"Chernobyl" is worth watching

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semipro

semipro

Minister of Fire
Hearth Supporter
Jan 12, 2009
4,358
SW Virginia
I spend most of my time watching How-To stuff on Youtube. I try not to get caught up in the hype about TV shows and I avoid dramatic series in general. Many seem like glorified soap operas and a waste of time to me.
"Chernobyl" is different.
The writing, production, directing, etc. as a documentary are incredible. It may be more accurate to call it a docudrama based on some of the factual liberties taken by the writers and producers but that characterization seems unfair after I researched background and listened to the accompanying podcasts.
Its obvious that the story writes itself if realistically depicted. Its apparent that most dramatization by the creators is done to simplify a very complex story into a 5 part mini-series in a way that conveys the primary components of the event, what led to it, and the aftermath. In fact, some eye-witness accounts were seen as overly dramatic and left out of production. One event regarding liquidators tasked with hunting down pets left behind was described in the accompanying podcast and I can see why they left it out -- unseeing is tough.
Its available on HBO and reportedly free at other online locations. I took advantage of HBO's free 7-day trial to access the series on my Roku.. (I don't work for HBO or Roku or have any known financial interest in them)
 
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We just finished watching Chernobyl. It is a powerful series and very well done. As you noted, if anything it is understated. The horrors experienced by those poor people are unimaginable. The heroic sacrifices made by so many thousands to stabilize the situation are humbling and sobering. All this because of lies, disinformation and the hubris of man. I thought it telling that at the end Gorbachev is noted as saying that he thought this is what actually brought down the Soviet Union.
 
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Old Gorbi, anything to deny RR his due. What it showed is the utter failure of communism. On a side note Limbaugh said it was the best documentary he's ever seen.
 
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begreen said:
I thought it telling that at the end Gorbachev is noted as saying that he thought this is what actually brought down the Soviet Union.
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I'd never heard this before this show. The financial costs alone must have been staggering for an economy not in great shape to start with.
 
The request for all the liquid nitrogen in the Soviet Union was a telling statement on the scope of the disaster they were coping with.

Powerful statement. Living with lies and denial can end up being a very deadly thing.

“What is the cost of lies?” the weary official says into a tape recorder, sitting in his dark kitchen. “It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then?’’
 
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"If Hollywood ever decides to tell the true story of nuclear, and explain for viewers the paradoxical relationship between safety and danger, it won’t need to resort to sensationalism. The truth is sensational enough."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...chernobyl-gets-nuclear-so-wrong/#15f54e9632f6

Not my reveiw,opinion of another. When you sit around and agree( whole bunch of you folks are like thinkers) with anything that fits your mind you are not reading and thinking enough?
 
There definitely were dramatizations and characters that were an amalgam of many characters. Conversely, some parts like the killing of animals, were actually toned down greatly from the reality. We discussed this as a family after seeing the show. None of us came away with a greater fear of nuclear energy from the series. The point of the movie was about the power of lies and what they can do when they pervade a system. This is as important today as it was then, as we saw in PR with hurricane Maria. There is a human cost to these lies and denials.

"But HBO “gets a basic truth right,” he writes, which is that Chernobyl was “more about lies, deceit and a rotting political system than... whether nuclear power is inherently good or bad.”

This is a point that the creator of “Chernobyl,” Craig Mazin, has stressed. “The lesson of Chernobyl isn’t that modern nuclear power is dangerous,” he tweeted. “The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism are dangerous.”"

If an alterative reality is desired, Russia state TV is about to provide it. They are funding their own series about Chernobyl in which the underlying cause is the CIA.
https://www.cnet.com/news/patriotic...aster-will-reportedly-air-on-russian-tv-soon/

FWIW, the official Russian death count from Chernobyl remains at 31.
 
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vinny11950 said:
Off topic, but related in a way, this seems like trouble if the DOE gets away with it. Obviously they don't want to spend money they don't have, but would rather just redefine the waste and claim it has been cleaned up.

(broken link removed to http://www.stuarthsmith.com/trumps-doe-places-a-ticking-nuclear-time-bomb-at-hanford-site/)
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Unfortunately this critically important topic is "simplified" by the stuarthsmith.com web site as an anti-Trump hit piece.

The paragraph ending in "...said Marco Kaltofen, a nuclear forensic expert and a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute who has worked with me for years on a number of important radiation lawsuits." reinforces that this is largely opinion rather than real journalism.

That not withstanding, the issue of spent nuclear fuel waste desperately needs Federal Govt consensus. If it takes some govt grease, things like building a few hundred swimming pools in Nevada high schools, I think it's worth it.
 
CaptSpiff said:
Unfortunately this critically important topic is "simplified" by the stuarthsmith.com web site as an anti-Trump hit piece.

The paragraph ending in "...said Marco Kaltofen, a nuclear forensic expert and a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute who has worked with me for years on a number of important radiation lawsuits." reinforces that this is largely opinion rather than real journalism.

That not withstanding, the issue of spent nuclear fuel waste desperately needs Federal Govt consensus. If it takes some govt grease, things like building a few hundred swimming pools in Nevada high schools, I think it's worth it.
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So you label any criticism of the actions of this administration as anti-Trump and dismiss it right away? It still does not answer the question as to why reclassify the waste? Is it really to do better clean up or is it to declare victory, remove liability, and move on?

If you ask me does this administration deserve the benefit of the doubt on environmental issues, I say no. We already have a 2 year track record on this and it's not great. Why trust them with nuclear waste?

The whole point of Chernobyl was to show that no matter how government wants to define its own reality, nuclear power and nuclear waste have to have strict standards or else bad things happen.

My guess is that because the Federal Govn't is running huge deficits because of the tax cuts, there is no money to do proper cleanups at these sites, so DOE is trying to redefine the problem and call it a day.
 
vinny11950 said:
So you label any criticism of the actions of this administration as anti-Trump and dismiss it right away? It still does not answer the question as to why reclassify the waste? Is it really to do better clean up or is it to declare victory, remove liability, and move on?
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Nope, I don't dismiss criticism against the administration,... there's plenty. However this article is an opinion piece that uses words like " harebrained" and "outrageous", and talks about specific DOE proposed actions while never citing any DOE personnel by name, choosing instead to use Trump's name as a trigger.

vinny11950 said:
If you ask me does this administration deserve the benefit of the doubt on environmental issues, I say no. We already have a 2 year track record on this and it's not great. Why trust them with nuclear waste?

The whole point of Chernobyl was to show that no matter how government wants to define its own reality, nuclear power and nuclear waste have to have strict standards or else bad things happen.

My guess is that because the Federal Govn't is running huge deficits because of the tax cuts, there is no money to do proper cleanups at these sites, so DOE is trying to redefine the problem and call it a day.
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So the article correctly describes this as a 30 year "discussed problem" that has technical solutions which have been politically unpalatable. During this time both D's & R's have been in control of the executive and/or legislative authority. Each time strongmen in one or the other party have stalled efforts to bring this to solution.

I don't know the evil or goodness in the hearts of those involved. I do know that if we've been stuck in action for 30 years we've got to do something differently. And many people will complain.
 
Oak Ridge TN reportedly has several "plants" that are so "hot" that from the start they planned to bury them once they stop using them.

Reportedly the former USSR had multiple facilities located in remote locations that they just walked away from them. No people, no problem ;)

Hanford just has the problem that its located on the banks and quite near the Columbia River with a major population center located downstream.

A friend is a amateur geologist and has mentioned before that the maps of the underlying geology of the US are all very good as they were updated when the government was first looking for hazardous waste sites.

The current nuclear plant cycles were designed not be efficient, they were designed to develop waste that could be upgraded for weapons. There were far more efficient cycles designed and tested by the US. This is the latest attempt at building what was once a US concept

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesc...e-than-worth-its-weight-in-salt/#36b3873b7694
 
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So in keeping with the posting, here's the Govt perspective on the Hanford facility in Washington State.
It can accurately be described as a mess. One that too many administrations over the years have kicked down the road!

(broken link removed)

Shows Chernobyl is not the only mistake being encased in concrete.
 
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CaptSpiff said:
(broken link removed)

Shows Chernobyl is not the only mistake being encased in concrete.
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Mistake? I’m not sure how you’d equate the standard decommissioning and cocooning of early Cold War reactors to Chernobyl.
 
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