Chernobyl - HBO/Sky *Spoilers*

no.8

@Hector Savage

Awful attempt to try and be funny

silverharp

Cordell wrote: »

I dare to say that women in STEM fields were much more common in that part of the world during those times than they are now and here. Women were common in all kind of jobs, from lathe operators to physicists and mathematicians.

here is a list of soviet era Physicists presumably the ones at the top of their field. Pretty much all men

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_physicists

Nermal

Greyjoy wrote: »

That's exactly the point the series creator Mazin makes in the HBO podcast series. The russian scientists were dealing with probabilities of what might happen. Do they take drastic action or just cross their fingers and hope the worse case scenario doesn't happen?

Mazin is not a physicist. The probability of a steam explosion causing a nuclear one at Chernobyl is zero. Not low, not minimal - zero.

leggo wrote: »

Not in this particular place at this particular time, as many as 40% of doctors/scientists were women. That’s why they made it a female character, it’s been explained multiple times now.

Yes, so representative, and not at all revisionist tokenism:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/worldnews/8461299/Chernobyl-power-plant-in-pictures-25-years-since-the-worlds-worst-nuclear-accident.html?image=3

Greyjoy

Nermal wrote: »

Mazin is not a physicist. The probability of a steam explosion causing a nuclear one at Chernobyl is zero. Not low, not minimal - zero.

Khomyuk never actually makes that claim it will cause a nuclear explosion. She says it will have the force of a nuclear reaction of 2-4 megatons. You can argue how accurate that estimate would be but at the very least the explosion will send radioactive material scattered across the landscape.

Credit Checker Moose

Time to unsubscribe from this wreck of a thread.

pc7

Thanks to whomever recommended Midnight in Chernobyl, just finished it on Audible. (Can’t find post). Starting hbo podcast now, have throughly enjoyed learning about it all after the show. Which was brilliant, pity thread going ****ty.

Hector Savage

leggo wrote: »

Not in this particular place at this particular time, as many as 40% of doctors/scientists were women. That’s why they made it a female character, it’s been explained multiple times now.

Indeed, was just a point, I have read many books on the history of Chernobyl disaster I dont need an explanation why she was made up.

40% is still not a majority anyway last time I checked...

Hector Savage

pc7 wrote: »

Thanks to whomever recommended Midnight in Chernobyl, just finished it on Audible. (Can’t find post). Starting hbo podcast now, have throughly enjoyed learning about it all after the show. Which was brilliant, pity thread going ****ty.

That would have been me !
No sweat glad you enjoyed it, another excellent read is "Voices from Chernobyl" or the revised edition "Chernobyl Prayer" by Svetlana Alexievich.

Hector Savage

Credit Checker Moose wrote: »

Time to unsubscribe from this wreck of a thread.

+1 on that!

Cordell

silverharp wrote: »

here is a list of soviet era Physicists presumably the ones at the top of their field. Pretty much all men

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_physicists

She wasn't a top physicist, she was a "regular" one working out of a secondary research institute in a secondary URSS city. Perfectly plausible to be either a man or a woman, and I don't have any wiki link to back it up, it's only what I saw growing up in that time in that part of the world (not URSS but close enough for practical reasons). And I would say that none of the people working there, male or female, were top physicist. They were physicist doing physics stuff just to be doing something - this is how the system worked.
Legasov wasn't a top physicist either, he was a chemist according to wikipedia, but still with no scientific achievements in his name. His legacy was the disaster management, and not even that a particularly good one.

goose2005

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinaida_Ershova was a woman who worked for decades at the top of the Soviet nuclear project

iano.p

A great show. I thought the podcast wasn't that good at all. It's nice to get a small bit of back story but wasn't overly needed because the show was so good.

astrofool

Is there really people insecure enough to spend time out of their lives worrying about the fact that a composite character in a drama set in a communist country is female instead of male? To what end? What is the point? It's a really weird thing to comment on and reflect on afterwards vs. everything else that happened, and likely points to issues on behalf of the people making a big/small/any kind of deal out of it.

sydthebeat

astrofool wrote: »

Is there really people insecure enough to spend time out of their lives worrying about the fact that a composite character in a drama set in a communist country is female instead of male? To what end? What is the point? It's a really weird thing to comment on and reflect on afterwards vs. everything else that happened, and likely points to issues on behalf of the people making a big/small/any kind of deal out of it.

Because being "that guy" is en vogue in the social media world

Itssoeasy

Lads, this thread has gone off the rails a bit.

Can we all agree that a terrible real life event took place in the former Soviet Union in April of 1986 and that regardless of what facts were wrong or which characters were real or composite that the show as a whole gave a very good representation of the utter horror that happened to the ordinary people of northern Ukraine and southern Belarus which still impacts them to this day. Can we at least agree on that ?

teednab-el

How could the Soviets not evacuate their own people from the worlds worst nucleur disaster on time is beyond me. How could they do that to their people? Shame is one thing but insecurity and incompetance is another.

How people living in the USSR at the time could accept such a corrupt and lieing government and decisions on the disaster were affecting peoples health and their future lives. The soviet union didn't fall half quick enough if you ask me.

Also Diatylov didnt get enough of a punishment for his role on the disaster. Yes there were design flaws with the RMBK reactors but he ignored wrecklessly the protocol for the safety test and ran it under his terms and not what the protocol suggested to run test at. He wanted it his own way and wanted to get the test signed off so that he would get his promotion. He didnt get enough of the blame for the disaster which he should have taken the hit for.

Some people argue that truth about the design flaws of the reactor would have eventually come out but that's one question we may never find out.

Itssoeasy

teednab-el wrote: »

How could the Soviets not evacuate their own people from the worlds worst nucleur disaster on time is beyond me. How could they do that to their people? Shame is one thing but insecurity and incompetance is another.

How people living in the USSR at the time could accept such a corrupt and lieing government and decisions on the disaster were affecting peoples health and their future lives. The soviet union didn't fall half quick enough if you ask me.

Also Diatylov didnt get enough of a punishment for his role on the disaster. Yes there were design flaws with the RMBK reactors but he ignored wrecklessly the protocol for the safety test and ran it under his terms and not what the protocol suggested to run test at. He wanted it his own way and wanted to get the test signed off so that he would get his promotion. He didnt get enough of the blame for the disaster which he should have taken the hit for.

Some people argue that truth about the design flaws of the reactor would have eventually come out but that's one question we may never find out.

You are seeing a 1986 situation through 2019 eyes. The Soviet union is remembered for many things but transparency isn't one of them.

teednab-el

Itssoeasy wrote: »

You are seeing a 1986 situation through 2019 eyes. The Soviet union is remembered for many things but transparency isn't one of them.

They were responsible because they left their people oblivious to the seriousness of the situation. They knew inside it was a terrible disaster and they were going to cover up at all costs only it was too big a disaster to hide when Sweden and Finland had detected the radiation levels.

It could have been even worse if Europe was wiped off the map.

Itssoeasy

teednab-el wrote: »

They were responsible because they left their people oblivious to the seriousness of the situation. They knew inside it was a terrible disaster and they were going to cover up at all costs only it was too big a disaster to hide when Sweden and Finland had detected the radiation levels.

I agree and I'm not saying what the Soviet authorities did was good in the aftermath of the disaster at chernobyl, but again it's easy for us to say they should have done X, and Y at the time but hindsight is the foresight of a gob****e as someone once said.

teednab-el

Itssoeasy wrote: »

I agree and I'm not saying what the Soviet authorities did was good in the aftermath of the disaster at chernobyl, but again it's easy for us to say they should have done X, and Y at the time but hindsight is the foresight of a gob****e as someone once said.

I think they were never going to keep something as terrible as this quiet from the west. They should have evacuated the people of pyripyat when they knew the situation was bad. They evacuated them 36 hours after the explosion. Anyone near the plant at that stage had received lethal doses of radiation and were going to die before they even knew it.

dasdog

Very good show but there is far too many shots of stubbing out cigarettes

Hector Savage

astrofool wrote: »

Is there really people insecure enough to spend time out of their lives worrying about the fact that a composite character in a drama set in a communist country is female instead of male? To what end? What is the point? It's a really weird thing to comment on and reflect on afterwards vs. everything else that happened, and likely points to issues on behalf of the people making a big/small/any kind of deal out of it.

I don't have a problem with it per se, it does annoy me a little of the motivation that caused them to make the character female - 2019 identity politics bull**** ... it's everywhere

Martina1991

Hector Savage wrote:

I don't have a problem with it per se, it does annoy me a little of the motivation that caused them to make the character female - 2019 identity politics bull**** ... it's everywhere

Maybe the casting directors motivation was that Emma Watson is a great actor.

astrofool

Hector Savage wrote: »

I don't have a problem with it per se, it does annoy me a little of the motivation that caused them to make the character female - 2019 identity politics bull**** ... it's everywhere

You're putting that motivation onto them due to, what seem to be, your own insecurities.

Lackadaisical

What difference does it make that she's female? The USSR was pretty egalitarian between the genders. There would have been plenty of female Soviet scientists.

You're actually applying a 1970s/80s Irish and American workplace sexism bias that wouldn't have been the same in 80s USSR contexts. Women's rights in the USSR were far from perfect but they we're probably more developed than many Western countries in terms of women's access to STEM subjects in education and so on. So you certainly would have encountered female scientists and engineers etc etc

I'm not saying that it was a particularly liberating regime but it had a lot of ideals about egalitarianism.

She's a composite character for dramatic licence purposes and that's, rather unusually, explained directly in the credits.

This is a dramatisation of an historical event. It's not a technical or verbatim historical documentary and doesn't claim to be. So the composite character works. The alternative was a hugely complex and hard to portray random collection of scientists and engineers.

Hurrache

Hector Savage wrote: »

I don't have a problem with it per se, it does annoy me a little of the motivation that caused them to make the character female - 2019 identity politics bull**** ... it's everywhere

I'm always amused at men getting intimidated and irritated with women just because they're women. Freud would love to be around these days.

mrm

Hector Savage wrote: »

I don't have a problem with it per se, it does annoy me a little of the motivation that caused them to make the character female - 2019 identity politics bull**** ... it's everywhere

You actually do! Just checked the cast list on IMDb and of the listed 41 characters 5 are female, so it is mainly male characters. One of the 5 is the composite character chosen to be female, as after episode 2 I do not remember much screen time for female characters. And THIS annoys you! It would appear to be a balanced decision, given there were 2 genders to chose from, one already filling all of the other primary roles. Did Emily Watson absolutely ruin the composite role? And then, how?

F*ck the producers and their litter of puppies....what about cats. Wont somewon tink abou de cats! Completely felinist agenda! So annoyed, but I don't have a problem with it purr se.

furiousox

'Inside Chernobyl's Mega Tomb' being shown on BBC4 TV tomorrow 16/6 @ 9pm.

http://www.windfallfilms.com/show/6894/inside-chernobyls-mega-tomb.aspx

Deleted User

Deleted User wrote: »

Fair enough. He also makes a living by DESTROYING Anita Sarkeesian. I watched his video. I'd like a second opinion to confirm what he says.

He took the explanation as very literal. As if the steam explosion literally equated to 2-4 megaton nuclear explosion. My understanding was the radioactive material sent flying would cause a fallout similar to that effect; not an explosion that would engulf that city mentioned (Minsk I think).

A 4 megaton nuclear weapon’s fall out would be very small and less serious than even what was released from reactor 4 never mind the other reactors (for the simple reason that there is only a fraction of the fissile material in a bomb compared to a reactor so fissioning of the material in the bomb will create far less fission products) so I think they were saying an explosion equivalent to a 4 megaton nuclear explosion (it certainly wouldn’t be a nuclear explosion anyway as it’s 100% impossible to get hyper criticality to a level to get an nuclear explosion from a reactor, even getting it in to go off in a bomb takes extremely good design etc.

Also while the potential steam explosion in the event of a melt down into the tanks would have been massive taking out the rest of the plant etc I also think the 2-4 megatons is an exaggeration (though I wouldn’t blame this show as I’ve heard it other places before).

Lackadaisical

In general most of the comparisons don't illustrate the danger and are largely there to try and approximate the seriousness.

An open, burning graphite core on plutonium producing reactor, without any kind of containment and that has just been through a violent and absolutely catastrophic steam explosion is about as dangerous as you can possibly get.

The comparisons of radiation exposures to x-ray doses are meaningless as much of the contamination is from radioisotopes of elements that your body uses. So they will be swallowed, inhaled, absorbed and become incorporated into your tissues e.g. built into your bones where they will continue to be radioactive for the rest of your life in some cases or at least for a significant time in the cases of shorter lives isotopes.

All an x-ray machine or even a radiotherapy machine does is expose you to a measured dose of radiation. When that machine stops, so does the radiation. Exposure to what came out of Chernobyl is a completely different issue. That's also why I would never visit the site, no matter how interesting it might be.

Then the comparison to megatons if explosives are crude too. The explosion was a complex steam explosion caused by a sudden criticality and uncontrolled chain reaction. There are perfectly reasonable theories that it was an actual nuclear explosion in the sense of an absolutely enormous and sudden release of energy as well as a steam explosion. It was so serious it probably vaporised metal structures never mind the water. The sheer forces involved to blow the lid and biological shield off are enormous.

Also the assumption made about what could happen if the core landed in ground water were absolute worst case scenario situations.

The one thing that has been shown with Chernobyl and Fukushima is the cores tend to not be able to sustain a chain reaction once they are broken up. They rely on a lot of things being placed "just so" to make the chain reaction work. The risk with Chernobyl was the moderator was grapgitey and is still present but it's likely to have largely burnt away in the fire, so the chain reaction would have been stopped after a while. It also would have been very inefficient as the core melted into sludge / lava.

In water moderated reactors like Fukushima, the water being gone means the by nuclear reaction isn't able to self sustain.

So in reality the idea that a hot core would just burn through the the ground indefinitely is a fairly remote possibility.

The risk with nuclear power accidents is huge scale, very long term serious contamination. It's not really an explosive / shockwave risk like a weapon.