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Debunking the Myths of the HBO Chernobyl series (2023)

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Re: Debunking the Myths of the HBO Chernobyl series (2023)

#61

Post by hkpack »

glenstein wrote: post #19
hkpack wrote: post #6

I think we need to also debunk the debunking. You know, some of us were already living then and it is not some distant event we have no knowledge of. For example: > Re: The soviet government did not want to evacuate the town of Pripyat > Debunking: Legasov indicated the opposite. He said that the decision to evacuate was made quickly, even though the levels of radiation in the town were not considered to be dangerous…

I think too often these historical "debunking" exercises are really just exercises in overzealously uncharitable interpretation. Some of the distinctions drawn are asinine especially in the context of a dramatic presentation. And some are even importantly wrong, as you've now pointed out which I wouldn't have thought of on a skim-by reading. Just like we have functional literacy and information literacy, there should…

If we dismiss the possibility that the post itself is a part of Russian propaganda to whitewash the soviet legacy (which they are engaging now at scale), then the next best explanation is that the author lacks the context of living in the USSR to correctly interpret the recordings.

In USSR everyone lied. Telling anything against the party will put you and your family in grave danger - it is basically a suicide. There were no free press, no activism, and all information was filtered by the party with complicated process of deciding what should be published and when and who gets punished for what.

People in the west have no understanding what it means to live all your life in such conditions so they try to interpret people as if it happened in their country.

It can be that the person was trying to make amends with the party to ease the social ostracization for his family, friends or colleagues. It doesn't mean the person is telling the truth at all, it means that he show loyalty to the party line by telling that the system was efficient and all his higher-ups were doing the best job.

Re: Debunking the Myths of the HBO Chernobyl series (2023)

#63

Post by osm3000 »

josefritzishere wrote: post #62

Legit question... I have not watched it. Is it actually good on it's own merits?

It’s pretty good. I loved it. I recommend it

My only problem is that the creator insists it was factually correct. First test, the tapes, are anything but correct

Re: Debunking the Myths of the HBO Chernobyl series (2023)

#64

Post by mvkel »

spwa4 wrote: post #52
mvkel wrote: post #5

> Legasov commended the swiftness and efficiency of the government response at all levels Sure, but in those times, he would be compelled to say such things. That doesn't mean he believed it. It seems the main faults that OP finds in the show are that Legasov had issues with his government, when in "reality" he thought they were great. But is that "reality," or oppression? I also don't see the fault in highlighting h…

The main issue is what the Soviet government did before the disaster even happened. Someone, in the series it is implied it was a student, in Legasov's institution wrote a paper about what the risks was when AZ-5 was pressed. Apparently there was even a suggested redesign for the rods that would mitigate the risk (but it required lowering the maximum power output for the reactor, and thus required building more react…

Very well said, and an important reminder of the recursion of oppression

Re: Debunking the Myths of the HBO Chernobyl series (2023)

#65

Post by rl3 »

nocoiner wrote: post #60
rl3 wrote: post #29

> It was about Anatoly Grishchenko, a Soviet helicopter pilot who had served in Chernobyl and, like many others, had developed cancer as a result. If there's one thing that pissed me off about the TV series, it was its poor to non-existent storytelling surrounding the helicopter crews who ran sortie after sortie right over the burning reactor—around the clock—knowing full well the grave risks posed by the radiation.…

But which was it? Was “aviation instrumental in containing the disaster” or did “virtually none of the neutron absorbers” reach the core? Those are both quotes from your post. In literal or figurative battles, there are plenty of examples of actions that are simultaneously indisputably brave and utterly futile.

>But which was it? Was “aviation instrumental in containing the disaster” ...

I just naïvely assumed dumping 5,000 tons of material over a burning reactor probably did help significantly given the fire went out around days 10-12.

In retrospect, that assumption appears incorrect despite being congruent with the narrative of virtually every documentary I saw on Chernobyl in the late 90s/early 2000s:

"But I'm surprised that at Vienna they would have claimed that the core was smothered. It turns out, at least from my investigations, that the core froze by itself, solidified by itself, and stopped releasing." [0] (1994)

I was even able to find some research suggesting the aerial drops acted as an insulator, worsening subsequent radiation releases. At least they covered the glowing red target, which was thought to be a piece of the core ejected from the explosion and not the core itself as originally thought.

The divers at least appear to have saved the day from complete catastrophe, not to detract from the air crews' heroism.[1]

[0] https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=94-P13-000...

[1] https://www.history.co.uk/article/the-real-story-of-the-cher...

Re: Debunking the Myths of the HBO Chernobyl series (2023)

#66

Post by man8alexd »

amiga386 wrote: post #57
netrem wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They even published a podcast highlighting the creative freedoms, but failed to mention the important ones, like the fact that the reactor caps couldn't bounce up and down... Deeply ironic for a show with the tagline "What is the cost of lies?"

You think that's an important one? To me, that's just a creative liberty; the need for visuals in the seconds before the explosion led to a choice to visualise it like the top of a boiling kettle. To me, there are more substantive issues, e.g. * Claiming that nobody survived watching from the Bridge of Death, when it hasn't even been confirmed there was a gathering of people on the bridge, let alone any of that group…

> the need for visuals in the seconds before the explosion led to a choice to visualise it like the top of a boiling kettle.

And this is the lie. Before they pressed the AZ-5 button: (quote from INSAG-7 report) "the parameters of the unit were controlled, remained within the limits expected for the operating conditions concerned, and did not require any intervention on the part of the personnel."

There was no drama in the control room, everything was mostly calm and "business as usual".

The Soviets invented the story "these youkels at Chernobyl did unauthorized experiment, disabled all safety mechanisms, broke all the rules and blew up our big beautiful reactor." This story was presented at the IAEA meeting in Vienna in 1986 by Legasov himself and published as the INSAG-1 report. The miniseries repeats this story but shifts all the blame to evil Dyatlov.

After the Soviet Union fell, the updated report INSAG-7 was published in 1992, which I quoted above.

Re: Debunking the Myths of the HBO Chernobyl series (2023)

#67

Post by man8alexd »

vt240 wrote: post #27

Dyatlov's interview from the 90s, which is still available on youtube [1], seems to fit better with the account given in the hit book "Midnight in Chernobyl" (which was the basis for the series,) than the story written for TV. To me the series just seemed like a rehash of the same movie tropes we've seen time and time again in dramatizations of the accident, compared to a true adaptation of book, which included a lot…

There is an article by Dyatlov: "Why INSAG has still got it wrong."

https://www.neimagazine.com/analysis/why-insag-has-still-got...

Re: Debunking the Myths of the HBO Chernobyl series (2023)

#68

Post by man8alexd »

spwa4 wrote: post #52
mvkel wrote: post #5

> Legasov commended the swiftness and efficiency of the government response at all levels Sure, but in those times, he would be compelled to say such things. That doesn't mean he believed it. It seems the main faults that OP finds in the show are that Legasov had issues with his government, when in "reality" he thought they were great. But is that "reality," or oppression? I also don't see the fault in highlighting h…

The main issue is what the Soviet government did before the disaster even happened. Someone, in the series it is implied it was a student, in Legasov's institution wrote a paper about what the risks was when AZ-5 was pressed. Apparently there was even a suggested redesign for the rods that would mitigate the risk (but it required lowering the maximum power output for the reactor, and thus required building more react…

Everything about nuclear reactors was secret by default, no student would have known any details about the RBMK reactor.

The "positive scram effect" was discovered at Ignalina (where the miniseries were filmed) in 1983. The RBMK design organization NIKIET sent an official informational letter to the power plants and proposed changes to the design and operational procedures. The changes weren't implemented as "there was a widespread view that the conditions under which the positive scram effect would be important would never occur." The same as O-rings.

And there was no "a Soviet program to fail Jewish students". Just primitive ground-level anti-semitism.

Re: Debunking the Myths of the HBO Chernobyl series (2023)

#69

Post by man8alexd »

tptacek wrote: post #41
muxl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The show makes reference to "Midnight in Chernobyl" in its epilogue, I think it's safe to say it was one of the main sources of information for the show (though of course they took liberties because it was a historical drama).

Mazin has talked about "Voices From Chernobyl" more than any other source. I used as many sources as I could find. I was looking at research articles in scientific journals; I was looking at governmental reports; I was looking at books written by former Soviet scientists who were at Chernobyl; I was reading books by Western historians who had looked at Chernobyl. I watched documentaries; I read first-person documents…

Mazin almost completely ignored the INSAG-7 report and in the last episode, they retell the same fictional story blaming the operators that Legasov himself presented in Vienna in 1986 to the IAEA meeting, which was published as the original INSAG-1 report.

Re: Debunking the Myths of the HBO Chernobyl series (2023)

#70

Post by spwa4 »

man8alexd wrote: post #68
spwa4 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main issue is what the Soviet government did before the disaster even happened. Someone, in the series it is implied it was a student, in Legasov's institution wrote a paper about what the risks was when AZ-5 was pressed. Apparently there was even a suggested redesign for the rods that would mitigate the risk (but it required lowering the maximum power output for the reactor, and thus required building more react…

Everything about nuclear reactors was secret by default, no student would have known any details about the RBMK reactor. The "positive scram effect" was discovered at Ignalina (where the miniseries were filmed) in 1983. The RBMK design organization NIKIET sent an official informational letter to the power plants and proposed changes to the design and operational procedures. The changes weren't implemented as "there w…

As shown in the series, the article about AZ-5 increasing reactor power instead of decreasing it was classified a LOT higher and inaccessible to the researchers of the institute, and it was only that specific article. They explicitly hid the table of contents and that one article. It was explicitly suppressed, not accidentally classified along with a bunch of other stuff.
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