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Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

397 points by BCM43 7y ago

lioon121 7y ago
TL;DR
gukov 7y ago
Highly recommend the HBO's new miniseries Chernobyl. One episode left. It's already at the top of IMDB TV show rankings. [1] https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv/ https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv/
- bitL 7y ago
  HBO offsets the GoT S8 disappointment, Chernobyl is so far the best show I've watched in the past 5-10 years.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- asah 7y ago
  +1 - we saw last night's episode... the dogs and the baby... this must be seen but it's also something you can't un-see.
- legitster 7y ago
  A bit over-dramatized, but very, very good. Although I do not really like the decision to reduce the entire engineering team to a single character. I get that it simplifies the writing and casting, but it just perpetrates the lone scientist myth. It could have been really compelling to take the time to show the group effort.
  - wefarrell 7y ago
    The lone scientist hero myth is hardly unique to science, it's an abstraction that you see in all narratives that use a leader to represent a group. There are few scientific characters because the show chooses to focus on the political/systemic failure rather than the technical one. It shows us the leaders who bury their heads in the sand, the clueless residents who suffer as a result, and the liquidators who are aware of the dangers and make the sacrifice regardless. It's more a show about communism than it is about nuclear power, and I really like their take on the disaster.
    - effie 7y ago
      It is a show about what happens when the state officials and secret state organizations have all the power to keep that power. It corrupts the people, because there is not much left to keep them honest.
  - equasar 7y ago
    It amazes me how there can be a small digit number of people that always will be complaining for something that is truly remarcable well done.
    - switch007 7y ago
      What is remarkable? Everyone who recommended it to me didn’t articulate an actual reason. I find this quite often. It was over hyped to me There’s nothing amazing about people disagreeing, surely?
    - rawTruthHurts 7y ago
      I feel you... that pesky people with different and well argumented opinions... tsk tsk...
  - gideon_b 7y ago
    It's worth listening to the podcast that the screenwriter put out alongside the show. He discusses the decision to collapse the scientists into one character, and explains why he chose to do it this way. Whether or not you agree it's interesting to see the though process that goes into a decision like this.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  I don't get the feeling it's very accurate, but it is very entertaining. EDIT: the accuracy I am referring to is about the actual sequence of events of the plot, which I understand to be simplified as people replying have pointed out :)
  - orblivion 7y ago
    This Twitter thread speaks to this, (supposedly) from a Russian guy. He said that as far as Soviet life goes it's extremely accurate. https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1132029943297265664 https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1132029943297265664
    - papito 7y ago
      Yes. I lived in Soviet Ukraine at the time. While the British actors do take away some authenticity from it, the look and feel of 1980's Soviet Union is incredibly accurate. I showed a clip to my parents and they were like "wait, what, this is not a documentary?"
  - keldaris 7y ago
    It varies. The physics part is oversimplified and, at times, overdramatized (the threat of a megaton-range explosion being a particularly egregious example). The range of characters is highly limited by the format of the series (hence the fictional Belarusian physicist meant to be a composite of many characters, but really just serving as a narrative shortcut to compress the whole thing into the length constraints they have). At the same time, the visual setting is very accurate (part of the filming is done at Ignalina, the site of another RBMK reactor plant with a similar workers' town, etc.) and the general atmosphere is vastly more true to life than any other dramatization of the accident I've ever seen.
    - ghshephard 7y ago
      The question about the series, when something particularly unrealistic occurs, like the movie trope of three heroes volunteering to open the sluice gates, and having to swim through water, and having their lamps all go out at the same time - that happened - is whether the mini series is showing something unbelievable, but true, or something that just didn't happen. By and large, the creators always tried to be biased away from the fantastical elements. That is, they left parts out of the movie, that while 100% true, just sounded too unrealistic.
- lqet 7y ago
  Agreed, it's brilliant and imho the best series in years. The last TV episode that left me as speechless and uneasy as the first episode of Chernobyl (the shift worker looking down into the open reactor from the roof!) was the now legendary Ozymandias episode of Breaking Bad.
- theNJR 7y ago
  It is not a coincidence that you are seeing lots of old content about Chernobyl resurfacing now. Still, the show is amazing.
- yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
  Can anyone explain why the Pripyat hospital in the first episode was so dirty and old? It had only been running for about 15 years at the time of the disaster.
  - laacz 7y ago
    I've lived my early childhood though USSR (Latvia; born in 1979), and have been to relatively recently remodeled hospitals on multiple occasions for an extended stay. Plaster and paint easily fell off, tiling was irregular and often cracked, walls were never straight or evenly plasered, bed frames already had rust, springs always squeaked. All that said, it was clean, yet because of build quality, standardized pale paint colors, and poor lighting it seemed very used and in need of repairs. It could give impression of being dirty, when watched over TV. 15 years for that type of build quality is a long time.
    - gideon_b 7y ago
      I recently stayed at a hotel built with this quality. Everything was rusty, from the door hinges to the windows, to the front gate. There were cracks in the foundation that shot up the walls. I asked the manager when they opened and he told me they had been open for less than a year. The building was less than 3 years old.
- KONAir 7y ago
  I find this one more... down to Earth(?) and despite being more of a love story, it touches almost every subject there is to touch. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2934916/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2934916/ https://youtu.be/Xe8ptlQ1_FQ https://youtu.be/Xe8ptlQ1_FQ
randylahey 7y ago
I found it very distracting that none of the ostensibly Russian or Ukrainian characters have an even remotely slavic accent.
- mikeash 7y ago
  I hate it when movies try to portray foreign language speakers as speaking accented English. That’s not how any of this works! If they want to go for accuracy, the actors should speak the actual language. Provide subtitles for outside audiences. Otherwise, just have the actors speak normally. It’s no less authentic than speaking with an accent, and the actors can focus on acting. Another prominent Soviet example of doing this well is The Death of Stalin. You actually get a sense of the people as real people instead of scary foreigners.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    I’ve heard some audiences (probably Americans) don’t like subtitles. So it’s a matter of money in some ways.
    - FPGAhacker 7y ago
      After seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I became a fan of subtitled movies. Part way through the movie it felt like I understood Mandarin.
    - MistahKoala 7y ago
      I wonder if that explains Amazon Prime's dubbed shows? I thought it was unusual (along with Netflix's 3%); in the UK I'm used to foreign programmes only being subtitled.
- heliophobicdude 7y ago
  I believe you are referring to the HBO miniseries, Chernobyl. The showrunners explained in a podcast that in auditions, characters used Slavic accents but ended up becoming distracting and could have ended up comical. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2T6ldM41ZbVzuEaL644sef?si=1o7EarcDRxGMNtpdyjvOdg https://open.spotify.com/episode/2T6ldM41ZbVzuEaL644sef?si=1...
dweekly 7y ago
The pictures are lovely and the reflections profound. But much of the cited data here appears wrong. For instance, the article states (italicized): "six hundred helicopter pilots were killed" and yet it was only 600 helicopter pilots who _flew_ liquidator missions[1], two of which were killed in an piloting accident and none were registered killed from immediate radiation exposure[2], though at least one eventually died from cancer likely from this exposure[3]. Similarly a claim of "Over six hundred thousand people were directly involved in dealing with the aftermath of the Chernobyl explosion" is not supported by the evidence[4]. I don't mean any of this to lessen the enormity of what happened and the tremendous, noble effort made by the liquidators to remediate what was there at great personal cost. It's just good when making specific claims for those claims to be substantiated. [1] https://www.rotorandwing.com/2016/04/26/chernobyl-anniversary-recalls-helo-pilots-bravery/ https://www.rotorandwing.com/2016/04/26/chernobyl-anniversar... [2] http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Chernobyl_pilots_knew_risks_commander_999.html http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Chernobyl_pilots_knew_risk... [3] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-07-04-mn-106-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-07-04-mn-106-st... [4] http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/liquidators/ http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/liquidato...
- baybal2 7y ago
  > equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion Yep, the man greatly dramatises the story. Total deaths from immediate "radiation poisoning" were likely less than 100, with possibly 100 more due to radionuclide ingestion. Immediate DNA damage that does not result in radiation sickness, is much less lethal than popular culture suggests. Another thing to add, the best protective equipment for nuclear disaster is a good respirator, and a chemsuit, and not the lead "x-ray suit" often portrayed in popular culture. The cause of most deaths during Chernobyl was smoke inhalation, seconded by radionuclide ingestion by people who ate contaminated meals from field kitchens.
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    > > equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion To be clear, this didn't happen. No one said it did. There was a chance something like this could have happened (the Chernobyl miniseries does a great job of showing this). The issue was that there were large water tanks under the reactor, and that the reactor material would eventually melt into those tanks, superheat the water and cause an enormous steam explosion, further scattering radioactive materials into the atmosphere, and destroying the three other reactors at Chernobyl, scattering their material too. That said, the idea that a 5MT explosion at Chernobyl would have levelled the city of Kiev is not particularly realistic [0]. (note that the fallout effects from Chernobyl would be much worse than from a nuclear explosion, so given winds, fallout could have made Kiev, or even Moscow, uninhabitable). And in fact, as explained elsewhere, the explosion wouldn't have been 5MT, but much smaller, although that wouldn't have mattered much for the issue of spreading radioactive material. [0]: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=5000&lat=51.3906031&lng=30.1039024&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&casualties=1&fallout=1&ff=50&psi=20,5,1&rem=100,500&therm=_3rd-100,_3rd-50,_2nd-50,_1st-50,_noharm-100&fatalities=0&injuries=0&psi_1=0&zm=6 https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=5000&lat=51.3906031&...
gk1 7y ago
There's a YouTuber who's been traveling around Belarus and recording his daily adventures. Many of the videos are from inside the areas affected by Chernobyl. They're fun to watch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqWdYjn21PdHRvHB7NrwlXBeHE44AW-R9 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqWdYjn21PdHRvHB7Nrwl...
- cycrutchfield 7y ago
  Used to be a fan of Bald until his bizarre fake fight video with Harald Baldr. Then I started to notice other little things he was doing that were a bit off-putting and how creepy and exploitative some of his videos felt. Ended up unsubscribing after that.
- hackermailman 7y ago
  The Belarus exclusion zone is huge, and sort of keeps growing whenever there is a forest fire and radioactive materials are redistributed.
- poisonarena 7y ago
  That guy made a really cringey gopnick video, and comes off as a weird sexpat to me
- rasz 7y ago
  I thought you were linking bionerd23 https://www.youtube.com/user/bionerd23/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/bionerd23/videos
HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
On that score- the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki did less overall damage than the Allied's firebombings in other cities- and, IIRC, there were less casualties in the nuked cities as well- the damage was just different.
- dalore 7y ago
  Well yes, some consider that the atomic bombs saved lives by ending the war. If the bombs weren't dropped and the ware continued then those fire bombings would have killed even more.
  - robocat 7y ago
    Your comment is based on the myth that the atomic bombs ended the war. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-stone-kuznick-hiroshima-obama-20160524-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-stone-kuznick-hi... """ The atomic bombings, terrible and inhumane as they were, played little role in Japanese leaders' calculations to quickly surrender. After all, the U.S. had firebombed more than 100 Japanese cities. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just two more cities destroyed; whether the attack required one bomb or thousands didn't much matter. As Gen. Torashirō Kawabe, the deputy chief of staff, later told U.S. interrogators, the depth of devastation wrought in Hiroshima and Nagasaki only became known "in a gradual manner." But "in comparison, the Soviet entry into the war was a great shock." """ """ Most Americans have been taught that using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was justified because the bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby averting a costly U.S. invasion of Japan. This erroneous contention finds its way into high school history texts still today. """
    - ekianjo 7y ago
      Exactly, the soviet entry is clearly what led the leaders of Japan to surrender - the timeline also matches very closely. Not sure what we keep hearing the A-bomb propaganda such a long time after the facts.
      - 7y ago
wyldfire 7y ago
> This cost $1.8 billion to construct, $60 million a year to maintain, What are the maintenance costs for The Object? Is it monitoring/auditing or is there active construction/repair?
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  If you are talking about the New Safe Containment structure, then the plan is to disassemble the original sarcophagus and remove as much as can be done safely. Its not merely a static entombment structure (though that is its failsafe function).
tedunangst 7y ago
When was this published? I couldn't find a date.
- creeble 7y ago
  Looks like 4 days ago, if I'm reading the Instagram dates correctly.
Cynddl 7y ago
I'm confused, did they legally entered the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone? I was told that biking into the Chernobyl Zone, e.g., is forbidden due to the risk of contamination when you exit. Edit: Indeed it was not. From Instagram, “we spent the night tiptoeing around razor wire fences, coasting through sleeping security checkpoints, and riding frantically away from some surprisingly alert and vigilant guard dogs.” This validates what I know from Ukraine. Entering the exclusion zone is a very lucrative touristic business, with prices around $100-200 for a single day trip in a group.
- orblivion 7y ago
  Moxie is an anarchist, and has detailed all sorts of adventures like this. Most notably, his Anarchist Yacht Club. There's a documentary out there.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  There are plenty of videos about this nowadays. Here's a series of videos of a Ukrainian youtuber from this winter, biking into the exclusion zone, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=199KDKgO1Uc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=199KDKgO1Uc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5knVD0AnTFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5knVD0AnTFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DePsh2OFNVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DePsh2OFNVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi9rhMn6qTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi9rhMn6qTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY3jyNbbEHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY3jyNbbEHY
- thesmok 7y ago
  Price of a day trip is much less if you're local. Higher prices are for tourists, but they include smaller groups and more comfortable buses.
- nimnio 7y ago
  Just FYI, you didn't need to check Instagram. It's in the article.
dmix 7y ago
> Standing in the bleachers, listening to the Pripyat municipal overture of resounding bird song, the only thing we could do was stare out at the trees and wonder "how long until New York looks like this?" I'm curious what the author meant by this. Does he mean how long would it take NYC to look like Chernobyl after a similar nuclear/natural accident happened? Or do they have a fatalistic outlook on the future due to some environmental, economic, or political worldview? Also the end of the story mentions there are no obvious monuments to the people who worked to help rescue people but there is one in the very city he was reporting from dedicated to the firefighters and others involved: https://oddviser.com/ukraine/chernobyl/memorial https://oddviser.com/ukraine/chernobyl/memorial
- jahewson 7y ago
  > fatalistic I do not think it means what you think it means.
  - lqet 7y ago
    As a non-native speaker: do you care to elaborate why you think this word is incorrect here?
    - xsmasher 7y ago
      The word refers to a belief fate or destiny; but the usage here implied negativity or pessimism of some kind. A "pessimistic outlook" is probably closer to what they wanted to express.
  - atombender 7y ago
    Looks like a perfectly apt use of the word. A fatalistic worldview can mean, for example, that they expect humankind's destructive impulses will always lead to its own destruction.
- YjSe2GMQ 7y ago
  It just means that on a long enough timeline everyone's and everything's survival rate drops to zero. For NY it may be 50 years, may be 5000 years, may be 5B years.
madengr 7y ago
Can anyone comment on the validity of the 5 MT explosion when the core material hit water? This was also stated the the HBO show. I don’t think 5 MT fission bombs are even possible, as they tend to blow themselves apart.
- saul_goodman 7y ago
  Nothing against Moxie, but this stated fact is clearly nonsense. It certainly would have been terrible for a large volume of water to reach the burning core, but you're not going to get a 5MT blast from a reactor accident. It takes a LOT of things working perfectly to make a nuclear bomb explode correctly. Lots of bad things happen when reactors go critical, a nuclear blast is generally not one of them. It's the spread of contaminated matter that makes reactor accidents bad. Also, sure, explosions can happen with rapid temperature changes like one encounters in these situations, but nothing like an actual nuclear bomb.
  - moxie 7y ago
    "Only 1400 kilograms of uranium and graphite mixture would have needed to hit the water to set off a new explosion. Our experts studied the possibility and concluded that the explosion would have had a force of 3 to 5 megatons. Minsk...would have been razed." - Vassili Nesterenko, director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. I am not a nuclear physicist, but at least some people who are did not find this to be "clearly nonsense."
    - arpa 7y ago
      Link to original source please, in text, from a reputable source (copy of a report). An interview of a senile official as a part of a dubiuous documentary is not a solid source, sadly. Also, argument to authority does not make the claim valid
    - vonmoltke 7y ago
      Ignoring the plausibility of the yield, Minsk is over 150km away from Pripyat. It's impossible for a 5Mt explosion centered on Pripyat to even reach Minsk, let alone "raze" it.
dzonga 7y ago
watching Chernobyl on HBO brought to life some of the stories that happened during that fateful period. Easily the best show on HBO right now
saul_goodman 7y ago
Maby they did sneak in, but fool me once: http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html The last time someone posted pictures claiming they rode their motorcycle through the forbidden zone it caused a stir because that is expressly forbidden because of the risk of picking up contaminated dust. Enclosed tour vehicles only for this reason. Then apparently, in the case of kiddofspeed, we find out she rode her motorcycle to the standard meeting place and took the standard tour. While carrying her helmet along with her for effect.
- 4043D 7y ago
  Moxie isn't known for bullshiting about stuff like that he's done a fair few things "normal" people would think fairly crazy.
  - rasz 7y ago
    and yet whole article is full of nonsense(death toll, explosion etc).
  - dTal 7y ago
    Mmm, that isn't strictly true. From what I've read his anarchist-leaning sailing documentary "Hold Fast" is... controversial, in sailing circles.
    - abyssin 7y ago
      I enjoyed watching his documentary, but I'm not part of sailing circles. In what way is it considered controversial?
      - dTal 7y ago
        Disclaimer: I also am not in sailing circles and also have not seen the documentary in question - I'm basing this impression entirely on the hearsay of an extensive Reddit thread (that I cannot alas find again) full of sailors who had no idea about Moxie's other life. The objections I remember were: -incompetent sailing -criminal behaviour (or more likely faked criminal behaviour) including theft -making a big show about being poor and bohemian when in fact they had loads of cash (some of which was spent on the boat offscreen, rather subverting the message) This is exactly the same kind of pseudo-rebellious sketchiness as pretending to ride your motorcycle illegally through Chernobyl, when in fact you took the official tour. (I have just queried a sailing IRC channel and got a similar response, so I don't think I'm misremembering.)
aquamo 7y ago
Loved this story! Also good timing as a lot of us are watching the HBO mini-series now. I especially liked this quote: "The reason it's so beautiful and so peaceful is precisely because we can't consume it. Like, perhaps, all real paradises everywhere."
wst_ 7y ago
Not so long ago there was a submission about visit of Arkadiusz Podniesiński in Fukushima. Before that, though, he was visiting the zone multiple times and made two long movies about it. Here's a trailer of second one. Worth a look as the visuals are quite nice. Alone in the Zone 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCBQA7Z1Y0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCBQA7Z1Y0
ycombonator 7y ago
Coincidentally I just started watching Chernobyl series on HBO https://www.hbo.com/chernobyl https://www.hbo.com/chernobyl
- ycombonator 7y ago
  I have got a stalker who keeps downvoting each every comment I write.
kyledrake 7y ago
All of Moxie's stories are great and I highly recommended them: https://moxie.org/stories.html https://moxie.org/stories.html The train stories in particular made me recall reading Days of War, Nights of Love in a really good way.
latchkey 7y ago
1 gallon of water weighs 8.34 lbs. 5 * 8.34 * 3 = 125.1 lbs
yesprabhu 7y ago
The book, 'Chernobyl, History of a Tragedy' by Serhii Plokhy gives a very good account of the accident. Days preceding, the burning days ,and political and social repurcussions there after.
dmpanch 7y ago
Visited Chernobyl 3 years ago, just before they cover it with Confinement. https://imgur.com/gallery/uIOOz1p https://imgur.com/gallery/uIOOz1p Btw, you can easily visit it, because of lots of tours here, it cost about $100-$150 per day. I used this company https://www.chernobyl-tour.com/english/48-one-day-trip-to-the-chernobyl-zone-and-prypyat-town.html https://www.chernobyl-tour.com/english/48-one-day-trip-to-th...
- yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
  I was there around the same time as you — a couple of weeks before the new sarcophagus was rolled into place, and just after the last inhabitant of Chernobyl died and her house burned down. Everyone recommends going, but to be honest I'd give it a miss. There are plenty of nice things to see and do in Ukraine.
arpa 7y ago
Five megaton explosion? That's hydrogen fusion bomb range, dude, not a steam explosion.
perfunctory 7y ago
When discussing the safety of nuclear power most comments seem to focus on the number of deaths. While death count is tragic in itself, it doesn't capture the full extent of human drama. Consider this Fukushima "the nuclear accident was responsible for 154,000 being evacuated" "In December 2016 the government estimated decontamination, compensation, decommissioning, and radioactive waste storage costs at 21.5 trillion yen ($187 billion), nearly double the 2013 estimate." Chernobyl "In 2005, the total cost over 30 years for Belarus alone was estimated at US$235 billion; about $301 billion in today's dollars given inflation rates." "between 5% and 7% of government spending in Ukraine is still related to Chernobyl" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Tsubasachan 7y ago
I watched a documentary on the new concrete sarcophagus that they built to contain the reactor. Its amusing that the EU had to invest billions into the project. Hell even the US put in money and expertise despite being an ocean away. Where was Russia? It was their powerplant that blew up!
nnq 7y ago
Q for ppl more knowledgeable - How exaggerated is this claim? : > would have ignited a second reaction that would have been the equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion. It would have leveled Kiev and Minsk, and would have ejected the nuclear material from the other 3 Chernobyl reactors with a force that would have rendered much of Europe uninhabitable for hundreds of years (I can imagine it is exaggerated, but I am not an expert so can't tell the magnitude. I meant 5 megatons is not that much, the tested "Tsar Bomba" was estimated at 50+ megatons. And even will tones of material spread around, most of it would have settled on the ground on a smallish area, right?)
- effie 7y ago
  It seems extremely exaggerated, such explosions require complicated bomb design, otherwise the first stages of the explosion throw the reacting matter away and it won't react completely. However, 5 megatons can destroy city completely, and if it explodes close to ground, it will create lots of contamination. Then it is up to the winds. Bad wind will make this contamination a major catastrophe thousands of kilometers away.
agumonkey 7y ago
never ceases to amaze..
cambaceres 7y ago
"When that material then started to smolder downwards out through the floor of the chamber, it threatened to come into contact with a large amount of water that had pooled there as a result of early firefighter attempts to put it out with hoses. This would have ignited a second reaction that would have been the equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion. It would have leveled Kiev and Minsk, and would have ejected the nuclear material from the other 3 Chernobyl reactors with a force that would have rendered much of Europe uninhabitable for hundreds of years. With only days to stop it, Alexei Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov, and Boris Baranov went into the ruins of the plant, knowingly facing almost certain death from that level of radiation exposure, to release valves that would drain 5 million gallons of water." Is this really true? Are there better sources than this blog post?
- jaggirs 7y ago
  The HBO series chernobyl says the same pretty much. I suppose thats a better source, but not by much.

397 points by BCM43 7y ago

TL;DR

Highly recommend the HBO's new miniseries Chernobyl. One episode left. It's already at the top of IMDB TV show rankings. [1] https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv/ https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv/

bitL 7y ago
HBO offsets the GoT S8 disappointment, Chernobyl is so far the best show I've watched in the past 5-10 years.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
asah 7y ago
+1 - we saw last night's episode... the dogs and the baby... this must be seen but it's also something you can't un-see.
legitster 7y ago
A bit over-dramatized, but very, very good. Although I do not really like the decision to reduce the entire engineering team to a single character. I get that it simplifies the writing and casting, but it just perpetrates the lone scientist myth. It could have been really compelling to take the time to show the group effort.
- wefarrell 7y ago
  The lone scientist hero myth is hardly unique to science, it's an abstraction that you see in all narratives that use a leader to represent a group. There are few scientific characters because the show chooses to focus on the political/systemic failure rather than the technical one. It shows us the leaders who bury their heads in the sand, the clueless residents who suffer as a result, and the liquidators who are aware of the dangers and make the sacrifice regardless. It's more a show about communism than it is about nuclear power, and I really like their take on the disaster.
  - effie 7y ago
    It is a show about what happens when the state officials and secret state organizations have all the power to keep that power. It corrupts the people, because there is not much left to keep them honest.
- equasar 7y ago
  It amazes me how there can be a small digit number of people that always will be complaining for something that is truly remarcable well done.
  - switch007 7y ago
    What is remarkable? Everyone who recommended it to me didn’t articulate an actual reason. I find this quite often. It was over hyped to me There’s nothing amazing about people disagreeing, surely?
  - rawTruthHurts 7y ago
    I feel you... that pesky people with different and well argumented opinions... tsk tsk...
- gideon_b 7y ago
  It's worth listening to the podcast that the screenwriter put out alongside the show. He discusses the decision to collapse the scientists into one character, and explains why he chose to do it this way. Whether or not you agree it's interesting to see the though process that goes into a decision like this.
SomeOldThrow 7y ago
I don't get the feeling it's very accurate, but it is very entertaining. EDIT: the accuracy I am referring to is about the actual sequence of events of the plot, which I understand to be simplified as people replying have pointed out :)
- orblivion 7y ago
  This Twitter thread speaks to this, (supposedly) from a Russian guy. He said that as far as Soviet life goes it's extremely accurate. https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1132029943297265664 https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1132029943297265664
  - papito 7y ago
    Yes. I lived in Soviet Ukraine at the time. While the British actors do take away some authenticity from it, the look and feel of 1980's Soviet Union is incredibly accurate. I showed a clip to my parents and they were like "wait, what, this is not a documentary?"
- keldaris 7y ago
  It varies. The physics part is oversimplified and, at times, overdramatized (the threat of a megaton-range explosion being a particularly egregious example). The range of characters is highly limited by the format of the series (hence the fictional Belarusian physicist meant to be a composite of many characters, but really just serving as a narrative shortcut to compress the whole thing into the length constraints they have). At the same time, the visual setting is very accurate (part of the filming is done at Ignalina, the site of another RBMK reactor plant with a similar workers' town, etc.) and the general atmosphere is vastly more true to life than any other dramatization of the accident I've ever seen.
  - ghshephard 7y ago
    The question about the series, when something particularly unrealistic occurs, like the movie trope of three heroes volunteering to open the sluice gates, and having to swim through water, and having their lamps all go out at the same time - that happened - is whether the mini series is showing something unbelievable, but true, or something that just didn't happen. By and large, the creators always tried to be biased away from the fantastical elements. That is, they left parts out of the movie, that while 100% true, just sounded too unrealistic.
lqet 7y ago
Agreed, it's brilliant and imho the best series in years. The last TV episode that left me as speechless and uneasy as the first episode of Chernobyl (the shift worker looking down into the open reactor from the roof!) was the now legendary Ozymandias episode of Breaking Bad.
theNJR 7y ago
It is not a coincidence that you are seeing lots of old content about Chernobyl resurfacing now. Still, the show is amazing.
yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
Can anyone explain why the Pripyat hospital in the first episode was so dirty and old? It had only been running for about 15 years at the time of the disaster.
- laacz 7y ago
  I've lived my early childhood though USSR (Latvia; born in 1979), and have been to relatively recently remodeled hospitals on multiple occasions for an extended stay. Plaster and paint easily fell off, tiling was irregular and often cracked, walls were never straight or evenly plasered, bed frames already had rust, springs always squeaked. All that said, it was clean, yet because of build quality, standardized pale paint colors, and poor lighting it seemed very used and in need of repairs. It could give impression of being dirty, when watched over TV. 15 years for that type of build quality is a long time.
  - gideon_b 7y ago
    I recently stayed at a hotel built with this quality. Everything was rusty, from the door hinges to the windows, to the front gate. There were cracks in the foundation that shot up the walls. I asked the manager when they opened and he told me they had been open for less than a year. The building was less than 3 years old.
KONAir 7y ago
I find this one more... down to Earth(?) and despite being more of a love story, it touches almost every subject there is to touch. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2934916/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2934916/ https://youtu.be/Xe8ptlQ1_FQ https://youtu.be/Xe8ptlQ1_FQ

randylahey 7y ago

I found it very distracting that none of the ostensibly Russian or Ukrainian characters have an even remotely slavic accent.

mikeash 7y ago
I hate it when movies try to portray foreign language speakers as speaking accented English. That’s not how any of this works! If they want to go for accuracy, the actors should speak the actual language. Provide subtitles for outside audiences. Otherwise, just have the actors speak normally. It’s no less authentic than speaking with an accent, and the actors can focus on acting. Another prominent Soviet example of doing this well is The Death of Stalin. You actually get a sense of the people as real people instead of scary foreigners.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  I’ve heard some audiences (probably Americans) don’t like subtitles. So it’s a matter of money in some ways.
  - FPGAhacker 7y ago
    After seeing Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I became a fan of subtitled movies. Part way through the movie it felt like I understood Mandarin.
  - MistahKoala 7y ago
    I wonder if that explains Amazon Prime's dubbed shows? I thought it was unusual (along with Netflix's 3%); in the UK I'm used to foreign programmes only being subtitled.
heliophobicdude 7y ago
I believe you are referring to the HBO miniseries, Chernobyl. The showrunners explained in a podcast that in auditions, characters used Slavic accents but ended up becoming distracting and could have ended up comical. https://open.spotify.com/episode/2T6ldM41ZbVzuEaL644sef?si=1o7EarcDRxGMNtpdyjvOdg https://open.spotify.com/episode/2T6ldM41ZbVzuEaL644sef?si=1...

dweekly 7y ago

The pictures are lovely and the reflections profound. But much of the cited data here appears wrong. For instance, the article states (italicized): "six hundred helicopter pilots were killed" and yet it was only 600 helicopter pilots who _flew_ liquidator missions[1], two of which were killed in an piloting accident and none were registered killed from immediate radiation exposure[2], though at least one eventually died from cancer likely from this exposure[3]. Similarly a claim of "Over six hundred thousand people were directly involved in dealing with the aftermath of the Chernobyl explosion" is not supported by the evidence[4]. I don't mean any of this to lessen the enormity of what happened and the tremendous, noble effort made by the liquidators to remediate what was there at great personal cost. It's just good when making specific claims for those claims to be substantiated. [1] https://www.rotorandwing.com/2016/04/26/chernobyl-anniversary-recalls-helo-pilots-bravery/ https://www.rotorandwing.com/2016/04/26/chernobyl-anniversar... [2] http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Chernobyl_pilots_knew_risks_commander_999.html http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Chernobyl_pilots_knew_risk... [3] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-07-04-mn-106-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-07-04-mn-106-st... [4] http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/liquidators/ http://www.chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/liquidato...

baybal2 7y ago
> equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion Yep, the man greatly dramatises the story. Total deaths from immediate "radiation poisoning" were likely less than 100, with possibly 100 more due to radionuclide ingestion. Immediate DNA damage that does not result in radiation sickness, is much less lethal than popular culture suggests. Another thing to add, the best protective equipment for nuclear disaster is a good respirator, and a chemsuit, and not the lead "x-ray suit" often portrayed in popular culture. The cause of most deaths during Chernobyl was smoke inhalation, seconded by radionuclide ingestion by people who ate contaminated meals from field kitchens.
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  > > equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion To be clear, this didn't happen. No one said it did. There was a chance something like this could have happened (the Chernobyl miniseries does a great job of showing this). The issue was that there were large water tanks under the reactor, and that the reactor material would eventually melt into those tanks, superheat the water and cause an enormous steam explosion, further scattering radioactive materials into the atmosphere, and destroying the three other reactors at Chernobyl, scattering their material too. That said, the idea that a 5MT explosion at Chernobyl would have levelled the city of Kiev is not particularly realistic [0]. (note that the fallout effects from Chernobyl would be much worse than from a nuclear explosion, so given winds, fallout could have made Kiev, or even Moscow, uninhabitable). And in fact, as explained elsewhere, the explosion wouldn't have been 5MT, but much smaller, although that wouldn't have mattered much for the issue of spreading radioactive material. [0]: https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=5000&lat=51.3906031&lng=30.1039024&airburst=0&hob_ft=0&casualties=1&fallout=1&ff=50&psi=20,5,1&rem=100,500&therm=_3rd-100,_3rd-50,_2nd-50,_1st-50,_noharm-100&fatalities=0&injuries=0&psi_1=0&zm=6 https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/?&kt=5000&lat=51.3906031&...

gk1 7y ago

There's a YouTuber who's been traveling around Belarus and recording his daily adventures. Many of the videos are from inside the areas affected by Chernobyl. They're fun to watch: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqWdYjn21PdHRvHB7NrwlXBeHE44AW-R9 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqWdYjn21PdHRvHB7Nrwl...

cycrutchfield 7y ago
Used to be a fan of Bald until his bizarre fake fight video with Harald Baldr. Then I started to notice other little things he was doing that were a bit off-putting and how creepy and exploitative some of his videos felt. Ended up unsubscribing after that.
hackermailman 7y ago
The Belarus exclusion zone is huge, and sort of keeps growing whenever there is a forest fire and radioactive materials are redistributed.
poisonarena 7y ago
That guy made a really cringey gopnick video, and comes off as a weird sexpat to me
rasz 7y ago
I thought you were linking bionerd23 https://www.youtube.com/user/bionerd23/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/bionerd23/videos

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago

On that score- the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki did less overall damage than the Allied's firebombings in other cities- and, IIRC, there were less casualties in the nuked cities as well- the damage was just different.

dalore 7y ago
Well yes, some consider that the atomic bombs saved lives by ending the war. If the bombs weren't dropped and the ware continued then those fire bombings would have killed even more.
- robocat 7y ago
  Your comment is based on the myth that the atomic bombs ended the war. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-stone-kuznick-hiroshima-obama-20160524-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-stone-kuznick-hi... """ The atomic bombings, terrible and inhumane as they were, played little role in Japanese leaders' calculations to quickly surrender. After all, the U.S. had firebombed more than 100 Japanese cities. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just two more cities destroyed; whether the attack required one bomb or thousands didn't much matter. As Gen. Torashirō Kawabe, the deputy chief of staff, later told U.S. interrogators, the depth of devastation wrought in Hiroshima and Nagasaki only became known "in a gradual manner." But "in comparison, the Soviet entry into the war was a great shock." """ """ Most Americans have been taught that using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was justified because the bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby averting a costly U.S. invasion of Japan. This erroneous contention finds its way into high school history texts still today. """
  - ekianjo 7y ago
    Exactly, the soviet entry is clearly what led the leaders of Japan to surrender - the timeline also matches very closely. Not sure what we keep hearing the A-bomb propaganda such a long time after the facts.
    - 7y ago

wyldfire 7y ago

> This cost $1.8 billion to construct, $60 million a year to maintain, What are the maintenance costs for The Object? Is it monitoring/auditing or is there active construction/repair?

vonmoltke 7y ago
If you are talking about the New Safe Containment structure, then the plan is to disassemble the original sarcophagus and remove as much as can be done safely. Its not merely a static entombment structure (though that is its failsafe function).

tedunangst 7y ago

When was this published? I couldn't find a date.

creeble 7y ago
Looks like 4 days ago, if I'm reading the Instagram dates correctly.

Cynddl 7y ago

I'm confused, did they legally entered the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone? I was told that biking into the Chernobyl Zone, e.g., is forbidden due to the risk of contamination when you exit. Edit: Indeed it was not. From Instagram, “we spent the night tiptoeing around razor wire fences, coasting through sleeping security checkpoints, and riding frantically away from some surprisingly alert and vigilant guard dogs.” This validates what I know from Ukraine. Entering the exclusion zone is a very lucrative touristic business, with prices around $100-200 for a single day trip in a group.

orblivion 7y ago
Moxie is an anarchist, and has detailed all sorts of adventures like this. Most notably, his Anarchist Yacht Club. There's a documentary out there.
zzzcpan 7y ago
There are plenty of videos about this nowadays. Here's a series of videos of a Ukrainian youtuber from this winter, biking into the exclusion zone, etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=199KDKgO1Uc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=199KDKgO1Uc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5knVD0AnTFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5knVD0AnTFw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DePsh2OFNVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DePsh2OFNVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi9rhMn6qTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi9rhMn6qTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY3jyNbbEHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY3jyNbbEHY
thesmok 7y ago
Price of a day trip is much less if you're local. Higher prices are for tourists, but they include smaller groups and more comfortable buses.
nimnio 7y ago
Just FYI, you didn't need to check Instagram. It's in the article.

dmix 7y ago

> Standing in the bleachers, listening to the Pripyat municipal overture of resounding bird song, the only thing we could do was stare out at the trees and wonder "how long until New York looks like this?" I'm curious what the author meant by this. Does he mean how long would it take NYC to look like Chernobyl after a similar nuclear/natural accident happened? Or do they have a fatalistic outlook on the future due to some environmental, economic, or political worldview? Also the end of the story mentions there are no obvious monuments to the people who worked to help rescue people but there is one in the very city he was reporting from dedicated to the firefighters and others involved: https://oddviser.com/ukraine/chernobyl/memorial https://oddviser.com/ukraine/chernobyl/memorial

jahewson 7y ago
> fatalistic I do not think it means what you think it means.
- lqet 7y ago
  As a non-native speaker: do you care to elaborate why you think this word is incorrect here?
  - xsmasher 7y ago
    The word refers to a belief fate or destiny; but the usage here implied negativity or pessimism of some kind. A "pessimistic outlook" is probably closer to what they wanted to express.
- atombender 7y ago
  Looks like a perfectly apt use of the word. A fatalistic worldview can mean, for example, that they expect humankind's destructive impulses will always lead to its own destruction.
YjSe2GMQ 7y ago
It just means that on a long enough timeline everyone's and everything's survival rate drops to zero. For NY it may be 50 years, may be 5000 years, may be 5B years.

madengr 7y ago

Can anyone comment on the validity of the 5 MT explosion when the core material hit water? This was also stated the the HBO show. I don’t think 5 MT fission bombs are even possible, as they tend to blow themselves apart.

saul_goodman 7y ago
Nothing against Moxie, but this stated fact is clearly nonsense. It certainly would have been terrible for a large volume of water to reach the burning core, but you're not going to get a 5MT blast from a reactor accident. It takes a LOT of things working perfectly to make a nuclear bomb explode correctly. Lots of bad things happen when reactors go critical, a nuclear blast is generally not one of them. It's the spread of contaminated matter that makes reactor accidents bad. Also, sure, explosions can happen with rapid temperature changes like one encounters in these situations, but nothing like an actual nuclear bomb.
- moxie 7y ago
  "Only 1400 kilograms of uranium and graphite mixture would have needed to hit the water to set off a new explosion. Our experts studied the possibility and concluded that the explosion would have had a force of 3 to 5 megatons. Minsk...would have been razed." - Vassili Nesterenko, director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. I am not a nuclear physicist, but at least some people who are did not find this to be "clearly nonsense."
  - arpa 7y ago
    Link to original source please, in text, from a reputable source (copy of a report). An interview of a senile official as a part of a dubiuous documentary is not a solid source, sadly. Also, argument to authority does not make the claim valid
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    Ignoring the plausibility of the yield, Minsk is over 150km away from Pripyat. It's impossible for a 5Mt explosion centered on Pripyat to even reach Minsk, let alone "raze" it.

dzonga 7y ago

watching Chernobyl on HBO brought to life some of the stories that happened during that fateful period. Easily the best show on HBO right now

saul_goodman 7y ago

Maby they did sneak in, but fool me once: http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html The last time someone posted pictures claiming they rode their motorcycle through the forbidden zone it caused a stir because that is expressly forbidden because of the risk of picking up contaminated dust. Enclosed tour vehicles only for this reason. Then apparently, in the case of kiddofspeed, we find out she rode her motorcycle to the standard meeting place and took the standard tour. While carrying her helmet along with her for effect.

4043D 7y ago
Moxie isn't known for bullshiting about stuff like that he's done a fair few things "normal" people would think fairly crazy.
- rasz 7y ago
  and yet whole article is full of nonsense(death toll, explosion etc).
- dTal 7y ago
  Mmm, that isn't strictly true. From what I've read his anarchist-leaning sailing documentary "Hold Fast" is... controversial, in sailing circles.
  - abyssin 7y ago
    I enjoyed watching his documentary, but I'm not part of sailing circles. In what way is it considered controversial?
    - dTal 7y ago
      Disclaimer: I also am not in sailing circles and also have not seen the documentary in question - I'm basing this impression entirely on the hearsay of an extensive Reddit thread (that I cannot alas find again) full of sailors who had no idea about Moxie's other life. The objections I remember were: -incompetent sailing -criminal behaviour (or more likely faked criminal behaviour) including theft -making a big show about being poor and bohemian when in fact they had loads of cash (some of which was spent on the boat offscreen, rather subverting the message) This is exactly the same kind of pseudo-rebellious sketchiness as pretending to ride your motorcycle illegally through Chernobyl, when in fact you took the official tour. (I have just queried a sailing IRC channel and got a similar response, so I don't think I'm misremembering.)

aquamo 7y ago

Loved this story! Also good timing as a lot of us are watching the HBO mini-series now. I especially liked this quote: "The reason it's so beautiful and so peaceful is precisely because we can't consume it. Like, perhaps, all real paradises everywhere."

wst_ 7y ago

Not so long ago there was a submission about visit of Arkadiusz Podniesiński in Fukushima. Before that, though, he was visiting the zone multiple times and made two long movies about it. Here's a trailer of second one. Worth a look as the visuals are quite nice. Alone in the Zone 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCBQA7Z1Y0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdCBQA7Z1Y0

ycombonator 7y ago

Coincidentally I just started watching Chernobyl series on HBO https://www.hbo.com/chernobyl https://www.hbo.com/chernobyl

ycombonator 7y ago
I have got a stalker who keeps downvoting each every comment I write.

kyledrake 7y ago

All of Moxie's stories are great and I highly recommended them: https://moxie.org/stories.html https://moxie.org/stories.html The train stories in particular made me recall reading Days of War, Nights of Love in a really good way.

latchkey 7y ago

1 gallon of water weighs 8.34 lbs. 5 * 8.34 * 3 = 125.1 lbs

yesprabhu 7y ago

The book, 'Chernobyl, History of a Tragedy' by Serhii Plokhy gives a very good account of the accident. Days preceding, the burning days ,and political and social repurcussions there after.

dmpanch 7y ago

Visited Chernobyl 3 years ago, just before they cover it with Confinement. https://imgur.com/gallery/uIOOz1p https://imgur.com/gallery/uIOOz1p Btw, you can easily visit it, because of lots of tours here, it cost about $100-$150 per day. I used this company https://www.chernobyl-tour.com/english/48-one-day-trip-to-the-chernobyl-zone-and-prypyat-town.html https://www.chernobyl-tour.com/english/48-one-day-trip-to-th...

yakshaving_jgt 7y ago
I was there around the same time as you — a couple of weeks before the new sarcophagus was rolled into place, and just after the last inhabitant of Chernobyl died and her house burned down. Everyone recommends going, but to be honest I'd give it a miss. There are plenty of nice things to see and do in Ukraine.

arpa 7y ago

Five megaton explosion? That's hydrogen fusion bomb range, dude, not a steam explosion.

perfunctory 7y ago

When discussing the safety of nuclear power most comments seem to focus on the number of deaths. While death count is tragic in itself, it doesn't capture the full extent of human drama. Consider this Fukushima "the nuclear accident was responsible for 154,000 being evacuated" "In December 2016 the government estimated decontamination, compensation, decommissioning, and radioactive waste storage costs at 21.5 trillion yen ($187 billion), nearly double the 2013 estimate." Chernobyl "In 2005, the total cost over 30 years for Belarus alone was estimated at US$235 billion; about $301 billion in today's dollars given inflation rates." "between 5% and 7% of government spending in Ukraine is still related to Chernobyl" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Tsubasachan 7y ago

I watched a documentary on the new concrete sarcophagus that they built to contain the reactor. Its amusing that the EU had to invest billions into the project. Hell even the US put in money and expertise despite being an ocean away. Where was Russia? It was their powerplant that blew up!

nnq 7y ago

Q for ppl more knowledgeable - How exaggerated is this claim? : > would have ignited a second reaction that would have been the equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion. It would have leveled Kiev and Minsk, and would have ejected the nuclear material from the other 3 Chernobyl reactors with a force that would have rendered much of Europe uninhabitable for hundreds of years (I can imagine it is exaggerated, but I am not an expert so can't tell the magnitude. I meant 5 megatons is not that much, the tested "Tsar Bomba" was estimated at 50+ megatons. And even will tones of material spread around, most of it would have settled on the ground on a smallish area, right?)

effie 7y ago
It seems extremely exaggerated, such explosions require complicated bomb design, otherwise the first stages of the explosion throw the reacting matter away and it won't react completely. However, 5 megatons can destroy city completely, and if it explodes close to ground, it will create lots of contamination. Then it is up to the winds. Bad wind will make this contamination a major catastrophe thousands of kilometers away.

agumonkey 7y ago

never ceases to amaze..

cambaceres 7y ago

"When that material then started to smolder downwards out through the floor of the chamber, it threatened to come into contact with a large amount of water that had pooled there as a result of early firefighter attempts to put it out with hoses. This would have ignited a second reaction that would have been the equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion. It would have leveled Kiev and Minsk, and would have ejected the nuclear material from the other 3 Chernobyl reactors with a force that would have rendered much of Europe uninhabitable for hundreds of years. With only days to stop it, Alexei Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov, and Boris Baranov went into the ruins of the plant, knowingly facing almost certain death from that level of radiation exposure, to release valves that would drain 5 million gallons of water." Is this really true? Are there better sources than this blog post?

jaggirs 7y ago
The HBO series chernobyl says the same pretty much. I suppose thats a better source, but not by much.