Interestingly Legasov makes the case that the actual on the ground handling of the firefighting situation was correct:
"Sometimes they say that many firemen got high radiation doses pointlessly, because they were standing at certain spots monitoring that new fires don’t start. They say that this was a poor and uneducated decision. That is wrong because the engine room had a lot of oil, hydrogen inside the generators and other sources that could not only start a fire, but could even cause another explosion that would devastate the 3rd block. This is why their actions were not only heroic but very professional, educated and correct from the point that they took the first precise steps to localize the accident and prevent it from spreading."
Though organizational dynamics are the same everywhere it appears...
"As for the physics and technology of reactors, it was a forbidden area for me—both because of my own education and because of the taboo imposed by Anatoly Pavlovich Aleksandrov [president of the USSR Academy of Sciences] and his subordinates working in this area. They really did not like interference in their professional work by outsiders. I remember how once Lev Petrovich Feoktistov, who had just started working at our institute, attempted to conceptually analyze questions about a more reliable reactor, a more interesting reactor, that would eliminate—this problem was worrying then—the production of such fissile materials that could be removed from the reactor and used in nuclear weapons. But his proposals were met with hostility; as well as the proposals about a new safer reactor from Viktor Vladimirovich Orlov who had come to the institute. They were somehow not considered by the existing reactor community.
Since I didn’t have administrative authority over this department but generally understood many specific details of what was going on, and because I was concerned, I began to suggest to the reactor department an engineering, not physical, approach to solving problems. But, naturally, I couldn’t considerably change this situation. And Anatoly Petrovich had such a humanly understandable and even likeable trait, namely, reliance on people with whom he has worked for many years. He trusted certain people who worked on, say, naval equipment, station machinery or specialized devices; and really didn’t like the appearance of new faces who could somehow bother him or make him doubt the decisions made earlier. This roughly is how things were."
He recounts after being promoted to the first deputy director of the Institute of Atomic Energy by Aleksandrov himself! And after it was transferred to the control of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building...
There is an accompanying podcast which went into the decisions behind the series, such as the character design and which events to show and how they were dramatised. The original page is dead[0] but it seems to be available on most podcast platforms. I can highly recommend a listen-along for your next rewatch
I think the video miniseries is based on a book, Voices of Chernobyl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voices_from_Chernobyl). I'd be curious if anyone on HN has read it and if they have comments on how the miniseries and book compare and contrast.
I'm not fond of the serie, to be honest. The actors are stellar, but there are such liberties taken with basic physics (the steam explosion supposedly ventilating half of Europe, the baby protecting the mother from radiations, ...) that it seems to me that they were this close to have a great thing, and they just made useless melodrama out of it.
After an (admittedly, cursory) search, I was unable to locate the audio original. The only original that seems to be available is the published [0] Russian transcript of the tapes; and an audio recording of the Russian transcript, referenced in another comment in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33966474). But no original, with the real Legasov's voice, anywhere.
[0] - Or maybe not even properly published. I can't find bibliographic record of the original publication. Serhiy Plohiy, in his book on Chernobyl, for example, seems to reference a website with the text.
From what I've found on russian sites, the original tapes are still kept secret. I've also read that a part of them might have been erased.
The russian transcripts are the only things available. And you'll find youtube videos of people reading them in russian too, but not the original tapes.
If there is an audiobook version in English of the Legasov Tape transcripts out there anywhere, I would very much like to give it a listen.
I'm completely naïve about the business of audiobook and podcast production, but would certainly support the production of something like that in the only way I know how, which is to say I would pay money for it. Given the recent interest I imagine others would too.
It's the place where nearly all the fissile material for nuclear weapons was produced. The nearby Lake Karachay received so much nuclear waste that it evaporated entirely from the heat. Just this one small lake received as much radiation contamination as was released in all of Chernobyl.
Hmm, that is not what your source (Wikipedia) says happened:
>"After a drought caused water levels to drop, revealing contaminated silt, which was then wind blown, further polluting surrounding areas, it was decided to completely fill in the lake."
I enjoyed the HBO series, and appreciate the book and podcast recommendations contained in this thread. "Voices of Chernobyl" by Svetlana Alexievich is definitely at the top of my list of books to read for next year, as the characters in the show seem to have been distilled from her stories based on hundreds of interviews with liquidators and survivors.
The following [0,1] news articles describe Ms. Alexievitch's other works including "War's Unwomanly Face" about female combatants in WWII, and "Zinky Boys" about the Soviet-Afghan war. Only a few of her titles have been published widely in English despite her having won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2015.
On ‘War’s Unwomanly Face’, may I recommend the translation ‘The Unwomanly Face of War’?
It’s a much more recent translation and reportedly — I haven’t read the version you refer to — the older one was heavily edited or censored to focus on war as victory, as positive, rather than the real history and personal impact she wrote about. This Guardian review mentions the original vs the newer translation briefly towards the end: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/02/unwomanly-face...
Also — and I know this is a weird thing to say about such a horrific topic — I find the translation of the newer title, ‘The Unwomanly Face of War’, much more poetic or fluid phrasing than ‘War’s Unwomanly Face’. It’s English language as beauty rather than the slight awkwardness present in the 1980s translation’s title. It reminds me of ‘A Remembrance of Things Past’, which has a certain je ne sais quoi compared to the newer translated title ‘In Search of Lost Time’ (not that that’s a bad title, it just sounds a bit like the title of a 1930s boy’s adventure novel compared to the nostalgic beauty of Remembrance.)
> ...but at that time we were mostly worried about whether the reactor was still working. That is, was it generating short-lived radioactive isotopes...
> ...the most precise information about the state of the reactor was gathered from the ratio of short-lived and long-lived isotopes of iodium 134 and 131. Then, by making radiochemistry measurements quite quickly we established that no short-lived iodium isotopes were being produced and hence the reactor was not operational and was in sub-critical state.
I wonder where and how they were able to do the radiochemical measurements so quickly - did the facility have that sort of capability on-site, or were samples repeatedly flown to a research institute that had the appropriate gamma spectroscopy equipment to analyze?
[+] [-] MichaelZuo|3 years ago|reply
"Sometimes they say that many firemen got high radiation doses pointlessly, because they were standing at certain spots monitoring that new fires don’t start. They say that this was a poor and uneducated decision. That is wrong because the engine room had a lot of oil, hydrogen inside the generators and other sources that could not only start a fire, but could even cause another explosion that would devastate the 3rd block. This is why their actions were not only heroic but very professional, educated and correct from the point that they took the first precise steps to localize the accident and prevent it from spreading."
Contrary to popular culture speculations since.
[+] [-] MichaelZuo|3 years ago|reply
"As for the physics and technology of reactors, it was a forbidden area for me—both because of my own education and because of the taboo imposed by Anatoly Pavlovich Aleksandrov [president of the USSR Academy of Sciences] and his subordinates working in this area. They really did not like interference in their professional work by outsiders. I remember how once Lev Petrovich Feoktistov, who had just started working at our institute, attempted to conceptually analyze questions about a more reliable reactor, a more interesting reactor, that would eliminate—this problem was worrying then—the production of such fissile materials that could be removed from the reactor and used in nuclear weapons. But his proposals were met with hostility; as well as the proposals about a new safer reactor from Viktor Vladimirovich Orlov who had come to the institute. They were somehow not considered by the existing reactor community.
Since I didn’t have administrative authority over this department but generally understood many specific details of what was going on, and because I was concerned, I began to suggest to the reactor department an engineering, not physical, approach to solving problems. But, naturally, I couldn’t considerably change this situation. And Anatoly Petrovich had such a humanly understandable and even likeable trait, namely, reliance on people with whom he has worked for many years. He trusted certain people who worked on, say, naval equipment, station machinery or specialized devices; and really didn’t like the appearance of new faces who could somehow bother him or make him doubt the decisions made earlier. This roughly is how things were."
He recounts after being promoted to the first deputy director of the Institute of Atomic Energy by Aleksandrov himself! And after it was transferred to the control of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building...
[+] [-] jamesfmilne|3 years ago|reply
Jared Harris does an excellent job playing Legasov.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries)
[+] [-] overlordalex|3 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.hbo.com/chernobyl/article/podcast
[+] [-] derbOac|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shakow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] technoooooost|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azangru|3 years ago|reply
[0] - Or maybe not even properly published. I can't find bibliographic record of the original publication. Serhiy Plohiy, in his book on Chernobyl, for example, seems to reference a website with the text.
[+] [-] throwaway41982|3 years ago|reply
The russian transcripts are the only things available. And you'll find youtube videos of people reading them in russian too, but not the original tapes.
[+] [-] this_steve_j|3 years ago|reply
I'm completely naïve about the business of audiobook and podcast production, but would certainly support the production of something like that in the only way I know how, which is to say I would pay money for it. Given the recent interest I imagine others would too.
[+] [-] H8crilA|3 years ago|reply
It's the place where nearly all the fissile material for nuclear weapons was produced. The nearby Lake Karachay received so much nuclear waste that it evaporated entirely from the heat. Just this one small lake received as much radiation contamination as was released in all of Chernobyl.
[+] [-] Dah00n|3 years ago|reply
Hmm, that is not what your source (Wikipedia) says happened:
>"After a drought caused water levels to drop, revealing contaminated silt, which was then wind blown, further polluting surrounding areas, it was decided to completely fill in the lake."
[+] [-] proxysna|3 years ago|reply
City-40 is the name of the movie about the city, city was named Chelyabinsk-40 (Челябинск-40) at the time of the incident.
>so much nuclear waste that it evaporated entirely from the heat.
That's just bs.
[+] [-] cuteboy19|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] this_steve_j|3 years ago|reply
The following [0,1] news articles describe Ms. Alexievitch's other works including "War's Unwomanly Face" about female combatants in WWII, and "Zinky Boys" about the Soviet-Afghan war. Only a few of her titles have been published widely in English despite her having won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2015.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160822202409/http://www.ibtime...
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20160906203202/https://www.thegu...
[+] [-] vintagedave|3 years ago|reply
It’s a much more recent translation and reportedly — I haven’t read the version you refer to — the older one was heavily edited or censored to focus on war as victory, as positive, rather than the real history and personal impact she wrote about. This Guardian review mentions the original vs the newer translation briefly towards the end: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/02/unwomanly-face...
Also — and I know this is a weird thing to say about such a horrific topic — I find the translation of the newer title, ‘The Unwomanly Face of War’, much more poetic or fluid phrasing than ‘War’s Unwomanly Face’. It’s English language as beauty rather than the slight awkwardness present in the 1980s translation’s title. It reminds me of ‘A Remembrance of Things Past’, which has a certain je ne sais quoi compared to the newer translated title ‘In Search of Lost Time’ (not that that’s a bad title, it just sounds a bit like the title of a 1930s boy’s adventure novel compared to the nostalgic beauty of Remembrance.)
[+] [-] muthas|3 years ago|reply
> ...but at that time we were mostly worried about whether the reactor was still working. That is, was it generating short-lived radioactive isotopes...
> ...the most precise information about the state of the reactor was gathered from the ratio of short-lived and long-lived isotopes of iodium 134 and 131. Then, by making radiochemistry measurements quite quickly we established that no short-lived iodium isotopes were being produced and hence the reactor was not operational and was in sub-critical state.
I wonder where and how they were able to do the radiochemical measurements so quickly - did the facility have that sort of capability on-site, or were samples repeatedly flown to a research institute that had the appropriate gamma spectroscopy equipment to analyze?
[+] [-] oryades|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] azangru|3 years ago|reply