We watched the final (5th) episode last night. They went through the cause of the accident in step by step detail and made it something we can understand. It will be interesting to see if this ever plays in Russia. The ultimate cause was one man convinced he was right, and everyone else was stupid, and the fact the Soviet State would not admit a design flaw so they just redacted that part of the instructions. And the fact the Soviets wanted to save money and did it the cheapest way possible, and had no containment building at all.

And Sammy, the 4th episode of shooting the pets was hard to watch. I can understand the reason why they did that on an intellectual level, but I don't think I could do that. They guy they showed as the leader of that group was just a the type of man that would be able to do it.

Overall I wonder what the scientists think of the show. I would love to see a "How it was made" show about the show.

Overall it is something that anyone that wants to learn about the disaster should see.

Talking about how it was made, I'd really like to know where it was shot.. and where they got that huge depot of russian trucks and Mil helicopters seen in ep 5. Easter europe likely ?
I enjoyed that show a lot, no shooting, no superhero, gripping story. Probably helps I live in europe when this blew and I remember not eating supposedly rain contaminated veggies for a month (not a hardship)

My understanding is they used one of the other Chernobyl reactors for some of the inside shots.

Enjoyed it a lot. Apparently it is the most popular show every (what ever that means), more than Breaking Bad and GoT.

https://canoe.com/entertainment/television/hbos-chernobyl-is-now-the-top-ranked-tv-show-of-all-time

I just watched the first episode... What struck me the most is the absolute denial of how bad the situation was.
Eye witness accounts of the core exploding were disregarded as impossible.

Even the presence of graphite pieces on the ground was denied by the officials.

You ain't seen nuttin yet

I watched the end of it the other night. When I was a teenager I toured a school in the Belarus Exclusion Zone and saw the piles of gas masks on the floor among other things. I ended up taking a couple communist propaganda posters from the school and one of the other kids took some film that hadn't been developed. I think my radioactive posters are still folded up in ziploc bags somewhere in my attic.

I binge watched all 5 episodes tonight. I only planned to watch the first but I couldn't help myself.
It definitely felt authentic.
Hats of to the Russians. When called upon they pulled together and got the job done.

And I'm glad their reactor safety issues have been resolved.

We can only hope. I would not bet on it.

There are companion podcasts that discuss the "making of"

It was filmed in Lithuania, at the sister plant to Chernobyl.

Highest average review rating
does not mean most popular, in terms of views

Actual roof clearing... 90 seconds and you're finished.

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“Nuclear power plants emit no carbon dioxide and have been statistically safer than every competing energy industry,” he writes, “including wind turbines.”

Right! Until the blow up!

Honestly, even including the three major "events", they have been safer, caused fewer deaths per mWh and cost less. People are freaked out by anything nuclear.

I wrote a term paper in 1982 on Nuclear Power Safety. I went through the statistics and even detailed the worst US accidents, including TMI. Chernobyl had not happened.

Chernobyl, and all of the RMBK designs, are completely different from any commercial power station in the rest of the world. RMBK is basically a variation of the plutonium creating reactor, like the original Savana River plant in WWII.

I HATE that the rest of the industry is stained by what the USSR did. And as you can see from my posts, I don't think Chernobyl is the worst radioactive event from the USSR. That country cut corners on EVERYTHING.

Properly run, even the RMBK is safer than fossil fuel. And if Chernobyl had a containment dome, it would not have been the same issue.

It was a dramatic recreation of the event. At the end they even mentions the one lady scientists was easier way to show the work of a team of scientists all working as one. So she was not real, but represented a team to make the story telling easier. Not super accurate, but easier for the audience to understand.

I am sure they had to changes some facts as the Soviets did not make it easy to know all the facts.

Much like the very accurate movie Apollo 13. The actors would not just flip any switch, it had to to be the correct switch. The one thing they "cheated" on was the argument between Lovell, Swigert, and Haise. In the actual tapes they never once raised their voices. The astronauts were always 100% professional. In the movie just for the drama, they had the raised voices.

It isn't the reactor safety issues, it is the whole mentality of the Russian infrastructure.

And that was supposed to be the point of the series, not to further set back world-wide nuclear power.

Really well done.

Thanks for posting. I would have missed it.