I don’t have HBO but am curious is the new show Chernobyl just there to scare a new generation from nuclear power? Just when it was starting to look like we were headed in that direction.

It shouldn't be used to scare us from nuclear power. It should be used to scare us way from socialism. Tweetstorm from a guy who was in the Romanian navy at the time and was tasked with taking radiological readings in Black Sea.

https://twitter.com/BDemonrats/status/1128159583032111104

(Spoiler) One of the scenes that almost made me vomit was a woman scientist from Minsk, RSS Bielorussia who went to the Republic Party leader and asked him to evacuate the city. The comrade answered he's not going to do that because he was told by the Party people in Chernobyl

there wasn't any danger so he knows better than her. The scientist tells him "I'm the lead researcher at the Atomic Energy Institute in Minsk, what where you before becoming a State Soviet Secretary?"
His answer: "I was making shoes in a factory. The proletariat has the power"

Radwaste will be more authoritative to comment on the nuts and bolts of how the Chernobyl disaster came to be, but the big take away I get is don't let imbeciles play with nuclear reactors they don't really understand.

I agree it should scare us from socialism. But since it is a Hollywood production (pro-socialism anti-nuclear Hollywood), i worry what it will try to do.

Must be a local crime story.

Imagine that members of a religious minority were being frequently physically assaulted in America’s largest city at alarming rates. Imagine if members of that minority were being cold-cocked or spit on randomly for doing nothing more than being who they are and dressing how they dress. Imagine what a powerful and important story this would be to our country, how mobilized the media and government would be to stop it. But what if I told you that this is happening in New York City right now, and nobody seems to care very much? How can this be? I’ll explain it.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/10/skyrocketing-attacks-nyc-jews-ignored-race/

Recycling, Penn & Teller style.

https://youtu.be/qcdNaajKExs

"I don’t have HBO but am curious is the new show Chernobyl just there to scare a new generation from nuclear power?"

Maybe. I'm finding it fascinating. The famous Russian insistence on State authority is shown down to variations in individual personalities, a Party veteran insisting that the entire reason for the State apparatus is to protect the people, then failing to do so; plant managers insisting that their authority supersedes engineering expertise; a Deputy Minister telling plant workers that they will do things likely to kill them because it must be done. When he says that it is the way of their people to sacrifice for the greater good it is totally convincing, and volunteers appear.

So far as "scaring a new generation"...There are enough outright gaffes in how the accident was handled that it is child's play to point out American and other plants have defenses in depth Russians never considered. At one point, Chernobyl operators are told, "Get the good dosimeter out of the safe."

The missing part is how the explosion occurred. That could be seen as prejudicial. After all, if you try to tell someone how it happened, eyes will glaze over or you will be accused of being an authoritarian because no one learns even the basics; if you note that Russian RBMK reactors are not made any more, and that those still in operation have new controls, you're not getting any positive reaction to that from a millennial taught to buy fear every day from CNN. It's so MUCH more satisfying to buy fear than think. Then there is a scene where a Russian physicist claims that if the core drops through containment into a water tank, there will be an explosion of "2 to 4 megatons". No. This is where dramatic license was exceeded.

{Here's why: even properly configured fissile material, such as a barely-subcritical chunk of Plutonium, cannot be "detonated" by immersion in water. The physical action of moving into the water, if it produces a criticality, does so gradually when considering the timeline of nuclear materials; where a "prompt" criticality involving 100% of the intended weapon mass is desired, this occurs in less than 10^-14 seconds (yes, ten to the minus 14). A gradual process disrupts the geometry of the reaction and sends most of the mass involved back below criticality, where it does not react quickly enough to involve itself in a "detonation" - instead, it melts or vaporizes, never having been reduced to component particles to release further energy. In weapons, this is called a "fizzle".}

A delightful and continuing feature is that the sets are frightfully accurate in showing a characteristic of Soviet construction and manufacture: since profit and individual achievement are suppressed, and that takes accountability with it until there's a fatality, there are HUGE differences in build quality between structures and plant components mere feet apart, and some locations properly date from the 1940s; some of this is filmed in Lithuania.

If they don't get major awards for this thing, I'll be surprised. If liars do NOT line up on the View to scare people more OMGOMGOMGITSANUCLEEARBOMB I'll lose a bet.

More here.

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One might notice something if one is alert:
The Soviet economic system waited until there's a fatality to act if an activity was approved by the State. That's exactly what would occur if the bulk of consumer protections were abandoned in the USA.

> It shouldn't be used to scare
> us from nuclear power. It should
> be used to scare us way from
> socialism.

Well, maybe not, but I sincerely adore the sentiment.

Song?

When driving, it's important to bang the… the

Daddunt!... Daddunt!

Okay.

> where dramatic license was
> exceeded.

More

Thanks, Radwaste, no one would take that bet with me.

Well, maybe not, but I sincerely adore the sentiment.

Thanks. Just remember, in socialism, you're just a cog in the machine, unless you're nomenklatura, in which case you're safe until you're purged for counter-revolutionary think.

A replaceable cog.