This is a really weird post. The thrust appears to be a contrarian desire to portray the Soviet government as capable and competent, and I wonder if it's the author's naivete or some sort of an agenda. The post latches on small discrepancies, but somehow ignores the entire impetus of Legasov's tapes. He sure didn't record them to praise the government:
"And when I visited the Chernobyl station after the accident and saw what was happening there, I myself drew a precise and unequivocal conclusion, that the Chernobyl disaster is an apotheosis, the pinnacle of all the mismanagement that has been carried out for decades in our country."
The show is obviously a "based on a true story" dramatization that invented personas, added tension where little existed, and so forth. But the overall thesis checks out: it was a massive failure of governance before the disaster and during it, including the well-documented fact that the Soviets were initially withholding information from the rest of the world and turning down aid.
Not telling the population for days on end and drafting people to deal with the consequences without informing them where and why they would be going does not constitute an adequate government response. I lives in the USSR at the time and remember it well. And the consequences for the people who came back.
Yes, this is a very odd take. There are many other things in Legasov's tapes but not the miniseries, that very much get to the heart of the Soviet system of government. Where in the article is there space to discuss points like these?
> The fault of Anatoly Pavlovich Alexandrov is that he, albeit reluctantly, consented. He was against it, objected to it together with the experts, but then went on to meet the stubborn requirements of State Planning Committee and the Ministry of Energy, that stations can be built without containments.
> Sidorenko Viktor Alekseyevich, the director of the Department of Nuclear Reactors at our institute, the author of this doctoral dissertation and this book, was expelled from the institute. He had to leave the institute. Because his own colleagues didn’t understand him. But why didn’t they understand him? Because his colleagues got bonuses from the Ministry; because the institute was part of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building. Do you understand? They see the director, who is a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, and their [own] salary is lousy. If he doesn’t get a bonus of 100 roubles, he will survive. But I get only 180 and for me, a bonus of 100 roubles is important. If I “squeal” about the cost of these containments, then I will not get a bonus. If I say something wrong, I will not be published and my dissertation will fail.
It's funny that this series seems as if it is being confused as a documentary. It was a dramatic telling of a story. Creative licensing was in full effect. The first item in the "Series VS tapes: point by point" is a very common use of that creative licensing. Trying to follow multiple people in a work like this gets tiring and a bit boring. The details are kept, but it's easier to follow when those multiple people are written as one character. It's why the term "littleuns" was used in Lord of The Flies as the individuals were not important to the story, just the fact they were there and needed to be considered allowed the story to not get bogged down.
The series was also told completely in ~8 hours of content, yet this event clearly took longer than 8 hours to play out. Why no critique on that?
Furthermore it is explicitly told on screen at the very ending of the series that the character of Ulana Khomyuk was created to represent all of these scientists.
Sadly, most people aren’t readers. I saw an article the other day stating the percentage of people who read for pleasure has declined into the low teens
The true story of Chernobyl isn’t going to land with folk today. We’ve lost the attention span for anything longer than a slick miniseries with A list actors. Even then, most people I know haven’t seen the show, which is amazing.
Books are taking a backseat to Movies. Movies are taking a backseat to Mini series. Mini series are taking a backseat to Video Games. Video Games are taking a back seat to Youtube.
There are only 24 hours in a day and no one gets more. This results in shifting preferences for consumption patterns over time.
I hear boomers spend all their time in movie theaters instead of sitting down and reading a good book. Don't they know movies are evil and are going to rot their brains?
I hear Gen X loves to watch TV. What a bunch of 'slackers'. What's with these shows like Sienfeld? Its a show about nothing! Why would anyone watch that?
I hear millennials are spending all their time playing video games instead of watching quality TV. What is it with this PlayStation nonsense? Its a TOY!
I hear Gen-Z loves to just sit around and watch people play games instead of playing them. Have their brains completely rotted?
I hear Gen Alpha does not even bother with people playing and just watches the output of game engines as the old kids would say 'I don't even': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WePNs-G7puA
Long story short: Cultural preferences change over time. My view is Let them cook :)
Sure. And historically, major such changes also often came with meaningful societal consequences. Shifts in power, wealth concentration, equality, capability, liberty, resilience, stability, cohesion, ingenuity, all sorts of thing.
You can hold whatever view you'd like, but assuming a cultural change is inherently for the best just because its a big or widespread one might leave you a little blindsided someday.
Well I am not saying that it is automatically good, I said Let them cook ie. Lets see how things turn out, the journey will certainly be interesting.
I will concede that I default to the positive view that generations will find a way to figure things out for themselves.
For example Gen-Z seems to be growing up with a lot of anxiety caused by screen time + a mean towards more demanding expectations growing up.
This is leading towards a greater acceptance towards 'disconnecting' from all tech as they age and a greater acceptance for treating hallicugunans as a form of medicine that makes sense for some people and not as a thing to fear. And these people are only in their 20s. Who knows what they will eventually turn out as.
Although it's sort of ironic that the living generation most famous for radically questioning the demanding society they were growing up into and opening their minds to escape and growth through hallucingens is the same one that's since been assigned a pejorative name by those same kids and cast by them as the great villian of our age.
So maybe something like that, if history repeats as much as it seems to.
It happens. The Jaws movies brought a lot of shark panic to public consciousness despite how utterly rare shark attacks are. The China Syndrome's effect on the nuclear industry given it's timing with Three Mile island.
Probably more that I'm not aware of but it's common enough phenomenon.
> Legasov commended the swiftness and efficiency of the government response at all levels
Sure, but in those times, he would be compelled to say such things. That doesn't mean he believed it.
It seems the main faults that OP finds in the show are that Legasov had issues with his government, when in "reality" he thought they were great. But is that "reality," or oppression?
I also don't see the fault in highlighting him as the "main" scientist; it's a show.
> It seems the main faults that OP finds in the show are that Legasov had issues with his government, when in "reality" he thought they were great. But is that "reality," or oppression?
The tapes were framed in the HBO as an honest message of a dying man to the world to expose the lies that happened. Well, after Going through the tapes, I couldn't find any indication of that...only the opposite.
Now I concede that I don't really know what actually happened, and one can't put a price on the intensity of the situation for everyone at that time.
My point is simple: HBO series said Legasov's position was something that wasn't true
Sure, but in any case you're going to cherry-pick inaccuracies, wouldn't it be fair to balance them with the "remarkably accurate recreations," according to historians[0]? Especially since it's couched as a historical drama, not a documentary.
The main issue is what the Soviet government did before the disaster even happened. Someone, in the series it is implied it was a student, in Legasov's institution wrote a paper about what the risks was when AZ-5 was pressed. Apparently there was even a suggested redesign for the rods that would mitigate the risk (but it required lowering the maximum power output for the reactor, and thus required building more reactors, and so would increase the cost of the nuclear program by maybe 10-20%)
The Soviet government did something to shut that person up (and in the series Legasov implies he was part of that, I can't even find what he did exactly), repressed the knowledge (declaring it a state secret) ... and then a decade later Chernobyl exploded.
In other words: what happened is that the Soviet government refused to fix their nuclear reactors due to cost, and then that decision blew up Chernobyl, making tens to hundreds of thousands of victims.
Then, during the cleanup of the disaster, the KGB took additional measures to keep it hidden.
So yes it was oppression ... oppression is the cause of the disaster in the first place. And you can't forget that Legasov is not a hero: his career was built on oppression, not scientific accomplishment (there was a Soviet program to make sure Jewish students would fail at the institute. Legasov was the one implementing that). So of course Legasov can't be trusted.
Who knows, maybe the student who wrote that AZ-5 would blow up the reactor in the first place was one of the Jewish students whose career Legasov sabotaged.
Everything about nuclear reactors was secret by default, no student would have known any details about the RBMK reactor.
The "positive scram effect" was discovered at Ignalina (where the miniseries were filmed) in 1983. The RBMK design organization NIKIET sent an official informational letter to the power plants and proposed changes to the design and operational procedures. The changes weren't implemented as "there was a widespread view that the conditions under which the positive scram effect would be important would never occur." The same as O-rings.
And there was no "a Soviet program to fail Jewish students". Just primitive ground-level anti-semitism.
As shown in the series, the article about AZ-5 increasing reactor power instead of decreasing it was classified a LOT higher and inaccessible to the researchers of the institute, and it was only that specific article. They explicitly hid the table of contents and that one article. It was explicitly suppressed, not accidentally classified along with a bunch of other stuff.
It was a good show. I've re-watched it a couple of times. The actors are excellent, and it's well-done.
I take it for granted that a lot of it was amped up for drama, but other sources (several documentaries) seem to agree on a lot of the actions and timelines. The show added motivations, and some fictional characters.
I also enjoyed Dopesick, and that's a subject that I have direct experience and knowledge of. I have pretty much the same issues with that show.
I've mentioned her article. I think she barely touched the topic of Chernobyl itself. Her points was about what the Soviet life was back then, and some depictions of this was incorrect.
For example (for her article)
> In Episode 2, for example, the Central Committee member Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) threatens to have Legasov shot if he doesn’t tell him how a nuclear reactor works. There are a lot of people throughout the series who appear to act out of fear of being shot. This is inaccurate: summary executions, or even delayed executions on orders of a single apparatchik, were not a feature of Soviet life after the nineteen-thirties. By and large, Soviet people did what they were told without being threatened with guns or any punishment.
Her point was: this is not the Soviet way back then. My point is: these two people barely interacted directly, and one of them at least (Legasov) had a lot of respect for the other from the very beginning
Again, it's weird, because Legosov isn't even the primary source for the series, which is an explicitly fictionalized recounting of what happened. As Gessen points out, your thing about Legasov being part of a team is literally a character in the series!
> because Legosov isn't even the primary source for the series
I think it was explicit that the series framed the tapes as the "revelation"; the honest message of a dying man to the world to expose what actually happened
I think you're over-reading what was really just a dramatic framing for the series. The author was explicit that he used composite characters and multiple sources.
It's not a documentary! That doesn't mean you can't criticize it (Gessen sure did). It's that a lot of the kinds of criticisms you make don't make sense given what the show is.
The show makes reference to "Midnight in Chernobyl" in its epilogue, I think it's safe to say it was one of the main sources of information for the show (though of course they took liberties because it was a historical drama).
Mazin has talked about "Voices From Chernobyl" more than any other source.
I used as many sources as I could find. I was looking at research articles in scientific journals; I was looking at governmental reports; I was looking at books written by former Soviet scientists who were at Chernobyl; I was reading books by Western historians who had looked at Chernobyl. I watched documentaries; I read first-person documents.
And then there was Voices From Chernobyl, which is unique. What Svetlana Alexievich did there, I think, was capture an aspect of history we rarely see, which is the story of the people who you wouldn’t otherwise even know existed. We look at history from the point of view of the big movers, the big players, and she looks at history through the eyes of human beings. They’re all equal to her: Whether they are generals or party leaders or peasants, it doesn’t matter. And I thought that was just beautiful. It really inspired me.
So again this idea that anything not in the Legasov tapes was invented --- no. The show is a fictionalized retelling, but no, that criticism doesn't stand.
Mazin almost completely ignored the INSAG-7 report and in the last episode, they retell the same fictional story blaming the operators that Legasov himself presented in Vienna in 1986 to the IAEA meeting, which was published as the original INSAG-1 report.
>It was about Anatoly Grishchenko, a Soviet helicopter pilot who had served in Chernobyl and, like many others, had developed cancer as a result.
If there's one thing that pissed me off about the TV series, it was its poor to non-existent storytelling surrounding the helicopter crews who ran sortie after sortie right over the burning reactor—around the clock—knowing full well the grave risks posed by the radiation.
Instead, we were shown one disjointed helicopter crash scene amidst a still-burning reactor that made them look like bumbling fools attempting something futile.
In real life, the Chernobyl incident happened on 26 April, 1986. The Mi-8 crash where it struck the crane didn't happen until October 2nd, 1986.
Aviation was instrumental in containing the disaster during its early phases. Those crews helped save an untold number of lives. Their portrayal or lack thereof in the show was massively disrespectful to their contributions.
---
Between 27 April and 1 May, about 1800 helicopter flights deposit over 5,000 metric tons of sand, lead, clay, and neutron absorbing boron onto the burning reactor. It is now known that virtually none of the neutron absorbers reached the core. [0]
But which was it? Was “aviation instrumental in containing the disaster” or did “virtually none of the neutron absorbers” reach the core? Those are both quotes from your post.
In literal or figurative battles, there are plenty of examples of actions that are simultaneously indisputably brave and utterly futile.
>But which was it? Was “aviation instrumental in containing the disaster” ...
I just naïvely assumed dumping 5,000 tons of material over a burning reactor probably did help significantly given the fire went out around days 10-12.
In retrospect, that assumption appears incorrect despite being congruent with the narrative of virtually every documentary I saw on Chernobyl in the late 90s/early 2000s:
"But I'm surprised that at Vienna they would have claimed that the core was smothered. It turns out, at least from my investigations, that the core froze by itself, solidified by itself, and stopped releasing." [0] (1994)
I was even able to find some research suggesting the aerial drops acted as an insulator, worsening subsequent radiation releases. At least they covered the glowing red target, which was thought to be a piece of the core ejected from the explosion and not the core itself as originally thought.
The divers at least appear to have saved the day from complete catastrophe, not to detract from the air crews' heroism.[1]
To be honest, I find most of these inconsistencies to be inconsequential for enjoying the film. The ones that really get to me though are the dramatic overestimates on the devastation caused by Chernobyl, and the effects of the radiation itself. Most of the effect of the film comes from this belief that the radiation really is that dangerous. When you know it isn't, it takes quite a bit away from the premise.
The bit about "The water tanks in the reactor were full, and the uranium fuel rods were at risk of melting through the water tanks, potentially releasing a force equivalent to a multi-megaton nuclear device and devastating much of Europe with radiation." is sort of complex to judge.
It is absolutely true that that scenario was impossible and couldn't actually happen. But as far as we can tell (documented in Voices of Chernobyl) someone at a similar meeting to the one portrayed in the TV show did really say that that could happen as portrayed in the TV show. But of course the audience is going to assume that things scientists say in shows like this are accurate.
There is a podcast [1] featuring the showrunner Craig Mazin who is also a very conscientious and prolific podcaster [2] who cares deeply about balancing fact with a compelling narrative.
This is the basic difference between "based on" and documentary. Having worked as a screenwriter myself I can assure you that even if the script had been 100% factual, things would have been changed beyond the creators' control anyway.
You know, some of us were already living then and it is not some distant event we have no knowledge of.
For example:
> Re: The soviet government did not want to evacuate the town of Pripyat
> Debunking: Legasov indicated the opposite. He said that the decision to evacuate was made quickly, even though the levels of radiation in the town were not considered to be dangerous.
WTF? The level of radiation was not considered to be dangerous when your reactor was blown open? Are you fucking kidding?
> Re: The government made an effort to conceal everything regarding the accident and what was happening.
> Legasov stated that this was not the case, and that information was not provided at the time because it didn't exist. The situation was very confusing, and information was scarce, coming from multiple conflicting sources and estimates, making it difficult to collect, filter, and access the correct information.
The accident happened on 26 April 1986, and on the 1st of May, _4 days later_ there was a celebration of Labour Day - a mandatory parade in Kyiv within just 100 km. And no-one knew about the disaster from the official sources. Only people with access to foreign radio knew about the disaster, others were happily marching with red flags on the streets breathing polluted air.
And so on, and so forth...
He claims that they had all the equipment ready and knew the actual levels, but at the same time were confused and information was scarce, and the level of radiation were not that bad - it this some type of propaganda for the dumb?
I agree there are some claims in this article that should be further scrutinized but it's true that the levels of radiation were not as high as one might assume. The direction of the wind during and immediately following the disaster slowed the spread of radioactive material over Pripyat (this is also why southern Belarus was hit so hard). The prevailing winds in that region are north east and the Chernobyl power plant was on the north side of the city. By the time of the May day parade the winds had shifted such that Kiev was downwind from Chernobyl.
The KGB did their best to contain information about the disaster in general and the USSR wanted the May day parade to go on as-planned to make it look like things were fine. Even those with enough power or connections to be aware of the danger were pressured to participate. The May day parade was later often referred to in infamy by the Ukrainian independence movement following the disaster.
Most of my information comes from what I remember of reading "Midnight in Chernobyl" and "Chernobyl the History of a Nuclear Disaster"
I think too often these historical "debunking" exercises are really just exercises in overzealously uncharitable interpretation. Some of the distinctions drawn are asinine especially in the context of a dramatic presentation. And some are even importantly wrong, as you've now pointed out which I wouldn't have thought of on a skim-by reading.
Just like we have functional literacy and information literacy, there should be such a thing as Debunking Literacy. Are you actually debunking or just uncharitably interpreting?
If we dismiss the possibility that the post itself is a part of Russian propaganda to whitewash the soviet legacy (which they are engaging now at scale), then the next best explanation is that the author lacks the context of living in the USSR to correctly interpret the recordings.
In USSR everyone lied. Telling anything against the party will put you and your family in grave danger - it is basically a suicide. There were no free press, no activism, and all information was filtered by the party with complicated process of deciding what should be published and when and who gets punished for what.
People in the west have no understanding what it means to live all your life in such conditions so they try to interpret people as if it happened in their country.
It can be that the person was trying to make amends with the party to ease the social ostracization for his family, friends or colleagues. It doesn't mean the person is telling the truth at all, it means that he show loyalty to the party line by telling that the system was efficient and all his higher-ups were doing the best job.
As a piece of writing it does not come across as sober or thoughtful. Rather it’s filled with mixed metaphors, hyperbole, and leaps of logic.
No indications the real-life event was an _act of god_ or _natural disaster_. The HBO series is a dramatization of human error, and stands or falls on the merits of fiction.
In other words—Sorry you didn’t like this dramatization of the disaster. As other said, it’s not a documentary.
At the end of the day, creators want an entertaining show and that usually requires intrigue, interpersonal conflict, character growth, good vs. evil, etc.
Biopics/dramatizations of events often bring multiple minor characters together into a single person.
I would be more bothered by the change of small details irrelevant to the narrative than I am by larger character changes. I would prefer that the mainline details stay the same - chain of events, impact to the town, aftermath - but I am not watching the series in order to write a paper. I appreciate the articles which document the fiction vs. reality of historical dramas, but I do not share in any anger. Then again, I'm not related to anyone whose character was represented in the series.
I would have accepted that if it wasn't for Craig Mazin (the creator of the series) insistence that he stuck to the details and the truth in the series:
They even published a podcast highlighting the creative freedoms, but failed to mention the important ones, like the fact that the reactor caps couldn't bounce up and down...
Deeply ironic for a show with the tagline "What is the cost of lies?"
You think that's an important one? To me, that's just a creative liberty; the need for visuals in the seconds before the explosion led to a choice to visualise it like the top of a boiling kettle.
To me, there are more substantive issues, e.g.
* Claiming that nobody survived watching from the Bridge of Death, when it hasn't even been confirmed there was a gathering of people on the bridge, let alone any of that group dying from it. But Voices of Chernobyl contained accounts from survivors who claim they were there and happened, and it makes excellent drama, so into the show it goes.
* Raising the idea that Vasily Ignatenko was giving off dangerous radiation to his wife, but her baby "absorbed" it, killing it and protecting her. This is a complete myth, and it comes directly from Lyudmilla Ignatenko herself. It's gripping testimony, but it's simply not true, and one doctor who was there, reflected on how the myth of people being "contaminated" led to a lot of evacuated children not being accepted by families in Moscow because of this fear. (https://www.vanityfair.com/video/watch/radiation-expert-revi...)
But overall, I agree with your point, the irony is not lost. This series was utterly compelling to me, and had such amazing drama. It's almost certainly not the case that Valery Legasov gave an eloquent speech berating his own government in the middle of the Chernobyl trial, but it felt so good when he did that in the TV show. It's a lie that comforts the viewer, telling them that there is a just world, and the liars and self-serving bureaucrats and dysfunctional governments of this world will be held to account, by good people, truthtellers.
There was no mass funeral with victims buried in concrete. But the spectacle of the TV show moved me to tears. Again, dramatic license. There were victims buried in lead coffins, in regular graves: wouldn't that imagery have been enough? No, because once the show has brought you to your knees with a row of lead coffins and mourning families, the cement mixer arriving over the hill then pushes you right over the edge. The concrete flowing around the coffins is such a visually powerful scene. Even though it's false, I wouldn't ever take it out of the show.
Those are definitely bigger issues.
I would also add the 100 megaton explosion, which physically wasn't even nearly possible. I wonder if there was a scientist in the writing room raising it as an issue, only to be ignored because the show needed a subplot, much like how the show's politicians ignored Legasov to not embarrass the state.
The bouncing caps stuck with me as I've seen many reviews online mentioning how fascinating they found the scene. In my opinion it's only fascinating if it has some grounding in the actual truth. After all, the show wouldn't be as popular if it was about a made up disaster and made up energy technology.
I agree the show is compelling, but once I noticed the inaccuracies, it became difficult to immerse myself. Perhaps I would've enjoyed it more if the show runner didn't claim high accuracy.
> the need for visuals in the seconds before the explosion led to a choice to visualise it like the top of a boiling kettle.
And this is the lie. Before they pressed the AZ-5 button: (quote from INSAG-7 report) "the parameters of the unit were controlled, remained within the limits expected for the operating conditions concerned, and did not require any intervention on the part of the personnel."
There was no drama in the control room, everything was mostly calm and "business as usual".
The Soviets invented the story "these youkels at Chernobyl did unauthorized experiment, disabled all safety mechanisms, broke all the rules and blew up our big beautiful reactor." This story was presented at the IAEA meeting in Vienna in 1986 by Legasov himself and published as the INSAG-1 report. The miniseries repeats this story but shifts all the blame to evil Dyatlov.
After the Soviet Union fell, the updated report INSAG-7 was published in 1992, which I quoted above.
The image presented in the TV show is not that Dyatlov is evil, but that he is dismissive of his staff's concerns, he bullies them into submission, and he has a callous indifference to safety. This is all true. He's also the main author of the test procedure! Dyatlov had been at Chernobyl since planning began in 1973, and by comparison Toptunov was 25 years old and had only been in his post for 3 months. If anyone is to blame, it's going to be Dyatlov, and chief engineer Fomin who permitted Dyatlov to run the test. But as the TV show makes clear, this pales into insignificance when compared with a regime that intentionally buries secrets, like them already knowing the unsafe design of the RBMK control rods.
The only way I'd say the TV show did him a disservice is in showing him in complete denial there was a problem, and demanding water be pumped into the (nonexistant) core. In reality, he realised it was futile, but after reporting to Fomin and Bryukhanov and collapsing from radiation sickness, it was Fomin who took his place, did not understand the situation, and ordered the futile water pumping.
From INSAG-7:
> When the reactor power could not be restored to the intended level of 700 MW(th), the operating staff did not stop and think, but on the spot they modified the test conditions to match their view at that moment of the prevailing conditions.
> operating rules were violated, and control and safety rods were placed in a configuration that would have compromised the emergency protection of the reactor even had the rod design not been faulty on the ground of the positive scram effect mentioned earlier. Most reprehensibly, unapproved changes in the test procedure were deliberately made on the spot, although the plant was known to be in a condition very different from that intended for the test
> INSAG, with the present report, does not retract INSAG-1, nor does it alter the conclusions of that report except as clearly indicated here. While the balance of INSAG's judgement of the factors contributing to the accident has shifted, the many other conclusions of INSAG-1 are unaffected.
If it's "business as usual" for the operators to invent changes to nuclear safety tests as they carry them out... I don't know what to say to you!
> he is dismissive of his staff's concerns, he bullies them into submission, and he has a callous indifference to safety.
I suspect that you are sourcing "Midnight in Chernobyl", which is based on Medvedev's book, which is full of inventions.
> a regime that intentionally buries secrets, like them already knowing the unsafe design of the RBMK control rods.
This is an invention in the miniseries. See section 4.1 in the INSAG-7 about the Ignalina phenomenon.
> When the reactor power could not be restored to the intended level of 700 MW(th), the operating staff did not stop and think, but on the spot they modified the test conditions to match their view at that moment of the prevailing conditions.
This is a weak spot in the INSAG-7. The 700 MW was the upper limit, not the lower and this number was put in the test conditions by Dyatlov, who designed the test.
> operating rules were violated, and control and safety rods were placed in a configuration
The only operational rule violated was the ORM margin but there was no indication about this metric in the control room and the operators weren't aware of this violation. They were still prosecuted for this. Criminal investigation against Akimov and Toptunov was closed only in November 1986, six months after their deaths.
> INSAG, with the present report, does not retract INSAG-1, nor does it alter the conclusions of that report except as clearly indicated here.
I love this. "No, no, it wasn't bullshit that Legasov gave us in 1986."
> the operators to invent changes to nuclear safety tests
It is not that kind of nuclear safety test that was sent to them from above. The organization that designed the reactor proposed a new mode of operation but didn't bother to design anything. The changes to the design and testing were prepared locally at Chernobyl NPP, so it was Dyatlov who prepared the test program. Fomin authorized the test. The INSAG-7 report says that regulations NSR-04-74 and GSP-82, which were in force at the time of the accident, did not require the plant managers to obtain approval from someone else. In 1987, Fomin was sentenced to 10 years in a penal colony anyway.
Dyatlov's interview from the 90s, which is still available on youtube [1], seems to fit better with the account given in the hit book "Midnight in Chernobyl" (which was the basis for the series,) than the story written for TV. To me the series just seemed like a rehash of the same movie tropes we've seen time and time again in dramatizations of the accident, compared to a true adaptation of book, which included a lot of updated analysis beyond the IAEA original report.
Hey Omar! I met you briefly in Grenoble many years ago. I hope you're doing well.
I only recently watched this series and found it very entertaining. But I never expected it to be very accurate. It's definitely been dramatized for TV. I definitely didn't get an anti-nuclear sentiment from the show, I mostly think they were trying to portray a negative view of Soviet Bureaucracy.
It's a dramatization, of course there are going to be liberties taken and creative license used to further the (TFA might say contrived) story.
One thing not mentioned in TFA, though, is how those suffering from radiation sickness (first responders like the firefighter Ignatenko, etc.) are portrayed almost as if they are contagious, and so should not be touched. The Chernobyl series is not the only one to do this, either, and it can lead to viewers thinking radiation sickness is something you can "catch" from someone else.
I don't know why they never make it clear that it's for the sake of the sickened themselves that contact should be minimized (assuming all contaminated clothing etc. has already been discarded), since their immune and other internal systems are totally compromised by radiation poisoning.
An unfortunate detail is that the wife of the firefighter (Ignatenko) who was portrayed in Chernobyl was recently killed by a Russian drone which hit her apartment building.
> It’s like we’ve chosen to ignore the truth in favor of a good story or a good feeling.
Aww, man. I've got some bad news for you about literally any fact you know that isn't derived from math. And even that is still, philosophically, just some stories we're telling ourselves about the observations we're all seeing.
This is an incredibly naive and wild take. The first complaint is that the show focuses on Legasov and “claims” he was the primary scientist when Legasov says he wasn’t, then proceeds to “debunk” the show based on the tape alone. A testimony BTW which is not only not always consistent with the multitude of other sources and evidence but also sometimes contradicts things Legasov himself said (allegedly or on-record).
I don’t defend the show as an academic, completely accurate documentary, because it isn’t and never claimed to be. But suggesting it is almost entirely falsified is an awful take. I can’t wait to read about their outraged takedown piece on Titanic once they get around to reading one survivor’s memoirs.
This kind of "for the drama" variance is very common. Look at archaeologists reaction to Coogans film about Richard III which went to court.
Films, even documentary, don't always get it right and often don't even try because "based on" admits a lot of change.
People often don't understand history. "The KGB regiments shot deserters in ww2 Stalingrad" since the KGB was formed in 1954, that's a serious mis-statement of history. Should we be surprised the role of soviet structural agencies is misunderstood by an american dramatisation? (This kgb comment is a generalisation for illustration not a dig at anything in the doco)
Confusing the KGB with the NKVD (different names used at different times for essentially the same organization) is a totally inconsequential mistake and it is disingenuous to pretend it has any significance.
You kind of make my point because any one of the things complained of could be said to be inconsequential but the sum total strongly suggests more fiction than fact.
"Enemy at the gates" comes to mind. That whole "pick up the gun of your dead comrade" scene..
It really annoys me when fiction is based on real events, takes a lot of liberty with the source material that it enters into the public consciousness.
The classic case is the "The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus" where it was claimed he was aiming to prove the Earth was not flat.
My personal peeve is movies like "The Imitation Game".
This is a really weird post. The thrust appears to be a contrarian desire to portray the Soviet government as capable and competent, and I wonder if it's the author's naivete or some sort of an agenda. The post latches on small discrepancies, but somehow ignores the entire impetus of Legasov's tapes. He sure didn't record them to praise the government:
"And when I visited the Chernobyl station after the accident and saw what was happening there, I myself drew a precise and unequivocal conclusion, that the Chernobyl disaster is an apotheosis, the pinnacle of all the mismanagement that has been carried out for decades in our country."
The show is obviously a "based on a true story" dramatization that invented personas, added tension where little existed, and so forth. But the overall thesis checks out: it was a massive failure of governance before the disaster and during it, including the well-documented fact that the Soviets were initially withholding information from the rest of the world and turning down aid.
Not telling the population for days on end and drafting people to deal with the consequences without informing them where and why they would be going does not constitute an adequate government response. I lives in the USSR at the time and remember it well. And the consequences for the people who came back.
Yes, this is a very odd take. There are many other things in Legasov's tapes but not the miniseries, that very much get to the heart of the Soviet system of government. Where in the article is there space to discuss points like these?
> The fault of Anatoly Pavlovich Alexandrov is that he, albeit reluctantly, consented. He was against it, objected to it together with the experts, but then went on to meet the stubborn requirements of State Planning Committee and the Ministry of Energy, that stations can be built without containments.
> Sidorenko Viktor Alekseyevich, the director of the Department of Nuclear Reactors at our institute, the author of this doctoral dissertation and this book, was expelled from the institute. He had to leave the institute. Because his own colleagues didn’t understand him. But why didn’t they understand him? Because his colleagues got bonuses from the Ministry; because the institute was part of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building. Do you understand? They see the director, who is a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences, and their [own] salary is lousy. If he doesn’t get a bonus of 100 roubles, he will survive. But I get only 180 and for me, a bonus of 100 roubles is important. If I “squeal” about the cost of these containments, then I will not get a bonus. If I say something wrong, I will not be published and my dissertation will fail.
It's funny that this series seems as if it is being confused as a documentary. It was a dramatic telling of a story. Creative licensing was in full effect. The first item in the "Series VS tapes: point by point" is a very common use of that creative licensing. Trying to follow multiple people in a work like this gets tiring and a bit boring. The details are kept, but it's easier to follow when those multiple people are written as one character. It's why the term "littleuns" was used in Lord of The Flies as the individuals were not important to the story, just the fact they were there and needed to be considered allowed the story to not get bogged down.
The series was also told completely in ~8 hours of content, yet this event clearly took longer than 8 hours to play out. Why no critique on that?
Furthermore it is explicitly told on screen at the very ending of the series that the character of Ulana Khomyuk was created to represent all of these scientists.
[1]:https://youtu.be/OHrVlyU3suk?t=45
Did the author miss the ending?
Sadly, most people aren’t readers. I saw an article the other day stating the percentage of people who read for pleasure has declined into the low teens
The true story of Chernobyl isn’t going to land with folk today. We’ve lost the attention span for anything longer than a slick miniseries with A list actors. Even then, most people I know haven’t seen the show, which is amazing.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12496190/
Books are taking a backseat to Movies. Movies are taking a backseat to Mini series. Mini series are taking a backseat to Video Games. Video Games are taking a back seat to Youtube.
There are only 24 hours in a day and no one gets more. This results in shifting preferences for consumption patterns over time.
I hear boomers spend all their time in movie theaters instead of sitting down and reading a good book. Don't they know movies are evil and are going to rot their brains?
I hear Gen X loves to watch TV. What a bunch of 'slackers'. What's with these shows like Sienfeld? Its a show about nothing! Why would anyone watch that?
I hear millennials are spending all their time playing video games instead of watching quality TV. What is it with this PlayStation nonsense? Its a TOY!
I hear Gen-Z loves to just sit around and watch people play games instead of playing them. Have their brains completely rotted?
I hear Gen Alpha does not even bother with people playing and just watches the output of game engines as the old kids would say 'I don't even': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WePNs-G7puA
Long story short: Cultural preferences change over time. My view is Let them cook :)
> Cultural preferences change over time.
Sure. And historically, major such changes also often came with meaningful societal consequences. Shifts in power, wealth concentration, equality, capability, liberty, resilience, stability, cohesion, ingenuity, all sorts of thing.
You can hold whatever view you'd like, but assuming a cultural change is inherently for the best just because its a big or widespread one might leave you a little blindsided someday.
Well I am not saying that it is automatically good, I said Let them cook ie. Lets see how things turn out, the journey will certainly be interesting.
I will concede that I default to the positive view that generations will find a way to figure things out for themselves.
For example Gen-Z seems to be growing up with a lot of anxiety caused by screen time + a mean towards more demanding expectations growing up.
This is leading towards a greater acceptance towards 'disconnecting' from all tech as they age and a greater acceptance for treating hallicugunans as a form of medicine that makes sense for some people and not as a thing to fear. And these people are only in their 20s. Who knows what they will eventually turn out as.
Fair enough.
Although it's sort of ironic that the living generation most famous for radically questioning the demanding society they were growing up into and opening their minds to escape and growth through hallucingens is the same one that's since been assigned a pejorative name by those same kids and cast by them as the great villian of our age.
So maybe something like that, if history repeats as much as it seems to.
It happens. The Jaws movies brought a lot of shark panic to public consciousness despite how utterly rare shark attacks are. The China Syndrome's effect on the nuclear industry given it's timing with Three Mile island.
Probably more that I'm not aware of but it's common enough phenomenon.
> Legasov commended the swiftness and efficiency of the government response at all levels
Sure, but in those times, he would be compelled to say such things. That doesn't mean he believed it.
It seems the main faults that OP finds in the show are that Legasov had issues with his government, when in "reality" he thought they were great. But is that "reality," or oppression?
I also don't see the fault in highlighting him as the "main" scientist; it's a show.
> It seems the main faults that OP finds in the show are that Legasov had issues with his government, when in "reality" he thought they were great. But is that "reality," or oppression?
The tapes were framed in the HBO as an honest message of a dying man to the world to expose the lies that happened. Well, after Going through the tapes, I couldn't find any indication of that...only the opposite.
Now I concede that I don't really know what actually happened, and one can't put a price on the intensity of the situation for everyone at that time.
My point is simple: HBO series said Legasov's position was something that wasn't true
Sure, but in any case you're going to cherry-pick inaccuracies, wouldn't it be fair to balance them with the "remarkably accurate recreations," according to historians[0]? Especially since it's couched as a historical drama, not a documentary.
Should we debate the accuracy of Marvel movies?
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20190610100414/https://www.cbsne...
I am not sure why you are mentioning historians here. A proper historical view/investigation is way outside of my scope.
My angle is simple: they said it was accurate, and Legasov did so and said that...and in his own words, he negated most of that.
Is Legasov a good guy? I don't know. Was he honest in what he said? I don't know...but he said what he said!
> cherry-pick inaccuracies
Feel free to go to the tapes
The main issue is what the Soviet government did before the disaster even happened. Someone, in the series it is implied it was a student, in Legasov's institution wrote a paper about what the risks was when AZ-5 was pressed. Apparently there was even a suggested redesign for the rods that would mitigate the risk (but it required lowering the maximum power output for the reactor, and thus required building more reactors, and so would increase the cost of the nuclear program by maybe 10-20%)
The Soviet government did something to shut that person up (and in the series Legasov implies he was part of that, I can't even find what he did exactly), repressed the knowledge (declaring it a state secret) ... and then a decade later Chernobyl exploded.
In other words: what happened is that the Soviet government refused to fix their nuclear reactors due to cost, and then that decision blew up Chernobyl, making tens to hundreds of thousands of victims.
Then, during the cleanup of the disaster, the KGB took additional measures to keep it hidden.
So yes it was oppression ... oppression is the cause of the disaster in the first place. And you can't forget that Legasov is not a hero: his career was built on oppression, not scientific accomplishment (there was a Soviet program to make sure Jewish students would fail at the institute. Legasov was the one implementing that). So of course Legasov can't be trusted.
Who knows, maybe the student who wrote that AZ-5 would blow up the reactor in the first place was one of the Jewish students whose career Legasov sabotaged.
Everything about nuclear reactors was secret by default, no student would have known any details about the RBMK reactor.
The "positive scram effect" was discovered at Ignalina (where the miniseries were filmed) in 1983. The RBMK design organization NIKIET sent an official informational letter to the power plants and proposed changes to the design and operational procedures. The changes weren't implemented as "there was a widespread view that the conditions under which the positive scram effect would be important would never occur." The same as O-rings.
And there was no "a Soviet program to fail Jewish students". Just primitive ground-level anti-semitism.
As shown in the series, the article about AZ-5 increasing reactor power instead of decreasing it was classified a LOT higher and inaccessible to the researchers of the institute, and it was only that specific article. They explicitly hid the table of contents and that one article. It was explicitly suppressed, not accidentally classified along with a bunch of other stuff.
You do understand that the series is a fiction?
The scan of the letter is available online, there are no redactions and no security classification markings.
http://accidont.ru/PS_letter.html
Very well said, and an important reminder of the recursion of oppression
It was a good show. I've re-watched it a couple of times. The actors are excellent, and it's well-done.
I take it for granted that a lot of it was amped up for drama, but other sources (several documentaries) seem to agree on a lot of the actions and timelines. The show added motivations, and some fictional characters.
I also enjoyed Dopesick, and that's a subject that I have direct experience and knowledge of. I have pretty much the same issues with that show.
But I still enjoyed both of them as dramas.
If I want facts, I'll do my own research.
M. Gessen wrote a much better piece about the accuracy of HBO's Chernobyl:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-hbos-cher...
This piece seems a little confused, since Legasov wasn't the primary source for the show?
I've mentioned her article. I think she barely touched the topic of Chernobyl itself. Her points was about what the Soviet life was back then, and some depictions of this was incorrect.
For example (for her article)
> In Episode 2, for example, the Central Committee member Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) threatens to have Legasov shot if he doesn’t tell him how a nuclear reactor works. There are a lot of people throughout the series who appear to act out of fear of being shot. This is inaccurate: summary executions, or even delayed executions on orders of a single apparatchik, were not a feature of Soviet life after the nineteen-thirties. By and large, Soviet people did what they were told without being threatened with guns or any punishment.
Her point was: this is not the Soviet way back then. My point is: these two people barely interacted directly, and one of them at least (Legasov) had a lot of respect for the other from the very beginning
Again, it's weird, because Legosov isn't even the primary source for the series, which is an explicitly fictionalized recounting of what happened. As Gessen points out, your thing about Legasov being part of a team is literally a character in the series!
> because Legosov isn't even the primary source for the series
I think it was explicit that the series framed the tapes as the "revelation"; the honest message of a dying man to the world to expose what actually happened
I think you're over-reading what was really just a dramatic framing for the series. The author was explicit that he used composite characters and multiple sources.
It's not a documentary! That doesn't mean you can't criticize it (Gessen sure did). It's that a lot of the kinds of criticisms you make don't make sense given what the show is.
The show makes reference to "Midnight in Chernobyl" in its epilogue, I think it's safe to say it was one of the main sources of information for the show (though of course they took liberties because it was a historical drama).
Mazin has talked about "Voices From Chernobyl" more than any other source.
I used as many sources as I could find. I was looking at research articles in scientific journals; I was looking at governmental reports; I was looking at books written by former Soviet scientists who were at Chernobyl; I was reading books by Western historians who had looked at Chernobyl. I watched documentaries; I read first-person documents.
And then there was Voices From Chernobyl, which is unique. What Svetlana Alexievich did there, I think, was capture an aspect of history we rarely see, which is the story of the people who you wouldn’t otherwise even know existed. We look at history from the point of view of the big movers, the big players, and she looks at history through the eyes of human beings. They’re all equal to her: Whether they are generals or party leaders or peasants, it doesn’t matter. And I thought that was just beautiful. It really inspired me.
So again this idea that anything not in the Legasov tapes was invented --- no. The show is a fictionalized retelling, but no, that criticism doesn't stand.
Mazin almost completely ignored the INSAG-7 report and in the last episode, they retell the same fictional story blaming the operators that Legasov himself presented in Vienna in 1986 to the IAEA meeting, which was published as the original INSAG-1 report.
>It was about Anatoly Grishchenko, a Soviet helicopter pilot who had served in Chernobyl and, like many others, had developed cancer as a result.
If there's one thing that pissed me off about the TV series, it was its poor to non-existent storytelling surrounding the helicopter crews who ran sortie after sortie right over the burning reactor—around the clock—knowing full well the grave risks posed by the radiation.
Instead, we were shown one disjointed helicopter crash scene amidst a still-burning reactor that made them look like bumbling fools attempting something futile.
In real life, the Chernobyl incident happened on 26 April, 1986. The Mi-8 crash where it struck the crane didn't happen until October 2nd, 1986.
Aviation was instrumental in containing the disaster during its early phases. Those crews helped save an untold number of lives. Their portrayal or lack thereof in the show was massively disrespectful to their contributions.
---
Between 27 April and 1 May, about 1800 helicopter flights deposit over 5,000 metric tons of sand, lead, clay, and neutron absorbing boron onto the burning reactor. It is now known that virtually none of the neutron absorbers reached the core. [0]
[0] https://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/timeline...
But which was it? Was “aviation instrumental in containing the disaster” or did “virtually none of the neutron absorbers” reach the core? Those are both quotes from your post.
In literal or figurative battles, there are plenty of examples of actions that are simultaneously indisputably brave and utterly futile.
>But which was it? Was “aviation instrumental in containing the disaster” ...
I just naïvely assumed dumping 5,000 tons of material over a burning reactor probably did help significantly given the fire went out around days 10-12.
In retrospect, that assumption appears incorrect despite being congruent with the narrative of virtually every documentary I saw on Chernobyl in the late 90s/early 2000s:
"But I'm surprised that at Vienna they would have claimed that the core was smothered. It turns out, at least from my investigations, that the core froze by itself, solidified by itself, and stopped releasing." [0] (1994)
I was even able to find some research suggesting the aerial drops acted as an insulator, worsening subsequent radiation releases. At least they covered the glowing red target, which was thought to be a piece of the core ejected from the explosion and not the core itself as originally thought.
The divers at least appear to have saved the day from complete catastrophe, not to detract from the air crews' heroism.[1]
[0] https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=94-P13-000...
[1] https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-real-story-of-the-cher...
To be honest, I find most of these inconsistencies to be inconsequential for enjoying the film. The ones that really get to me though are the dramatic overestimates on the devastation caused by Chernobyl, and the effects of the radiation itself. Most of the effect of the film comes from this belief that the radiation really is that dangerous. When you know it isn't, it takes quite a bit away from the premise.
The bit about "The water tanks in the reactor were full, and the uranium fuel rods were at risk of melting through the water tanks, potentially releasing a force equivalent to a multi-megaton nuclear device and devastating much of Europe with radiation." is sort of complex to judge.
It is absolutely true that that scenario was impossible and couldn't actually happen. But as far as we can tell (documented in Voices of Chernobyl) someone at a similar meeting to the one portrayed in the TV show did really say that that could happen as portrayed in the TV show. But of course the audience is going to assume that things scientists say in shows like this are accurate.
That is a very good point
My angle was: HBO series said Legasov's position was something that was by far not true
There is a podcast [1] featuring the showrunner Craig Mazin who is also a very conscientious and prolific podcaster [2] who cares deeply about balancing fact with a compelling narrative.
This is the basic difference between "based on" and documentary. Having worked as a screenwriter myself I can assure you that even if the script had been 100% factual, things would have been changed beyond the creators' control anyway.
1 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-chernobyl-podcast/...
2 https://scriptnotes.net/
I think we need to also debunk the debunking.
You know, some of us were already living then and it is not some distant event we have no knowledge of.
For example:
> Re: The soviet government did not want to evacuate the town of Pripyat
> Debunking: Legasov indicated the opposite. He said that the decision to evacuate was made quickly, even though the levels of radiation in the town were not considered to be dangerous.
WTF? The level of radiation was not considered to be dangerous when your reactor was blown open? Are you fucking kidding?
> Re: The government made an effort to conceal everything regarding the accident and what was happening.
> Legasov stated that this was not the case, and that information was not provided at the time because it didn't exist. The situation was very confusing, and information was scarce, coming from multiple conflicting sources and estimates, making it difficult to collect, filter, and access the correct information.
The accident happened on 26 April 1986, and on the 1st of May, _4 days later_ there was a celebration of Labour Day - a mandatory parade in Kyiv within just 100 km. And no-one knew about the disaster from the official sources. Only people with access to foreign radio knew about the disaster, others were happily marching with red flags on the streets breathing polluted air.
And so on, and so forth...
He claims that they had all the equipment ready and knew the actual levels, but at the same time were confused and information was scarce, and the level of radiation were not that bad - it this some type of propaganda for the dumb?
I agree there are some claims in this article that should be further scrutinized but it's true that the levels of radiation were not as high as one might assume. The direction of the wind during and immediately following the disaster slowed the spread of radioactive material over Pripyat (this is also why southern Belarus was hit so hard). The prevailing winds in that region are north east and the Chernobyl power plant was on the north side of the city. By the time of the May day parade the winds had shifted such that Kiev was downwind from Chernobyl.
The KGB did their best to contain information about the disaster in general and the USSR wanted the May day parade to go on as-planned to make it look like things were fine. Even those with enough power or connections to be aware of the danger were pressured to participate. The May day parade was later often referred to in infamy by the Ukrainian independence movement following the disaster.
Most of my information comes from what I remember of reading "Midnight in Chernobyl" and "Chernobyl the History of a Nuclear Disaster"
I think too often these historical "debunking" exercises are really just exercises in overzealously uncharitable interpretation. Some of the distinctions drawn are asinine especially in the context of a dramatic presentation. And some are even importantly wrong, as you've now pointed out which I wouldn't have thought of on a skim-by reading.
Just like we have functional literacy and information literacy, there should be such a thing as Debunking Literacy. Are you actually debunking or just uncharitably interpreting?
If we dismiss the possibility that the post itself is a part of Russian propaganda to whitewash the soviet legacy (which they are engaging now at scale), then the next best explanation is that the author lacks the context of living in the USSR to correctly interpret the recordings.
In USSR everyone lied. Telling anything against the party will put you and your family in grave danger - it is basically a suicide. There were no free press, no activism, and all information was filtered by the party with complicated process of deciding what should be published and when and who gets punished for what.
People in the west have no understanding what it means to live all your life in such conditions so they try to interpret people as if it happened in their country.
It can be that the person was trying to make amends with the party to ease the social ostracization for his family, friends or colleagues. It doesn't mean the person is telling the truth at all, it means that he show loyalty to the party line by telling that the system was efficient and all his higher-ups were doing the best job.
As a piece of writing it does not come across as sober or thoughtful. Rather it’s filled with mixed metaphors, hyperbole, and leaps of logic.
No indications the real-life event was an _act of god_ or _natural disaster_. The HBO series is a dramatization of human error, and stands or falls on the merits of fiction.
In other words—Sorry you didn’t like this dramatization of the disaster. As other said, it’s not a documentary.
I'm currently writing my own expose on the historical inaccuracies in the Harry Potter series.
How can a work of fiction about a real-world event have a myth?
At the end of the day, creators want an entertaining show and that usually requires intrigue, interpersonal conflict, character growth, good vs. evil, etc.
Biopics/dramatizations of events often bring multiple minor characters together into a single person.
I would be more bothered by the change of small details irrelevant to the narrative than I am by larger character changes. I would prefer that the mainline details stay the same - chain of events, impact to the town, aftermath - but I am not watching the series in order to write a paper. I appreciate the articles which document the fiction vs. reality of historical dramas, but I do not share in any anger. Then again, I'm not related to anyone whose character was represented in the series.
I would have accepted that if it wasn't for Craig Mazin (the creator of the series) insistence that he stuck to the details and the truth in the series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY0r1Ln6tkM
For the life of me I couldn't figure out what truth he is talking about (other than that Chernobyl happened, and some characters existed)
They even published a podcast highlighting the creative freedoms, but failed to mention the important ones, like the fact that the reactor caps couldn't bounce up and down...
Deeply ironic for a show with the tagline "What is the cost of lies?"
You think that's an important one? To me, that's just a creative liberty; the need for visuals in the seconds before the explosion led to a choice to visualise it like the top of a boiling kettle.
To me, there are more substantive issues, e.g.
* Claiming that nobody survived watching from the Bridge of Death, when it hasn't even been confirmed there was a gathering of people on the bridge, let alone any of that group dying from it. But Voices of Chernobyl contained accounts from survivors who claim they were there and happened, and it makes excellent drama, so into the show it goes.
* Raising the idea that Vasily Ignatenko was giving off dangerous radiation to his wife, but her baby "absorbed" it, killing it and protecting her. This is a complete myth, and it comes directly from Lyudmilla Ignatenko herself. It's gripping testimony, but it's simply not true, and one doctor who was there, reflected on how the myth of people being "contaminated" led to a lot of evacuated children not being accepted by families in Moscow because of this fear. (https://www.vanityfair.com/video/watch/radiation-expert-revi...)
But overall, I agree with your point, the irony is not lost. This series was utterly compelling to me, and had such amazing drama. It's almost certainly not the case that Valery Legasov gave an eloquent speech berating his own government in the middle of the Chernobyl trial, but it felt so good when he did that in the TV show. It's a lie that comforts the viewer, telling them that there is a just world, and the liars and self-serving bureaucrats and dysfunctional governments of this world will be held to account, by good people, truthtellers.
There was no mass funeral with victims buried in concrete. But the spectacle of the TV show moved me to tears. Again, dramatic license. There were victims buried in lead coffins, in regular graves: wouldn't that imagery have been enough? No, because once the show has brought you to your knees with a row of lead coffins and mourning families, the cement mixer arriving over the hill then pushes you right over the edge. The concrete flowing around the coffins is such a visually powerful scene. Even though it's false, I wouldn't ever take it out of the show.
Those are definitely bigger issues. I would also add the 100 megaton explosion, which physically wasn't even nearly possible. I wonder if there was a scientist in the writing room raising it as an issue, only to be ignored because the show needed a subplot, much like how the show's politicians ignored Legasov to not embarrass the state.
The bouncing caps stuck with me as I've seen many reviews online mentioning how fascinating they found the scene. In my opinion it's only fascinating if it has some grounding in the actual truth. After all, the show wouldn't be as popular if it was about a made up disaster and made up energy technology.
I agree the show is compelling, but once I noticed the inaccuracies, it became difficult to immerse myself. Perhaps I would've enjoyed it more if the show runner didn't claim high accuracy.
> the need for visuals in the seconds before the explosion led to a choice to visualise it like the top of a boiling kettle.
And this is the lie. Before they pressed the AZ-5 button: (quote from INSAG-7 report) "the parameters of the unit were controlled, remained within the limits expected for the operating conditions concerned, and did not require any intervention on the part of the personnel."
There was no drama in the control room, everything was mostly calm and "business as usual".
The Soviets invented the story "these youkels at Chernobyl did unauthorized experiment, disabled all safety mechanisms, broke all the rules and blew up our big beautiful reactor." This story was presented at the IAEA meeting in Vienna in 1986 by Legasov himself and published as the INSAG-1 report. The miniseries repeats this story but shifts all the blame to evil Dyatlov.
After the Soviet Union fell, the updated report INSAG-7 was published in 1992, which I quoted above.
Are we reading the same document?
The image presented in the TV show is not that Dyatlov is evil, but that he is dismissive of his staff's concerns, he bullies them into submission, and he has a callous indifference to safety. This is all true. He's also the main author of the test procedure! Dyatlov had been at Chernobyl since planning began in 1973, and by comparison Toptunov was 25 years old and had only been in his post for 3 months. If anyone is to blame, it's going to be Dyatlov, and chief engineer Fomin who permitted Dyatlov to run the test. But as the TV show makes clear, this pales into insignificance when compared with a regime that intentionally buries secrets, like them already knowing the unsafe design of the RBMK control rods.
The only way I'd say the TV show did him a disservice is in showing him in complete denial there was a problem, and demanding water be pumped into the (nonexistant) core. In reality, he realised it was futile, but after reporting to Fomin and Bryukhanov and collapsing from radiation sickness, it was Fomin who took his place, did not understand the situation, and ordered the futile water pumping.
From INSAG-7:
> When the reactor power could not be restored to the intended level of 700 MW(th), the operating staff did not stop and think, but on the spot they modified the test conditions to match their view at that moment of the prevailing conditions.
> operating rules were violated, and control and safety rods were placed in a configuration that would have compromised the emergency protection of the reactor even had the rod design not been faulty on the ground of the positive scram effect mentioned earlier. Most reprehensibly, unapproved changes in the test procedure were deliberately made on the spot, although the plant was known to be in a condition very different from that intended for the test
> INSAG, with the present report, does not retract INSAG-1, nor does it alter the conclusions of that report except as clearly indicated here. While the balance of INSAG's judgement of the factors contributing to the accident has shifted, the many other conclusions of INSAG-1 are unaffected.
If it's "business as usual" for the operators to invent changes to nuclear safety tests as they carry them out... I don't know what to say to you!
> he is dismissive of his staff's concerns, he bullies them into submission, and he has a callous indifference to safety.
I suspect that you are sourcing "Midnight in Chernobyl", which is based on Medvedev's book, which is full of inventions.
> a regime that intentionally buries secrets, like them already knowing the unsafe design of the RBMK control rods.
This is an invention in the miniseries. See section 4.1 in the INSAG-7 about the Ignalina phenomenon.
> When the reactor power could not be restored to the intended level of 700 MW(th), the operating staff did not stop and think, but on the spot they modified the test conditions to match their view at that moment of the prevailing conditions.
This is a weak spot in the INSAG-7. The 700 MW was the upper limit, not the lower and this number was put in the test conditions by Dyatlov, who designed the test.
> operating rules were violated, and control and safety rods were placed in a configuration
The only operational rule violated was the ORM margin but there was no indication about this metric in the control room and the operators weren't aware of this violation. They were still prosecuted for this. Criminal investigation against Akimov and Toptunov was closed only in November 1986, six months after their deaths.
> INSAG, with the present report, does not retract INSAG-1, nor does it alter the conclusions of that report except as clearly indicated here.
I love this. "No, no, it wasn't bullshit that Legasov gave us in 1986."
> the operators to invent changes to nuclear safety tests
It is not that kind of nuclear safety test that was sent to them from above. The organization that designed the reactor proposed a new mode of operation but didn't bother to design anything. The changes to the design and testing were prepared locally at Chernobyl NPP, so it was Dyatlov who prepared the test program. Fomin authorized the test. The INSAG-7 report says that regulations NSR-04-74 and GSP-82, which were in force at the time of the accident, did not require the plant managers to obtain approval from someone else. In 1987, Fomin was sentenced to 10 years in a penal colony anyway.
Shakespeare's Richard III also inaccurate.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2013-02-07-source-shakespeares-ina...
Dyatlov's interview from the 90s, which is still available on youtube [1], seems to fit better with the account given in the hit book "Midnight in Chernobyl" (which was the basis for the series,) than the story written for TV. To me the series just seemed like a rehash of the same movie tropes we've seen time and time again in dramatizations of the accident, compared to a true adaptation of book, which included a lot of updated analysis beyond the IAEA original report.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8__v9EswN4
There is an article by Dyatlov: "Why INSAG has still got it wrong."
https://www.neimagazine.com/analysis/why-insag-has-still-got...
I wasn't aware of that Dyatlov's interview! Thanks a lot for sharing it
Hey Omar! I met you briefly in Grenoble many years ago. I hope you're doing well.
I only recently watched this series and found it very entertaining. But I never expected it to be very accurate. It's definitely been dramatized for TV. I definitely didn't get an anti-nuclear sentiment from the show, I mostly think they were trying to portray a negative view of Soviet Bureaucracy.
Hey Nicolas! Very glad to hear from you :)
I honestly don't see a problem with dramatization (not my taste, but people are different I guess).
My issue is with Craig Mazin (the creator of the series) insistence that he stuck to the details and the truth in the series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY0r1Ln6tkM
It's a dramatization, of course there are going to be liberties taken and creative license used to further the (TFA might say contrived) story.
One thing not mentioned in TFA, though, is how those suffering from radiation sickness (first responders like the firefighter Ignatenko, etc.) are portrayed almost as if they are contagious, and so should not be touched. The Chernobyl series is not the only one to do this, either, and it can lead to viewers thinking radiation sickness is something you can "catch" from someone else.
I don't know why they never make it clear that it's for the sake of the sickened themselves that contact should be minimized (assuming all contaminated clothing etc. has already been discarded), since their immune and other internal systems are totally compromised by radiation poisoning.
An unfortunate detail is that the wife of the firefighter (Ignatenko) who was portrayed in Chernobyl was recently killed by a Russian drone which hit her apartment building.
The government response to the disaster was slow and inadequate. It sure was they denied it actually happened for a pretty long time.
Nit pick after nit pick
> It’s like we’ve chosen to ignore the truth in favor of a good story or a good feeling.
Aww, man. I've got some bad news for you about literally any fact you know that isn't derived from math. And even that is still, philosophically, just some stories we're telling ourselves about the observations we're all seeing.
Propaganda at its finest...
This is an incredibly naive and wild take. The first complaint is that the show focuses on Legasov and “claims” he was the primary scientist when Legasov says he wasn’t, then proceeds to “debunk” the show based on the tape alone. A testimony BTW which is not only not always consistent with the multitude of other sources and evidence but also sometimes contradicts things Legasov himself said (allegedly or on-record).
I don’t defend the show as an academic, completely accurate documentary, because it isn’t and never claimed to be. But suggesting it is almost entirely falsified is an awful take. I can’t wait to read about their outraged takedown piece on Titanic once they get around to reading one survivor’s memoirs.
This kind of "for the drama" variance is very common. Look at archaeologists reaction to Coogans film about Richard III which went to court.
Films, even documentary, don't always get it right and often don't even try because "based on" admits a lot of change.
People often don't understand history. "The KGB regiments shot deserters in ww2 Stalingrad" since the KGB was formed in 1954, that's a serious mis-statement of history. Should we be surprised the role of soviet structural agencies is misunderstood by an american dramatisation? (This kgb comment is a generalisation for illustration not a dig at anything in the doco)
Still. It's a pretty egregious list.
Confusing the KGB with the NKVD (different names used at different times for essentially the same organization) is a totally inconsequential mistake and it is disingenuous to pretend it has any significance.
You kind of make my point because any one of the things complained of could be said to be inconsequential but the sum total strongly suggests more fiction than fact.
"Enemy at the gates" comes to mind. That whole "pick up the gun of your dead comrade" scene..
It really annoys me when fiction is based on real events, takes a lot of liberty with the source material that it enters into the public consciousness.
The classic case is the "The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus" where it was claimed he was aiming to prove the Earth was not flat. My personal peeve is movies like "The Imitation Game".
Legit question... I have not watched it. Is it actually good on it's own merits?
It’s pretty good. I loved it. I recommend it
My only problem is that the creator insists it was factually correct. First test, the tapes, are anything but correct
[dead]
[flagged]