Chernobyl

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Anyone else watching this ?
Probably not 100% truthful but what a powerful drama, makes you think what could happen even now
 
Yes.
It's grim watching, but compelling.
 
Extremely sad in parts, I can remember it happening, no one realised how much of a disaster it was at the time
 
Not watched any but did see the trailer.

The one thing I recalled at the time was the news reports about the 'army' of brave souls who entered the hot zones with little more than clothing suitable for working in a very dusty environment. I wonder how many of those men are still alive today!

The other thing I think I recall was that the prime reason for the disaster was down to human error and lack of understanding and/or training on the consequences of the procedures they were using :(
 
The other thing I think I recall was that the prime reason for the disaster was down to human error and lack of understanding and/or training on the consequences of the procedures they were using :(

You need to watch it for the answer to that, not exactly human error more lack of correct info.
 
You need to watch it for the answer to that, not exactly human error more lack of correct info.

Is it a "docu-drama" or more 'drama'??? i.e. how much is based on the internationally accepted facts rather than dressed up for dramatic intent?

PS lack of correct info is still IMO 'human error'. NB The entonox vs empty box scenario of the Moorgate train disaster is one example of lack of correct info!
 
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I think it's fantastic. A very important drama.

I am struggling to get past Finchy as a Soviet general though. :)
 
Is it a "docu-drama" or more 'drama'??? i.e. how much is based on the internationally accepted facts rather than dressed up for dramatic intent?

PS lack of correct info is still IMO 'human error'.

That we will never know, but it is compelling viewing
Depends on what caused the human error, and what may have been intentionally withheld from the operators
who may have been following what they thought was the correct safety test
 
Great series, compelling viewing yet again...
 
This sounds interesting, but I assume it's a TV series and we don't have television. One of my daughter's friends shot a video in Chernobyl some years ago, but I can't remember if he was freelance or on assignment. I do recall him saying that it was an experience he wouldn't forget.
 
Not trying to be difficult, but I've seen comments elsewhere too about not realising what a disaster it was at the time - I find this really curious, since the scale of it wasn't hidden, but seemed to be continuously on the news and discussed, the deaths of the workers, the area of land rendered uninhabitable, the fallout blowing across Europe and the UK with some farm produce deemed unfit for consumption.
 
I've always though it sounds like a girls name.

I imagine her with mousy blonde hair, a sexy Russian accent and a leather mini skirt.

I'd watch that.



Sorry.
:D
 
Not trying to be difficult, but I've seen comments elsewhere too about not realising what a disaster it was at the time - I find this really curious, since the scale of it wasn't hidden, but seemed to be continuously on the news and discussed, the deaths of the workers, the area of land rendered uninhabitable, the fallout blowing across Europe and the UK with some farm produce deemed unfit for consumption.

There was a certain amount of info released by the soviets but by no means everything was disclosed at the time. The thing is, the end result could have been far, far worse. The immediate “solution” to the reactor explosion was to cover it with sand and boron to slow down the release of radiation, but this caused more problems. The sand/boron mix turned to lava which then started to melt the concrete pad under the reactor. If the lava had come into with the cooling water under the reactor there would’ve been a massive steam explosion that would have released more radiation and probably have destroyed the other three reactors at Chernobyl too. The soviets didn’t release this information at the time.
 
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Not trying to be difficult, but I've seen comments elsewhere too about not realising what a disaster it was at the time - I find this really curious, since the scale of it wasn't hidden, but seemed to be continuously on the news and discussed, the deaths of the workers, the area of land rendered uninhabitable, the fallout blowing across Europe and the UK with some farm produce deemed unfit for consumption.

Wracking my brains ~ but was it not the case that initially the Russians were very quiet about the incident let alone the the enormity of the disaster...............evidence(?) of some sort of radioactive emission was speculated by other non Russian sources before they admitted 'they had a problem'???
 
Wracking my brains ~ but was it not the case that initially the Russians were very quiet about the incident let alone the the enormity of the disaster...............evidence(?) of some sort of radioactive emission was speculated by other non Russian sources before they admitted 'they had a problem'???
They only admitted there was a problem after a Swedish nuclear station picked up the radiation.... the Swedes originally thought it was a leak from their own reactor but finally realised it was in the atmosphere after lots of testing.
 
They only admitted there was a problem after a Swedish nuclear station picked up the radiation.... the Swedes originally thought it was a leak from their own reactor but finally realised it was in the atmosphere after lots of testing.

And eventually we detected fallout that meant that Welsh lamb was off the menu for a significant amount of time! :(

PS and again from a recollection, all the contracts (was 3 to 4 that they had sold???) that Russia had for new builds of that type of reactor were cancelled?
 
Haven't watch ep#4 yet, but can say it's a decent watch. they are using creative licence a fair bit, anyone who seen the Director/cast interview snippets after each episode will know this. There' one huge fictional element in particular ... but the gist of it is factual.
 
Haven't watch ep#4 yet, but can say it's a decent watch. they are using creative licence a fair bit, anyone who seen the Director/cast interview snippets after each episode will know this. There' one huge fictional element in particular ... but the gist of it is factual.

There always is some artistic licence in these things, one complaint I have seen is that all the actors sound english and
why couldn't they use subtitles ?
TBH I wouldn't have watched it if that was the case, I never really noticed it, was nice to be able to concentrate
on things properly without trying to keep up with subtitles.
One scene in the first episode had no talking but I found really moving was the crowds stood outside watching the fire
and ash starting fall on them, little knowing what the consequence would be

Chernobyl today

View: https://youtu.be/9DWnjcSo9J0
 
I don’t mind the accents at all and see no point in using subtitles either. It works well as it is and doesn’t need any gimmicks; it’s a riveting story.

Good to see that the tension and quality of writing and acting is being maintained at a high standard so far. I think it’s one of the best things on tv at the moment. It’s always a sign of a good piece of drama that you find yourself holding your breath even though you know how it all pans out ( the Apollo 13 film springs to mind).

Episode 4 is a hard watch for any animal lovers by the way. :(
 
There is a very good podcast accompanying each episode. I've been listening to them on YouTube . Apparently it's all been quite accurate.
 
I am enjoying it very much I think it is pretty accurate
I read a few years ago though that they used convicts to clear the worst roof of the waste and offered them a pardon if they did 20 minutes.
they all died in a week but that isn't on the show,
 
Been really good so far, of course artistic licence is used to make it more watchable Since those that were there to give an accurate report are likely long dead.
 
There always is some artistic licence in these things, one complaint I have seen is that all the actors sound english and
why couldn't they use subtitles ?
TBH I wouldn't have watched it if that was the case, I never really noticed it, was nice to be able to concentrate
on things properly without trying to keep up with subtitles.
One scene in the first episode had no talking but I found really moving was the crowds stood outside watching the fire
and ash starting fall on them, little knowing what the consequence would be

Chernobyl today

View: https://youtu.be/9DWnjcSo9J0


That kind of bothered me a little to begin with, the English accents, but I got over that pretty quick, the story is more important than the accents. What I was referring to was a bit more than that though, can't really say without it being a spoiler.

After watching numerous docu's on it and knowing that many areas surrounding Chernobyl are still highly radioactive there's no money in the world that would see me going on one of those dark tourist trips into the place.
 
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What I was referring to was a bit more than that though, can't really say without it being a spoiler.

There's a couple of things I know of that aren't the truth but nothing that makes any difference to what
happened, one is just a different story of a couple of the characters affected by it
 
I am enjoying it very much I think it is pretty accurate
I read a few years ago though that they used convicts to clear the worst roof of the waste and offered them a pardon if they did 20 minutes.
they all died in a week but that isn't on the show,
I hadn’t seen about the convicts but I did see that they’d used soldiers to clear the roofs. They were only supposed to do one “tour” of a couple of minutes exposure but several guys have said they were called back three or four times more.
 
There's a couple of things I know of that aren't the truth but nothing that makes any difference to what
happened, one is just a different story of a couple of the characters affected by it

Yeah that's why I'm continuing to watch, it's not so much that they made anything up more that they merged many characters into one - it's not even a spoiler I guess as it was shown [interview with one of the characters] after the second episode.
 
Not watched any but did see the trailer.

The one thing I recalled at the time was the news reports about the 'army' of brave souls who entered the hot zones with little more than clothing suitable for working in a very dusty environment. I wonder how many of those men are still alive today!

The other thing I think I recall was that the prime reason for the disaster was down to human error and lack of understanding and/or training on the consequences of the procedures they were using :(

It wasn't human error. I'm a retired electrical engineer who had a lot of experience of control systems in the 1970's and early 1980's. There were two things that were continually stressed in the training courses and questions asked on the subject in the examinations.

The first was that no system of control should be passed for service unless it had been thoroughly tested and proved to work under all possible fault conditions. My understanding from reports I have read is that the testing of the Chernobyl control system was terminated way before this point.

The second is that all the systems must be of the closed loop type. This means that the item being controlled must give a true indication of its actual position. The failure to do this at Three Mile Island; the position indicator on one of the vital valves in the cooling system was not actually attached to the valve as it was considered too difficult, resulted in the valve which failed giving a false position indication to the control room.

As one of the lecturers bluntly put it "Failure to ensure that both of these conditions are met will undoubtably result in a severe bite in your arse at some point in time
 
It wasn't human error. I'm a retired electrical engineer who had a lot of experience of control systems in the 1970's and early 1980's. There were two things that were continually stressed in the training courses and questions asked on the subject in the examinations.

The first was that no system of control should be passed for service unless it had been thoroughly tested and proved to work under all possible fault conditions. My understanding from reports I have read is that the testing of the Chernobyl control system was terminated way before this point.

The second is that all the systems must be of the closed loop type. This means that the item being controlled must give a true indication of its actual position. The failure to do this at Three Mile Island; the position indicator on one of the vital valves in the cooling system was not actually attached to the valve as it was considered too difficult, resulted in the valve which failed giving a false position indication to the control room.

As one of the lecturers bluntly put it "Failure to ensure that both of these conditions are met will undoubtably result in a severe bite in your arse at some point in time

I suppose the summation might be that any proper error correction system should 'fail to safe' without human interaction. It seems that 'we' do not learn to create such a failure resilient system..........................Fukashima was an example of failure to prepare for the once in a 100 years (or whatever timescale is appropriate) event. Having said that, did I read correctly that there is one nuclear power station in Japan that is actually built across a known earthquake fault!!! If correct that is not so much "failing to plan" as "planned to fail".
 
Last episode tomorrow, will be interesting to see the conclusion.
Listened to the podcast interviews with Craig Mazin, really enjoyed them too, the Pt 4 is particularly
harrowing, glad he decided not to include a couple of scenes
 
yeah last one tonight, will be watching it with wife tomorrow eve probably
 
What a powerful ending, a great dramatisation
 
I thought it was a bit of an anti-climax tbh, excellent series overall but it just fizzled out in the end without showing the true horror of the aftermath.
 
I thought it was a bit of an anti-climax tbh, excellent series overall but it just fizzled out in the end without showing the true horror of the aftermath.
It wasn't about the aftermath though.
 
It wasn't about the aftermath though.

I realise that, but it was in a way, otherwise the side story of the pregnant woman could have been omitted. Thought on end they would show some of the effects on humanity type thing. Very good series though, I do wish it had been a little longer. 4-5 episode series seem to be popular now, also watched 'When they see us' - only 4 eps, also very good
 
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I loved the ending where they told you about the effect on people, seems one of 3 guys that opened the sluices is still alive
Lyudmilla, despite being told she would never have more children now lives with her son
The russians still claim only 31 people died, whereas the toll is close to 100,00 and still rising

I did find the episode very thought provoking, it could easily happen again
 
I see it's already become a meme ... kids who probably never heard of Chernobyl are doing the "You didn't see it, because it isn't there!" and "only 3.6 roentgens" thing everywhere atm ...
 
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