The author of this piece is the President of Environmental Progress, a pro-nuclear lobbying group. He's posted multiple articles to Forbes to try to discredit the Chernobyl show....
... which is a TV show meant to entertain people. Since when did people get their authoritative facts about science from a dramatized TV show?
Anyhow, the people and their horrifying decision making processes are the real enemies presented in Chernobyl, in my opinion.
>Since when did people get their authoritative facts about science from a dramatized TV show
are you kidding? always
edit: making this comment, in response to the person to whom i'm responding to's disbelief made me realize something: it's a really silly thing to sit around and think you're above being influenced by narrative. how much of our indignation at others' naivete is simply privilege? if i couldn't afford a doctor, to whom i could outsource the cognitive burden of figuring it out, i would probably believe all sorts of things about health that had been suggested to me by way of narrative.
edit2: it's fun to watch the score on this comment. up down up down. on the one hand it's glib and snarky - HN loves that - but on the other hand it implicates privilege - HN hates that. i probably should've used a word different from privilege but i can't think of one that wouldn't trigger people just as hard.
> The author of this piece is the President of Environmental Progress, a pro-nuclear lobbying group. He's posted multiple articles to Forbes to try to discredit the Chernobyl show....
I’ve seen this pseudo ad-hom rolled out every time one of his articles comes up on HN. Is he really a nuclear lobbyist? Does that make anything he is saying not factual? Can we engage with the facts of the article rather than just attack the author?
In this case it’s an article about what a doctor who treated some of the Chernobyl patients is saying. Is that a lie? Is he not a doctor who treated the Chernobyl patients?
> which is a TV show meant to entertain people. Since when did people get their authoritative facts about science from a dramatized TV show?
That’s probably how a majority of people learn things especially about topics they otherwise would never engage in or dig deeper on such as the true details of a nuclear accident.
I know insinuating that "you didn't read the article" is against the rules here, so I will take the risk: did you read the article?
“Another error [in HBO’s “Chernobyl”] was to portray the victims as being dangerously radioactive,” UCLA’s Robert Gale wrote in “The Cancer Letter,” a subscription-based newsletter.
Gale, who worked for UCLA at the time of the accident, says that the firefighters who suffered from Acute Radiation Syndrome were not contagious, as they are portrayed as by HBO's "Chernobyl."
Gale criticizes the portrayal in “Chernobyl” of a baby’s death supposedly from “absorbing” deadly amounts of radiation from her dying father, a firefighter who helped put out the blaze.
“Lastly, there is the dangerous representation that, because one of the victims was radioactive, his pregnant wife endangered her unborn child by entering his hospital room,” writes Gale.
If you read further down, it's apparent that, yes, the guy is clearly pro-nuclear. But his criticisms are on specific matters of fact surrounding radiation poisoning.
In particular, this concrete show was praised for realism and details, so people do.
Other then that, yes people are influenced by narratives in stories and often take them as broadly "that sort of thing happened". That does not mean this particular dude is about to tell truth, but nevertheless fact checking of fiction is cool and good thing when it happens.
> Anyhow, the people and their horrifying decision making processes are the real enemies presented in Chernobyl, in my opinion.
And to me that's actually the best argument against nuclear reactors being "safe". We may have better technology, but we don't have better people or organizations, not really. To the victims, it does not matter whether the mismanagement was due to political careerism, greed and corner-cutting, or just laziness.
Agreed. The point of the HBO series was to depict what people experienced during the catastrophe, not to debunk the misconceptions, misinformation, and bad science that was present at the time.
To get upset that they didn't make a 'debunking Chernobyl' documentary is to miss the entire point of the series.
Unfortunately it's very easy for the uninformed masses (especially with topics such as nuclear power, not the most accessible for most people) to pick up on some of the more unrealistic details and build on their preconceptions or misconceptions. And the "entertainment" part tends to leave a more lasting impression also because they are more dramatic. And then there's that misconception that shows based on true events are somehow more documentary than art. So in such cases movie fiction easily turns into urban legend "facts".
The fact that the author of the article is part of a pro-nuclear lobbying group doesn't automatically contradict or discredit the opinions of the doctor that's featured in the article. They come from the actual guy who was there for real to treat the people.
Coal power stations produce around 5-10 tonnes of radioactive waste every year. This seems to be ignored for the most part when discussing nuclear energy.
+1. Just to add an explanation, they do so by taking naturally occurring radioactive particles that would otherwise remain locked deep into the Earth, and putting them in the atmosphere.
This should be common knowledge, but almost no one knows it.
It is not useful to use the many failings of coal as a fuel to promote nuclear power. Nuclear power does not compete against coal, it competes against wind/solar and natural gas.
The constant refrain of 'but coal ..' from nuclear advocates is just an admission that nuclear power is un-economic and unable to compete in the marketplace against the best options.
I'm not an expert, but this doesn't look too credible to me:
- I know that many death estimates for Chernobyl are highly exaggerated, but sticking to the official Soviet death toll of 31 seems ludicrous.
- Lyudmilla Ignatenko existed in real life and there are interviews with her telling how they didn't let her hug her husband at the hospital due to radioactivity, and she had to hid her pregnancy to be let in. Of course she could be lying, but those would be strange lies to tell.
- If victims could not be radioactive, why were they buried in metal caskets covered in concrete? This is well documented an there are photos.
- Regarding the Ignatenko's claim that the foetus had somehow protected her from radiactivity by absorbing it, personally I never interpreted it as a statement that the show was claiming as true. I saw it as the character's own interpretation. The show portrays different characters with various degrees of ignorance, and no one in the show portrayed as knowledgeable defends that theory.
- There are photos of radiation victims from various incidents and they look not unlike what is seen in the series. Here are some (trigger warning, very graphic images): https://imgur.com/gallery/3x7RcLk#QrTJTm5
There may be things to criticize about the show but this person looks like he is telling a quite biased story.
>> I know that many death estimates for Chernobyl are highly exaggerated, but sticking to the official Soviet death toll of 31 seems ludicrous.
That's the immediate death toll from radiation poisoning, not the total years lost as a result of radiation exposure. The article is correct to point out however that the total death toll must be much less than many other disasters and certainly not comparable to what people commonly believe about the death toll at chernobyl.
>>- Lyudmilla Ignatenko existed in real life and there are interviews with her telling how they didn't let her hug her husband at the hospital due to radioactivity, and she had to hid her pregnancy to be let in. Of course she could be lying, but those would be strange lies to tell.
>> If victims could not be radioactive, why were they buried in metal caskets covered in concrete? This is well documented and there are photos.
Those were firefighters who ingested radioactive products in the air. Normal human tissue cannot be induced to be become radioactive. I'm not surprised that they would quarantine a firefighter and bury his body in a metal casket but that doesn't apply to the majority of the victims of radiation poising by Chernobyl. The show at one point shows such a burial for liquidators who wouldn't have radioactive material in their body and is almost certainly ahistorical. The show never makes this clear.
>>- There are photos of radiation victims from various incidents and they look not unlike what is seen in the series. Here are some (trigger warning, very graphic images): https://imgur.com/gallery/3x7RcLk#QrTJTm5
He was literally standing over a tank of radioactive material when the accident occurred thus explaining the extent of his skin damage. The radiation exposure for the firefighters wouldn't have caused them to suffer skin damage to the same extent and not in the way portrayed in the film. The ingested fission products would have harmed internal tissue before reaching the surface of the body. The show's portrayal of the first responder firefighters is almost entirely completely wrong.
>>There may be things to criticize about the show but this person looks like he is telling a quite biased story.
I disagree and I'm quite concerned about how the show mistakenly portrays the effects of radiation. At the very least they could explained how radiation works and why the firefighters had to quarantined but they never do anything like that. Instead, we hear dramatic warnings of a thermonuclear blast unless our heroes take immediate action which is completely nonsensical.
For someone concerned about facts he presents no actual facts to backup his claim of 1 million unnecessary abortions. What is this based upon? How did they identify which were abortions driven by bad medical advice and which were abortions which women claimed were based upon the medical advice but for which that was just a cover to avoid the social stigma often associated with abortion?
Of course this also assumes that an abortion is some kind of harm.
Doesn't this depend on the exact emitters? Alpha and most neutrons will be blocked by body tissue, beta may have an effect at close proximity, and humans are almost transparent to gamma rays.
If someone is covered by fallout without knowing it, they can be dangerously radioactive.
If they inhale or ingest the fallout they'll be much less radioactive, but they could still be dangerous to others if they've ingested an extreme and lethal dose.
Some radiotherapy treatments do in fact make patients slightly radioactive. Friends and family are advised to keep their distance for a few half-lives.
The problem is that the show is historically accurate, the lady that lost her baby said in an interview by Svetlana Alexievich[0] that she was told about the danger of contamination from her husband.
The show was not meant to be a PSA for or against nuclear power, it's a historical fiction and for that it is as accurate as it can be. The story is mostly about propaganda and lies.
The animals were really shot and realocated people from Czernobyl area were discriminated (avoided) for that very fear. Men who helped to mitigate disaster were seen as not too good partners to have kids with.
Whether they were actually readioactive or not, people often assumed they are and acted accordingly.
This is the same fallacy that many people suffer from when they discuss irradiated meat. Much of the opposition is around the fear of radioactive food.
People are taking the wrong takeaway from the show. The point of Chernobyl(HBO) was not to show the dangers of Nuclear reactors, It was to show, The Lies, Politics and other disgusting elements can and will ruin lives of thousands of people.
Chernobyl was the result of lies and deception. Soviet Russia's wanted to be number 1 everywhere while completely disregarding how they got there, That is what led to Chernobyl.
People, Including the Doctor have taken it incorrectly in my humble opinion.
They even had a separate podcast where they discussed exactly this and more details related to the series in great detail. Look it up on Pocketcast or whatever app you use to listen to podcasts and you'll find it.
> Soviet Russia's wanted to be number 1 everywhere while completely disregarding how they got there, That is what led to Chernobyl.
What led to Chernobyl is a reactor design flaw (could happen to anyone), and irresponsible behavior of the plant staff, who run the experiment against "the book".
Only the later probably is because of the culture-wide trait. The rest of it could have happened to anyone.
Though I do agree, that the show displays the need for open information through the lack of it in Soviet Union like nothing else.
The claim that external exposure to radiation does not make you radioactive is true in most cases. However, Chernobyl is not most cases.
First, I'm not sure you can claim that people working during the disaster would only suffer external exposure. There was a reactor core on fire, there was probably plenty of isotopes in the air that would have been breathed in and possibly taken up by the body.
Second, neither alpha, beta nor gamma reaction will induce any significant amount of radioactive in materials that are exposed to them. And under normal circumstances, that is all you would be exposed to. But this was, again, an exposed reactor core. There might very well have been a significant amount of neutron radiation present, which does in fact induce radioactivity.
So the claims of the article are way too strong for this very, very exceptional situation.
It's sad to see them use inflated numbers to criticize the numbers they claim are inflated:
“Although the 31 immediate Chernobyl-related deaths are sad,” he concludes, “the number of fatalities is remarkably small compared with many energy-related accidents, such as the Benxihu coal mine disaster in China 1942, which killed about 1500 miners, and the 1975 Banqiao dam accident, also in China, which killed about 250,000 people.”
I lived in socialistic country in Eastern Europe and government DID try to cover it up. There were no new for at last several days. Then they said everything is fine, go outside, eat vegetables, drink mil, everything is OK.. it is just Western propaganda that there are problems. We trust our comrades in Soviet Union. While the news in Western Europe was: Minimize your stay outside. Do not drink mil. Do not eat vegetables (the farmers in West were actually destroying crops so it cannot be consumed).
This organization self-description[1] (emphasis added by me to highlight important phrases):
>> We publish the Nuclear Monitor, a unique international newsletter serving the worldwide movement against nuclear power. Produced 20 times per year, it gives an anti-nuclear perspective on what is happening in the nuclear power industry and the resistance against it.
An anti-nuclear activist group is an interesting choice to use as a reference...
If this topic interests you I highly recommend "Conspiracy" which is also available on HBO Now. It's a depiction of the 1942 Wannsee Conference done with all UK actors.
You can watch that one and then watch the German version for comparison.
[+] [-] nrjames|6 years ago|reply
... which is a TV show meant to entertain people. Since when did people get their authoritative facts about science from a dramatized TV show?
Anyhow, the people and their horrifying decision making processes are the real enemies presented in Chernobyl, in my opinion.
[+] [-] mlevental|6 years ago|reply
are you kidding? always
edit: making this comment, in response to the person to whom i'm responding to's disbelief made me realize something: it's a really silly thing to sit around and think you're above being influenced by narrative. how much of our indignation at others' naivete is simply privilege? if i couldn't afford a doctor, to whom i could outsource the cognitive burden of figuring it out, i would probably believe all sorts of things about health that had been suggested to me by way of narrative.
edit2: it's fun to watch the score on this comment. up down up down. on the one hand it's glib and snarky - HN loves that - but on the other hand it implicates privilege - HN hates that. i probably should've used a word different from privilege but i can't think of one that wouldn't trigger people just as hard.
[+] [-] erentz|6 years ago|reply
I’ve seen this pseudo ad-hom rolled out every time one of his articles comes up on HN. Is he really a nuclear lobbyist? Does that make anything he is saying not factual? Can we engage with the facts of the article rather than just attack the author?
In this case it’s an article about what a doctor who treated some of the Chernobyl patients is saying. Is that a lie? Is he not a doctor who treated the Chernobyl patients?
> which is a TV show meant to entertain people. Since when did people get their authoritative facts about science from a dramatized TV show?
That’s probably how a majority of people learn things especially about topics they otherwise would never engage in or dig deeper on such as the true details of a nuclear accident.
[+] [-] nerdponx|6 years ago|reply
“Another error [in HBO’s “Chernobyl”] was to portray the victims as being dangerously radioactive,” UCLA’s Robert Gale wrote in “The Cancer Letter,” a subscription-based newsletter.
Gale, who worked for UCLA at the time of the accident, says that the firefighters who suffered from Acute Radiation Syndrome were not contagious, as they are portrayed as by HBO's "Chernobyl."
Gale criticizes the portrayal in “Chernobyl” of a baby’s death supposedly from “absorbing” deadly amounts of radiation from her dying father, a firefighter who helped put out the blaze.
“Lastly, there is the dangerous representation that, because one of the victims was radioactive, his pregnant wife endangered her unborn child by entering his hospital room,” writes Gale.
If you read further down, it's apparent that, yes, the guy is clearly pro-nuclear. But his criticisms are on specific matters of fact surrounding radiation poisoning.
[+] [-] watwut|6 years ago|reply
Other then that, yes people are influenced by narratives in stories and often take them as broadly "that sort of thing happened". That does not mean this particular dude is about to tell truth, but nevertheless fact checking of fiction is cool and good thing when it happens.
[+] [-] brazzy|6 years ago|reply
And to me that's actually the best argument against nuclear reactors being "safe". We may have better technology, but we don't have better people or organizations, not really. To the victims, it does not matter whether the mismanagement was due to political careerism, greed and corner-cutting, or just laziness.
For an example look at what can happen without any external event in the nation that invented Six-Sigma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident#In_...
[+] [-] NikolaeVarius|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhayward|6 years ago|reply
To get upset that they didn't make a 'debunking Chernobyl' documentary is to miss the entire point of the series.
[+] [-] close04|6 years ago|reply
The fact that the author of the article is part of a pro-nuclear lobbying group doesn't automatically contradict or discredit the opinions of the doctor that's featured in the article. They come from the actual guy who was there for real to treat the people.
[+] [-] BrockSamson|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emiliobumachar|6 years ago|reply
This should be common knowledge, but almost no one knows it.
[+] [-] jhayward|6 years ago|reply
The constant refrain of 'but coal ..' from nuclear advocates is just an admission that nuclear power is un-economic and unable to compete in the marketplace against the best options.
[+] [-] H8crilA|6 years ago|reply
Coal deaths per energy: ~ 100k / PWh
Coal consumption per year: > 40 PWh
Coal deaths per year: >4M
Chernobyl death estimates: 4k to 93k
Which gives 4M / 93k = 43 Chernobyls per year to catch up with coal (best case estimates).
[+] [-] Al-Khwarizmi|6 years ago|reply
- I know that many death estimates for Chernobyl are highly exaggerated, but sticking to the official Soviet death toll of 31 seems ludicrous.
- Lyudmilla Ignatenko existed in real life and there are interviews with her telling how they didn't let her hug her husband at the hospital due to radioactivity, and she had to hid her pregnancy to be let in. Of course she could be lying, but those would be strange lies to tell.
- If victims could not be radioactive, why were they buried in metal caskets covered in concrete? This is well documented an there are photos.
- Regarding the Ignatenko's claim that the foetus had somehow protected her from radiactivity by absorbing it, personally I never interpreted it as a statement that the show was claiming as true. I saw it as the character's own interpretation. The show portrays different characters with various degrees of ignorance, and no one in the show portrayed as knowledgeable defends that theory.
- There are photos of radiation victims from various incidents and they look not unlike what is seen in the series. Here are some (trigger warning, very graphic images): https://imgur.com/gallery/3x7RcLk#QrTJTm5
There may be things to criticize about the show but this person looks like he is telling a quite biased story.
[+] [-] mjames083|6 years ago|reply
That's the immediate death toll from radiation poisoning, not the total years lost as a result of radiation exposure. The article is correct to point out however that the total death toll must be much less than many other disasters and certainly not comparable to what people commonly believe about the death toll at chernobyl.
>>- Lyudmilla Ignatenko existed in real life and there are interviews with her telling how they didn't let her hug her husband at the hospital due to radioactivity, and she had to hid her pregnancy to be let in. Of course she could be lying, but those would be strange lies to tell.
>> If victims could not be radioactive, why were they buried in metal caskets covered in concrete? This is well documented and there are photos.
Those were firefighters who ingested radioactive products in the air. Normal human tissue cannot be induced to be become radioactive. I'm not surprised that they would quarantine a firefighter and bury his body in a metal casket but that doesn't apply to the majority of the victims of radiation poising by Chernobyl. The show at one point shows such a burial for liquidators who wouldn't have radioactive material in their body and is almost certainly ahistorical. The show never makes this clear.
>>- There are photos of radiation victims from various incidents and they look not unlike what is seen in the series. Here are some (trigger warning, very graphic images): https://imgur.com/gallery/3x7RcLk#QrTJTm5
He was literally standing over a tank of radioactive material when the accident occurred thus explaining the extent of his skin damage. The radiation exposure for the firefighters wouldn't have caused them to suffer skin damage to the same extent and not in the way portrayed in the film. The ingested fission products would have harmed internal tissue before reaching the surface of the body. The show's portrayal of the first responder firefighters is almost entirely completely wrong.
>>There may be things to criticize about the show but this person looks like he is telling a quite biased story.
I disagree and I'm quite concerned about how the show mistakenly portrays the effects of radiation. At the very least they could explained how radiation works and why the firefighters had to quarantined but they never do anything like that. Instead, we hear dramatic warnings of a thermonuclear blast unless our heroes take immediate action which is completely nonsensical.
[+] [-] emiliobumachar|6 years ago|reply
Fear and panic caused more harm than the accident itself - including one million unnecessary abortions.
I think the danger implied is that it could happen again.
[+] [-] tssva|6 years ago|reply
Of course this also assumes that an abortion is some kind of harm.
[+] [-] TheOtherHobbes|6 years ago|reply
If someone is covered by fallout without knowing it, they can be dangerously radioactive.
If they inhale or ingest the fallout they'll be much less radioactive, but they could still be dangerous to others if they've ingested an extreme and lethal dose.
Some radiotherapy treatments do in fact make patients slightly radioactive. Friends and family are advised to keep their distance for a few half-lives.
[+] [-] zouhair|6 years ago|reply
The show was not meant to be a PSA for or against nuclear power, it's a historical fiction and for that it is as accurate as it can be. The story is mostly about propaganda and lies.
[0]:https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/apr/25/energy.u...
[+] [-] basch|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arethuza|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bartwe|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] watwut|6 years ago|reply
Whether they were actually readioactive or not, people often assumed they are and acted accordingly.
[+] [-] vibrio|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ishanjain28|6 years ago|reply
Chernobyl was the result of lies and deception. Soviet Russia's wanted to be number 1 everywhere while completely disregarding how they got there, That is what led to Chernobyl.
People, Including the Doctor have taken it incorrectly in my humble opinion.
They even had a separate podcast where they discussed exactly this and more details related to the series in great detail. Look it up on Pocketcast or whatever app you use to listen to podcasts and you'll find it.
[+] [-] lostmsu|6 years ago|reply
What led to Chernobyl is a reactor design flaw (could happen to anyone), and irresponsible behavior of the plant staff, who run the experiment against "the book".
Only the later probably is because of the culture-wide trait. The rest of it could have happened to anyone.
Though I do agree, that the show displays the need for open information through the lack of it in Soviet Union like nothing else.
[+] [-] WAHa_06x36|6 years ago|reply
First, I'm not sure you can claim that people working during the disaster would only suffer external exposure. There was a reactor core on fire, there was probably plenty of isotopes in the air that would have been breathed in and possibly taken up by the body.
Second, neither alpha, beta nor gamma reaction will induce any significant amount of radioactive in materials that are exposed to them. And under normal circumstances, that is all you would be exposed to. But this was, again, an exposed reactor core. There might very well have been a significant amount of neutron radiation present, which does in fact induce radioactivity.
So the claims of the article are way too strong for this very, very exceptional situation.
[+] [-] alex_young|6 years ago|reply
“Although the 31 immediate Chernobyl-related deaths are sad,” he concludes, “the number of fatalities is remarkably small compared with many energy-related accidents, such as the Benxihu coal mine disaster in China 1942, which killed about 1500 miners, and the 1975 Banqiao dam accident, also in China, which killed about 250,000 people.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#Casualties
The dam failure killed approx. 26,000 people, and 145,000 died as a result of subsequent epidemics and famine according to the official record.
While this was a very significant loss of life, inflating it to argue with other numbers you contest seems pretty shallow.
[+] [-] 292355744930110|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamarad|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AstralStorm|6 years ago|reply
The first news anyone got was from Sweden a few days later.
[+] [-] app4soft|6 years ago|reply
Please, stop share fakes written by Michael Shellenberger[0] on HN!
[0] http://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/853/exposin...
[+] [-] pdkl95|6 years ago|reply
This organization self-description[1] (emphasis added by me to highlight important phrases):
>> We publish the Nuclear Monitor, a unique international newsletter serving the worldwide movement against nuclear power. Produced 20 times per year, it gives an anti-nuclear perspective on what is happening in the nuclear power industry and the resistance against it.
An anti-nuclear activist group is an interesting choice to use as a reference...
[1] https://www.wiseinternational.org/what-we-do
[+] [-] michaelgiba|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilogik|6 years ago|reply
1. Have people speak perfect English, thus letting the actors shine, and not have the viewers have to read subtitles.
2. Have really good British/American actors do a fake (and probably bad) Russian accent, just for funsies
3. Hire actual Ukrainian/Russian actors, and use subtitles all the way.
Option 2 just seems stupid to me, the characters didn't speak in a foreign accent, they spoke in their own. Between Option 1 and 3, I prefer 1.
[+] [-] aivisol|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ToddBonzalez|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RichardCA|6 years ago|reply
You can watch that one and then watch the German version for comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URSNN5mnI2g
[+] [-] cwmma|6 years ago|reply