, hoping to compete with Los Alamos.

**billyk** · 05-30-2019, 05:14 PM

The Univ of Texas has a reactor (and there are some rumors there may be more than one), but it is in a secure location about 10 miles from the main campus.

The thing about the reactor at UW, anyone could just walk up to the building from outside and look directly down into the reactor pool through large windows on the outside of the building. It was an attempt to show how safe nuclear energy was.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Hall_Annex

This was before terrorism was much of a threat in the US, and before Three Mile Island, and Chernobyl, etc.

They actually had a Plutonium spill that caused a stir. Fairly minor, but still...

It was built in 1961, and shut down in 1988. I actually got to see it while it was still operating.

**Marshall Tucker** · 05-30-2019, 07:08 PM

I just stopped by to say we need a new phone.

**summit** · 05-31-2019, 08:30 AM

Just finished second episode. Great acting, creating amalgamation of real life character/events. Close enough for most of it. Terrible description of how fission works and beyond gross exaggeration of what would have happened if the corium hit a full bubbler pool. It would have been a catastrophe much worse than what happened. But orders of magnitude less bad than they described: no 30MT explosion, no destroying everything around, no making 300K sqmi permanently uninhabitable and displacing 60 million. That is some bullshit.

Apart from that, well done again.

My wife, an environmental engineer, struggled to believe the insanity of the Soviet CYA arrogant apparatchiks and eastern culture and seemingly insane decision making vs modern western safety engineering culture.

**Boissal** · 05-31-2019, 10:17 AM

Originally Posted by Summit

Just finished second episode. Great acting, creating amalgamation of real life character/events. Close enough for most of it. Terrible description of how fission works and beyond gross exaggeration of what would have happened if the corium hit a full bubbler pool. It would have been a catastrophe much worse than what happened. But orders of magnitude less bad than they described: no 30MT explosion, no destroying everything around, no making 300K sqmi permanently uninhabitable and displacing 60 million. That is some bullshit.

Apart from that, well done again.

My wife, an environmental engineer, struggled to believe the insanity of the Soviet CYA arrogant apparatchiks and eastern culture and seemingly insane decision making vs modern western safety engineering culture.

Your wife needs to listen to the podcast, the writer spends a lot of time explaining this behavior which is a bit hard to stomach as being real...
I think the poor explanations in general are meant to reinforce the fact that none of the people running the plant or associated with the program in general have any clue about what they're dealing with. Everyone is buying into the "happy safe atom" myth. Including the 25 y/o chief engineer and the party official who tells the fictional scientist (one of the 2 who has a clue about the exact nature of the problem) that he prefers his opinion to hers.

**summit** · 06-01-2019, 11:05 AM

3 & 4 were good but not as good as 1 & 2

The biorobot segment was intense! Having read the accounts, seen clips and pictures, the segment in the show really brought forth the intensity.

Culling the doggies was just awful.

I didn't remember them using coal miners to dig. I'll have to see if that was real. Once again some butchered technical explanations, but tolerable.

Some real bullshit: "the baby saved the mother by absorbing the radiation! Unborn babies are dying to protect their mothers!" FUCKING CONTRIVED PURE BULLSHIT

That's right up there with the "30 Megaton explosions! Will destroy all 3 remaining reactors! 60 million displaced forever!" Pure dramatic bullshit.

Still good TV.

**stuckathuntermtn** · 06-01-2019, 12:16 PM

Yeah, some things seemed a bit much.
The actual physics of it are fascinating though.

**Benny Profane** · 06-02-2019, 05:46 PM

Plenty of Fantasy in HBO’s ‘Chernobyl,’ but the Truth Is Real https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/a...nobyl-hbo.html

"The first thing to understand about the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” which concludes its five-part run on Monday, is that a lot of it is made up. But here’s the second, and more important, thing: It doesn’t really matter."

**SkiBall** · 06-02-2019, 06:07 PM

So tomorrow is the final Ep? Didn't realize it was so short. They should do a season 2 series following the aftermath.

**AK47bp** · 06-02-2019, 06:12 PM

Too late, Main character already killed himself.

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**SkiBall** · 06-02-2019, 06:14 PM

Aftermath. Implies after.

**Benny Profane** · 06-02-2019, 06:38 PM

The aftermath will be around a long time.

**SkiBall** · 06-02-2019, 06:41 PM

You are over-thinking it.

**summit** · 06-02-2019, 07:24 PM

Originally Posted by dunfree

in non-fiction "bloodlands" is a good coverage of the general history of brutality in that region over the mid 20th century

Bloodlands is an excellent book. It covers the Holodomor well amongst other things. keeps you turning the page even though it is heavy.

https://www.amazon.com/Bloodlands-Eu.../dp/0465031471

It would be good if everyone read it.

**billyk** · 06-03-2019, 12:34 AM

Originally Posted by Benny Profane

The aftermath will be around a long time.

Would it be safe to say that the aftermath happens sometime after pre-calculus?

**AK47bp** · 06-03-2019, 09:39 AM

Dude, aftermath implies after math. Calculus is math.

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**billyk** · 06-03-2019, 11:38 AM

Originally Posted by AK47bp

Dude, aftermath implies after math. Calculus is math.

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Isn’t that what I said? SOMETIME after pre-calculus. That would also include after calculus and after differential equations, but those don’t have “pre” in their names to contrast with “after”, so THEY ARE NOT AS FUNNY!

Don’t make me have to explain my humor again.

**t-the-east** · 06-03-2019, 12:03 PM

I’ve been avoiding this thread until I caught up, holy crap! Intense to say the least. Surprised it’s only 5 episodes.

**SkiBall** · 06-03-2019, 06:59 PM

I partied too hard in the calculus period. So aftermath, I started working 40+ hrs/wk instead.

**AK47bp** · 06-03-2019, 11:42 PM

So good.

Want more but I’m satisfied

Time for a cigarette.

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**billyk** · 06-03-2019, 11:56 PM

They even did a good job explaining the Xenon poisoning part, which I figured they’d just skip over. I had to watch this instead of the hockey game.

**buttahflake** · 06-04-2019, 06:11 AM

Originally Posted by AK47bp

So good.

Want more but I’m satisfied

Time for a cigarette.

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Wow, I hear ya. That was another heavy episode.
Jared Harris was incredible in this final show.
More like this please, HBO. No more dragon bullshit, more real life drama. Great mini-series

**ACH** · 06-04-2019, 09:04 AM

Originally Posted by AK47bp

So good.

Want more but I’m satisfied

Time for a cigarette.

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Lulz, yeah....

The whole thing was a very well executed build up to episode 5.

I haven't listened to the final podcast yet (artistic license or something that actually happened), however I felt a bit of satisfaction while watching the scene where the KGB chief was explaining to Valery how it would be like he never existed and nobody would ever know his story.