re: #61 Michele: Out of the closet, Into the fire

So has anybody else looked at the new HBO min-series Chernobyl?
Looks to be pretty intense.

Chernobyl (2019) | Official Trailer | HBO

Starts tomorrow.

I picked up the new book Midnight at Chernobyl at the library and didn’t even realize that the HBO miniseries was upon us.

I’d suggest reading the book as it gives even more depth to what happened and the aftermath. It’s 33 years after the fact, and most of the world has moved on. The kinds of factors that go into a disaster such as that are still around us. We have nuclear reactors nearing the end of their lives, equipment ages, and storage facilities are nearing capacity with no national repository here in the US. Natural disasters could also lead to nuclear disaster as we saw with Fukushima.

Hubris is one of the great dangers, and the book shows how that can end up as every bad decision was compounded by even worse ones, even if they were made with good intentions.

One of the interesting facts was that despite the graphite fire and the decision to dump sand, boron, and other chemicals to suppress the fire, it turned out very little actually hit the exposed reactor core.