It’s was well done but deeply disingenuous about the effects of radiation in places. I loved the show, but for anybody else watching, it’s worth realising that it’s very exaggerated in places.
Off the top of my head, for those that are curious:
- The show depicts radiation as similar to a contagion. In real life, once you strip and wash someone exposed to radioactive contaminants, they pose no danger to others.
- The reactor was never in danger of turning into a nuke or rendering huge swathes of Europe uninhabitable. Nuclear explosions only happen under tightly engineered conditions. A big pile of molten reactor slag, while certainly dangerous, can’t turn into a bomb.
However, the utter incompetence of the USSR is very accurate.
The reactor was never in danger of turning into a nuke or rendering huge swathes of Europe uninhabitable. Nuclear explosions only happen under tightly engineered conditions. A big pile of molten reactor slag, while certainly dangerous, can’t turn into a bomb.
The danger wasn’t that it would cause a nuclear explosion, it was that it would melt its way into a large reservoir of water underneath the reactor, instantly turning it all into steam, causing a massive explosion that would fling radioactive material over a much wider area
I don’t know if there was a risk of that happening in reality, but that’s how it was portrayed and explained in the show
