Anyone watching the Monday HBO series Chernobyl?

[dixiegrrrrl]

I find it horrifying. By keeping it secret, people died needlessly, and there is no telling how many cancer cases in Europe resulted.
Acting is excellent, tho.

[emmaverybo]

1. Yes. Discussed in another thread. I knew a young woman working in the Navy in Norway iirc

who developed three rare cancers all at once. Others working with her did as well. As I remember there was actual, visible fallout like a dust or something. She died. I worked with her mom and just such a traumatic time for her—she was elderly and her daughter, I am guessing adopted, so beloved, also was her only living relative.
So my memory about the details related to Chernobyl are blurred.
The show is as you say, horrifying in its details. Well done. Not sure I can sustain watching.

[RainCaster]

2. Watching this for many reasons

I grew up near Hanford WA, and worked in the nuclear industry while growing up. While others worked in a restaurant or gas station while in high school, I work in a radio-chem lab. I still remember much of the physics from that time.

I have been to Minsk several times in the last two years for business and I've seen how that city has rebounded from USSR policies.

It's a great show - very well done.

[Lucky Luciano]

3. In Ukraine, one of the big thing tourists do is visit the ghost town...

...of Pripyat which was evacuated after the incident. Everything is left as it was in 1986. A very eery thing...nature has taken over.

About 100,000 visitors per year. Tour guide required as there is special permission required to enter the evacuation zone.

[modrepub]

4. Conspiracy Theorists

wonder if Chernobyl was a US sponsored sabotage project to take out a nearby Soviet listening post called Duga-3 or the Russian Woodpecker because of it's distinctive tapping noise. Hopefully we wouldn't have done something that sinister.

[LiberalLoner]

5. No. The reactor design was inherently unstable, especially at low power,

And was an accident waiting to happen, especially combined with the secrecy of the Soviets. A good book to read on this is “Midnight in Chernobyl” by Adam Higginbotham.

[Codeine]

13. Please don't bring that garbage to DU. nt

[Solly Mack]

6. Yes

[mnhtnbb]

7. Yes.

I have a Chernobyl story,too.

My husband and I were booked to go to Vienna and Italy in April 1986. About a week before we were due to leave, Reagan bombed Tripoli in Libya on April 15th.. There were all kinds of protests going on in Europe as a result. I was 35 and about 4 1/2 months pregnant with my first child. I started to have misgivings about being in two countries where neither one of us spoke German or Italian and being identified as Americans. Then a man put his pregnant girl friend on an El Al flight from Heathrow with a bomb in her carryon bag. It was discovered by security.

At that point I told my husband I was not going I didn't care that we'd spent beaucoup $$ on plane tickets, I was not going to Europe. So, we changed our plans and decided to only use the portion of our tickets from Los Angeles to JFK. We got off the plane in New York and simply didn't take the connecting flight. Instead, my husband drew up an itinerary for us to drive down the east coast, touring Civil War battlefields, and end up in Atlanta (as previously planned for our return from Europe) for a professional conference he was attending and visit his family.

We later learned that had I not insisted on canceling the European portion of our trip, we would have been in Vienna when Chernobyl blew on April 26th. I would have gotten a pretty good dose of radiation from the fall out due to the proximity to the event and the prevailing winds at the time. And, I would have been past the point of being able to make a decision about terminating the pregnancy.

There have been times when I have followed my intuition or my gut or my instinct or whatever you want to call it and been glad I did. Boy, was I glad I followed my gut on that decision to not take the European portion of that trip.

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. I missed out on the news about Chernobyl..

Was playing hermit on Whidbey Island and had no tv. Did hear something about it a couple years later.

What I missed hearing about was the radiation effects on the rest of Europe.
and any serious protests against nuke plants.

[MicaelS]

12. What a story.

Thanks for sharing.

[Paladin]

8. Very well-produced series, so far. (nt)

[IcyPeas]

9. yes. very well done...

I am learning so much from watching this. a lot of the information is new to me, maybe new to lots of people.

If you are interested there is a companion Podcast by the writer of the HBO show.

The official podcast of the miniseries Chernobyl, from HBO and Sky. Join host Peter Sagal (NPR’s “Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!”) and series creator, writer and executive producer Craig Mazin after each episode as they discuss the true stories that shaped the scenes, themes and characters

it's available on most podcast carriers or you can listen to it here on youtube. It's very interesting and you get a little more detail

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. Thank you for that. !!

I will be sure to listen in.

[MrScorpio]

14. I was in South Korea when Chernobyl happened

I had no idea that it was this horrible.