Really? This is your concern? There are, perhaps, millions of individuals dealing with radiation-induced cancers and birth defects related to the Chernobyl disaster. And that's just one incident. I really hope that nuclear power does not spread. We have other options. I'll take tar sand oil before more nuclear power. |
Then you really know nothing. |
Educate me. PS - do you work at one of these "public affairs" groups that are trying to shape the narrative online about this mini-series? |
My spouse is a former nuclear engineer. I certainly don't understand nuclear power to the depths that he does, but he's been blathering on endlessly about the Chernobyl miniseries, so I pick up a thing here and there. The type of reactor built for Chernobyl has never been built outside of the USSR. A Chernobyl type incident couldn't be replicated in the US because we simply don't have reactors like that. The physics are different. There's never been a death in 50 years of the US using nuclear power. There's been three historic incidents in all that time. The horrible one, Chernobyl. The one where there was some containment leakage and the lasting impact is unknown, Fukushima. And three mile island, where it was completely contained and no one was injured. The space it takes to run a nuclear power plant is incredibly small compared to the power generated. Most of the waste is recyclable. The small amount that isn't recyclable is exactly that....small. It's cheap, low impact to the environment, safe, and doesn't use land which could best be used for other purposes. I'll never convince people of all that, of course. Some people are still afraid of air travel, and the incidents of accidents are historically low...but that's not on the news. |
Well on the other hand, climate change is a much bigger disaster waiting to happen. So we either curb our appetite for consumption or we find alternative fuels. Nuclear power is pretty clean. I prefer we use wind and solar, but the powers that be are fighting that tooth and nail. |
| Quick question, there's just one episode released so far, right? |
Yep. |
Well sure, if you believe everything the Soviet government said..... |
| I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought the acting was great. I hope it doesn’t stray to far from reality. I don’t know about the incident and would like to learn. |
|
I was in Ukraine in 2008 and visited Chernobyl and Pripyat, the town that had to be evacuated and left as a ghost town. It’s horrible.
The concrete barrier around the reactor was cracking when I was there and they said they were working on building another one. I don’t know the progress of that, but the area certainly remains dangerous, in terms of radiation. |
Can anyone just visit there or do you have to go with some sort of tour? Did you have to wear protective gear? |
NP. Out of curiosity, is the one you didn’t name the one that occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1960s or 1970s that they suppressed information about? I think it was maybe near Tomsk but I could be wrong. I lived in the Soviet Union for a short time and knew someone who lived there as a child. He said all the kids in his school got really sick and the government told them all not to worry. His mother pulled a lot of strings to get his family moved out of town. |
PP here. I realized I was talking a little out of my behind, so I went back and look up some more incidents. There's an international scale of nuclear events where things are ranked from 1-7 with 7 being the worst. There's been two 7s..Fukushima and Chernobyl. Three Mile Island was a 5. The one 6 was the Kyshtym disaster at Mayak Chemical Combine in the Soviet Union in 1957. I've never heard of that one; maybe that's what you're referring to? |
The firefighter with the pregnant wife...he dies but the baby later dies from heart failure and cirrhosis of the liver. |
| We lived in Minsk when this happened. At first, no one told us what was going on, then finally, after maybe 5 days, we got the announcement. Then rumors started circulating, that maybe all the children would be evacuated. My mom was so terrified, that she took an emergency vacation and we went to the Black Sea for a month. When we got back, there were more rumors, about what foods were contaminated, whether it was still a good idea to pick mushrooms, whether our butter was coming from Pripyat, etc. A distant relative of mine volunteered to work for a couple weeks near the reactor, and he died a few months after coming back. They gave the widow a pension, in recompense. We left the country three years later, it was the biggest impetus for my parents to immigrate, not only because of potential danger, but because there was no reliable information. Like rumors that contaminated food was being relabeled with fake point-of-origin info so that people would keep buying it. |