For a TV series the TV show Chernobyl was pretty accurate. For those who watched the the TV show, I recommend to also see an interview with an actual Ukrainian medical responder and radiation expert who was working in Chernobyl.
Probably the best non-technical book on the Chernobyl disaster is the book "Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe" by Serhii Plokhy. It describes not only the accident, but also the whole soviet system and political, economical decisions which led to the resulting catastrophe.
No, the show is not accurate. The last episode repeats the lies that Legasov told at the IAEA meeting in 1986, that were published as INSAG-1, and the show completely ignores INSAG-7. There was no drama in the control room, no indications that anything was wrong with the reactor, no power spike before AZ-5 was pressed.
The TV show pretends to be historically accurate, and many people believe that it is true. I would suspect that the majority of people have no other sources of information about Chernobyl other than this TV show.
How does it make sense that the show ignores INSAG-7 when the whole plot point about the design of the control rods increasing the reactivity isn't from INSAG-1 but from INSAG-7? The same with the plotline about this defect being known, but kept from the operators. And Legasov lying about all this at the IAEA meeting? All-in-all INSAG-1 paints a picture of operator failure, INSAG-7 paints a picture of systemic failure and the show paints a picture of systemic failure.
And to nitpick: INSAG-7 doesn't disagree with INSAG-1 about the power rising just before AZ-5. From page 8 of INSAG-7: "When the turbine was tripped, the four pumps it was powering began to slow
down as the turbine speed was reduced and the associated generator voltage fell. This
reduced rate of core flow caused the void content of the core to rise and caused an
initial positive feedback of reactivity which was at least in part the cause of the acci-
dent." (page 8) This happens ~30 seconds before AZ-5 is pushed.
The same event described in Table I on page 21-22 of INSAG-1, with the part deprecated by INSAG-7 marked with {}:
01:23:04 {The personnel blocked the two-TG trip signal.} Emergency stop valve to the turbine was closed. The reactor continues operating at a power of 200 MW(th).
01:23:10 One group of automatic control rods start driving out
01:23:21 Two groups of automatic control rods begin reinsertion.
01:23:31 Net reactivity increasing with subsequent slow increase in reactor power.
The textual description on page 25 of INSAG-1 isn't much different: "When the emergency stop valve to the turbine was closed, the steam pressure began to rise. The flow through the core started to drop because four of the main cooling pumps were running down with the generator. Increasing pressure, reduced feedwater flow and reduced flow through the reactor are competing factors which determine the volumetric steam quality and hence the power of the reactor. It should be emphasized that the reactor was then in such a state that small changes in power would have led to much larger changes in steam void, with consequent power increases. The combination of these factors ultimately led to a power increase begninning at about 01:23:30."
> neither the reactor power nor the other parameters (pressure and water level in the steam separator drums, coolant and feedwater flow rates, etc.) required any intervention by the personnel or by the engineered safety features from the beginning of the tests until the EPS-5 button was pressed. The Commission did not detect any events or dynamic processes, such as hidden reactor runaway, which could have been the event which initiated the accident. “
Sure, I'm just saying the power increase did happen, according to both INSAG-1 and INSAG-7. Neither INSAG-1, INSAG-7 nor Legasovs report claims there is a rapid increase in power before AZ-5 is pushed. The claim in INSAG-1 is that this power increase was the start of a positive-feedback loop that caused the explosion. The claim in INSAG-7 was that the power increase was not a safety problem, except to the extent it caused the operator to push AZ-5.
I have seen real world adults behave that way. Including multiple managers. The real world Dyatlov being verbally abusive is something the show has taken from the real world.
And before someone goes on about cultural difference, there are several high profile examples of American leaders/directors/business men acting in openly abusive ways.
"Verbal abuse" isn't a concept that existed in the Soviet Union. Giving or receiving instructions with as many "suka blyat" inserted between each word as possible wasn't abnormal.
It was concept that existed in the Soviet Union. And yes, people complained about those, got rid of them first thing whenever they could and retaliated when they could.
Soviet Union people knew the concept of "non-asshole boss" and could distinguish it from "asshole boss". They would use those terms. Where they could vote for boss (and yes they could vote for boss in some institutions) they would avoid voting for assholes (unless they expected them to be assholes to external people).
This concept existed also in literature, movies, music and general entertainment. It shown up there and the "good boss" always won (else it could be constructed as a critique of the system). Asshole boss was typically foreign ennemy in disguise.
If you check what people were telling about him (at least here: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%94%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%BB%D0%BE..., sorry for Russian), you will find what the opinions were very different. Yet in the series it all boiled down to a very primitive character.
I actually worked in a restaurant, two different restaurants to be clear. I liked that job actually. Both were good place, but pay was not all that great.
Nothing even approached the high profile behavior I have in mind.
Your restaurant or construction site just sucked, plainly.
This. Also, Higginbotham's "Midnight in Chernobyl" is brilliant prose about the disaster, from the run-up through to the aftermath. At times, it reads more like a thriller (and a fast-paced one at that!) than prose.
Higginbotham uses Medvedev's book as a source. Medvedev worked in the Ministry of Energy and he was their special representative in Chernobyl after the incident. His task was to cover the asses of the ministry and the reactor designers, so this book invented a lot of "facts" to put the blame on the operators, Dyatlov and Fomin.
I thought the show was horrible. It was moralistic, quite on the nose, and the dialogue was pretty corny. There were a lot of obvious appeals to your average NYT and Atlantic type viewer, which is surely the main factor behind its critical acclaim.
I worked in the soviet nuclear industry (Sredmash) in the 1980s.
The dialogs and characters are completely unrealistic and made me cringe.
Everyone looks overemotional and infantile.
The hierarchical interactions are comical - a minister would never go to talk to miners, he would just phone a subordinate and tell them to organize people, they don't need armed soldiers present to enforce something, it is not the Wild West. The authors have no clue about the soviet mentality and how soviet society operated.
Easy but boring. Realistically, the workers would be gathered in a hall and their immediate boss would give a speech: "The party and the government want you to serve the Motherland at this heroic moment and volunteer for a hard job. Whoever goes gets apartments ahead of the waiting list".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1GEPsSVpZY
Probably the best non-technical book on the Chernobyl disaster is the book "Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe" by Serhii Plokhy. It describes not only the accident, but also the whole soviet system and political, economical decisions which led to the resulting catastrophe.
The most comprehensive technical report is INSAG-7 The Chernobyl Accident - IAEA. https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub913e_web.p...