So long as you don't glow in the dark we'll assume you're OK.

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Chernobyl (the event) had a big impact on me.

At the time of the accident I was on a working holiday in Scotland. Just at the time when maximum fallout was wafting over the British Isles I was climbing Ben Lomond and other Scottish hills and soaking up the radioactive rain. Then I had a motorcycling accident on the way back from the Highlands and had to be hospitalised in Dumfries, during which time I had several powerful x-rays and scans, and drank plentifully of the local irradiated milk, which no-one really knew at the time was irradiated.

Later the same year I was hospitalised again for several weeks, this time in an ICU, and had more x-rays and scans during that stay than most people have in a lifetime.

As for the series, my brother is a graduate in Russian who spent a lot of time in the country in the 80's and beyond, and his testimony, added to what I know myself of the Soviet era, tells me the programme-makers have tried hard to create a period-look and done it fairly successfully.

Whether Chernobyl (the event) is responsible for the primary immune deficiency and other autoimmune illness I suffer from (and that nobody else in my family does) I don't know. But you have to wonder.

Chernobyl is a brilliant series and I remember the event very well, a few days after the event this country was covered by a layer of cloud which was depositing a steady layer of contamination. The areas that seemed to be most affected were the hill regions of Wales, Lake District and Scotland, the ground became so contaminated that for years it was illegal to sell any sheep grazed there for human consumption because the meat was so contaminated. In the series great play is made on the fact that certain components of the contamination would take in the order of 20,000 years to decay to half its original intensity, beggars the question how much of the intensity of the fallout that fell here on the UK has diminished, are we being kept in the dark because there is nothing that could be done even if we knew ?

Dave W

I was living in Aberystwyth and remember buying a shoulder of Welsh lamb for next to nothing about a week after the accident.

A rudimentary knowledge of bioaccumulation made it pretty obvious that any danger was radiation accumulating in the vegetation then building up in livestock over extended periods, certainly months, to become dangerous.

The BBC did an excellent dramatisation of the disaster, with the actor Ade Edmonson (from the young ones). Its available to watch on youtube. I was also watching a documentary with Guy Martin, he went out there to make a programme, and there still some people living relatively close to the reactor to this day. One old woman i recall. She said no one was moving her from her home, she had lived there all her life and she had no where else to go.

One thing that is wrong with the whole story is the men in the control room of the plant were scapegoated for the whole thing, which is very unfair. It was the design of the boron control rods that caused the explosion.

I remember seeing those. They're both worth watching.

A poignant illustration of the immediate human cost of the accident and the deadly effects of attending a fire caused by a reactor core blowing is recent footage taken in the basement of Pripyat hospital showing the still highly radioactive clothing stripped from the firefighters who were taken there for emergency treatment.

I remember this docu/drama also, and have it stored as an ISO image It's got to be one of the best TV programs ever made in my opinion of course. Shocking indeed. I was at school when this happened, and I remember it vividly

Edited By Ian Lainchbury on 29/05/2019 07:39:34

Who remembers the good old days, when ' every' shoe shop had an X-Ray machine, you stuck your foot in and your Mum could see right through to the basement ?

Also, not to forget we all got a 'top-up' from Fukishima in 2011.

Thoroughly gripping story brilliantly depicted, deserves every accolade, makes very uncomfortable but unmissable viewing

Enjoy is the wrong word, but I certainly appreciate this series and hope there is a follow-up on the long term effects and cleanup efforts

And maybe a series on Fukushima too