User Reviews

21 minutes into the episode, the whistleblower explains a hypothetical scenario where the reactor would explode or be exposed. His exact following quote is, "We would never regain entry to that reactor building in any of our lifetimes because the radiation levels escaping would be horrendous."

In a 2022 documentary, 36 years after Chernobyl, in a scenario where the exposed reactor was cleaned, cleared, and contained and actively publicized for the world to see, to then release footage of a "Whistleblower" uttering such nonsense is not only irresponsible, it's just moronic.

You're conducting an interview with someone you've built up over three episodes as someone with the inside scoop and be an expert in his field, and you just showed us footage of him uttering "the earth is flat, btw"

Shocking that the part of the documentary where he enlists in the Navy, he's the only one without an actual relevant degree....

The problem that the whistle blower exposes is that the crane in the containment used to load and extract fuel assemblies wasn't documented safe after the accident. The WB thought that when the top of the reactor is lifted a crane failure would drop it on top of the reactor and somehow that would cause a "super-criticality". I'm not a nuclear engineer but this seems far fetched to me. The fuel in a working reactor is held in a carefully calculated spacing of fuel pins in bundles within assemblies. Water flows between the assemblies and moderates the high speed neutrons so that they will more easily fission further uranium-235 atoms in a chain reaction. The distances are calculated to maintain a chain reaction within a range of neutron density controlled by neutron absorbing control rods and boron dissolved in the water. Enough of a range so fission can be stopped or maintained with up to two year old fuel which contains neutron absorbing fission products.

The mess at the bottom of the reactor will be a disorganized pile of fractured and crumbled uranium oxide and melted zircalloy cladding, possibly some steel fuel channel remnants. Not the carefully designed geometry to sustain a chain reaction. Somehow the compression of the reactor lid falling will compress this trash pile into a critical mass? If it were bomb grade 90% enriched uranium, I'd buy it. But this is 5% enriched reactor Uranium Oxide (the pure metal is used in bombs). I can't see the dropping the lid is going to cause anything other than expense and delay.

As a person with a dilettante interest in nuclear physics this series focus on the fear an panic of the people surrounding the plant is frustrating. There is little data like actual radiation readings and then its unclear where reading a being taken from. Horror stories of some girl who was riding her bike and came up with lesions and dead fish in the river might be footage from anywhere. I suspect if there were dead fish the news coverage at the time might have picked up on it? The pictures of the girl with lesions might be any radiation victim anywhere. Interesting to see how inept the nuclear industry was (and remains?) at dealing with the public.