Not to underplay the seriousness of the event or heroism of all those involved in the aftermath, but the show does make it look scarier than it deserves. For me

Not to underplay the seriousness of the event or heroism of all those involved in the aftermath, but the show does make it look scarier than it deserves. For me part of this is simply down to the Russian equipment - it just looks scarier seeing those guys in those green rubbery looking suits like something out of an alien movie, vs when you see guys at Fukushima in plain white protective gear. It's worth pointing out that the RBMK reactor design used at Chernobyl has no comparison in the west. Not to mention they had no (none!) containment building on those things. The design of the RBMK was in part because it's simpler to build. It's a kind of evolution of the very early reactor "piles" used during the lead up to and through the Manhattan project. The pressure vessels used in western reactors are difficult to produce. (We apparently no longer have any iron works left in the US that could produce them, the last one closed down some time ago.) On top of being simpler to build the RBMK style reactor also has (IIRC) the benefit (for Russia) that it can be used to produce the right kind of plutonium for nuclear weapons. Something that in the west was done in dedicated military reactors because civilian designed light water reactors suck for that task.