Chernobyl TV Series

[Colin WhittakerParticipant @colinwhittaker20544]

Just released on HBO in the US and available to the rest of us by devious means if you know how.

The story of the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor Explosion in episodes (now up to 3).

It's a real bastard of a heavy engineering disaster story. Be thankful you never had anything to do with it.

This TV series has moved me. Please, no jokes.

Colin

[Colin WhittakerParticipant @colinwhittaker20544]

Nasty Engineering Story

[J HancockParticipant @jhancock95746]

We are all carrying a bit of it around with us now , like it or not !

[Brian OldfordParticipant @brianoldford70365]

Posted by J Hancock on 28/05/2019 15:57:25:

We are all carrying a bit of it around with us now , like it or not !

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

[Former MemberParticipant @formermember53456]

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[Former MemberParticipant @formermember32069]

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[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

I'm not watching it either, I've got enough real life drama going on, my last ever apprentice thinks it's great, ah the innocence of youth!

Tony

[Bill PhinnParticipant @billphinn90025]

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.

[Former MemberParticipant @formermember53456]

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[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

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

[Brian OldfordParticipant @brianoldford70365]

Posted by Samsaranda on 28/05/2019 18:44:36:

. . . . . . . kept in the dark because there is nothing that could be done even if we knew ?

Dave W

It's called the "Mushroom Technique" – kept in the dark and fed on bovine excrement.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

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.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Whilst I wouldn't want to belittle the effect of radioactive contamination, at least radioactive elements do decay, however slowly, many chemical toxins are poisonous for ever. I'd rather ingest a gram of plutonium than a gram of arsenic, the plut will pass through your digestive tract and come out the other end, the arsenic will kill you. There is still plenty of it under Devon and Cornwall, and a lot on the surface in old mine tips

[ronan walshParticipant @ronanwalsh98054]

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.

[Cornish JackParticipant @cornishjack]

I am confused! … not an unusual condition

I remember Chernobyl but NOT any radiation fears in the UK . Given the normal geostrophic wind patterns of generally West to East I wouldn't have expected any major pollution. The pollution scare which DID register was the Windscale/ Sellafield explosion which caused very specific problems with Welsh sheep for some considerable time afterwards., plus a general concern expressed by our European, particularly Scandinavian, neighbours.

Chernobyl was indeed horrible but one memory remains immovable – the military helicopter crews who VOLUNTARILY flew and hovered over the site dumping concrete to try to contain it, knowing it was a death sentence. How does anyone do that? The ultimate in heroism. R I P

rgds

Bill

[Bill PhinnParticipant @billphinn90025]

Posted by ronan walsh on 28/05/2019 23:51:10:

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.

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.

[Cabinet EnforcerParticipant @cabinetenforcer]

Posted by Cornish Jack on 29/05/2019 00:30:26:

I am confused! … not an unusual condition

I remember Chernobyl but NOT any radiation fears in the UK . Given the normal geostrophic wind patterns of generally West to East I wouldn't have expected any major pollution.

Just shows how little attention is paid to your average hill farmer I suppose. Not that long since the last restrictions were lifted:

**LINK**

[LainchyParticipant @lainchy]

Posted by ronan walsh on 28/05/2019 23:51:10:

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 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

[Wout Moerman 1Participant @woutmoerman1]

I'm a radiation protection expert myself and probably owe my job to this accident. I started my job in the early 90s and a lot of funding was available for education and training in the radiation sector, after many lean years. My compliments for how this issue is discussed in this thread. A few details:

plutonium is also very toxic, as are uranium isotopes. For some of the isotopes the chemical toxicity is more harmful than the radiotoxicity.

The long lived contamination of Europe is caused by cesium-137 which has a half life of 30 years. If the half life was much longer it would be less radioactive.

The main problem directly after the accident was deposit of iodine-131 which has a half life of 8 days. There was a significant increase of thyroid cancer in Russian children 10 years after the disaster.

[J HancockParticipant @jhancock95746]

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 ?

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Bill, uncharacteristically the winds immediately after the Chernobyl accident flowed east to west over Europe causing a plume of radiation to be swept up over Scandinavia and then down across the UK, I think a lot of the contamination had settled across Europe and Scandinavia before reaching UK. It was just bad luck that the winds were in the wrong direction for us and we got a share. I seem to have a vague recollection that about that time there was concern about radioactive contamination of the overalls of personnel who had reason to work inside the air intakes of Lightning aircraft, due to the large volumes of air, from high altitude, passing through the intakes and the particles of contamination being deposited in the intakes.

Dave W

[J HancockParticipant @jhancock95746]

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

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Just to put things inperspective you may like to have a look at these links to get a idea of relative doses.

For instance 1 hour at chernoble in 2010 comes in between flying from NewYork to LA and a chest XRAY

**LINK**

**LINK**

regards Martin

Edited By Martin Kyte on 29/05/2019 09:47:47

[Andy CarruthersParticipant @andycarruthers33275]

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

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Martin, the dosage at Chernobyl in 2010 was infinitely lower than in 1986 because the isotopes had yet to decay and also the reactor was then yet to be capped with steel and concrete thereby sealing the open core of the reactor. I wouldn’t have wanted to be within a hundred miles of the site in 1986, nowadays it is relatively safe fairly close up to the reactor site, although not recommended to spend a prolonged period there. I am impressed with the technical details of the series and also the sets are realistic, it is apparently filmed in Lithuania, an ex Soviet state, I am sure that the Lithuanians are not fussed about upsetting their former masters in Russia, there is no love lost there between them.

Dave W

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