Chernobyl. 9pm sky Atlantic
 

If the dramatisation of the actions in the immediate aftermath is accurate, then it certainly is a shambles. I see no reason to question the script, as the delay in ordering the evacuation of Pripyat is truly damning.
They simply had no plans for such a catastrophe and the Soviet system did its usual blinkered management of their version of truth.

In fairness, I'm not convinced we would do much better if such an extreme event were to happen.
We came close.... Calder Hall.

Thought the fire was at Windscale/Sellafield?

Sacrifice by Cap Parlier
 

Downloaded to Kindle on the iPhone - next to read.

A good programme indeed it was!

(Although on my rather ancient SD/RGB Sky system I thought that the picture quality and dialogue track weren't up to par).

You're right. Calder Hall was the Magnox facility at Windscale that followed the original reactors.

This film with period footage is a bit of an eye opener


An another really good drama with a n excellent performance by Ade Edundson (of Bottom fame)

I clearly recall the time. I was at Fod Free Finn on my final tour before leaving the RAF. It dominated the Mess tv rooms for ages. It was grim, as I recall. Ten or twelve years later I was a primary head, and a charity asked wherther we could host 5 or 6 Russian children during the school day for a couple of weeks. They were shipping the kids over for cleaner air, and some decent feeding up, and frankly, for a bit of cheer. Of course I said yes. Bonus- I had a Slovakian parent who could speak a bit of Russian. Good old Mrs Dutko! (Gave her a job later.) We did it for a few years as I recall.

CG

PS: several heads said no. Tw*ts come in all jobs.

It is very tempting to watch this and just point the finger at good ol communism. Problem is power (in the form of people) is always infinitely corruptible...in communism through party prestige and influence, in capitalism through filthy lucre. Were it not for little luck, and the moral courage and integrity of Sir John Cockcroft, Windscale (Sellafield) could have ended up as bad...with the same sort of consequences for Northern England. And there was no shortage of misinformation peddling by the Government of the day to boot. You might ponder why the name has been changed as well.

You can draw your own conclusions as to how we might wish to build and regulate nuclear power stations in the future, as we seem hell bent on going down that route.

PS

Oh yeah...and much of this "abuse of power/privilege" type behavior is present in Fukishima as well.

Most of this is easily found online in the form of official reports with little effort.

What struck me in the first episode was the denial that anything bad had happened even when people were telling the senior person in the control room what they had seen and right up until he was puking up he was still in denial even though he had seen parts of the reactor spread out below the window.
I suppose the shock of it all would do that to an extent, but it sent people to their deaths.
The other was the plant manager in the fall out bunker who also was trying to pass the buck and then sending the guy who was telling him how it actually was up onto the roof to look down on the open burning reactor, I think that would have been a case of after you mate. That and the lack of basics like medicines, protective gear and geiger counters.

Myself as well! (Got Sacrifice on my Kindle)

Unthinkable isn't it...and yet...

Tuohy then ordered everyone out of the reactor building except himself and the Fire Chief in order to shut off all cooling and ventilating air entering the reactor. Tuohy then climbed up several times and reported watching the flames leaping from the discharge face slowly dying away. During one of the inspections, he found that the inspection plates—which were removed with a metal hook to facilitate viewing of the discharge face of the core—were stuck fast. This, he reported, was due to the fire trying to suck air in from wherever it could.

"I have no doubt it was even sucking air in through the chimney at this point to try and maintain itself," he remarked in an interview.

Finally he managed to pull the inspection plate away and was greeted with the sight of the fire dying away.

"First the flames went, then the flames reduced and the glow began to die down," he described, "I went up to check several times until I was satisfied that the fire was out. I did stand to one side, sort of hopefully," he went on to say, "but if you're staring straight at the core of a shut down reactor you're going to get quite a bit of radiation." (Tuohy lived to the age of 90, despite his exposure.)

Tuohy died on 12 March 2008, having never received any kind of public recognition for his decisive actions.[49] The Board of Inquiry's report concluded officially that the fire had been caused by "an error of judgment" by the same people who then risked their lives to contain the blaze. It was later suggested by the grandson of Harold Macmillan, Prime Minister at the time of the fire, that the US Congress might have vetoed plans of Macmillan and US president Dwight Eisenhower for joint nuclear weapons development if they had known that it was due to reckless decisions by the UK government, and that Macmillan had covered up what really happened. Tuohy said of the officials who told the US that his staff had caused the fire that "they were a shower of bastards".[61]

Like I said, brave men and corrupt, cowardly officials exist in all societies.

I'm halfway through it, some incredibly brave and dedicated people whose responses were hamstrung by the Soviet political system

You'll have to come to the land of the Dumnoni and watch it in 4K and surround sound. ;)

If the Americans had shared their development information it may never have happened in the first place. Remember post Manhattan project the UK was cut off from all nuclear "secrets" by the USA. Thus the rush job for weapons grade plutonium that led to the reactor being pushed beyond it's limits.

Maybe they realised the UK intelligence community all seemed to be recruited from a hotbed of communist sympathisers, and getting a message to the Politburo was quicker via MI5 than it was via the GPO?

Some would argue that it remains so to this day.

I watched all the episodes so far in one sitting yesterday evening. Pretty riveting television...well-produced, well-scripted and very well-acted. But I also got rather annoyed, as it is a work of almost complete fiction masquerading as an accurate historical account.

Clearly it was a catastrophic accident - but in reality the situation was never even remotely as apocalyptic as presented in the film...

There was never the any risk of a multi-megaton 'thermal' explosion that would have wiped out the entire western third of the USSR. There was a risk of a thermal explosion, but the concern was that it would kill and injure the people trying to contain the damaged reactor or that it would damage the other three reactors on the site.

The civilian population in Pripyat did not get severe radiation burns from gawking at the burning reactor...in fact it seems that these people had absolutely no immediate health effects (despite media reports to the contrary), and the long term health effects (thyroid cancer etc.) seem to have be much lower than anyone expected at the time. The only people who suffered severe radiation burns or acute radiation sickness were the staff for that specific reactor and the (very brave) people who were directly involved in the containment or cleanup.

The three (genuinely heroic) men who waded underneath the reactor building to help drain the water storage tanks were not on a suicide mission. Two are still alive, and the third died of natural causes (a heart attack).

There were no miners...in reality they used oil drilling technology to pump liquid nitrogen under the reactor, but then realized it was unnecessary and stopped the effort. Even if the core had melted through the the concrete base it would not have rendered the entire Dnieper watershed uninhabitable.

Finally, the other three reactors on the site were undamaged - once Reactor 4 was contained they continued to be operated (although the operators had to work limited shifts), and the entire site was only decommissioned in 2000.

I'm afraid I find it rather ironic that so much of the discussion in the media on this series consists of sanctimonious homilies on the terrible consequences of the communist system suppressing the truth, when the series itself contains so many deliberate and misleading untruths as to almost represent propaganda. False news indeed!

Miners
 

"There were no miners...in reality they used oil drilling technology to pump liquid nitrogen under the reactor, but then realized it was unnecessary and stopped the effort"

There were, see my previous post video they brought them in from the mining areas of the USSR

I've heard plenty of good reports but I dont have Sky. I rather think the answer will be no but Is there any alternative way of viewing it?

https://www.nowtv.com/watch/chernoby...iAAEgKtffD_BwE

free trial then cancel?

I watched all five episodes yesterday here.
https://flixtor.to/watch/tv/4876850/chernobyl

Thanks for the help Nutloose and Lantern10 - I will give it a try.

Looking back on the original shambles is all very well. Nothing new was revealed. Take a look at the current shambles.

33 years on it does not take much research, online, to see that this is an ongoing problem.

The removal of hundreds of tonnes of radioactive metals into the world market is complete for now. Contaminated wood growing in the exclusion zones is still being cut. All being sold on the world markets. Probably at a very 'good' price.

If you want your alarm bells to ring do a few quick searches. Don't bury you head in the sand. That sand is very radioactive!

Have lived the last decade or so in Russia, with some recent years in Ukraine, the realism of some of the scenes is outstanding, they must have had some pretty talented people working on that show to achieve that level of accuracy (everyday life in the 80's), however I'm not so convinced over the character portrayal but my Ukrainian friends say they have this spot on as well. It was a dark period, and it should have been portrayed as such but I don't feel that atmosphere, and I was in Russia during the late 90's... when everything was dark. But still, the series is enthralling,

I think it showed the very worst failings of communism. The denial mindset was staggering.

What really surprised me, was the apparent lack of understanding of the risks among the general populace, even the firemen, despite their connections with the nuclear plant.
Even my basic traing in such matters had me filled with horror at what unfolded. The dose rates, in roentgens, were the stuff of nightmares.
I am filled with admiration for the selfless courage of those who understood their impossible position and still did their best to cope with the consequences of the disaster.