I need to catch this but I don't have HBO. In college we always had projects on this, man I love physics I should've been a physicianist.
Finally got a chance to watch the final episode. Truly a masterpiece. I think this actually managed to surpass Band of Brothers in my book.
I just want to add. The props and explanation during the trial for how a reactor functions and what leads to the explosion was amazing.
Agreed. I, too, feel like a could run a nuclear power plant in Russia now. Just have to keep balance and not be an egotistical asshat.
Family Matters is streaming on Hulu right now!!. I already watched 1 of my 3 favorite episodes. Laura Winslow was so fine!
Probably an extreme long shot, but am I the only person that had this game for Atari 800 when they were a kid? Most of the time, all I did was force a meltdown. Running a nuclear reactor within parameters is no fun - nothing happens. Also, I usually wasn't clever enough to figure out the fault.
Russia gonna deploy bots to tank the score. But I finally got a chance to watch the series this past week. It was wonderful. Lots of great dialogue and tough moments that showed a lot of fortitude from the Russian people. But of course it made the state look bad, rightfully.
I finished the series this weekend. It's the best thing I've watched in years. There were so many jaw-dropping moments as the scale of the disaster was explained. The makeup on the firefighters in episode 3 was the grisliest thing I've seen on TV. Really an excellent series about the failure of human institutions. Of course the indictment of the Soviet system is as clear as day; the cycle of craven self-advancement, institutional lying, pride, etc. However, Legasov's speech during the trial also points to our ability, as humans, to turn a blind eye to the truth when it's inconvenient.
I know people are painting this as really negative Russian, but I'm not sure we should be convinced it would be any better had it happened here.
I'm pretty sure the USA wouldn't (more likely they *couldn't* either) have kept the truth from its own people for as long (leading to countless deaths and suffering) or have tried to "Iraqi Information Minister" the rest of the world for years after. That's not even counting the fact that the whole scenario was baked up almost exclusively by Russian society/government, so it wouldn't happen here in the first place (at least not the way it transpired there).
Our plants appear so much more robust and well planned -- Bay City amazed me when I was young it was absolutely massive in person. I thought they were compact from pics on TV/ etc. along with all the ships and subs with reactors.
We can't do it because we can't do it, not because we wouldn't want to. Our various levels of government have hidden information for years. Flint water, Hurricane Harvey flood zones, hell climate change lol. Our government lies all of the time. We catch them in it because the state doesn't have that type of information control here, but they definitely TRY.
The planning and design phase on American reactors is so much more robust. In the USSR, some group of apparatchik approved designs in private. Everything was a secret, the accepted paradigm was that only the state can be trusted to know what is best for the people. The people aren't capable of knowing their interests and must be protected from themselves. Think of Maester Luwin's speech in the bunker under the plant - "When the people ask questions that are not in their best interests, they should simply be told to keep their minds on their labor, and leave matters of the state to the state. That is how we keep the people from undermining the fruits of their own labor. This is our moment to shine." In the USA, the local entities have to go through a very thorough and very public planning phase with open public dialogue. Independent federal agencies have to approve construction plans and there are whistleblower laws etc. With something like nuclear energy that terrifies people, this means is is really hard to slip unsafe things past public scrutiny. Sometimes the process fails, but that entire concept was foreign in the USSR.
I was more referring to the government attempts to cover up, beginning on the local level trying to skirt accountability up to the main levels trying to hide the fallout. American government officials do the same thing. The advantage we had and continue to have is more information through the press (hey, cheers to the "enemy of the people" free press!). It's hard for them to hide stuff here. That doesn't mean they don't try and that if they could get away with it they absolutely would. We know they would because we know that they HAVE.
