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Culture, history and society

Culture, history and society

Chernobyl is magnificent despite its flaws

20 Jun 2019 Hamish Johnston
Jared Harris
Truth seeker: Jared Harris as Soviet physicist Valery Legasov in Chernobyl. (Courtesy: Sky)

I have just finished watching the Sky/HBO television miniseries Chernobyl and I loved it – as much as you can love a tragedy. I know that it is a somewhat flawed depiction of what happened when a Soviet nuclear reactor exploded in 1986, but I am pleased that two of the main characters are physicists and that the final episode gets into the nitty gritty of reactor physics.

For me, the highlight of the miniseries is episode 5, in which chemist and physicist Valery Legasov (played by Jared Harris above) testifies at the trial of three officials responsible (in part) for the tragedy. Armed with a minute-by-minute account of what happened in the control room provided by physicist Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), Legasov reveals that a fatal flaw in reactor design contributed to the disaster – a flaw that the Soviet authorities are desperate to cover up. He does this heroically, with the knowledge that it will end his career and indeed his life.

Brilliantly, Legasov charts the final hours of the reactor using coloured cards to represent physical processes that either increase (red) or decrease (blue) the power of the reactor. The effect of the graphite moderator is a red card, for example, while neutron absorption by the control rods is blue.

I have a limited understanding of reactor physics, but there was nothing in Legasov’s presentation that set off any alarm bells. And what really pleased me, is that the explanation was so clear and so simple that millions of viewers will now have a pretty good idea of how a nuclear reactor works.

Indeed, the Metro newspaper proclaimed “Nuclear physics has never been so compelling” in its five-star review of the episode.

Chernobyl has also inspired physicists to give their own explanations of what went wrong at the reactor. The best I have seen is Scott Manley’s description below – which provides much more information than Legasov’s but remains compelling.

Although the reactor physics in Chernobyl appears to be accurate, some of the miniseries is indeed fiction. While Legasov was a real person, Khomyuk never existed. Rather she is a fictional embodiment of all the Soviet physicists that investigated the disaster.

Some critics have also identified errors in how Soviet politics are depicted: see, for example, this article in the New Yorker. If you are looking for a review of the miniseries from someone involved in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, Robert Peter Gale is in the process of writing an epic four-part critique of Chernobyl. Gale is an American haematologist and researcher who travelled to the Soviet Union shortly after the disaster to advise on treatments for radiation exposure.

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