3-4 megaton explosion if hot uranium touches water
I turned it off and am considering not resuming it.
Why is that? I'm assuming it's because of inaccuracy of that statement, can you elaborate more on the problem with that ?
Even if it is inaccurate it's still a guesstimate to light a fire under the Politburo's asses
Here's part two of the podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faQs2_hjNZk
Likely gross exaggeration aside, thats a direct quote from Nesterenko who was the director of the Nuclear Institute in MInsk at the time and worked on Chernobyl.
I can totally see this figure thrown at party bureacrats to instill some sense of urgency in them
In a marginally more sober hindsight, you're probably right. I'll definitely keep watching, but that line hit me as "Here we go again with the made up explosion and we're gonna send the 3 divers in (who didn't die)". But he did say that, you're right.
Spoiler from Wikipedia:
Steam explosion risk
Two floors of bubbler pools beneath the reactor served as a large
water reservoir for the emergency cooling pumps and as a pressure
suppression system capable of condensing steam in case of a small broken
steam pipe; the third floor above them, below the reactor, served as a
steam tunnel. The steam released by a broken pipe was supposed to enter
the steam tunnel and be led into the pools to bubble through a layer of
water. After the disaster, the pools and the basement were flooded
because of ruptured cooling water pipes and accumulated firefighting
water, and constituted a serious steam explosion risk.
Chernobyl corium lava, formed by fuel-containing mass, flowed into the basement of the plant.[82]
The smoldering graphite, fuel and other material above, at more than 1200 °C,[83] started to burn through the reactor floor and mixed with molten concrete from the reactor lining, creating corium, a radioactive semi-liquid material comparable to lava.[82][84]
If this mixture had melted through the floor into the pool of water, it
was feared it could have created a serious steam explosion that would
have ejected more radioactive material from the reactor. It became
necessary to drain the pool.[85]
The bubbler pool could be drained by opening its sluice gates. However, the valves controlling it were underwater, located in a flooded corridor in the basement. So volunteers in wetsuits and respirators (for protection against radioactive aerosols) and equipped with dosimeters, entered the knee-deep radioactive water and managed to open the valves.[86][87]
These were the engineers Alexei Ananenko and Valeri Bezpalov (who knew
where the valves were), accompanied by the shift supervisor Boris
Baranov.[88][89][90] Upon succeeding and emerging from the water, according to many English language news articles, books and the prominent BBC docudrama Surviving Disaster – Chernobyl Nuclear, the three knew it was a suicide-mission and began suffering from radiation sickness and died soon after.[91] Some sources also incorrectly claimed that they died there in the plant.[90] However, research by Andrew Leatherbarrow, author of the 2016 book Chernobyl 01:23:40,[86]
determined that the frequently recounted story is a gross exaggeration.
Alexei Ananenko continues to work in the nuclear energy industry, and
rebuffs the growth of the Chernobyl media sensationalism surrounding him.[92]
While Valeri Bezpalov was found to still be alive by Leatherbarrow, the
65-year-old Baranov had lived until 2005 and had died of heart failure.[93]
god the absolute sense of dread that overwhelms both the viewers and the people in the situation is incredible. the moment the realization hits these naysayers is amazing.
I do wonder though if in the chaos of a huge steam explosion reacting with graphite, with so much spent and unspent fuel set to potentially collide and compress at random what the worst possible outcome could have been. Maybe hindsight is 20/20 but at the moment maybe they really thought they had all the ingredients for thermonuclear conditions?
Here's a neat gif i found of the helicopter crash.
https://i.imgur.com/Gw7OAnJ.mp4
Damn.
Episode 2
Jesus christ the ending to that episode was absolutely horrifying
Wow why Wikipedia leak the whole plot of the show like this long before it airs? Someone's gonna get fired for this.
Here's what Nesterenko said about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coYYBdcA1lo
3 to 5 megatons
https://media1.tenor.com/images/824548a44c37fc8984c7c2090ff22f52/tenor.gif
That's almost hard to believe. But flashing water into steam is extremely violent and they had plenty of water and plenty of heat so who knows.
Steam explosions are no joke. Under the assumption that the water in the bubbler pool did weigh the same as regular water despite the radioactive nature of it, the figure from the Wiki article is accurate, and all of the water was flash heated by the corium lava, 20,000 metric tons of water instantly expanding to 1700 times its original size would probably fuck up the rest of the plant pretty substantially. I don't think their assumptions of a blast that size were too exaggerated, but like someone else here said, maybe they pushed the number up to try and make sure action was taken sooner rather than later.
More on topic;
What an ending to that episode though, you can feel the terror building among the 3 guys that went in, the sound design of nothing but their steps, the water and the click of the geiger counter building and getting faster was absolutely fantastic. It would have been easy to fall into the classic thing of putting in a building score that peaks with their lights failing and going out, but I'm so glad that they didn't do that, the scene is far better for it.
I can't wait for the next episode.
At least evacuate Pripyat, it's 3km away.
That's my decision to make.
Then make it!
I was told not to.
☭☭☭
God damn this show is so heart wrenching.
The sacrifices and heroism of the liquidators was amazing.
Started watching the show last night with the intent of only watching the first episode and saving the second for today. Went right through both without thinking about it. Absolutely incredible across the board.
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/f9d7854964f35be39abb622e40d580b2-480-80.jpg
Leaked photo from Chernobyl
fun fact, 2 of the 3 men who undertook the mission are still alive today. the only one to die, died in 2005.
that was a fascinating read. the nature of the Soviet machine and not wanting the entire truth being told about Chernobyl when it happened has made it so much more difficult to find out what happened, but that guy's writing in the album there looks very well thought out and researched well, I might even buy his book
Amazing cast and fantastic acting really, I can't wait for episode 3.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/109898/4b2aae10-fa21-4d17-849e-f2e405f56700/received_309688513260464.jpeg
Wait, fucking Yuvchenko managed to survive? I wonder how much of what they showed was artistic license, since he looked like he was an absolute goner when they last showed him
He suffered massive radiation poisoning but instead of dying he just turned into a Soviet superhero, and is off fighting the enemies of the state somewhere
This show just fucking nails it's cinematography and I love it. The entire sequence in the tunnels at the end, with the little set up right at the start of the guy banging the flashlight to get it working. That entire thing will just wreck your nerves, especially as the ticking just gets faster and louder with every second until everything is gone and the ticking is all that's left. And Jared Harris is putting in a fantastic performance, every time he speaks he just makes you lean in closer and closer and you get more in to it. And I loved how, with Boris, once Legasov says they'll be dead within five years, he just has a complete shutdown until the very end. Like he hits a despair breaking point he never saw coming and it's not until they need the diver volunteers that he recovers and is able to step up again. I seriously want to see this team get more work like this. I could watch a docu-drama series on any subject with this kind of production quality.
Man's built like a brick shithouse, would take five Chernobyls to kill an absolute unit like him
Looking at it like this, it makes so much sense why they went with UK actors. So much more choice of terrific actors while also keeping likenesses close.
Yeah and hats off to the costume and makeup department, Con O'Neill looks almost indistinguishable from the real Viktor Bryukhanov on set.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/109898/1506bb80-cb12-4f05-bccb-3c07647dfdd9/20190516_184955.jpg
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