I haven’t seen the HBO series, mainly because when it was new, a number of reliable sources claimed it was total BS. I’ve been trying to find those sources and found a lengthy article detailing fact and fiction here:
The conclusion is damning:
The miniseries implying that radiation is contagious like a virus is essentially zombie logic, that anyone who suffers from radiation poisoning is therefore poisonous themselves. Such false logic was used to isolate, terrify, and stigmatize people not only in Chernobyl, but also in places like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and more recently in Fukushima. Natasha Yuvchenko, wife of Chernobyl engineer Alexander Yuvchenko (the man who held the steel door open), says that for many years people literally ran away from them, afraid of being contaminated
The Chernobyl miniseries attempts to arouse our fears, in part by playing on the fact that nuclear disasters remind us of nuclear bombs. “Is it war? Are they bombing?” a plant worker asks early in the miniseries. Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) later makes references to the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed a combined total of 129,000–226,000 people.
We’re told this by Jared Harris’s character, scientist Valery Legasov, who says that radiation is like “a bullet” and Chernobyl is like “three trillion bullets in the air, water and food… that won’t stop firing for 50,000 years.” It appears that science has once again gone out the window in favor of dramatization. The series is again attempting to weaponize the radiation to remind us of warfare.
Linky:
And another from Forbes:
Many have gone point-by-point through the miniseries to fact-check the science, which is tedious, but a few examples can illustrate the problem. All look great on the screen but to the non-scientist, they subtly and forcefully promulgate these myths of radiation and death.
The worst was the pregnant wife of a firefighter visiting her husband suffering from acute radiation syndrome (ARS), during which the baby absorbed so much radiation that it died. HBO’s fictional scientist-hero, played wonderfully by Emily Watson, stated “The radiation would have killed the mother, but the baby absorbed it instead.”
There are a few indefensible things in the series, like the “bridge of death” which seems to be entirely urban legend that the producers never verified, or the baby “absorbing” the mom’s radiation. However, it must be made clear that the series is presenting what the people of the Soviet Union thought at the time, not what we know now. People did think (and many still do think) radiation was contagious, because a lot of the information about it was classified, or people just aren’t educated about it. Even practicing nuclear engineers were forbidden from knowing certain things. Presenting it as if the general public, or everyday hospital staff, or the higher ups in the Communist party did understand it would be extraordinarily revisionist. The propaganda machine on both sides of the iron curtain meant that any explosion would be a suspected bombing from the other side. Again, that’s normal for the time period, as is explaining radiation to a clueless bureaucrat with a bullet analogy. Maybe it does perpetuate some misinformation, but it also showcases the danger of misinformation, downplaying critical situations, lying, and coverups all in the name of saving face.
That’s interesting. I agree that the implication that people suffering acute radiation sickness are themselves radioactive is probably the worst failing, and not excusable.
But the show is still worth watching given how much they got right, and how much of that is so preposterous.
The thing of radiation being a bullet, I never personally took to be implying any single particle would kill you. I just took him as giving a visceral description of how inherently dangerous exposure is, describing it as many tiny bullets, some proportion of which will cause harm.
Depends on circumstance. If someone is exposed to loose nuclear material, they are “infectious” in that they may be covered in radioactive dusts and residues. It doesn’t take much, so anything they come into contact with will also be contaminated.
Once they have been thoroughly de-contaminated and their clothes discarded with the nuclear waste, now they are no longer capable of spreading radiation to others.
But yes, if you have absorbed enough material that the radioactivity emitted by you is hazardous to others (once your exterior has been decontaminated), you have maybe seconds to live, probably less.
Mostly radiation sickness is the result of ionising radiation damaging tissue. The most important damage is to rapidly regenerating tissue, as these tissues have more unravelled DNA - simply because the DNA needs to unravel for a cell to divide. Ravelled up DNA is reasonably robust, but unravelled DNA is much more easily damaged, and a dose of ionising radiation leads to damaged DNA in reproducing cells. A damaged cell will usually detect damage and self destruct. So those parts of the body that are usually fast replenishing can take a serious hit. Gut lining and blood production are the first ones to suffer. Anything from nasty GI behaviour to vomiting and shitting blood and the gut lining for a start. Anaemia due to blood replenishment failure. Potential issues from failure of other replenishing organs, such as the liver, immune system. Supportive care, blood transfusions, address the individual failures as best one can. If the patient survives the body will rebuild as best it can. Cells that sustain damage and don’t self destruct are potential progenitors of cancers in later life. Little to do but wait and hope.
Actual ingestion of radioactive material is another separate problem. Breathing in plutonium dust is a big nasty. Little to be done, the patient will die early of lung cancer. If you get lucky you might be able to locate the tumours early. Depends on the number of grains of dust.
Overall you either get the patient past the acute damage done, and they survive, or you don’t and they die. Long term, the outlook is not brilliant for survivors. It pretty much depends on the dose received how well things go.
I watched the HBO series with a woman who was about 80km from Chernobyl when the explosion occured. She was 15yo, with her Komosol (sp, effectively ‘Young Communist’) group camping, drinking vodka, when the sky to the north lit up with a dark red color. It stayed that way all night, so the guide headed back to town, found out what happened, went back to the group and got them out of there, back to the town- and promptly quit her job, something you just did not do in Soviet Russia.
Inna knew it was serious when the decision was made not to punish the guide, instead giving her another job.
She can’t speak to the science of the show, but she definitely has opinions as to the accuracy of how Soviet life was portrayed:
If you have somehow ingested or consumed enough radioactive material that being near you is a danger to others, then you are probably already medium-rare. (If not toast). If it’s on you or your clothing, then a good wash or whatever cleaning will make the people who visit you in hospital or attend your funeral safe. But then, where did that radioactive material go after it left you?
Think of radioactive damage as not unlike burns. Both break complex chemical bonds of organic chemicals. (From what I read, overdoing the radiation-to-preserve-food process is like cooking it. Milk for example tastes caramelized) The main difference is heat is very concentrated and localized, whereas radiation is insidious all through the body - depending on the type and strength of radiation, how much it penetrates.
Well, Marie Curie’s casket is lined with lead to contain the radiation. While it is believed her exposure to radiation is what killed her it wasn’t particularly fast nor was she toast (she was 66).
I do not know if diesel backup generators were an issue at Chernobyl. But after the diesel generators failed at Fukushima Daichi, I was told by a nuclear safety engineer that diesel backup generators often fail – it did not surprise him. Apparently they are only run briefly during testing, once or twice a year, and sit idle for long periods in between. Their starter batteries corrode or get sulphur buildup, the oil or fuel leaks, air gets in the lines, or the stored diesel fuel becomes sludge (separates into component chemicals).
This is a common hazard everywhere such generators are used, not specific to nuclear power or any one political system .
The whole thing started as a test to see if they could keep the pumps running while waiting for the diesel generators to start and provide power (IIRC about a minute of lag time).
That said, the diesel generators played no role in the accident themselves because, working or not, the disaster still would have happened.
I know it’s been a year, but… those criticisms themselves seem like garbage to me.
Former navy nuke, watched the miniseries, thought it was brilliant. Also, I don’t recall a scene where they suggested radiation was infectious. As others have noted, however, fine contaminated particles can end up on your skin, which can in turn cause someone so-contaminated to be a danger to others. If they are referring to the isolation/containment scenes… that’s not for the befit of the unexposed, that’s for the benefit of those who were exposed: one of the things accuse radiation exposure does is wreck your immune system and ability to fight off infection. So you need to keep the victims of acute radiation exposure isolated until such time as they have either recovered enough of their immune system to stave off infection, or died. So flipping what if the series didn’t take pains to explain that? (Although, honestly, it’s been so long since I watched, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did have at least a throw away line of dialogue to that effect as well).
As far as radiation being like a bullet? Hell yeah. Especially neutron radiation. I’d think of it that way all the time, just ricocheting off your body’s cells, knocking things out of whack kind of like the proverbial (and fictional) magic bullet from certain Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories except… very real. Yes, it takes a lot of those little bullets to lead to problems, but the metaphor still stands.
The parallels to Hiroshima and Nagasaki? I don’t even know where the article is going with that. They are relevant examples of the lingering danger of widespread contamination.
Honestly, if you haven’t already, and you have the chance to watch the series, I would highly recommend it.
One needs to consider that there are currently people who are pushing a nuclear power agenda, because it is an alternative to fossil fuels. I am basically on board with their motivation but they do seem anxious to downplay the risks. The same people - for obvious reasons - like to attack the Chernobyl docudrama, and overplay its inaccuracies and downplay the dangers it portrays.
The criticisms levelled at the miniseries by those quoted by @Charlie_Tan are nitpicking at most and downright pathetic at worst. It is ridiculous to describe Legasov’s characterisation of neutrons as bullets as “science going out the window”. Loose analogies are a key tool of science education. Watch lectures by say Richard Feynman or Carl Sagan (often regarded as some of the greatest science educators of all time) and they are full of loose analogies to explain their points.
In the miniseries, it is implied that the firefighter Vasily Ignatenko somehow - after being fully washed down etc - nonetheless “transferred” damaging radiation to his pregnant wife Lyudmilla and that their baby subsequently died as a result of “absorbing” the radiation. However as others have said up thread, this is an accurate portrayal of what at least some believed to be possible at the time even if it is not an accurate description of reality. Lyudmilla herself said "that her baby “took the whole radioactive shock […] She was like a lightning rod for it”.. Yes that is not correct, but the miniseries accurately portrayed her beliefs.
To be clear, I am cautiously in favour of the idea of nuclear power as an alternative to fossil fuels, but scratch the surface of someone enthusiastically attacking the accuracy of the Chernobyl miniseries and you will usually find they are pushing that agenda.
From my recollection, they did imply for example that the pregnant woman was taking a big risk to herself and her baby by visiting her husband. For example, the nurse was particularly alarmed by the fact that she was visibly pregnant. And they played ominous music specifically at the point where he put his hand on her baby bulge [ETA: which goes beyond just relaying what the characters themselves believed].
If the husband still had enough radioactive dust on his body to cause harm to the baby in those seconds, then they’ve done a pretty poor job of cleanup, and that should be the priority before any other treatment.
When Marie and Pierre Curie’s bodies were exhumed in 1995, they were transferred to the Pantheon in wooden coffins, so authorities decided there was no significant radiation risk at that point. And placing the bodies in lead-lined coffins initially may have been unnecessary.
A human whose body has become a radioactive emitter (other than surface contamination) has ingested a radioisotope which has become part of their body chemistry.
In the case of the Curies, it was the radium they spent their long careers handling (without precautions). They inhaled and probably ate or drank finely ground dust of radium compunds, and the radium incorporated itself into their tissues (mostly their bones).
Radium is an alpha emitter, so the radiation from that wouldn’t have been able to eacape their bodies and be detectable. But radium decays into radon, which is a strong gamma emitter, and that would have been strongly detectable.
So, TL;DR: they spent their long lives contaminating their innards, where surface decontamination couldn’t reach it. It takes a long time for this kind of internal contamination to build up in a body to the point that the body becomes a measurable radiation source.