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Henry Fountain is a science writer at the New York Times climate bureau. He visited the Chernobyl factory and the exclusion zone that surrounds it in 2014.
The first thing to understand about the HBO mini-series "Chernobyl", which ends Monday in five parts, is that it is largely composed. But here's the second, most important thing: it does not really matter.
The explosion and fire at the Chernobyl Unit 4 reactor on 26 April 1986 was an extremely messy and sinister event, a "dirty" radioactive bomb of a magnitude to which no one – and certainly no one in the Soviet Union – was prepared. This is the worst disaster in the history of nuclear energy, which claimed the lives of more than 30 people (and in the following years, although the numbers are highly controversial) and which is contaminating more and more people. plus radioactive contamination over large areas of Soviet and European territory.
Immediately after the panic and in the months of crisis and confusion, seven months later, the concrete and steel sarcophagus enclosing the lethal remains of the reactor, the heroes and villains were hundreds and hundreds of thousands.
The producers of the mini-series do not heal the disaster (sometimes the gore goes a little too far: the victims of radiation are often covered with blood for some reason). Instead, they simplify. They leave the lonely, but the demands of Hollywood and production budgets weigh heavily on the mess.
This does not mean that there are not a lot of likelihood keys. The rooftop scene in which conscripts only have a few seconds to launch radioactive debris on the ground is as strange as it was to appear to those who were there three decades ago. And the Unit 4 control room is faithfully recreated, from the control bar dials on the walls to the white coats and caps worn by the operators. (When I visited the adjacent control room of Unit 3 five years ago, I had to wear the same garment, which seemed to me more appropriate for a bakery than for a nuclear power plant.)
But if you did not know much about Chernobyl, you could be forgiven if, after looking, you thought that the whole reaction and cleansing were led by two people, Valery Legasov and Boris Shcherbina, helped valiantly by a third, Ulana Khomyuk.
You could also be forgiven if you thought that it was real characters. Legasov and Shcherbina were real, although their roles were distorted and magnified meet the script's need to get things done. Khomyuk, for its part, was made up in a complete fabric and its actions tarnish the credulity: to go to Chernobyl, without being invited, to investigate the accident and to be in the presence of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Kremlin. time after.
The producers mention a file at the end, Khomyuk being a composite character created to represent all the scientists who participated in the investigation of the disaster. Well, I guess. But much of the rest of "Chernobyl" also benefits from the simplistic treatment of Hollywood.
There are brave and convicted firefighters, unaware of the radiation risks to which they were exposed (no one climbed the reactor debris, as described in the series, they worked on the roof to prevent fires from spreading to unit 3 undamaged). Brave and well-intentioned miners are forced to dig under the reactor to stop the collapse, undressing to do the work (the series does not say it, but their work has largely ended in nothing). The usual helicopter pilots could, because of the radioactivity, deposit their lead, boron and sand charges on the reactor (a helicopter crashed, killing the crew, the accident occurred months later). late and the radiation has nothing to do with it).
I could go on. Do not talk to me about the blue light of the exposed reactor shining high in the night sky during the first episode. Yes, nuclear reactors can produce a blue hue, from something called Cherenkov's radiation, but no, there is no chance that Unit 4 will look like a "Tribute in Light" in Lower Manhattan on the anniversary of September 11th.
In the end, however, none of this really matters. For the mini-series, the basic truth is correct: the Chernobyl disaster was more about lying, deception and a decaying political system than bad engineering or abysmal management and training (or, in this case , the question of whether nuclear energy is intrinsically linked). Good or bad).
"Chernobyl" is sinister that partly because of all the destruction and death. The need to constantly lie (or deal with the lies of higher levels) weighs as much on his characters as all the lead on the reactor.
Yes, this basic truth is also simplified, especially in the last episode, which describes the trial of three plant managers.
I do not want to say too much about these scenes, although I'm going to reveal that the term geek "positive void coefficient" – one of the design flaws of the reactor – was pronounced. (As a science writer, I was delighted.)
The scenes are very tense and are among the best in the entire miniseries. But they seem more drawn from the audience of American films than from Soviet jurisprudence. The idea of someone who tells the truth to power in this The court seems about as wacky as anything else in Chernobyl.
How the show reaches its truth, however, is less important than that. Viewers can come out of "Chernobyl" by realizing that together, people and machines can do horrible things – like creating a nuclear disaster for ages. They also come to understand that in this case, this result was more the fault of a government and its apparatchiks, all the better.
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