Chernobyl

Sunny

Sunny

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Maryland
Has anybody else watched the HBO miniseries about the Chernobyl disaster? It's an excellent depiction of what can happen when a lying government covers up the danger it is putting its population in, and then covers up the cause of the disaster. Fascinating stuff; the writing and acting are so good that it's even made understandable to a lay person like me.

At the end, the credits give some incredible information about the aftermath. It is impossible to say how many people died in the disaster, as some died from the original explosion, and many others died from radiation sickness and radiation-induced cancer several years later. But most were much too young for it to be "natural causes." The Soviets did their best to lie their way out of it and cover up how and why the disaster happened, which was due to their own stubbornness and stupidity. So, estimates are from 4,000 deaths up to 95,000 deaths. The official Soviet tally is 34 deaths.

The series stars Jared Harris and Emily Watson as two truth-seeking scientists who exposed what happened. If you get HBO, don't miss it.
 

Sunny said:
..... It is impossible to say how many people died in the disaster, as some died from the original explosion, and many others died from radiation sickness and radiation-induced cancer several years later. But most were much too young for it to be "natural causes." The Soviets did their best to lie their way out of it and cover up how and why the disaster happened, which was due to their own stubbornness and stupidity......
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The Russians have produced their own version of this and the incident is blamed on American spies who sabatoged the facility.
 
C'est Moi said:
Actually it was an HBO/Sky UK production and all the cast are British. I was very impressed with the production and I'm a fan of Jared Harris.


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Have to admit the trailer looks pretty good [thanks for sharing] I have D-TV...I'll look and see if it is available?
 
I haven't seen this particular production, but I've seen others. One thing I've always wondered about was the radiation will be around for centuries, how do you keep people out of that contaminated area say ,1500 years from now, when there's no Russia or whatever comes after, and what what ever comes after that. What if the ancient Egyptians had nuclear power, and they had a "Chernobyl", how would people today be able to read their hieroglyphics telling us the area was contaminated? How would we know about it after all this time, with the rise and fall of civilizations.
 
Back in late March, 1979, here in my part of the state of Pennsylvania, we almost had our own Chernobyl when the accident occurred at Three Mile Island nuclear power facility, which is located just outside of Harrisburg in the small town of Middletown.

The irony was that at the time of the accident, a movie out of Hollywood was about to be released, which depicted such an accident. The name of the movie is “The China Syndrome.” A lot of the facts talked about in the movie were actually factual and very similar to the incidents that took place during the several days following.

As a State Policeman and as my luck would have it, I had been serving my 2-year duty to the Governor’s protection team, I can attest to the fact that we were all very busy for those 10+ days in the Governor’s mansion and in the Capitol. My wife told me several days later that I was averaging only 2-3 hours a night of sleep. This was something that I wasn’t aware about. I think I was running on pure adrenaline and coffee. Lots of coffee.

The main issue was that the water level fell below the safety perimeter exposing the reactor’s core. This could have caused what scientists refer to as “The China Syndrome.” It’s named that because when the core explodes due to no water covering the core to cool it and so when (if) the core explodes, the explosion goes down and not up. The explosion is powerful enough that it is commonly referred to as blowing the hole deep enough to go all the way to China.

The president at the time was Jimmy Carter, who, along with our Honorable Governor, Richard Thornburg, visited the plant. This was done to help ease the minds of the residents as a way of demonstrating that all was safe. Let the truth be known, it was not 100% secure during their visit.

This was my first ever interaction with the Secret Service. I was very impressed with their professionalism. I was also impressed with the President’s and the Governor’s respect and kindnesses that they both showed to the employees of the facility and the security teams in place.
 
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911 said:
Back in late March, 1979, here in my part of the state of Pennsylvania, we almost had our own Chernobyl when the accident occurred at Three Mile Island nuclear power facility, which is located just outside of Harrisburg in the small town of Middletown.

The irony was that at the time of the accident, a movie out of Hollywood was about to be released, which depicted such an accident. The name of the movie is “The China Syndrome.” A lot of the facts talked about in the movie were actually factual and very similar to the incidents that took place during the several days following.

As a State Policeman and as my luck would have it, I had been serving my 2-year duty to the Governor’s protection team, I can attest to the fact that we were all very busy for those 10+ days in the Governor’s mansion and in the Capitol. My wife told me several days later that I was averaging only 2-3 hours a night of sleep. This was something that I wasn’t aware about. I think I was running on pure adrenaline and coffee. Lots of coffee.

The main issue was that the water level fell below the safety perimeter exposing the reactor’s core. This could have caused what scientists refer to as “The China Syndrome.” It’s named that because when the core explodes due to no water covering the core to cool it and so when (if) the core explodes, the explosion goes down and not up. The explosion is powerful enough that it is commonly referred to as blowing the hole deep enough to go all the way to China.

The president at the time was Jimmy Carter, who, along with our Honorable Governor, Richard Thornburg, visited the plant. This was done to help ease the minds of the residents as a way of demonstrating that all was safe. Let the truth be known, it was not 100% secure during their visit.

This was my first ever interaction with the Secret Service. I was very impressed with their professionalism. I was also impressed with the President’s and the Governor’s respect and kindnesses that they both showed to the employees of the facility and the security teams in place.
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Three Mile Island.....scary time.
 
Nuclear power for general public energy? ........Like having an excessively powerful hand grenade in control of persons' who have jumped ahead of the full knowledge they need of all the dangerous drawbacks of it....., with their fingers crossed?
 


I don't know if it's the same production as we saw in the UK, but I commented on that on a UK site




"As I suspected, difficult to watch, poorly lir, too dark, unreadable subtitles and no audio description.



From what I could make out, not my cup of tea. It was "factually correct " like Jesus Christ Superstar was based on a true story! There was a place called Chernobyl, and there was a meltdown there. There the similarities end.

By the the mid 80s even the Russians were more professional than the bunch of hysterical nincompoops depicted here, and a gross slander on those who stayed at their posts knowing they were doomed.

A sensationalised account with an eye to ratings,and little relevance to nuclear engineering as I know it.

Watch it for what is is, a good yarn, but read no significance into it."


Just as an aside, I was in mainland Europe at the time and was involved in monitoring fallout, so have some indirect involvement.
 
Three Mile Island.....scary time.

The scientists that had examined the core after the "accident" as it was called, later said that the core was less than one hour away from total meltdown, which would have devastated the area for about a 50-mile radius. These are all predictions that the nuclear scientists made during their examination of the reactor's core.

The Governor had informed the security team that he was 75% convinced that he should declare an evacuation, but he was afraid of the panic it would have caused. Schools and businesses had already been shut down for two days during the episode. The main issue with NOT evacuating was that the Governor was given information by his Emergency Management Team (equivalent to FEMA) that to get the number of people out of the area living in a 50-mile radius would have been pandemonium, so he decided to stick with what the scientists from the Atomic Nuclear Commission was telling him that if they could get water back to the core and get it cooled, they could prevent the core from exploding. So, they restarted the pumps, which was against their better judgment, but decided to do it anyway, and the water did indeed refill the reactor and cool the core. The citizens in the surrounding areas did not learn how close they came to being annihilated until months after the accident.

There were two separate units at Three Mile Island. Unit Two was destroyed and later disassembled and hauled away to be stored at an unknown facility for scientists to be able to do research. (Yeah, "research." That's what they want us to believe.)
 
Holly, I had to agree to let Digital Spy "spy" on me, furnishing them with who knows how many cookies, so I didn't go there.

Laurie, I have no idea of how accurate the film is. Here is one comment I found on IMDB:

[h=2]User Reviews[/h]


Incredible 21 May 2019 | by jfirebug – See all my reviews
My husband grew up near Kyiv and his father drove one of the buses that evacuated the civilians from Pripyat. I have heard his stories of the disaster; the people's concerns, fears and sacrifices. We watch this together and he is amazed at it's authenticity. The set detail, the way the Soviet regime hierarchy functioned, the denial and secrecy surrounding the disaster. He tried (as he usually does when watching a Western production based in or about that part of the world) to find errors or inconsistencies but has not been able to - yet.

The acting is impeccable by all, the filming is top notch, the sounds used to heighten the tension versus music. The way they are able to capture that exact feeling of anxiety, horror, disgust and sadness all rolled into one is admirable.

Only watched two episodes but if the series continues at this pace it will go down as one of the best ever. This story has been waiting to be told and there is hands down no one better than HBO to do it.... BRAVO.


​
 
Laurie said:


I don't know if it's the same production as we saw in the UK, but I commented on that on a UK site




"As I suspected, difficult to watch, poorly lir, too dark, unreadable subtitles and no audio description.



From what I could make out, not my cup of tea. It was "factually correct " like Jesus Christ Superstar was based on a true story! There was a place called Chernobyl, and there was a meltdown there. There the similarities end.

By the the mid 80s even the Russians were more professional than the bunch of hysterical nincompoops depicted here, and a gross slander on those who stayed at their posts knowing they were doomed.

A sensationalised account with an eye to ratings,and little relevance to nuclear engineering as I know it.

Watch it for what is is, a good yarn, but read no significance into it."


Just as an aside, I was in mainland Europe at the time and was involved in monitoring fallout, so have some indirect involvement.
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From your "review," it wasn't the same. This production is in English and there were no subtitles nor poor sound. It was extremely well done, and did not make the Soviets appear bumbling or inept--just furtive and underhanded. Which they are, and were much moreso during the Cold War era.
 
Sunny said:
Holly, I had to agree to let Digital Spy "spy" on me, furnishing them with who knows how many cookies, so I didn't go there.

Laurie, I have no idea of how accurate the film is. Here is one comment I found on IMDB:

User Reviews



Incredible 21 May 2019 | by jfirebug – See all my reviews
My husband grew up near Kyiv and his father drove one of the buses that evacuated the civilians from Pripyat. I have heard his stories of the disaster; the people's concerns, fears and sacrifices. We watch this together and he is amazed at it's authenticity. The set detail, the way the Soviet regime hierarchy functioned, the denial and secrecy surrounding the disaster. He tried (as he usually does when watching a Western production based in or about that part of the world) to find errors or inconsistencies but has not been able to - yet.

The acting is impeccable by all, the filming is top notch, the sounds used to heighten the tension versus music. The way they are able to capture that exact feeling of anxiety, horror, disgust and sadness all rolled into one is admirable.

Only watched two episodes but if the series continues at this pace it will go down as one of the best ever. This story has been waiting to be told and there is hands down no one better than HBO to do it.... BRAVO.


​
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Sunny--Holly's link says that Emily Watson's character did not exist but was created as an amalgomation of several people (which was also stated at the end of the film), and Legasov was not actually at the trial but they took "dramatic license" with that to expedite the outcome of the trial.
 
This movie was based on the book Voices From Chernobyl, by Russian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature.
 
The Russians have a terrible record with nuclear energy. I watched a movie, “K-19, The Widowmaker,” which was based on a true story about a Soviet ballistic missile nuclear submarine that quit working due to the core in the reactor being exposed.

Quite a few died trying to make repairs and others died later suffering with nuclear radiation poisoning.

My dad told me that when we dropped the A-Bomb on Hiroshima, anyone that was within very close proximity to the blast was disintegrated (vaporized).
 
It was extremely well done, and did not make the Soviets appear bumbling or inept--just furtive and underhanded. Which they are, and were much moreso during the Cold War era.
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C'est Moi, good description. That was exactly the impression I got from the show - furtive and underhanded. The Soviet officials were much more concerned with covering their a** than protecting their people. And many died (horribly) as a result.

I did see that description of the Emily Watson character being a combination of many scientists. Probably dramatic license; it would have been pretty uninteresting to have many different scientists each offering a sentence or two about it.
 
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