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Chernobyl the miniseries-A Glowing Review

Started by Hog, July 31, 2020, 10:56:29 AM

Hog

I just watched the HBO miniseries Chernobyl.  It was excellent IMO.  I remember the actual events of 1986, but I didnt remember Valery Legasov's suicide 2 years to the minute after the actual explosion of reactor #4 at 01:23:40 hours local April 26, 1986.  He was the guy that spilled the beans in regards to the Soviet state know about and covering up the fact that the Soviet light water cooled, graphite moderated, unenriched Uranium fueled RBMK reactors with their Positive Void co-efficient can experience thermal power excursions once the emergency SCRAM buttons(meant to immediately stop the fission chain reaction-in essence the SCRAM button it the Emergency Stop button for nuclear reactors) that can occur when operating the reactor in low power states.  He wasn't shot in the head, and during the next 2 years he made several audio tapes that were circulated among the Soviet science community.  Eventually the Soviets caved and made alterations to their RBMK reactors making the emergency stop SCRAM buttons safer to use.

The initial explosion was a steam explosion when the SCRAM button was depressed causing a power excursion of over 32,000 megawatts(32,000,000,000 watts) of thermal energy inside a reactor that was designed for 3,200 megawatts of thermal energy(3,200,000,000 watts).  All of the liquid water, liquid H20, was suddenly converted to steam and since the volume of water as it changes state from liquid to gas increases by 1,600 times, there was no where for all this extra volume to go so reactor number 4 blew its 1000 tonne steel lid up and over on its side and blew the roof of the reactor building to smithereens. The core now exposed to the open air explosively caught fire as oxygen swept down into the core.  The resultant graphite fire was billowing two WW-II nuclear bombs worth of radioactive materials into the environment EVERY HOUR.  The total fuel load for a RBMK reactor is 192 tons of 2% Uranium.  Following the Chernobyl incident, the 2% Uranium load was changed to 2.4% enriched Uranium.  There are currently 10 RBMK reactors under operation at this time. 2 New RBMK reactors were built AFTER the Chernobyl incident, one of them being Smolensk-3, the other Ignalina-2.  Ignalina-2 was shutdown in 2009. 
"The automatic reactor shutdown system at Inglina-2 was triggered on June 6, 2009, at 09:15 EEST (06:15 UTC), the automatic reactor protection system was actuated and Unit 2 was shut down No radiation was released. Plant officials decided to keep it off-line for thirty days, performing the annual preventive maintenance in June, instead of August 29â€"September 27 as originally scheduled."

With the core exposed to the atmosphere apparently there was Cherenkov radiation visible in the form of a brilliant blue light that forms when high seed beta particles pass through its immediate environment.

Here is the Cherenkov light in an underwater nuclear reactor named teh Advanced Test Reactor.


and from the Reed Research Reactor


It was crazily dramatic when it was being discussed that the officials in West Germany were keeping their children inside the schools during recess to reduce their exposure to nuclear fallout while at the very same moment, school aged boys are walking through an outdoor basketball court in the city of Pripyat with the burning reactor in the background.

Years ago I remember the story of a guy who went in for a shift at a nuclear powerplant. It was Sweden or Finland or one of those smaller Western countries. At these powerplants, your level of radiation is measured upon you arriving at work AND as you leave work, this way it can be proven that you indeed became irradiated while at work or not. Well to everyone's surprise as he placed his hands into the radiation detector and the machine began to do a full body scan, the radiation alarms started going off.  I'm sure that guy needed to change his underwear shortly thereafter.  Well it was determined that this nuclear powerplant worker had become contaminated from the fallout of Chernobyl that had blown in the winds several hundred kilometers away.  I also remember stories about the detection of radioonucleotides from Chernobyl Reactor #4 being detected in Canadian cows milk. Of course the simple detection of radioactive products says nothing about the actual amount of particles from which you can determine if its at a safe level or not. Simply sleeping for 8 hours next to someone gives you a dose of 0.05 microsieverts, which is the equivalent radioactive dose of eating 2 bananas=0.1 microsieverts. For comparison a flight from New York to LA gives you a dose of 40 microsieverts, which is 4 times higher than the dose a human gets after spending one average day on Earth from background radiation sources 10 microsieverts.


My hats go off to those "liquidators" that helped to save Europe from certain irradiation, esp. if the predicted multi megaton thermal explosion occurred. If the contents of the core of Reactor #4 caused that steam explosion we would have seen the cores of 4 Soviet era RBMK reactors with the force of 4 of the USA's largest strategic nuclear weapons currently in service, the 1.2 megaton B-83 nuke.  Europe/Africa/Asia, heck the world would be a very different place if the contents of those 4 reactors were strewn across the countryside.


Both the Chernobyl and Fukashima Daichi incidents are rated at Level 7 event classification of the International Nuclear Event Scale.  I remember when the Fukashima incident was rated at a level 5, then was uprated to Level-6.  I dint realize until exactly 2 minutes ago that Fukashima was increased again to a Level 7 incident.


Anyone else care to share their reviews/stories from Chernobyl/Fukashima?

peace
Hog

pate

I think I will take a gander at this "Chernobyl" miniseries, if the opportunity arises.  For some reason it brought the movie Silkwood to my twisted and warped mind.

If you haven't seen "Silkwood," it might be of interest to you while this "Chernobyl" mini-series is fresh in your mind.

Good stuff, I will keep an eye out for it, aye!

-p

Hog

Quote from: pate on July 31, 2020, 01:37:43 PM
I think I will take a gander at this "Chernobyl" miniseries, if the opportunity arises.  For some reason it brought the movie Silkwood to my twisted and warped mind.

If you haven't seen "Silkwood," it might be of interest to you while this "Chernobyl" mini-series is fresh in your mind.

Good stuff, I will keep an eye out for it, aye!

-p

Hey Pate, what's shaking?  Spoiler alert, I found the scene where they send conscripts up onto the most dangerous of the three rooftops that required "Bio-robots" to clear the graphite  and dump it back into the reactor. 90 seconds is all they have, they are told to scoop the graphite blocks up to and over the rail and to NOT look over the rail.  Any and all robots, including the space rovers from the Soviet failed Moon shot were used and the intense radiation cooked their electronics.
Crazy scene!

https://youtu.be/kQtYKLrSlfo


I think I have seen Silkwood. Was it about a woman who was exposed to Plutonium at work? IIRC They had to tear through her home in order to decontaminate it?  I'll have to watch it again, it's been at least 20 years since I've seen it.

Another good one was the "China Syndrome".  Apparently the "China Syndrome" was released on March 16 1979 and then 12 days later the Three Mile Island(TMI) partial meltdown incident occurred on March 28 1979.  Three Mile Island was scored Level 5 out of the 7 tiered nuclear incident system.  If the TMI nuclear operators had done absolutely nothing, the reactor would have safely shut down with zero release of radiation.

Here is the "Turbine Trip" scene from the China Syndrome.
https://youtu.be/nemYBeT4aQY

I think that the movie China Syndrome and the Three Mile Island incident did a big number on the nuclear power industry in the United States.  Chernobyl in 1986 finished it off.

A few years ago my province of Ontario dropped coal for power production. Right now 60% of Ontarios electrical production is nuclear.
"As of June 2019, Canadian reactors had produced 2.9 million spent fuel bundles or around 52,000 tonnes of high-level waste, the second largest amount in the world behind the USA. This number could grow to 5.5 million bundles (103,000 tonnes) at the end of the planned life of the current reactors fleet."

Anyone have any memories of what it was like to live through Three Mile Island incident?

peace
Hog

DynamoHum

The Chernobyl series was truly excellent. They interspersed real footage with dramatised footage for the rooftop clearance scene.

I remember the events very clearly as practically all the sheep in Wales had to be culled because the wind carried the radiation over to the UK and it contaminated lots of animals here.

If anyone hasn’t seen Chernobyl, it’s truly riveting.

Looking forward/not looking forward to the Fukushima dramatisation in a few years.

Ciardelo

A "Glowing" Review

Heh, now that there is funny :D

Hog

Quote from: DynamoHum on July 31, 2020, 03:47:14 PM
The Chernobyl series was truly excellent. They interspersed real footage with dramatised footage for the rooftop clearance scene.

I remember the events very clearly as practically all the sheep in Wales had to be culled because the wind carried the radiation over to the UK and it contaminated lots of animals here.

If anyone hasn’t seen Chernobyl, it’s truly riveting.

Looking forward/not looking forward to the Fukushima dramatisation in a few years.
Restrictions on certain Scotch lamb farms ended in 2010 with restrictions on Wales lamb farms finally ending in 2013.

Crazy.

peace
Hog

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