Chernobyl

www.sputniknews

     I have missed Game of Thrones, House, Breaking Bad, Orange is the New Black, Downton Abbey, and the like. I have not watched one episode while the series were airing nor have I ever watched a single episode on-demand. While it is not all people talk about, but these series are a topic of conversation and they generate buzz. They are the TV shows of today and none of them are on the major networks I grew up watching. They are high stakes programming with budgets that rival major films. More often than not, these series have serious themes. They are dramas.
     That changed a week ago when I was lured to watch Chernobyl because of the subject matter. As I am writing this, I am watching the second episode of the HBO miniseries, Chernobyl, about the nuclear disaster that began on April 26, 1986. Honestly, this is first such miniseries I am watching since the term binge-watching was coined.
     The first episode was a bit disappointing. It seemed like a hodge-podge of vignettes that did not drive the narrative. They might have made it a bit unclear and confusing perhaps to mirror the chaos, denial, and confusion surrounding the crisis in its early hours. No one wanted to look bad to their superiors so there was more cover-up and trying to fix the problem locally than communication. This was presumably a result of the culture of fear that was the Soviet Union. The second episode was a bit better. There was a bit more narrative and character development.
     I think I was looking more documentary or reliable docudrama than what the series is delivering thus far. The first two episodes seem more like Hollywood than history. My view was in line with a review I just read in the New York Times.

“Chernobyl…” takes what you could call a Soviet approach to telling the tale. This is incongruous, since one of the messages of the program is that Soviet approaches don’t work. But there it is: the imposition of a simple narrative on history, the twisting of events to create one-dimensional heroes and villains, the broad-brush symbolism. ~ New York Times

     The Chernobyl disaster was unprecedented and hopefully will never happen again. Here is a high-level summary of what happened:

• The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel.
• The resulting steam explosion and fires released at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere and downwind – some 5200 PBq (I-131 eq).
• Two Chernobyl plant workers died on the night of the accident, and a further 28 people died within a few weeks as a result of acute radiation poisoning.
• UNSCEAR says that apart from increased thyroid cancers, "there is no evidence of a major public health impact attributable to radiation exposure 20 years after the accident."
• Resettlement of areas from which people were relocated is ongoing. In 2011 Chernobyl was officially declared a tourist attraction.  ~ World Nuclear Association

     Contrary to the above assessment by the World Nuclear Association, Sputnik International reported a more grim death and health toll:

In total, about 8.4 million citizens of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were exposed to radiation. 

According to the Union Chernobyl of Ukraine, about 9,000 Russian liquidators died and over 55,000 were disabled as a result of the Chernobyl tragedy.

On July 7, 1987, six former officials and technicians at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant went on trial on charges of negligence and violation of safety regulations. Three of them – Viktor Bruyihov, the former Chernobyl power station director, Nikolai Fomin, the former chief engineer and Anatoly Dyatlov, the former deputy chief engineer – were sentenced to 10 years in prison. ~ Sputniknews

      Back when it happened, there was great concern about the long-term health threats of the people in Europe where the winds carried the massive plumes of smoke laden with radioactive particles. While the Soviets are blamed for the reactor design and training of the personnel working in the control room, their reaction to disaster, once they acknowledged the severity and scale of the problem, was pretty impressive. The devised and executed a plan to construct a cement crypt to enclose the core. They did this all in 209 days. The workers, on-site, that made this happen have been portrayed as the true heroes of this saga.

     I will watch the remaining three episodes of this mini-series. But, I also read reviews about the various books on Chernobyl and just ordered the acclaimed Midnight in Chernobyl published just this year.