Chernobyl - HBO/Sky *Spoilers*

The Black Oil

5 part mini series airing on HBO in May. Featuring Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård and Jared Harris.

Seems to be positive reaction to a trailer going by Twitter, but haven't found it online yet.

https://medium.com/hbo-cinemax-pr/five-part-miniseries-chernobyl-debuts-in-may-on-hbo-a77c7f9bf233

The Black Oil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMlwjCID3Io

Hear more of that sound, starting May 6th.

Agent Coulson

Trailer.

Looks good.

Slydice

That gave me the shudders!

The Black Oil

That does look very good...

Mr E

That looks superb. Great cast too.

Barry Keoghan too... fair play to him.

crushproof

Very impressive with a great cast. Did I see the Love Hate Cat Killer there?

I've been to Chernobyl so very eager to see how they've recreate the surrounding area and how they bring places like the Red Forest into the story. It's HBO so I'm hoping the CGI is up to scratch.

fryup

i also can't wait to see this,

as someone who lived through that time i have a keen interest in it

i recommend the channel 4 documentary

jeremyj1968

this is a great documentary on Chernobyl. Features the bould Mick-Ay-El as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5GTvaW34O0

Never forget the bravery of the poor men who went up on the roof to shovel the radioactive waste back in to the reactor, and the men who worked underground to prevent the catastrophe.

I saw a recent documentary on BBC who's name escapes me. Anyone?

Also the babushkas of chernobyl is well worth checking out if you haven't seen it.

fryup

there was another documentary about the wildlife around chernobyl...and surprisingly despite the high radiation levels some species are thriving

Mr.Maroon

There was documentary on BBC4 a few months back about the building of the dome over the reactor.

Amazing feat.

Technocentral

Ignore, just saw thread here.

Agent Coulson

Yesterday the 26th was the 33rd anniversary of the disaster.


I read a non spoiler review which said this is really haunting & powerful.



It starts on May 6th on both HBO & Sky.

recyclops

That was harrowing great TV

JP Liz V1

Agent Coulson wrote: »

Yesterday the 26th was the 33rd anniversary of the disaster.


I read a non spoiler review which said this is really haunting & powerful.



It starts on May 6th on both HBO & Sky.

33 years :eek:

bfa1509

It would be interesting to see how they drama this incident up. The spoiler of reality here is that only 2 people died in the explosion. Tragically 4 died when a helicopter trying to extinguish the fire crashed when it clipped cables hanging from a crane:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuNtgYtF4FI&feature=youtu.be


Around 30 died from radiation sickness and the amount who indirectly died due to cancers is highly disputed as the cancer level was high in the area to begin with. That also goes for the birth defects.

Interestingly the last reactor to stop producing electricity was shut off in the year 2000, so it was business as usual in the other 3 reactors for years after the incident!

fryup

well is it any good?

Atlantic Dawn

Great opener but I think it needed Ukrainianised English accents, having pure UK accents lost it a little, having said that if it was subtitled it would have been pure pain.

Growing up I remember nothing at all about it, don't remember it being on the news when it happened at all.

uck51js9zml2yt

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

Great opener but I think it needed Ukrainianised English accents, having pure UK accents lost it a little, having said that if it was subtitled it would have been pure pain.

Growing up I remember nothing at all about it, don't remember it being on the news when it happened at all.

Was definitely on the news back then. We also got our iodine tablet afterwards.

Big worry was fallout and milk getting contaminated

Slydice

That was a tough watch. The soundtrack is so unsettling!

Feels like the director has got a proper approach set out for it.

The only negative that threw me out a few times were the english accents. Not all have english accents either so it feels a bit weird. I'll probably get used to em as it goes on. I know they didn't matter a bit right at that final scene!

How Soon Is Now

Really liked that first episode as ive always found the whole Chernobyl thing really interesting ive watched dunno how many different documentaries on it at this stage plus i was born a month after it happened so explains a lot :pac:


Herself cant see past the English accents and finds it really hard to take it seriously but once i kinda figured out what they where doing i just ignored it.


I think once the story acting writing and atmosphere are on the the right level gimme English accents over bad Ukrainian ones!.


Seen a few familiar faces in it which was funny especially the da from Friday night dinner!! I think that took me out of it more then anything picturing him during the Chernobyl disaster haha!!

Gimme A Pound

Yeah the girl from Line of Duty the other night is in it. And a lad from Emmerdale/Happy Valley!

Gimme A Pound

Did anyone predict what the guy at the start was gonna do?

How Soon Is Now

Zaniyah Gigantic Caricature wrote: »

Yeah the girl from Line of Duty the other night is in it. And a lad from Emmerdale/Happy Valley!

Ya your man from Mad Men and Fringe is in there to and fella who was in the Thor films :pac: Ian from Shameless in there somewhere as well!

How Soon Is Now

Zaniyah Gigantic Caricature wrote: »

Did anyone predict what the guy at the start was gonna do?

Not the first show hes done it in seems to be his special move!!

Slydice

Zaniyah Gigantic Caricature wrote: »

Did anyone predict what the guy at the start was gonna do?

I thought he was gonna be killed by yer man in the car. As it got closer to what actually happened.. it became clearer what he was gonna do. Not sure why it reminded me of Shawshank Redemption but it did.

During it, the behaviour of the cat kinda set me into the cold episode to come.

Anteayer

I remember watching a documentary about that accident and it was fundamentally down to a very poor design that was more about generating plutonium for weapons than electricity for consumption.

It used a weird combination of a water cooled, graphite core that led to a "high positive void coefficient" which basically meant that when the reactor boiled, the steam bubbles removed the neutron-absorbing characteristics of the water in the cooling channels and actually speeded up the reaction - to a runaway state that was uncontrollable.

It was a rally bad design compromise.

Not only that, but the units had no secondary containment. They just had a concrete 'biological shield' (a bit huge concrete lid). Beyond that they were just sitting in a normal building. So when the reactor blew up, it shot the lid through the ceiling and spewed radioactive material into the surrounding environment.

In a normal western design, there's very conservative secondary containment buildings and they avoid that positive coefficient void situation in any design.

Gimme A Pound

Anteayer wrote: »

I remember watching a documentary about that accident and it was fundamentally down to a very poor design that was more about generating plutonium for weapons than electricity for consumption.

It used a weird combination of a water cooled, graphite core that led to a "high positive void coefficient" which basically meant that when the reactor boiled, the steam bubbles removed the neutron-absorbing characteristics of the water in the cooling channels and actually speeded up the reaction - to a runaway state that was uncontrollable.

It was a rally bad design compromise.

Not only that, but the units had no secondary containment. They just had a concrete 'biological shield'. Beyond that they were just sitting in a normal building. So when the reactor blew up, it shot the lid through the ceiling and spewed radioactive material into the surrounding environment.

In a normal western design, there's very conservative secondary containment buildings and they avoid that positive coefficient void situation in any design.

Fair play to you on your knowledge. It's probably basic enough physics but too complex for me.

ED E

The "New Safe Containment" or just the new sarcophagus is a really interesting piece of engineering if anyone is looking for some follow up to watch. Constructed out of the danger zone then rolled into place, robots going in to work on the molten core.

Anteayer

Zaniyah Gigantic Caricature wrote: »

Fair play to you on your knowledge. It's probably basic enough physics but too complex for me.

Basically, when you design something like a nuclear reactor (or anything else that could be dangerous or a huge environmental risk) you normally try to ensure that it will 'fail safe'. So, if something goes wrong, the system will naturally shut down / trip out.

I don't think we'll ever see anything so dangerous ever constructed again. Your typical electricity generating reactor as you'd find in the in Europe (including the other Russian design), were single purpose and generally very safe.

There are still 11 RMBK (Chernobyl type) reactors in service, although they have been highly modified to make them a lot safer. Lithuania had one in operation until 2004, but was required close it as part of their EU membership as they're considered too dangerous to operate in the EU.

4068ac1elhodqr

The Ukrainian language word for "wormwood" is чорнобиль or "chornobyl"
If you don't know what 'wormwood' is, look up ye olde end-time phrophecy.


Here's a question, if there is a (direct) mass solar flare upon the earth (bit like an EMP),
that burns up an amount of the global supply of transformers (not easily replaceable),
what's going to keep the many similar off-line nuc-plants from overheating or meltdown?

Anteayer

After Fukushima, none of them are dependent on grid power and there are extensive back up systems in place. So, they'd have an ability to either cool on their own steam turbines spinning and driving pumps and local diesel backups.

The UK's fleet of gas cooled plants are even safer again. They're an old design, but they can passively cool without any need for powering and the majority of European reactors would be very heavily fail safe.

The newest EPR plants being built have 300% redundancy and a double containment with 2.6 meter thick of reinforced concrete around them and a "core catcher" in the event of an absolute mess - a special containment to catch anything that drops out of the reactor.

The design spec is that they can independently cool for 3 years without connection to any grid power.

In the 'West' at least these plants tend to be 'over engineered' to the maximum possible degree to prevent anything ever happening, although the Fukushima incident would really shake a lot of people's view of that. It was an older design (online since 1971) but that shouldn't have been possible. Although Japan presents some very serious challenges due to the seismic activity and tidal wave risks.

It's an interesting TV series though and seems to be tracking the science fairly accurately

Mongfinder General

Anteayer wrote: »

I remember watching a documentary about that accident and it was fundamentally down to a very poor design that was more about generating plutonium for weapons than electricity for consumption.

It used a weird combination of a water cooled, graphite core that led to a "high positive void coefficient" which basically meant that when the reactor boiled, the steam bubbles removed the neutron-absorbing characteristics of the water in the cooling channels and actually speeded up the reaction - to a runaway state that was uncontrollable.

It was a rally bad design compromise.

Not only that, but the units had no secondary containment. They just had a concrete 'biological shield' (a bit huge concrete lid). Beyond that they were just sitting in a normal building. So when the reactor blew up, it shot the lid through the ceiling and spewed radioactive material into the surrounding environment.

In a normal western design, there's very conservative secondary containment buildings and they avoid that positive coefficient void situation in any design.

Thanks science boy or girl. Will the half life of the atoms that got smashed in the reaction causing the meltdown have an impact on the time it will take to cleanse the soil and surrounding environs? Also is plutonium more toxic than let's say radium? Do we know what elements were in the mix when the reactor blew up? Am I talking completely through my hole?

4068ac1elhodqr

Anteayer wrote: »

After Fukushima, none of them are dependent on grid power and there are extensive back up systems in place. So, they'd have an ability to either cool on their own steam turbines spinning and driving pumps and local diesel backups.

The UK's fleet of gas cooled plants are even safer again. They're an old design, but they can passively cool without any need for powering and the majority of European reactors would be very heavily fail safe.

The newest EPR plants being built have 300% redundancy and a double containment with 2.6 meter thick of reinforced concrete around them and a "core catcher" in the event of an absolute mess - a special containment to catch anything that drops out of the reactor.

The design spec is that they can independently cool for 3 years without connection to any grid power.

In the 'West' at least these plants tend to be 'over engineered' to the maximum possible degree to prevent anything ever happening, although the Fukushima incident would really shake a lot of people's view of that. It was an older design but that shouldn't have been possible.

Of course, that assumes a ready near-endless accessable localised supply of alternate power (gas/diesel/coal).

An event similar to the (solar storm CME) of 1859 (Carrington event 1855–1867) but in modern times, could create a bit of a mess. Even Western grids don't have widespread protection against it.

Fried transformers take months to re-build, if a nations grid goes down, everything else goes down with it (public water & fuel pumps, transport, travel, comms, services, gps, broadcasts, lights, heat etc).

Thankfully they're only due about every 500yrs.

recyclops

Hbo have a podcast to run parallel with the show. The director discusses the accents and pretty much says that if we had actors doin fake Russian accents in English it takes away from the scenes as they are acting the language not the scene.

I got over the accents fairly quick as everything else was so well presented.

The Specialist

Watched it last night, excellent start to the series and a real creepy vibe to it too. It's kind of chilling watching what happened when you know the history of the event and the (excuse the pun) fallout after it.

If you want some further chills, look up the Youtube vids about the "elephants foot" in the basement under the reactor, a massive molten lump of radioactive fuel. Supposedly if it ever manages to burn through the floor, it will meet a lake that's under the facility and cause a further explosion :O

is_that_so

recyclops wrote: »

Hbo have a podcast to run parallel with the show. The director discusses the accents and pretty much says that if we had actors doin fake Russian accents in English it takes away from the scenes as they are acting the language not the scene.

I got over the accents fairly quick as everything else was so well presented.

Yeah it was like the BBC/HBO Conspiracy and worked very well. The only other real option was to have them speaking Ukrainian/Russian.

MadYaker

I visited Chernobyl a few years ago and it was really incredible. It first came to my attention in video games when I was a kid and I've been intrigued ever since. I'm glad to hear this is worth watching I'll give it a go this evening.

Anteayer

I'd say it'd be interesting to visit, but I don't think I would be overly keen on it, even after this length of time.

What would concern me is that the comparisons to 'only as much radiation as a high altitude flight' or X number of chest x-rays or way less than a CT scan don't actually take into account the dangers present which are not really just the dose of measurable rays. They are 'clean' sources or radiation and can be switched on/off like a light bulb. They're not 'dirty' contamination of a site.

At a nuclear disaster site like Chernobyl or a weapons testing site etc you've a whole load of radioactive material scattered into the immediate environment and that can be potentially directly inhaled as dust, swallowed or enter your body in food or water supplies. When that's in your system, the issue is more that you can have a radioactive particle sitting in the middle of a biological system, incorporated into a bone or other cells. That means you've a little radioactive particle sitting there emitting gamma rays or alpha/beta particles for potentially decades or your whole life, that is what would worry me as it increases your long term risk of certain cancers.

I'd suspect somewhere relatively wet and biologically active like Chernobyl will probably be cleaner than a dusty site like some of the US test facilities in deserts. A lot of the materials would either have washed away or have been absorbed into biological systems - plants, fungi, insects, etc that would have concentrated them up and effectively removed them from being free to blow around in the general environment.

But, even so, personally I'd prefer to just keep a safe distance.

On the risk of solar storms:

The big risk with that is that long power lines act as an antennae for electromagnetic fields, so when the storm happens it induces serious currents on those lines and that's what blows transformers. In a lot of a cases, transformers would trip out i.e. open breakers / blow fuses when they're overloaded, so it might not be that bad. In the sense that you might get a grid shutting down for a few hours, or days until all of those are reset, with some damage here and there.

The power companies are aware of the risks and do design to some degree to avoid it. No power operator wants to be exposed to billions of € of damage.

In terms of power to run pumps at nuclear plants, you're talking about small, local power systems that are generating locally and also quite likely have heavy shielding around them are not very susceptible to this kind of issue. So in a power plant, the energy wouldn't be travelling over long lines from local generators, so in general should be OK.

If it's an absolutely enormous event though you could be looking at currents induced on absolutely everything and even electronics in personal devices being wrecked. In that case, we'd be totally hosed.

The other thing that's changed a lot is that all of our long distance, and even most of our local communications traffic (beyond the last mile to your house unless you've FTTH fibre like Siro or Eir's equivalent) goes over fibre optics. The cabinets in the streets for broadband (cable or VDSL) and the telephone exchanges are all connected by fibre, not copper. So, there wouldn't be the quite the same risk to those networks as they're carrying light through glass fibre which is not in anyway impacted by magnetic fields.

If you'd gone back decades ago we were much more dependent on things like long distance copper lines with hundreds / thousands of copper strands, or coaxial cables. We were also much, much more dependent on microwave links than we are today, and that's even only going back to the 1990s.

Taking out communications satellites would be hugely problematic, but not nearly as bad as it would have been in the 70s, 80s and 90s as very little traffic goes by satellite these days, it's all fibre. It would obviously have huge implications for TV broadcasters, some communication services, GPS / Galileo (and similar), weather forecasting and all sorts of other satellite systems.

In general it wouldn't actually impact aircraft, as they use surprisingly primitive navigation systems that don't involve satellites. Shipping could be quite drastically impacted though as they're heavily reliant on satellite navigation.

fryup

haven't got sky

...any chance RTE will show it? if not..when will it be available on dvd?

Gimme A Pound

Why would others here know when it'll be on DVD or if it'll be on RTE? :pac:

Give it an auld Google. Or watch it on HBO maybe?

Hurrache

recyclops wrote: »

Hbo have a podcast to run parallel with the show. The director discusses the accents and pretty much says that if we had actors doin fake Russian accents in English it takes away from the scenes as they are acting the language not the scene.

I got over the accents fairly quick as everything else was so well presented.

Where's the podcast?

The accents did grate on me but I thought the same as the point you just made, had they tried Ukrainian accents it would have me mentally complaining as to why they were talking to each other in English.

Did they visual editor have the picture go almost fuzzy or colour shift for every scene in and around the plant?

is_that_so

fryup wrote: »

haven't got sky

...any chance RTE will show it? if not..when will it be available on dvd?

It will show on Now TV as well. They do a 14 day free trial but I don't know how it works and whether you will be able to binge them.

is_that_so

Hurrache wrote: »

Where's the podcast?

The accents did grate on me but I thought the same as the point you just made, had they tried Ukrainian accents it would have me mentally complaining as to why they were talking to each other in English.

Did they visual editor have the picture go almost fuzzy or colour shift for every scene in and around the plant?

Podcast here and it tells you where else you can find it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUeHPCYtWYQ

4068ac1elhodqr

Anteayer wrote: »

But, even so, personally I'd prefer to just keep a safe distance.

Agree with this, not worth the risk to even visit.

Anteayer wrote: »

On the risk of solar storms:

The big risk with that is that long power lines act as an antennae for electromagnetic fields, so when the storm happens it induces serious currents on those lines and that's what blows transformers. In a lot of a cases, transformers would trip out i.e. open breakers / blow fuses when they're overloaded, so it might not be that bad. In the sense that you might get a grid shutting down for a few hours, or days until all of those are reset, with some damage here and there.

The power companies are aware of the risks and do design to some degree to avoid it. No power operator wants to be exposed to billions of € of damage.

In terms of power to run pumps at nuclear plants, you're talking about small, local power systems that are generating locally and also quite likely have heavy shielding around them are not very susceptible to this kind of issue. So in a power plant, the energy wouldn't be travelling over long lines from local generators, so in general should be OK.

If it's an absolutely enormous event though you could be looking at currents induced on absolutely everything and even electronics in personal devices being wrecked. In that case, we'd be totally hosed.

The other thing that's changed a lot is that all of our long distance, and even most of our local communications traffic (beyond the last mile to your house unless you've FTTH fibre like Siro or Eir's equivalent) goes over fibre optics. The cabinets in the streets for broadband (cable or VDSL) and the telephone exchanges are all connected by fibre, not copper. So, there wouldn't be the quite the same risk to those networks as they're carrying light through glass fibre which is not in anyway impacted by magnetic fields.

If you'd gone back decades ago we were much more dependent on things like long distance copper lines with hundreds / thousands of copper strands, or coaxial cables. We were also much, much more dependent on microwave links than we are today, and that's even only going back to the 1990s.

Taking out communications satellites would be hugely problematic, but not nearly as bad as it would have been in the 70s, 80s and 90s as very little traffic goes by satellite these days, it's all fibre. It would obviously have huge implications for TV broadcasters, some communication services, GPS / Galileo (and similar), weather forecasting and all sorts of other satellite systems.

In general it wouldn't actually impact aircraft, as they use surprisingly primitive navigation systems that don't involve satellites. Shipping could be quite drastically impacted though as they're heavily reliant on satellite navigation.

It's difficult to estimate the damage from a CME today such as that 150yr ago (or EMP in present day from NK).

Power companies after all have to satisfy stakeholder profits, before doubling up on expensive transformers for a 500/1 low risk scenario.

One article suggested a 10% survival rate within 12mths of a grid shutdown, mainly due to lack of power/water/transport and all essential utility services for considerable periods of time, until full system rebuild (excluding any risk to nuc power plants, in places less advanced than Japan).

On the plus side, there would be less instagrammersnapchatters, and could still navigate by the stars, and CB/radios (if stored in cages) would still transmit.

NIMAN

I'm sure I'm not the first to say this (haven't read all 5 pages) but spoilers?

I think we all know what happens here.

touts

I remember seeing a documentary a few years ago about the disaster. One scene I recall was the teams of liquidators running onto the roof to pick up bits of the reactor and throw them over the side to be picked up by ground teams. There were these white streaks on the footage and they were the gamma rays hitting the film. The poor camera man had to stand there and watch teams of men running onto the roof and off again as quickly as possible as he stood on it filming them.

That scene came back to me as the soldier lead the guy up onto the roof to look into the reactor. Yes the soldier didn't go over to the edge and get the full blast of radiation into his face as the guy did but I'm sure he got quite a dose just being 10 meters away.

BobMc

Was really looking forward to this, Enjoyed Ep1, just recently finished book called Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham. Highly Recommend it !!!!!!

So the characters and events are fresh in the mind, I did note in Ep1 they skipped straight to the accident had happened but from the history and the book, the acutal cause is very interesting and was skipped unless it comes back into the story
thru Harris / Legasov and the tapes. Also very scary is the sheer contempt to their own citizens/people and loyalty to THE PARTY. More scary is its probably still a lot like that today

Exclamation Marc

Actual accents are much more tolerable to me than bad fake accents. I'd even rather subtitled local language than '80s villain Russian twangs'.

Death of Stalin showed how to do it and I fully bought into it.

Unearthly

is_that_so wrote: »

. The only other real option was to have them speaking Ukrainian/Russian.

That would have been my preference but I'm probably in the minority

Overall though good start