this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2023
98 points (97.1% liked)

Asklemmy

43757 readers
1459 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] colonial@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] trafficnab@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago

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