[N/A] Chernobyl - HBO Miniseries

ARFlyer

ARFlyer

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Just got done watching the premiere episode and it was truly horrifying. I’ve read a lot and watched a lot of documentaries on the accident. However, the way they present it in this mini series is down right horror.

I recommend anyone to watch this show. It’s weekly for the next five weeks.
 
Just watched the first episode tonight. Very well done, and yes, very horrifying also. Definitely going to watch this series.
 
Great. Just when the world really, really could use more nuclear power, they come out wth this hit piece to make sure we never get it and continue burning fossil fuel until they run out, or we're dead. Thanks HBO. :mad:
 
How many plants are still running Nuclear, the ones near me have converted to fossil?

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tmyers said:
How many plants are still running Nuclear, the ones near me have converted to fossil?

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Some in the US (dunno how many) are beginning to reach end of life and are getting ready for retirement. With no new plants being built, we better start putting up millions of windmills.
 
Matthew said:
Some in the US (dunno how many) are beginning to reach end of life and are getting ready for retirement. With no new plants being built, we better start putting up millions of windmills.
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And solar, and tidal hydro, and a thousand other concepts. At least those jobs can't be offshored.
I'd feel a lot better about nuclear if the molten salt reactor was proven practical.
 
Where's Henning when you need him?
 
Matthew said:
Some in the US (dunno how many) are beginning to reach end of life and are getting ready for retirement. With no new plants being built, we better start putting up millions of windmills.
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Don't forget the big electric fans to blow on them when the winds are calm.
 
PPC1052 said:
Don't forget the big electric fans to blow on them when the winds are calm.
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Just have the fans point at each other... there, free power! one blows the other to spin it, powering the fan
 
ARFlyer said:
I recommend anyone to watch this show.
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Saw the preview the other night on HBOGO before Game of Thrones (don't even get me started) and I was properly intrigued. Definitely on the watch queue!

Dav8or said:
Just when the world really, really could use more nuclear power, they come out wth this hit piece to make sure we never get it and continue burning fossil fuel until they run out, or we're dead
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in principle I agree with you. Nuclear power has the potential to be a real energy panacea. The concern is that humans are fallible, accidents and mistakes happen, and the fallout from a nuclear accident is properly catastrophic. At some point the scales tip where many consider it not worth the risk.

Chip Sylverne said:
tidal hydro
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Surprised this isn't more prevalent than it is.. even a 2-3 knot ocean current could power some massive submarine blades and generate loads of energy. Water is immensely powerful. The Gulf Stream flows around 2-3 knots. How many windmills do we have? Imagine that same amount implemented as submarine turbines throughout the gulf stream. Out of site, loads of power, little risk of collateral damage if one fails. PS, not sure this is just my experience, but of all the wind turbines I've driven past, out by Ocotillo, Banning Pass, etc., none of them ever seem to be spinning.. or maybe 2 out of 200 are slowly turning. Do I just happen to see these on calm or low load days? Odd.

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The thing with nuclear is the R&D was driven by military needs. Not commercial electricity production. Many of the “grass roots” anti nuclear movements were funded by energy companies heavily vested in fossil fuel production to protect their investments. Even through the Clinton presidency there was government funding for R&D. It wasn’t dumped from the budget until after Clinton.

I’m convinced it’s the answer. We just need to allow the R&D to mature the technology.
 
Unfortunately I don't have HBO otherwise I'd definitely be watching, I am always fascinated by these things.

As far as nuclear goes I'm all for it. Most of these accidents you hear/read about are designs that are over 50 years old now. There's been a huge amount of advancement since then and there are some designs that eliminate the risk of the kinds of accidents we've seen at places like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. In my estimation, if we're actually serious about climate change this is the only answer. Solar and wind help but they don't have the capacity to power everything and unless we want to scale back our use of energy to only bare essentials this is it. It's the only thing we know how to build now that can solve the problem in a meaningful way.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
Many of the “grass roots” anti nuclear movements were funded by energy companies heavily vested in fossil fuel production to protect their investments.
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And it wasn’t just them. Prior to Regan financially breaking the Soviet Union, they had a long term psy-ops to make Americans distrust nuclear power. The benefits of it were seen to too much of an advantage to allow us to develop.

Then the best they are building/running at Chernobyl is a really poor, really dangerous copy of a one off US research reactor, that was actually quite safe. The corners that were cut when they couldn’t plan to get enough graphite in every reactor really affected the safety of the design. And then the double whammy of control rods that when you first start inserting them to slow things down, actually initially speed them up? It isn’t that impossible to convince yourself is an acceptable risk as long as you always inset them one at a time. But when the SHTF and someone starts every single one of them in at the same time.... With a really long chain of events before it. They really should have canceled that test, and run it a different day, with the core in a more stable condition.
 
cowman said:
Unfortunately I don't have HBO otherwise I'd definitely be watching, I am always fascinated by these things.

As far as nuclear goes I'm all for it. Most of these accidents you hear/read about are designs that are over 50 years old now. There's been a huge amount of advancement since then and there are some designs that eliminate the risk of the kinds of accidents we've seen at places like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. In my estimation, if we're actually serious about climate change this is the only answer. Solar and wind help but they don't have the capacity to power everything and unless we want to scale back our use of energy to only bare essentials this is it. It's the only thing we know how to build now that can solve the problem in a meaningful way.
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Actually designs that avoid the possibility of another Chernobyl predate it - look up Integral Fast Reactor for an example of a project that was begun a couple of years earlier, then cancelled after a successful prototype had been tested, because of arguably overblown concerns about possible diversion of weapons-grade material (it's a breeder type design).

I agree that nuclear is our best hope of maintaining our current rate of energy consumption whilst curbing GHG emissions. But there are only two new reactors under construction in this country as far as I am aware, several others have been shut down or are slated to be shut down, and in the time it takes to build a working nuclear plant, CO2 levels are likely to rise another 20-30 ppm. So I think it is not going to be a practical and workable solution for the near future.
 
By the way, the Los Angeles Times posted a criminally misleading article this morning: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-11-19/san-onofre-nuclear-plant-waste-radioactive

It's interesting that somehow the media makes a blanket allowance and exception for people to report on things without adequate knowledge of it. It's also ironic that in California's quest for clean energy they're championing against really the only viable energy source

Chernobyl melted down as a result of very well documented test that went awry based on a reactor design, that, under certain conditions, gets hotter (first) when scrammed

San Onofre, other than being powered by a radioactive fuel, is nothing like Chernobyl

I should publish an Opinion piece in the LA Times about how driving your car could be a Titanic waiting to happen

The media, simply, sucks.

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cowman said:
Unfortunately I don't have HBO otherwise I'd definitely be watching, I am always fascinated by these things.

As far as nuclear goes I'm all for it. Most of these accidents you hear/read about are designs that are over 50 years old now. There's been a huge amount of advancement since then and there are some designs that eliminate the risk of the kinds of accidents we've seen at places like Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima. In my estimation, if we're actually serious about climate change this is the only answer. Solar and wind help but they don't have the capacity to power everything and unless we want to scale back our use of energy to only bare essentials this is it. It's the only thing we know how to build now that can solve the problem in a meaningful way.
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I agree with you that now progress minimizes the occurrence of such disasters, as happened in Chernobyl.

Have you still not got the opportunity to watch the series? I am sure you need to find such an opportunity. To be true, I watched this series with long breaks. I reached the end much later than the release date of the last series I guess I was too impressed with what details were shown in it.
 
Based on the writings of you reprobates I watched the first episode last night. I've never spent an hour of my time clenching. What a great show! Like the very best horror movie you've ever seen that wasn't the least bit scary. Don't know if I want to watch the second one.
 
The book "Midnight in Chernobyl' is a great read on the disaster, the "stuff" that lead up to it and the aftermath. I recommend it.
 
Back in 1986 I was a kid in a school located about 700 miles north-west of Chernobyl ... I remember we were being given iodine tables during a break between classes - frankly, don’t remember this being a big deal back then and never knew how bad it was until I watched the series a few months ago :)
 
Most plants, in my understanding, are old tech based heavily on military reactors from the Navy? Newer stuff should be much, much safer. If I recall, the French use quite a bit of nuclearr power. Then again, France isn't a third world country masquerading as a first world entity. Russia - some good minds imbedded in the amber of a depraved culture. Like giving a machine gun to a monkey; someone, including the monkey, is likely to get hurt.
 
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Reviving this thread as I watched all 5 episodes back-to-back on a flight from DFW-DXB. I had seen many of the memes about 3.6 Rad but never understood the significance since I had never investigated much about Chernobyl other than it was a huge nuclear disaster. I think the series was pretty good overall, and according to the critics, fairly accurate on the details. There was a bit more time spent on the “killing of domestic wildlife to prevent spread of infectious disease” than was probably warranted, but it certainly highlighted some of the more gruesome tactics that were employed in the weeks immediately following the calamity to try and minimize the damage.

They also did a fair job of explaining the major cause-effect of the reactor states and what ultimately was believed to have caused the supposedly impossible explosion of the reactor.

Certainly worth a watch, even if they took a few liberties with the drama.
 
SoonerAviator said:
what ultimately was believed to have caused the supposedly impossible explosion of the reactor
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I really appreciated the documentary-esq feel of this and was grateful it was a not typical Hollywood Michael Bay type thing full of excessive dramatization / anti nuclear energy propaganda / etc. The attention to detail was on point

I also never really understood why or how it melted down, but that illustration given by Valery Legasov during the hearing was fantastic
 
Highly recommend the Chernobyl podcast that accompanied the show for each episode with Peter Siegel and the show runner. Sheds some interesting light on where the show intentionally departs from reality for the sake of story telling etc.
 
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