Chernobyl

Jozu said:

What I didnt understand was the operators' lack of awareness of radiation in those moments. I can understand if you were already in a spot and got fucked, but those guys who willingly went on the roof or down into near the core are fucking retarded. There is no way you work at a Nuclear power plant and not understand the fundamental properties of radiation poisoning. Perhaps thats the point of the show, one of the dying Ghoul operators in the hospital said he was like one of the top engineers and he was only 25....

No fucking way you would EVER see a 25 year old in a Nuclear Power Plant control room in the United States.

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Good post but wanted to highlight this part. As others have said I'm not sure so sure the lack of awareness was intentional. A lot of them really couldn't comprehend the scope of the accident at first. The ones the eventually realized that the place was a tomb but forged on to manually insert rods was probably both an acceptance to do 'something' despite knowing they were already dead plus the soldier mindset of doing anything for the 'state' because that's what any good loyal russian did. That's why the scene where Dyatlov sees the graphite on the ground in the beginning is so bad. That guy right off the bat knows that the place and everything in it is screwed and yet still tries to minimize the scope because he such the company man.

Arrion said:

I've actually been there as a tourist. It's quite safe. The only time the dosimeter started recording significant radiation and and throwing an alarm was while we were driving on the perimeter road on the downwind side of the reactor, basically next to the red forest. True to the guides' word, the total dose we received was about 1/10th the dose you get on a transatlantic flight. Being in an airplane at 35000 feet is more radiation exposure.

The real danger is getting contaminated particles on your clothes or skin. As long as you don't try to collect souvenirs or go around kicking up dust you'll be fine.

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Indoor areas are by far the main issue. Rain has washed the bulk of the radioactive particles down into the soil so just traveling in the open along roads is basically safe. Indoor areas though can potentially be really dangerous depending on what materials were left in them because the rain could not work to wash and dilute out the radioactive materials. Don't go digging and stay out of buildings unless you have a geiger counter and there should not be that much of a problem. Well and don't drink the water or eat stuff growing there but that really should not need to be said.

Alex said:

That's what strikes me most when watching this. It pisses me off how incompetent they were to allow it to happen, but I respect the hell out of them for doing everything it took to correct the wrongs. Honestly, if it happened in America, I don't think we'd react in the same way. Russia had the system in place to tell people "you're doing this right now, no questions". Feel America would spend so much time deliberating the stream explosion would have gone off. Let alone getting the miners involved on such short notice.

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I am not sure. In fukishima a lot of elderly people volunteered to help do parts of the clean up. Basically figuring any increase in radiation levels in their bodies wouldn't really matter because they would be dead long before they would have to worry about developing the cancers.

Dom said:

Speaking of Fukushima, are there any good dramatizations about it?

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How could there be? Nothing happened. The moral of the story is that nuclear power in a properly designed and maintained first world country is the safest and cleanest thing in the world.

Gavinmad said:

How could there be? Nothing happened. The moral of the story is that nuclear power in a properly designed and maintained first world country is the safest and cleanest thing in the world.

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Didn't a significant amount of Japanese workers sacrifice their lives to get the situation under control, the neighboring town is abandoned, and some radiation leak into the sea?

Frenzied Wombat said:

Didn't a significant amount of Japanese workers sacrifice their lives to get the situation under control, the neighboring town is abandoned, and some radiation leak into the sea?

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Well unless there is a massive cover-up or some clever word play, no. There are zero reported radiation sickness deaths attributed to the Fukushima disaster. Several small nearby towns are still largely abandoned, but that's due to reluctance to move back in rather than the area glowing in the dark.

When you consider how much electricity was produced at Fukushima Daichii, how much pollution a coal plant produces during every day "safe" operation, and the fact that it took an extremely high magnitude earthquake and two direct tsunami hits to do that much damage, and yeah I can pretty confidently say that the Fukushima "disaster" is proof of how safe nuclear power is. The only reason it has the same disaster rating as Chernobyl is because the rating system tops out at 7. If you expanded the system to a 1-10 rating, Fukushima would stay a 7 and Chernobyl would be an 11.

Whats crazy is in 1961 a Soviet nuclear submarine had a nuclear reactor failure and the commander ordered the engineering crew to fabricate a makeshift back up cooling assembly in order to cool the reactor, which they successfully did, at the cost of all 8 mens lives.

The head engineer, Boris Korchilov received a stunning 54 Sieverts! He died less than a week later, and most likely an agonizingly horrible death. Its insane how hard radiation exposure causes your DNA to literally scramble and die. It literally fucking cooks your chromosomes, its like getting a 3-d ultra sunburn.

Jozu said:

Whats crazy is in 1961 a Soviet nuclear submarine had a nuclear reactor failure and the commander ordered the engineering crew to fabricate a makeshift back up cooling assembly in order to cool the reactor, which they successfully did, at the cost of all 8 mens lives.

The head engineer, Boris Korchilov received a stunning 54 Sieverts! He died less than a week later, and most likely an agonizingly horrible death. Its insane how hard radiation exposure causes your DNA to literally scramble and die. It literally fucking cooks your chromosomes, its like getting a 3-d ultra sunburn.

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There was even a movie based off this incident which wasn't that bad.

K-19: The Widowmaker (2002) - IMDb

Wow! I forgot all about that movie. Thanks.

Cant wait for episode 4. HBO has a lot of talent.

Except for the two massive blemishes that are GoT and Westworld. Not even going to watch the Westworld season unless I read great reviews here.

I think we're at the point where this isn't spoiling anything. Courtesy of reddit.

Downhammer said:

I think we're at the point where this isn't spoiling anything. Courtesy of reddit.

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I think what surprises me the most is the guys that went in the water at the end of the 2nd episode are still alive.

Contaminated water is mostly fatal if ingested (or inhaled). But then it's pretty fatal. Otherwise prolonged exposure increases cancer risk and birth deformities mostly. So long as you don't have irradiated material INSIDE your body blasting cells apart until it leaves, you can mitigate the risk with shielding and filtration.

But if you DO ingest or inhale radioactive material into your body, it's gonna stay in there killing cells until you die painfully. Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated with less than 10 micrograms of polonium (which is 500 times the lethal amount lol)... he was dead in a week: