ABOUT CHERNOBYL

The Chernobyl Power Complex is lying about 130 km north of Kiev, Ukraine, and about 20 km south of
the border with Belarus. There are four nuclear reactors of the RBMK-1000. Units 1 and 2 were
constructed between 1970 and 1977, while units 3 and 4 of the same design were completed in 1983.
Two more reactors were under construction at the site at the time of the accident. To the southeast of
the plant, an artificial lake of some 22 square kilometres, situated beside the river Pripyat, a tributary
of the Dniepr, was constructed to provide cooling water for the reactors.

THE CHERNOBYL ACCIDENT

The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the
No. 4 nuclear reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, near the city of Pripyat in the north of
the Ukrainian SSR.

WHAT HAPPENED?

In the early hours of the 26 April 1986, workers at the Chernobyl plant, originally known as the V.I. Lenin
Nuclear Power Station, attempted an experiment at one of the site’s four reactors.

The test was designed to see if it was possible to bridge the gap between the power grid going down -
a common occurrence in the final years of the Soviet Union - and the plant’s back-up generators taking
over.

However, the test was hurried and poorly planned, and a subsequent reactor meltdown saw two
explosions blow the roof off the reactor and blast many tons of radioactive material into the
atmosphere over Ukraine, Belarus and beyond.

Although no informing comparisons can be made between the accident and a strictly air burst-fuzed
nuclear detonation, it has still been approximated that about four hundred times more radioactive
material was released from Chernobyl than by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Approximately 100,000 square kilometres of land was contaminated with fallout, with the worst hit
regions being in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. Slighter levels of contamination were detected over all of
Europe except for the Iberian Peninsula.

The initial evidence that a major release of radioactive material was affecting other countries came not
from Soviet sources, but from Sweden. On the morning of 28 April, workers at the Forsmark Nuclear
Power Plant (approximately 1,100 km (680 mi) from the Chernobyl site) were found to have radioactive
particles on their clothes.

It was Sweden's search for the source of radioactivity, after they had determined there was no leak at
the Swedish plant, that at noon on 28 April, led to the first hint of a serious nuclear problem in the
western Soviet Union.

EVACUATION

On April 27 the 30,000 inhabitants of Pryp’yat began to be evacuated. A cover-up was attempted, but
on April 28 Swedish monitoring stations reported abnormally high levels radiation. The Soviet
government admitted there had been an accident at Chernobyl, thus setting off an international outcry
over the dangers posed by the radioactive emissions.
EXCLUSION ZONE

Following the disaster, the Soviet Union created a circle-shaped exclusion zone with a radius of about
30 km. The zone was later expanded to include heavily radiated areas outside the initial zone. Although
no people actually live in the exclusion zone, scientists, scavengers, and others may file for permits that
allow them to enter for limited amounts of time.

The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with badly
trained personnel.

Accident led to major changes in safety culture and in industry cooperation, particularly between East
and West before the end of the Soviet Union. Former President Gorbachev said that the Chernobyl
accident was the most important factor in the fall of the Soviet Union.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Chernobyl-disaster

The Chernobyl disaster sparked criticism of unsafe procedures and design flaws in Soviet reactors, and
it heightened resistance to the building of more such plants. Chernobyl Unit 2 was shut down after a
1991 fire, and Unit 1 remained on-line until 1996. Chernobyl Unit 3 continued to operate until 2000,
when the nuclear power station was officially decommissioned.

CHERNOBYL AS A TV SERIES

Chernobyl is a five-part historical drama television miniseries created and written by Craig Mazin, and
directed by Johan Renck. The series was produced by HBO in association with Sky. Different mixture of
documentary and series.

HBO's "Chernobyl" became an instant hit on IMDb and had gained a 9.6-star out of 10 rating, ahead of
the popular “Breaking Bad” (9.5), “Game of Thrones” (9.3) and “The Wire” (9.3), according to IMDb’s
ranking of TV shows.

The miniseries was criticized by some pro-Kremlin Russian media as Western propaganda, and a
Russian TV network is producing its own version of Chernobyl in which the CIA plays a key role in the
disaster.

As you’d expect from a dramatic retelling of the nuclear disaster, the show is based on the lives and
important roles of real people, from scientists, firefighters and political officials played by the likes of
Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgard, and Paul Ritter. There are, however, some characters who are fictional.
The most notable is scientist Ulana Khomyuk played by Emily Watson, who is a composite character
representing the numerous men and women who investigated the disaster and reported its effects.

While HBO's Chernobyl certainly wasn't filmed at the Chernobyl site itself or in the neighboring city of
Pripyat, it was shot in Lithuania and Ukraine and did utilize real structures that were built during the
Soviet Union's reign.

“Firefighters and plant workers - sometimes through ignorance and sometimes because of altruistic
self-sacrifice - exposed themselves to huge doses of radiation to try to limit the damage, NEI said. But
other parts clearly are dramatised, it added. For example, one of the characters in the mini-series
(Khomyuk) is there to "unravel the mystery" of what happened, but "in the real event there wasn’t
much mystery”. The story is about “extreme management problems and a pattern of secrecy that
wasn’t compatible with industrial safety”, it said.

MINERS STORY
Four hundred miners were drafted in to install a heat exchanger beneath the reactor to try and cool the
core.

The Japanese government estimates the total amount of radioactivity released into the atmosphere
was approximately one-tenth as much as was released during the Chernobyl disaster.

DARK TOURISM

Tourists visiting Chernobyl must be respectful, the creator of the HBO show about the nuclear
disaster there says. Some people visiting the site in Ukraine, where the world's worst nuclear
accident happened in 1986, have been taking pictures smiling at the abandoned power plant. Its
inapropriate to pose for a good photo at the place such a disaster happened.

While travelers are permitted to visit Chernobyl with a guide, there is no official Ukrainian law in
place authorizing tourism in the exclusion zone. As a result, guests are referred to as "visitors" rather
than tourists, according to Victor Korol, director of local tour operator SoloEast.

Although the UN predicted up to 9,000 related cancer deaths back in 2005, Greenpeace later estimated
up to 200,000 fatalities, taking further health problems connected to the disaster into account.