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Well, are you?

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I work in the industry and have had many quals including radworker and contamination worker as the needs of my job dictated. I no longer have a need to touch nuclear materials directly so I gave up those quals long ago.

I've worked for civil and DoD nuclear programs and the national labs. I hate using the word expert but I do consider myself an SME in reactor design and also have a personal interest in the history of nuclear and the Soviet union itself. I work with the top scientists and engineers in the world on this subject and that is not an exaggeration.

I gave my opinion on the Chernobyl thing and thats all it is, an opinion, a point of discussion. I provided context and an alternative viewpoint.

GD of course being the hive of foaming at the mouth autists that it is can't handle a non-conforming opinion because it wasn't what the TV told them.

There is more to this world than what is shown on TV.

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Where is the thread that talks about the actual show without all the hand wringing and tech jargon?

This show is fucking outstanding!  This is the best show I've seen in a really long time thus far.  

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I work in the industry and have had many quals including radworker and contamination worker as the needs of my job dictated. I no longer have a need to touch nuclear materials directly so I gave up those quals long ago.

I've worked for civil and DoD nuclear programs and the national labs. I hate using the word expert but I do consider myself an SME in reactor design and also have a personal interest in the history of nuclear and the Soviet union itself. I work with the top scientists and engineers in the world on this subject and that is not an exaggeration.

I gave my opinion on the Chernobyl thing and thats all it is, an opinion, a point of discussion. I provided context and an alternative viewpoint.

GD of course being the hive of foaming at the mouth autists that it is can't handle a non-conforming opinion because it wasn't what the TV told them.

There is more to this world than what is shown on TV.

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I have said this many times before also.

When you take a pause and really think about what they did, it appears that this was unlikely to be an accident.

I believe there is a strong chance the Soviet government did this on purpose to undermine Western nuclear power efforts.

What most people don't realize is how much time and effort the NKVD and KGB spent on undermining and obstructing the nuclear programs in France, Germany, South Africa, Spain, the UK, the USA, etc. Through any means possible. I would not put this "accident" above them, in fact, it is fits perfectly with their normal MO.

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For my military brethren, this quote is the same context as
"I worked along side the United State's most elite Navy Seals and Army Special Forces. I have worked with several Teams, including Seal Team 6, so I believe I am a SME on Seal and Operator tactics and operations"

Doesn't want to mention MOS 92G for.....you know..... reasons

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This discussion of the possible explosion they're trying to avoid as of the end of Ep 2 interests me, because  the truth is we still cannot understand some of the shit water does under extremely high temperature.

Remember those videos with thermite dripping through a bucket into ice?   The crazy guy on the hydrolic press youtube channel even did one on a frozen lake.  Pretty good sized explosions from a melt mass equal to maybe a few tablespoons of molten material at less than half the temperature of the Chernobyl melt.  And the guys of Mythbusters said no one knows wtf is happening, although there are some theories.   I think its a temporary confinement that lets water get into some sort of extreme superheated state followed by a BLEVE explosion.

When I was in college a girlfriend's roommate nearly blew up their kitchen putting full sized tea leaves into an old 50s style screw on lid teapot.   The leaves floated up and plugged the teaspout, and when the pressure got high enough it popped off the knob from the screw top letting the entire 3 or so cups of water instantly boil in the container.  It blew the top off like shrapnel, blew the vent hood off their kitchen stove, and shot bits of metal through the ceiling.    SHe said it sounded like dynamite.

No add in that there was zirconium from the fuel cladding in that melt, and that Zirconium is a catalyst for popping hydrogen and oxygen atoms apart at high tempurature so you can add a hydrogen explosion to the mix too.    It would not have been small, but not as large as supposed by the made-up scientist.

One thing that's most interesting is that the fallout from whatever sized explosion it would have been.   That was the bad part.

The little Uranium bomb we popped over Hiroshima had about 55 pounds of Uranium.    A mass equal to the dime in your pocket actually fissioned, the rest was just bathed for an instant in an insane neutron flux and them blown to pieces and spread.

Now, remember those fuel bundles at Chernobyl (they look like a cluster of rods) EACH have over 300 pounds of Uranium.   And there are like 1700 of those bundles  in the RBMK reactor type.    That is a whole lot of nuclear material, all angry and saturated with daughter nucleotide products from the fission that are insanely radioactive.  The amount of shit that could have gone airborne if that mass actually plopped into a relatively confined pool of water... yikes.

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This show is fantastic. I was planning on ditching HBO after GoT but we're hanging onto it now. So good.

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Is it safe to say that the most significant event of the last century was Chernobyl?  Its only not-that significant to the world because it worked out.  If it hadn't?

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You have to understand that the $235 billion number is completely made up by westerners. From their perspective, this was not a major event, it did not consume any major resources, the cost was a single RBMK core and a few lives and some equipment (trivial). They continued to operate the rest of the reactors at the plant and their nuclear program went on as if nothing had happened.

You are talking about a country that displaced or killed millions of its own people for little or no reason... routinely.

This was a MAJOR strategic win against the western economies for them long term. The short term economic losses for them were cheap. You have to understand how badly Germany and the UK have been crippled by the loss of their nuclear programs. Same with South Africa and Spain. It was an enormous blow.

Whats funnier is the Soviets didn't even pay for most of the cleanup. Westerners did. You are viewing this from the perspective of a capitalist who puts a monetary value on liability. That is laughable to the Soviet government. They had no liability.

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I'm thinking the megaton level explosion and the visible ionization above the reactor in air are a little over the top but that's really picking nits...overall I think they've done a good job.

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Reviews from IMDB:

User Reviews

I highly recommend this film!
10 May 2019 | by natashapekar – See all my reviews
Hi. I'm from Kiev, Ukraine. I was born in 1983 and I was 2 and a half years when the Chernobyl catastrophe happened. I remember 1980s and I can tell that the authors of this film made a GREAT job to show every detail of what the world look for is in the times of Soviet union. The telephones, the clothes, the haircuts, the cracked paint on the window sills, even the door glass is similar to what I remember. There are couple of things which seemed weird to me: firefighters didn't have the red stars on their helmets, and most of the time people use the short forms of the names when they talk to each other (Vasya, not Vasiliy, Lyuda, not Lyudmila). But the most important thing that this film shows is that the soviet authoritiies lied to people about this catastrophe all the time. For example, in Kiev which is 130 km from Chernobyl, nobody knew about the high levels of radiation till the middle of May, they even held a parade on the first of May, when the level of radiation in Kiev was 100 times higher than normal (iodine131 isotope) and nobody gave us the iodine pills. Everyone who tried to tell the truth was called the provocateur and could even be fired from work. I highly recommend to watch this film. This is a tribute to all the heroes who lost their lives in a radioactive flame and saved all of us from death.

Unbelievable
alexander-phoenix14 May 2019
I'm Russian. Amazing work! Newer, you hear this, never ever before western cinematography made such authentic film. I speak about details: cars, kitchens, clothes...

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First of all, it didn't kill 50k people and it sure as fuck didn't "kill a continent". Thats pure hyperbole and quite childish to say.

It killed a few dozen people. As far as industrial accidents go, the body count wasn't impressive.

Secondly, you don't know shit about the NKVD/KGB. You have no idea the evil they did. Its all public information now. Perhaps you should read more.

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I'm watching it now.  That's pure nightmare fuel.  Holy hell.

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https://www.history.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_700/MTYzNjQzMDI4OTA3NTAxNTA1/ludmilla_ignatenko_chernobyl_key_players_gettyimages-542876250.webp

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I'm not tracking how they got to a multiple mega ton explosion from the potential steam explosion in the bubbler pools.  Big and bad sure. Multiple times more radiation released..yeah. but I'm not seeing the yield of a multiple stage boosted fusion weapon.

When in the midst of the poo hitting the spinny thing it is always best to assume the worst and act accordingly.  But 3-4 megatons isn't happening without a nuclear detonation and I don't see how that would be possible.

Did it get lost in the translation of history, did the smart people in the room mean contamination equivalent to a 4 megaton explosion?  Or is there some scenario where a steam explosion could somehow be the catalyst for a nuclear detonation?

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Yep.  Do some reading on the way the Soviets talked about their ideal society at the time and in decades prior; it was quite egalitarian in theory and they liked to proclaim it as such.  Seeing a female in a scientific position like that wouldn't be particularly odd, IMO.

The producer may well have still made the part female because "muh strong woman" - there's a good chance that it's the case, I'd say, or maybe the production overlords demanded a female character because the cast was "too male dominated" or some such BS.

But at least the part doesn't strain credulity or peg the BS meter nearly as much as when it's shoehorned in for other stories.

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Is that the fire fighters wife?  If so they have done an amazing job casting her.

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It was impressive what the soviets were able to do once they finally came to the realization of what had happened.